The surrounding owners and staff members have been eager to let him change to harvest rice and wheat since the last time they saw Xu Ping harvesting reeds and alfalfa with a harvester, and now when they see it come true, they let out a burst of exclamations, and everyone's hearts are hot, and they want to buy a few of these machines from Xu Pingzhuang to use them back.

Strictly speaking, what Xu Ping is now making is a cutting and drying machine, which can only cut down the rice and wheat plants, and needs to be transported back to the wheat field for threshing and impurities, which can be regarded as a sectional harvest. But this is already a great step forward, and it can save a lot of manpower and increase efficiency when the field is at its busiest.

Seeing that the harvesters pulled by the five heads arrived at the ground at about the same time, Zhang Junping asked Xu Ping: "Little farmer, now use cattle to cut rice, how many acres can be cut in about an hour?" ”

This Xu Ping had already measured it and replied: "A cow has two rows at a time, and it can cut more than two acres in one hour." If you go four rows at a time, you can get to four or five acres. ”

Zhang Junping nodded: "Two acres in an hour is not bad, and you can harvest ten acres in a day." By the way, can a cow send four lines at a time? ”

Xu Ping said: "This is not good, you have to try slowly, you may have to wait until next year." ”

Zhang Junping nodded and did not speak again. Whether an hour is two acres or four acres is just a change in quantity, and those are all subsections.

In fact, making two lines is the result of Xu Ping's conservatism, after all, for the first time, he strives to be safe. It is said that according to the red test of his previous life, a tractor with six or seven horsepower can also harvest six rows of corn at a time, and the cutting force required for rice is much smaller than that of corn, and a cow should be able to carry four rows.

After five cows worked continuously for an hour, they harvested more than 10 acres of land and vacated a large area. Xu Ping asked a farmer to pick up the harvester operated by Xu Chang and asked him to direct people to transport the cut rice back to the wheat field.

By this time the water in the fields had already been drained, and the ground had dried up. The paddy fields in the north are not like the geology in the south, the upper layer is dry and the bottom is full of silt. Xu Chang instructed Zhuang Ke to break the rice into bundles and put them on the ox cart and pull them back to the wheat field.

Seeing that a few acres of rice had already been pulled back, Xu Ping asked Zhang Junping and Guo Zhi: "Official, if we go back to the village, we can let the villager himself be here, and it will be nothing to look at it again." ”

Zhang Junping nodded and agreed, and took people back to the village with Xu Ping.

There were many people outside the owner of the village who followed them, and there were officials just now, and they didn't dare to be presumptuous, but they couldn't see it from a distance. Zhang Junping took the people away, they were unrestrained, and they ran into the field in a swarm to observe the operation effect of the harvester up close.

Xu Ping didn't care about them, just returned to the wheat field with Zhang Junping and others.

When they arrived at the wheat field, the farmer laid out the rice in bundles one by one, and a large piece of rice had been arranged. The rest of the paddy could not be pulled back, but had to be dried in the field before being pulled. Now I brought back a few acres of land, just for the demonstration of the people. Threshing, hulling, milling, cleaning, Xu Ping also has several machines.

Let Zhang Junping and the officials sit down and serve tea, Xu Ping stepped forward and commanded the villagers to start the next work with Xu Chang.

The bales were opened, the drier paddy was picked, and threshing was carried out first.

In order to let everyone see clearly, a threshing machine was pulled to the officials, Xu Chang went up to pedal as a motivation, and Xu Ping personally fed the rice threshing.

In Xu Ping's previous life, the human thresher was still relatively common in rice-producing areas, especially in some inconvenient places in mountainous areas, and many farmers used it. The principle is actually not complicated, it is nothing more than using the bow teeth to comb off, and it is great to add a concave plate to be able to take it off.

Xu Chang took a breath, kicked up on the machine, and brought it to the threshing drum to rotate quickly.

Xu Ping said: "Don't be too fast, the important thing is to have an even speed, especially don't stop in the middle." ”

Xu Ping responded, and the thresher turned smoothly.

Xu Ping grabbed a handful of paddy and stretched it out to the threshing drum, and with a crackling window, the grains fell off the straw and fell out from under the threshing machine. There was a big basket underneath, and all the grains fell into it.

Manual threshers are all on threshing, try to improve the quality of threshing, and do not particularly seek speed. In fact, Xu Ping's manual threshers in his previous life were all operated by one person and powered by pedals. When he came to this era, he was not so particular about efficiency, and the pedal was more complicated than in this era, so Xu Ping added a person. Even so, it is much simpler than the purely manual operation of this era.

This machine Guo Zhi has the most experience and has studied it carefully. Because in principle, the threshing machine is the most understandable to the people of this era, and the difficulty lies in the power transmission part, otherwise it may have been invented.

After a while, there were more than a dozen catties of millet accumulated in the basket on the ground, Xu Ping asked the villager to put it away, and by the way, he handed over his work to Xu Chang, and then found a villager to kick.

When he arrived at Zhang Junping's side, Xu Ping asked, "How do you think about threshing like this?" ”

Zhang Junping nodded: "Yes, I don't know how much better it is than using people to beat me!" By the way, I see that the top of the rice you took off is not particularly clean, have you ever thought about how to take it off again? ”

Xu Ping was a little embarrassed: "No, that's it in our village." There are a lot of cattle and sheep in the farm, and the straw is used as feed, and the remaining grains on it are not wasted. Besides, today we are threshing with freshly harvested paddy, which should be much better if it is dried for two days. ”

Zhang Junping nodded, and after a while, he asked: "It's still laborious to use people to pedal, can it be connected to the water mill, which saves manpower and can bring up a lot of pieces at a time." ”

Xu Ping said: "It's okay, it's just that it's inconvenient in my village." ”

At this time, the hydraulic machinery was already very developed, and there were large-scale stone mills for grinding flour in the capital and Zhengzhou, and the imperial court also had a special department to manage it. In particular, the transmission of the water mill has used a gear set consisting of primitive bevel gears and spur gears, which is the most sophisticated machinery of this era except for astronomical instruments. As an official in the imperial court, when I needed power, I thought of water power.

After taking off about 200 catties of millet, Xu Ping asked the threshing machine to stop and put it aside, and asked Zhuang Ke to carry the rice huller over.

The hulling machine is to further process the threshed millet, remove the chaff and process it into brown rice. According to the structure of the previous life, Xu Ping adopted a double-roller type, with a certain speed difference between the two rollers, imitating the action of human hand rubbing to complete the huskling operation. It's a pity that there was no rubber in this era, so it was impossible to make rubber rollers, so they had to be replaced by cast iron rollers. The cast iron roller is hard and inelastic, and the effect is destined to be much worse, and the gap must be large, which is easy to cause leakage, and easy to form broken rice, but there is no way to do it.

Xu Chang operated with a farmer, and another farmer fed grains into the rice huller.

Looking at the brown rice coming out from under the rice huller, Zhang Junping nodded and said, "This is good, I don't know how much stronger it is than the rice!" Even the water can't compare to this! ”

Guo Zhi nodded on the side: "This machine is the most ingenious, and it is much stronger than that threshing ground!" I've only seen Chung Mi before, and the little farmer didn't know how to think of this solution! ”

Of course, Xu Ping couldn't have imagined that he had never even planted rice in his previous life, but these machines were all stereotyped, and he just borrowed them and made slight changes.

After the rice is bunched, it is milled into polished rice with a rice mill. The structure of the rice mill is somewhat similar to that of the huller, and the important part of the work is the roller. However, the roller of the rice mill is originally to use iron rollers, and the effect is better.

After grinding the rice, Xu Chang took the Zhuang Ke to lead a donkey, brought the threshing machine, and cleared the bran and other miscellaneous bits in the milled rice, leaving only the white rice and put it into the sack.

Looking at the time, it took only more than half an hour, and nearly 200 catties of polished rice were not made, which is much faster than the pure manual operation in this era.

Zhang Junping and the officials behind him nodded again and again. At this time, the most lacking thing in the Central Plains is manpower, with this set of farm tools, it is possible to grow rice on a large scale, and the future is limitless. At this time, the political center of the Great Song Dynasty was in the Central Plains, including the vast majority of nearly one million troops in the north. The Central Plains is barren and cannot support such a large number of people at all, so it relies on the use of the Bianhe River to transfer grain from the south of the Yangtze River. If agriculture in the Central Plains can develop, it will not be a question of how much grain will be produced, but it will be able to greatly save manpower and material resources and bring a series of benefits.

After the new rice was collected, Xu Ping saw that the sun was already in the west, and said to Zhang Junping: "This is the first time the new rice has been harvested in the village this year, why don't you cook it and taste it together?" See what is the difference between our rice from the Central Plains and the rice shipped from Jiangnan? ”

This is the last step of the ceremony, and only after eating the new rice can the rice here be successfully planted, and everyone applauds it together. This is all due to the complete equipment on Xu Pingzhuang, you must know that the emperor took the ministers to watch the cutting of the new valley, and he couldn't let everyone eat the new rice.

And when there was wine in the village, and a few sheep and a hundred and ten chickens were killed, a feast was set up in the wheat field. In fact, Xu Ping really wants to kill a cow to eat, and the big cow he bought last year gave birth to a few calves, which already seems a bit too much. The court crushed the price of the cattle, and it was not worth it to sell it at all, so it was better to kill it and eat meat. But afraid of the policy of banning the killing of cultivated cattle at this time, for fear of causing unnecessary trouble, Xu Ping did not dare after all.

After setting up the wine and dishes, the boiled new rice was served, Zhang Junping was the first to move the chopsticks, symbolically led everyone to eat two bites, and praised a sentence: "This rice is soft and glutinous, especially better than Jiangnan!" Good! ”

The crowd applauded.

In fact, it is the first time to plant rice in the village, and there are no selected varieties, so how good can it be? But at this festive time, it's just a nice couple to add joy.

After three rounds of drinking, Zhang Junping asked Xu Ping: "I heard that your family was originally a wine household?" Has anyone ever been out of business? ”

Xu Zheng counts up to three generations, how many generations have never heard of an official, how many generations of the Xu family are authentic poor middle peasants, until Xu Zheng's generation has a poor word.

Xu Ping replied respectfully: "Back to the point, my ancestors have been farming for generations, until my father couldn't live in the countryside anymore, so he went to the capital to sell wine, and no one has ever been out of business." ”

Zhang Junping said to Xu Ping: "So, are you interested in becoming an official?" I see that you are clever, you know how to open ditches and manage ditches at a young age, and you know how to manage fields, and you can invent new machines, which is a rare talent. If I am interested, I will report to the court, make up an official, and serve the court, which is also a background! ”

Xu Ping was stunned for a moment. If it is other ordinary people in this era, it is natural to be overjoyed to have this opportunity, the times are limited, is being an official a superior person! Xu Ping didn't think so, he had seen what the petty official looked like, Li Yonghe was busy, and his life was not as good as his family. Not to mention Shi Yannian, if it weren't for Zhang Zhibai's appreciation, he would have been worse than Li Yonghe before he became the magistrate.

After hesitating for a while, Xu Ping replied, "Thank you for your appreciation!" However, I have been studying with my teacher since I was a child, and my family has repeatedly warned me that I have to take the imperial examination to be a Jinshi, so I have to be ashamed to mention some kindness. ”

Zhang Junping is a member of Enyin, naturally knows the huge difference between having a Jinshi background and not being born, and he was a little stunned after listening to Xu Ping's words: "It is rare for the little village owner to have this ambition, you are still young, as the saying goes, fifty young Jinshi, thirty old Ming Jing, so I will study hard for a few years, and fight for a background!" If things don't go as planned, one day when we get to that field, let's take care of it. ”