"Almost, ready to build bricks!"

Five men tossed and turned in the mud pit with a diameter of no more than two zhang for nearly an hour, Chen Xu felt that he had stepped on it almost, and these adobe bricks did not need to be stronger, they could be used for five, six, seven or eight years, at that time, coal should have been found and bricks and tiles were burned, and the house built by that time should be a spacious and bright brick house, far more comfortable than the low thatched hut where you have to bend down when you enter the door and stand tall and can't straighten your waist when you stand tall in the room.

Many people in later generations do not know the appearance of thatched houses, in fact, thatched houses are very low, and the area is also very small, the height of the roof will not exceed two meters five, and the height of the eaves to the ground will not exceed one meter five, plus the beams inside occupy a part of the space, the height of the room will not exceed two meters, living in it will be very depressing, but even this kind of low, damp and narrow thatched house, not everyone can build it, you can't do anything without an axe and knife, you can only live in simpler shacks and caves.

Therefore, Chen Xu built his thatched house to a height of four meters last time, and with these adobe bricks, this house can be built into an adobe house, which is not only strong, but also warm in winter and cool in summer.

Niu Dashi ran to the river and brought over two brick molds, one large and one small, soaked in the river, and Chen Xu instructed Tian Bao and Tian Erzhuang to use rattan baskets to load the mud they had stepped on into the rattan basket and pick it up to the place where it was leveled yesterday.

The mold is very simple, in fact, it is a square frame of four wooden planks put together with movable tenons, which together looks like a bottomless drawer, only need to pour the mud into the mold, press it firmly by hand, scrape it flat with a mud knife on it, and then open the wooden bolt at one end of the mold, the mold can be opened, and the natural thing left is a square mud brick, which is dried for a few days and waits for the dry knot to be turned up and continued to dry, until it is completely dried to build the wall.

After a mud brick is extended, put the mold together in a water basin and clean the mud on it with grass, and then place it at a distance of one foot from the upper brick to make a second mud brick.

When Chen Xu was a child, he saw people in the village do it, but even if he has not seen this kind of thing, he can imagine it, because even in the countryside in the 21st century, mud brick and adobe houses are not uncommon.

Chen Xu stretched out five mud bricks in one go, and it took less than ten minutes to share.

And Yu Wuya, Niu Dashi, and Tian Bao also saw the production method of mud bricks clearly, which was simply not too simple.

Next, Chen Xutuo big bricks, Yu Wuya Tuo small bricks, Niu Dashi is responsible for digging mud, Tian Bao and Tian Erzhuang are responsible for picking mud, five people cooperate seamlessly, less than an hour, they have extended nearly 100 mud bricks of all sizes, and the rows are neat and tidy and look very pleasing to the eye.

"Hey, what are you doing here?" Uncle Ma and two villagers walked along the river with hoes, and asked in surprise when they saw the neat mud bricks on the ground and Chen Xu, who was busy sweating profusely.

Under the explanation of Niu Dashi, Tian Bao, and Tian Erzhuang, the more Uncle Ma listened, the brighter his eyes became, and the more joy on his face, after listening, he looked at Chen Xu and said: "Okay, good, Xiao Xu's method is too good, count me in, help my family also make two fire kang caves to keep out the cold!" ”

After Uncle Ma finished speaking, he took off his straw sandals and rolled up his clothes and pants to help dig the mud, and the other two villagers naturally had to enjoy the same treatment, so they also began to help, Niu Dashi saw that his job position in digging mud was occupied, so he simply drove Chen Xu away and took over the work of brick building.

And Chen Xu also wished, although it seemed that the brick was the most relaxed, but in fact, he had been bending over, after more than an hour, his waist felt completely numb and almost straightened, and looking at the other villager who helped didn't seem to know what to do, Yu Wuya also threw his brick mold to him, stood next to him and began to be a master master to do professional guidance.

There are a lot of people, talking and laughing gradually, and in this era when communication basically relies on roaring, people's voices are generally one to two octaves higher than that of later generations, and it is not in vain that they can easily chat across hundreds of meters when they are working, so a group of old men say some vulgar jokes while working, and the noisy laughter and laughter can be heard by almost the entire village, so after a while, there are people in the village who are curious to come over to see the excitement, men, women and children, and then they know Chen Xu's plan, and then ...... There was no then, and in the end, the army of mud bricks became dozens of people, and the mud that was originally going to be able to expand the mud bricks for a day was quickly exhausted with the help of a group of people, and became more than 400 neatly arranged mud bricks, which showed extraordinary momentum in the sunlight.

"Xiao Xu, since everyone wants to make a fire kang, I don't think it's as good as a family out of labor, it just happens that the soil here is good, the water is also convenient, and the place is also open, so we will dig a few more mud pits, make more molds, and make seven or eight days It is estimated that every household is enough! Anyway, now that the land of each family is almost ploughed, it is not a big deal to delay the rest of the matter for a few days! Uncle Ma said.

"Okay, you arrange this matter, uncle, since everyone wants to make a fire kang, the number of bricks and stones is too large, and it is not realistic to build a kiln in our village to burn bricks, so let's do it, you are responsible for taking care of the affairs in the village, I will go to the town and let them speed up the production of clay bricks and stone slabs, otherwise I am afraid that they will not be able to supply them at that time." Chen Xu nodded and said.

"That's the best, you go quickly, I won't go wrong with the things in the village!" Uncle Ma also nodded quickly, and Chen Xu took Yu Wuya to wash his hands and feet and go home, and after greeting Chen Jiang, the two rode to Qinghe Town.

In fact, the town is still relatively busy during this time.

The autumn grain has been harvested into the end, the large farmland on both sides of the Xiaoqing River has been harvested, leaving only the straw and the black soil exposed by ploughing, but a large number of villagers are still busy, not only to evenly level the compost in the early stage into the soil, but also to bundle a large number of straw beans into bundles and pile them on the edge of the field, which looks like a hill.

Because it is already autumn, all kinds of medicinal herbs and wild fruits in the mountains have been fully ripe, and a large number of mountain people carry baskets of mountain goods from Shili Eight Village to the town every day to sell, most of which are sold to a few workshops.

Autumn is the time to purchase medicinal materials, Chen Xu also gave Xu Fu and Xu Yuan an order, all kinds of medicinal materials in the pharmaceutical factory must be purchased in large quantities, because most of the medicinal materials are only collected in autumn and winter to have the best medicinal effect, so a large amount of reserves should be made.

The brewery now also buys a large number of wild fruits such as mountain grapes, mountain pears, hawthorns, mountain persimmons, and prickly pears that can be used to make wine and sugar, so the brewery now has an additional function in addition to winemaking, that is, boiling sugar.

Fructose has not appeared in the sucrose when it has not yet appeared, has always been one of the most important sources and supplements of human beings for sweet food, maltose has appeared in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the dry one is called 饧 (xíng), and the thin one is called syrup, but because boiling sugar requires a large amount of food, and because there is no high starch sweet potato and rice and corn as raw materials, the yield is very low, and wine, it belongs to the high-end food that can only be consumed by nobles, so Qin Law prohibits the people from boiling sugar privately, so ordinary people naturally can't enjoy it, Farmers who have surplus labor and time will go up the mountain to pick some mountain persimmons and other wild fruits in autumn and winter to make sugary food and reserve them, so the preserved fruit is also called caramel candy, which is also a very rare item in poor families, this tradition is even after more than 2,000 years, even if Chen Xu was a child, if he could eat a fruit candy, he would feel very happy, and a sugar in his mouth should be sucked in front of children for a long time and was reluctant to swallow.

Therefore, sugar has been an extremely scarce and important substance since ancient times, and it is rarer than salt, and even the emperor cannot eat sugar every day.

And Chen Xu has traveled through the past few months, and the only sweet food he has eaten is honey.

But honey does not have the basis and possibility of making reserves at all, it all depends on the provision of nature, so the output is scarce to the point of outrageous, the medicine shop in Qinghe Town purchased it from summer to autumn, and only purchased it once, and the wild honey was less than three catties, half of which was used by him to make yam poria honey cake, and the rest was hidden in the warehouse of the medicine shop for later use, which is an extremely scarce material.

It is precisely because of this that both the villagers of Xiaohe Village and Yu Wuya expressed serious distrust of Chen Xu's behavior of catching bees and coming back to raise them, and used eating stone mills to express their firm position.

But at the moment, Chen Xu seems to be about to succeed.

After Chen Xu and Yu Wuya rode to the town, they first went to the pottery workshop, so that Gao He had recently stopped all the pottery work to make a large number of pottery bricks, and because there was no need to worry about water leakage or anything, the requirements for soil were not high, as long as they were made into bricks of the same size, even a slight crack would not affect the use, as for the specifications and molds for making bricks, Chen Xu had already asked Yu Wuya to bring them yesterday, so when the two came, several apprentices had already made hundreds of bricks.

This kind of clay brick used to build chimney is about the same as the blue brick of later generations, one foot in length and width, two inches thick, a piece of mud is filled in the brick mold and compacted in the middle with a copper knife to divide into two, after molding, take out two bricks, dry for a few days into the kiln to fire on the line, according to the scale of the current earth kiln, nearly three hundred bricks can be fired at a time, the firing time is one day and one night, and two thousand catties of dry wood need to be consumed.

In order to speed up this speed, Chen Xu directly took 2,000 yuan and gave it to the potter Gao He, and brought a few helpers from the ink workshop to help together, purchased a large amount of wood, hired more villagers to pick up soil and mud, and made as many clay bricks as possible as soon as possible, just the chimneys of the seventeen villagers in Xiaohe Village would consume nearly a thousand bricks, not counting the damage during firing and transportation.

Money is not short of money now, the last time the water came to recuperate from the injury brought more than 30,000 yuan, Zhao Qing and Wang Jian came to eat and drink Lasa Chen Xu got more than 10,000 money, although the current cost of each workshop is huge, but it can be easily handled, in fact, a lot of the money spent is back in his hands under the circulation, because whether it is a blacksmith shop or a pottery workshop or a carpentry workshop or a mill, he has shares, and the craftsmen in the town are also very supportive, and if they don't support it, it won't work, otherwise Chen Xu will fire them and change them. Anyway, Chen Xu is the big boss of Qinghe Town, and in a word, even You Du, the three elders and a few pavilion chiefs are his most loyal dogs and fans.

After finishing the pottery workshop, Chen Xu came to the stonemason shop again, and also gave the stonemason Liu Da'an 2,000 money, asking him to hire someone to come back from the mountains to pick more stones, and speed up the production of stone slabs.

Next, I went to the carpentry workshop and asked the carpenter Liu Erwa to process and make some brick molds.

"Ridian, what are you doing with so many wooden frames?" Although Liu Erwa agreed to make it, she didn't understand it very much.

"This is used to expand the mud bricks, I plan to make the soil kang at home for ......winter heating," Chen Xu did not hide it, and roughly explained the principle and process of the soil kang.

"Ridian, this ...... This kang is indeed a good thing, I work all year round, a winter will be sore back and leg pain, it is estimated that in two years I will not be able to hold an ax to do wooden work, but if there is a warm kang, I may be able to work for a few more years, Lord Lidian, Erwa please one thing, help my family also make a kang it! ”

Chen Xu: ......

This request did not surprise him, but Chen Xu had a toothache, mainly because the demand for the kang is too great now, the eleven villages in the entire Qinghe Town plus a total of more than 600 households in the town, if all of them have to be made of the ondol, this renovation project is very huge, completely beyond the bearing capacity of Qinghe Town, the stone slab is not enough, the clay bricks are not enough, just taking the soil to make adobe bricks is also a very big project, but such a good cold facility can not be promoted, not to benefit the poor people, is also a huge regret, If there is such a thing as freezing to death in winter, Chen Xu himself will feel that he hates his incompetence.

It seems that this matter needs to work together, not just by yourself to work, human beings have lived in this land for thousands of years, there is no shortage of skilled craftsmen, what is lacking is guidance, after they say the design ideas of the kang, let people find their own way to make it, maybe there is no need for adobe or even slate They can also exert their creativity to solve this problem, as long as they can keep warm and persist in the next winter, the rest of the next year will naturally have a lot of time to complete a new ondol.

Thinking of this, Chen Xu turned around and rode to Liu Po's house, and asked him to notify the town's leading figures and all the craftsmen to gather in the primary school, he wanted to hold a joint meeting of the town government, and for the first time used the democratic joint office to solve the soil kang crisis, and the name of the meeting he had already thought of on a horse, it was called the first emperor in the winter of the twenty-seventh year of Qinghe Town soil kang promotion seminar, and it should be recorded for future generations to worship.