On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, in the early morning, the army put out a lot of grain when making porridge. While eating, the civilians were discussing whether they should go to work in the fields.

The facts were just as guessed. Soon, the messenger came, telling him to hurry up and eat. After breakfast, he packed up his luggage and prepared to go to the fields.

The peasants were eating here. Li Mengxi and others didn't even bother to eat. They were counting grain, firewood, bent-shaft plows, hoes, pottery urns, bowls, pea seeds, and rulers to measure the fields.

Boundary signs marking the boundaries are all needed for farming.

All the reserve materials in the army were moved out of the warehouses. Vehicles pulled the materials one by one and moved them outside the city, where they were piled up in a large area outside the city.

For all the farming needs, a small urn for cooking is definitely enough. The curved-wheel plow is far from enough. But you can barely cultivate the land without a plow. A hoe can be used in one hand. Even if there are gaps, there are not many missing bowls.

The army has been preparing wooden pieces such as quick rulers for a long time and has abundant reserves.

The only thing Li Mengxi failed to calculate was the rations for farming, firewood for cooking, and pea seeds.

According to the previous plan, the rations for the campers should be distributed for a month. The reason for this was to take into account the implementation costs.

The traffic is too poor and transportation is troublesome. If the farmers are to receive ten days of food, then the food transport team will have to be dispatched every ten days. In a place as big as Julunuo, even if the food transport team has thousands of vehicles, the food transport team will be dispatched once every ten days.

It takes several days to cover the entire territory, and then as soon as the food is distributed, the people in front have finished eating it, and they have to quickly start the next delivery.

Since then, the delivery cannot stop, it is too busy.

Therefore, considering the workload, it is best to distribute food to the campers for a month.

In short, the more food is distributed, the slower the frequency of food distribution will be and the smaller the amount of government affairs will be.

The reason why we do not distribute more food, not to distribute more food for two months or even three months, is because firstly, if there is too much food, the people will not be able to carry it, and secondly, if there is too much food, there will not be enough food.

Especially the second point, Li Mengxi was worried about food.

One hundred thousand people, each carrying a month's rations, will the food storage be enough?

Li Mengxi asked Liu Bei. Liu Bei thought for a while and simply replied, "That's enough."

Li Mengxi then asked about seeds. Julu has 20 million acres of farmland. Assuming half of it is deserted, the number of acres that need to be planted is 10 million acres. One acre of land needs two kilograms of pea seeds to replant, which is 20 million kilograms of peas.

, that’s twenty million kilograms!

Li Mengxi asked Liu Bei if he had planted enough peas.

Liu Bei hesitated for a moment, thought for a moment, and said, "That's enough." He gave another simple reply.

Finally, Li Mengxi asked if each of the peasants had brought enough firewood for a month.

Liu Bei was silent.

The rebels settled in Julu in a hurry. They kept fighting. After the battle, they settled in Julu City in a hurry. There was no chance to replenish supplies. One winter day last year, hundreds of thousands of people relied on firewood to keep out the cold and make fires and meals.

, just because there was not much firewood, papermaking and steel filling were mature, and Li Mengxi did not dare to start production.

Now, I asked Liu Bei if he had enough firewood. Liu Bei, who had been dispatching supplies here for a long time, had no answer. He must not have enough firewood, and there was not much firewood left.

Li Mengxi hesitated and frowned, "Then... what should we do if we run out of firewood?"

On the side, Jian Yong said nonchalantly, "Firewood, it's everywhere, there are people with hands and feet, who can't chop some firewood."

The implication is that there is no need to worry about firewood at all. If there is a shortage of firewood, others will find it themselves.

Li Mengxi disagreed with Jian Yong's answer.

Anyway, Jian Yong thinks it is not a problem, but Li Mengxi thinks it is a big problem.

What does it mean to find your own firewood when you are short of food? Can't you find it yourself if you are short of food? If you don't have food, others have food. You can rob it and you will not die of hunger. But, can this be done? A camper who has no food will become

Bandits.

Li Mengxi discussed with Liu Bei how to solve the firewood problem.

Liu Bei suddenly said, "Xi'er, do you still remember after Deng Maocheng asked for the Yellow Turbans?" Liu Bei looked down at Li Mengxi.

Li Mengxi scratched his head and thought for a while, but couldn't remember the key. He looked at Liu Bei and asked doubtfully, "Cheng Yuanzhi and Deng Mao, what's wrong?"

Afterwards, Liu Bei talked about what happened at that time.

The matter is also related to Li Mengxi. When dealing with the Yellow Turban prisoners, Li Mengxi proposed that those who were willing to surrender to the army could do so, and those who were unwilling to surrender could be offered money and food to allow them to return home.

The situation at that time was that many prisoners were far away from home. In addition to providing them with food, which was raw, they also had to be given firewood and pottery jars. However, there were too few supplies in the army at that time and they could not afford one jar per person.

Therefore, the idea given to the returning captives at that time was that instead of leaving in a hurry, they could first get some water, cook the food, and then take it with them.

Liu Bei said, "For example, take wheat. Boil the wheat in water. When it's cooked, put it in a bag. When you're hungry, grab a handful and chew it. You can eat it for ten and a half months."

Eating raw wheat will cause stomach upset, but cooking it will not."

Li Mengxi understood, it turned out to be like this, it turned out to be dry food.

There was not much firewood in the army, but the limited firewood could be used to cook a large amount of grain in batches, and then the cooked grain was taken away by the civilians. The civilians did not need to light fires to cook for ten and a half months.

Li Mengxi was only worried about one thing. Ripe wheat was not easy to store. It was fine in the winter. But now that spring was coming, mold would grow and it would kill people.

The solution Li Mengxi came up with was to cook the grain, dry it in the sun, and then wrap a bag of quicklime in the grain bag to absorb moisture, so that it can be stored for a long time.

However, it takes too long to cook and dry it, and there is not enough lime.

Li Mengxi made things complicated again.

Liu Bei thought for a while and said, "There is no need to lime, use straw ash, put the grain into the urn, cover it with straw ash, and it will not get moldy."

Li Mengxi was surprised. Can plant ash be used in such a way?

On second thought, it seems to make sense.

The problem is perfectly solved.

The solution is that due to the shortage of firewood, those who set out first were given only enough firewood to make three meals per person, while those who set off later were given no firewood but cooked grain, or more precisely, cooked sorghum and sorghum.

Wheat and millet are not included in this list. Millet, which is millet, becomes porridge when boiled. It cannot be taken with you, and it cannot be preserved by spreading grass ashes.

Furthermore, according to Liu Xuande, millet seeds can be eaten dry and chewed without any problem.

After the last logistical problem was solved, Li Mengxi decided to split up. He asked Liu Bei to send someone to explain the farming matters first, and it took him an hour and a half to explain the matter thoroughly and clearly.

At the same time, the food is cooked and prepared quickly.

——

All the people left behind in the army were mobilized. After excluding the 100,000 who went out to work in the fields, there were still tens of thousands left. All the cooking utensils, large and small urns that could cook rice were added together, plus the few remaining in the army.

Let’s get a very large iron pot and start cooking the food together.

The grain in the granary that has not yet been shipped out does not have to be taken out of the city. It is directly transferred to the city and distributed around for use as cooked grain.

I don’t know whether there were thousands of pottery urns and thousands of bonfires busy at the same time, and soon the whole city was filled with smoke.

At the same time, while the grain was being processed and cooked, Liu Bei and his men carefully explained the matters related to the large and small farming to the campers who were preparing to go out to farm.

The soldiers running around shouting, "I'm going to work in the fields. Don't conflict with the villagers."

Be patient and give in when things happen. Even if a villager stabs you with a knife, even if you are hacked to death, you must not fight back. Anyone who fights back will be put to death!"

"If something happens, report it to the ranger and someone will come to negotiate."

"Furthermore, each of our 100,000 people will measure two hundred acres of land, divide it into portions, and remember to insert the land boundary as proof."

"Spring has arrived and the soil has returned to its original state. After settling down, hurry up and start planting."

…

The farming-related matters discussed last night till late at night were conveyed to various places by the messengers over and over again.

Now when I go to farm, farming is a small matter, not conflicting with the villagers, and controlling the land as quickly as possible. These two are the most important.

In order to control the land as quickly as possible, 100,000 people were scattered in all directions, and could cover the entire Julu territory within a few days.

In order to avoid conflicts with the villagers, the countermeasure was to make the villagers be as tolerant as possible, so that the villagers had no power to deal with matters, and then wherever trouble occurred, the superiors would personally handle it.

The messengers walked around conveying orders, and kept picking people out of the crowd to ask questions. If anyone couldn't answer, the whip was immediately applied to them.

Three to five whips are not very strong and do not hurt much, but they are enough to deter people.

In order to avoid being beaten, the guards had to listen carefully.

The messengers had been making noise for almost half an hour. In the city, in the big iron pot near the military medical camp, the wheat was finally cooked.

Before cooking, twenty kilograms of wheat were put in. After cooking, all the wheat was picked up, drained, and weighed. Twenty kilograms of wheat became sixty kilograms.

In other words, after the wheat is cooked, it weighs twice as much.

Now that the data is available, Li Mengxi knows how to distribute it.

After another half an hour, the cooked wheat from all over the city was collected together, and the steaming hot wheat was loaded into cart after cart and transported outside the city.

In various parts of the city, people were still busy cooking wheat and sorghum. People took large handfuls of grains into urns and sprinkled them with boiling water. It wouldn't take long for another urn to be cooked.

When Liu Bei saw Li Mengxi coming from the city, Liu Bei knew that it was time to leave.

——

There are more than 130 townships in Julu, so naturally the deployment is based on townships.

A more detailed coordination work is to let those who are far away go first, and those who are close to go last.

The first one to set out was Julu, from Xiaquyang County and Yangping Township, with a camp of 1,300 people.
To be continued...