novelonline Chapter 2086 Business Philosophy
Chapter 2086 Business Philosophy
Chapter 2086 Business Philosophy
The Queen Mother noticed Niguzhu's curious look.
"Nikuzhu, come here..."
The Queen Mother waved to her.
Niguzhu immediately stood up, trotted forward, and said to the Queen Mother: "Mother Wuku, I can also sing drinking songs, and I also want to toast..."
The Queen Mother smiled and said, "Then I will."
The Eighteenth Prince and the Ninth Prince had already returned to their seats, and the Fifth Prince was still beside them.
The Fifth Prince carefully prepared a Hada and a silver wine cup for Niguzhu.
The Hada was too long for Niguzhu, so he just folded it in half and held it in his hands.
Hearing their daughter start to sing, Shushu and the Ninth Prince looked at each other, with smiles in their eyes.
Everyone can see it for once.
"Lang Kun... Dao Te Ran... pays a visit..."
Niguzhu sang in a loud voice.
Every note was correct, but none of them were in tune.
The Queen Mother listened with a smile, not feeling it was awkward, and even nodded and followed Niguzhu's beat of the rhythm.
Kangxi couldn't help but glance at the Ninth Prince and Shushu.
I have never heard the Ninth Prince sing, let alone his daughter-in-law Shushu. The number of times I have met her can be counted.
Who did this kid follow?
The same long tune can be sung very differently when sung by others.
But this spirit of holding his head high and chest out has some resemblance to the Ninth Prince.
Niguzhu sang drinking songs and toasted like his elders.
The Empress Dowager, Kangxi and Concubine Yi drank Niguzhu's toast.
Shu Shu hesitated for a moment, and whispered to the Ninth Prince, "Master, since this is a family dinner, should I also toast?"
She is the daughter-in-law, granddaughter-in-law, and the mistress of the village. It is not easy for her to just sit there and do nothing.
The Ninth Prince said, "Yes, but use a silver cup instead of a bowl, to avoid getting the Empress and the Royal Grandmother drunk."
Mare's milk tastes mellow, but it has a strong aftertaste and can easily make you drunk.
Shushu nodded and also went to toast, starting with the Empress Dowager.
But she didn't sing any drinking songs. She was very polite, holding the Hada.
The Queen Mother took it, looked at Shushu with a smile and said, "I've been eating your eggs for several years. I'm going to go check the chicken coop later. How many chickens do you have now?"
Shushu had just met the steward in the morning, so he remembered it clearly and answered truthfully: "More than 2,400..."
The original price was more than 2,500 yuan, and I took out dozens of them to make the afternoon meal.
The Queen Mother was surprised and asked, "So many?"
Kangxi and Concubine Yi also looked over.
You should know that the chickens and ducks in the palace are supplied by the imperial farms of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in turn.
A farm that provides more than a hundred chickens and ducks every year is considered a big farm.
The Ninth Concubine raised so many chickens on the farm she came with as a dowry.
Shushu said, "There were only a few hundred chickens in the past few years. In the past two years, we have been growing corn on the farm, and the husks are just right for feeding chickens, so we set up a few chicken coops and raised more chickens."
The Queen Mother asked, "How many eggs do we have to collect every day? What if we can't eat them all?"
Eggs are eaten fresh, so they are fine when the weather is cold, but they will go bad in ten days or half a month in the summer.
Shu Shu said: "In addition to our own use, we also supplied it to four restaurants outside, and the surplus was made into pickled eggs and preserved eggs."
The Queen Mother praised: "It's a good arrangement. You should have a plan for your life."
Although the Ninth Prince had a title, his annual salary was only 2,500 taels of silver, which was enough to support hundreds of people.
Kangxi couldn't help but look at the Fifth Prince.
How stupid! Dong E's chickens had more than 2,000 and they were still fine, but the Fifth Prince only had a few hundred and they were all wiped out.
You can’t learn well what is ready-made.
The Fourth and Seventh Concubines, who also studied under Dong E, achieved some success. Although their achievements were not as large as Dong E's, they were able to be self-sufficient.
The Fifth Prince looked embarrassed.
I learned it, but I just had bad luck.
These chickens have to be protected from fowl plague all year round.
I even specially arranged for someone to come and learn for a few months, and raised chickens according to the model here, but they still didn't succeed.
Shushu toasted Kangxi again.
She was respectful, with her eyes downcast.
Kangxi took the silver cup, but instead of drinking it directly, he asked a question.
"I heard that you planted a lot of corn on your farm. How many acres do you plant? What's the yield per acre?"
Shushu replied: "I planted 440 mu of crops, and the average yield per mu last year was 316 kilograms."
After hearing this, Kangxi couldn't help but fall into deep thought.
He remembered clearly that when the Fourth Prince was trying to grow corn, the best fields in Haidian produced 350 kilograms per mu, the medium fields in Tongzhou produced 290 kilograms per mu, and the inferior fields in Baoding produced 190 kilograms per mu.
Dong E's farm is next to a mountain and a lot of the land is sloping. It is not considered good farmland and can barely be called medium-quality farmland. However, the yield per mu is much higher than that of medium-quality farmland.
"Did you use fertilizer?"
Kangxi thought about the chicken farm here and said.
Shu Shu said: "Not only heavy fertilizer, but also deep plowing, close planting and full seedlings, the care is quite delicate and consumes a lot of manpower and animal power."
The main reason is that there are chicken coops and pig farms here, which require a lot of feed every day.
We used to buy rice bran from the mill, but that wasn’t a long-term solution, so we asked people to plant more corn, and we became self-sufficient since last year.
Kangxi listened and nodded, then he finished the wine in his glass and said to the Ninth Prince, "I'll ask Ding Zaobao to learn more from him later."
Corn can be used as feed and also for making wine. If you store more, you never know when you may need it.
The Ninth Prince said proudly, "Learn, learn. Apart from anything else, there are so many imperial farms that they should have been properly tidied up long ago. In the early years, the daily necessities of the palace were all supplied by the imperial farms. It doesn't make sense that with so many imperial farms, the supply would be insufficient and we would have to buy from outside."
This purchasing expense is an additional expenditure.
This is equivalent to doubling the palace's expenses, but everyone's supplies have not changed.
The Ninth Prince thought of the eggs that were not included in the prince’s share.
It's really a big joke in the world.
1. Food that costs two cents per piece can be eaten by ordinary people, but it is not included in the rations for the princes and princesses. If they want to eat a plate of fried yellow vegetables, they have to send someone to the imperial kitchen to give a few taels of silver, and then they can get a plate of eggs.
Those imperial farms also cried poor, as if supplying twenty eggs every day was a huge task, and they demanded credit for it.
Kangxi also thought about the food expenses in the palace.
As a Beile Mansion, the mansion has not made much use of the farm under the name of the Ninth Prince. Just the farm that came as a dowry of Dong E is enough to be self-sufficient.
The Imperial Household Department has three to four hundred grain stores, bean stores, vegetable gardens, melon gardens, and orchards. It is wrong for it to be so inactive.
In addition, in Rehe, we can reclaim farmland and add dozens of farms to prepare supplies for the Rehe Palace.
Last year, the supplies for the Rehe Palace were all transported from the imperial farm in the capital, which consumed a lot of manpower and animal power.
After asking this question, Kangxi said nothing else.
He was also very curious about this farm and planned to ask the Ninth Prince about it in detail later.
When they got to Concubine Yi's place, she drank some wine first, and then smiled and said to Shushu, "I heard that there are people out there who are begging for money, so I'm here to beg for money today. When you leave, ask someone to pack a few baskets of eggs for me to take back as gifts."
Shu Shu said, "Even if the queen doesn't tell me, I still have to show my respect to her. In addition to eggs, the early cherries are ripe, and there are also some snacks made from corn."
When the Queen Mother heard that there was new food, she turned around and said, "What snacks are you talking about? Send them up now to try."
Shushu turned around and asked someone to bring up some snacks.
After a while, Xiaotang brought two maids in, holding a tray with four small platters on it.
There are four snacks in it: cheese nachos, corn crisps, corn candy and fried popcorn.
One was placed on each person's table.
Although corn is a coarse grain, the snacks made from it are novel and exquisite.
Except for the corn crackers which are salt and pepper, the other three are sweet and are loved by women and children.
The Queen Mother ate them one by one, pointed at the cheese corn chips and corn candies, and said to Shushu, "I'm going to beg for money too, so pack more of these two to take away."
Shu Shu said, "I prepared one for you, so I'll add another one."
The Queen Mother nodded and said, "Okay, okay..."
After Shushu toasted, he returned to his seat.
She glanced at Guarjia.
The Guarjia clan's identity was such that it was difficult for them to either rise or fall.
Guarjia lowered his head and ate corn candy in small bites.
Shushu looked away.
She remembered the words of the Ninth Prince.
The fifth prince wants to bring his legitimate son over.
For a moment, Shushu couldn't tell how he felt.
In the past few years, whether in front of Concubine Yi or the Empress Dowager, Shu Shu always held back, always respecting her sister-in-law, the Fifth Lady, first, and the two sisters-in-law got along very happily most of the time.
It is better to be valued by the Fifth Prince, his father, and to be personally taught by him, than to be not valued at all.
Now that there has been some relaxation during the school term, there might be a turning point in the matter of the title.
The main reason is that the young prince has his condition under control and does not have frequent attacks. His status as a legitimate son is noble after all.
If he marries and has children when he reaches adulthood, it is not impossible for the title to be passed directly to his grandson.
I hope Fifth Lady can think positively and be more open-minded.
Everyone was very satisfied with the tender and delicious mutton, crispy Mongolian fruits, and a few new foods.
The Queen Mother couldn't wait to go see the chicken coop.
Everyone surrounded the Queen Mother and walked out of the yurt.
The sedan chair was prepared outside the yurt, and the empress dowager got on it.
The others mounted their horses and followed Kangxi and Concubine Yi.
As for the children, they were arranged to be held by someone.
Kangxi was asking about other matters at the Ninth Prince's farm.
How many pigs and sheep are raised?
I heard there are cows too.
The Ninth Prince said, "Pigs are too voracious. We don't raise as many as chickens. There are less than 200 of them, and we sell ten pigs every month. However, my son's wife has two farms in Daxing and Tongzhou, and she also raises pigs. She also sells ten pigs every month, which is enough for the daily needs of the mansion."
Kangxi: "..."
As far as he knew, there were only a few dozen servants inside and outside the Beile Mansion, plus the guards and imperial guards who took turns on duty every day, there were only about 140 to 150 people.
As a result, a pig had to be slaughtered every day.
No wonder the guards and escorts of the Prince's Mansion look so energetic. Just look at the food, it is unique in the capital.
The Ninth Prince went on to say, "The child doesn't like pork, but prefers mutton. We have a flock of sheep on the farm, more than 300 of them, and we send one to the mansion every other day..."
"There is water at the foot of Baiwang Mountain, so I raised two more groups of ducks, with a total of more than 400 ducks..."
"Cows... a total of more than 60. There are 20 yellow cows given by my son's father-in-law every year, and 20 dairy cows given by the Tenth Lady. The rest are purchased by my son and distributed to tenants. Corn needs to be plowed deeply, so animal power is indispensable..."