Flowers in full bloom

That day, Hua Lei had just returned to Hua's house in Qingyun Lane when Youdi, a young man from Sifangyuan, came over.

It is said that there are nearly 340 to 350 acres of puddle land for sale in the southeast of Dongcheng District. Speaking of this puddle land, it was caused by the flood in Beijing two years ago. Originally there were nearly 8,000 acres of high-quality farmland here, but due to the continuous heavy rains in Beijing two years ago, the flood was too serious.

The officials above were afraid of affecting the people and the city of Beijing, so they closed the South Gate. The flood had nowhere to go and it became a disaster, submerging more than 8,000 acres of farmland for nearly a month, turning these originally fertile lands into the puddles they are today.

The owner of the manor now wants to sell the 350 mu of swampy land, the houses on the manor, and 16 farmers with nearly 60 people. The original price was 3,300 taels, but now it is only sold for about 1,600 taels.

Ask Hualei if she is interested in buying it. If she wants to buy it, she can go and see it tomorrow. But there is no rush. This farm has been hanging for several months and no one is interested.

Manager Chen thought about how quick Hualei had come to buy a shop and a farm, and also about how Hualei was doing very well in selling the various foods made from fruits, peppers, and flowers at Baihua Farm.

There are so many ideas for making money, so let the guy with the land come over and give Hualei a message. If Hualei also has some way to make money from the puddle, it would be a good thing. After all, the price is less than half of the original, which is really cheap.

Moreover, this order has been hanging for a long time. The six managers of Sifangyuan have brought customers with purchasing intention to see it several times, but it has not been sold. Thinking that I have some free time recently, I asked Hualei what he thought. If he buys it, I can get a commission.

Hualei was moved when she heard this. It was probably not possible to grow dry crops such as rice and wheat in the puddles. Then, would it be possible to raise ducks and geese? Would it be possible to grow some wild rice and lotus roots near the puddles? With a slight change of mind, she agreed to go and see the site tomorrow morning before making a decision.

After Brother Youdi left, Hualei went up to the study on the second floor, found several local chronicles and official reports about Shangjing City on the bookshelf and began to read them. These local chronicles and official reports were found when she was looking for defective products in the printing house before, and Hualei kept them on purpose.

At this time, she opened the regional annals and searched carefully. Because the regional annals recorded the natural geographical locations of Shangjing City, such as various rivers, state bridges, palaces, temples, etc., and also recorded the contents of economy, culture, natural disasters, and strange phenomena. It can be said that it is all-encompassing and has everything.

Hua Lei carefully read the various floods, earthquakes, plagues, etc. that had occurred in Shangjing City in the past few decades, and found that except for a large-scale flood in the summer of the fifth year of Dasheng the year before last, the last large-scale flood in Shangjing City occurred thirteen years ago during the reign of the previous emperor.

After the flood in Shangjing City the year before last, officials took many measures to prevent the flood from happening again, such as digging a new moat in the southeast, northwest and northeast directions, and digging a large reservoir for water storage in a relatively low-lying area.

The levees were also reinforced. The sewers in the streets of Shangjing City were all cleared and tidied, and fishing nets were installed at the sewer outlets to prevent waste from clogging them.

Last summer, it rained heavily for eleven consecutive days. Although a small area of ​​farmland was affected, no serious flooding occurred because the water drained away quickly.

Hualei looked at Di Yuzhi and thought deeply. According to this reasoning, the possibility of another serious flood is not very high. If I buy a swampy land, it should be no problem to raise ducks and geese. At that time, I can plant some wild rice and lotus roots, which are more resistant to floods than rice and wheat. It should also work.

After having a rough idea in mind, Hualei calculated the price again and made a few notes in her notebook before giving up.

The next day, after breakfast, I took Uncle Fu and drove a mule cart to the southeast with Manager Chen and Brother Youdi. The original name of the village was "Yuanying Village", which is quite poetic. I wonder what the actual situation is like?

The mule cart traveled for less than an hour before arriving at the farm. Perhaps because the farm was relatively large, there were three houses on the farm. In addition to the largest one in the middle, the other two were relatively small. The sixteen households also lived in three houses.

However, because they knew that someone would come to visit Zhuangzi today, they all gathered in the house in the middle line. There were sixty-eight people, big and small, old and young, all wearing tattered clothes and with sallow faces. It was obvious that they had not eaten well.

The house was also quite old, and although it didn't leak, some places still needed to be repaired if rice was to be stored. However, there were a lot of houses, seven rooms in a row, and there were actually five rows in total. Except for the first and second rows, which were rooms and study rooms for the master, the other rows were probably used as warehouses to store rice.

Behind the five rows of large brick houses, there are seven rows of slightly smaller and lower brick houses. Some of them are for farmers to live in, and the others are probably for grazing cattle, sheep, chickens and ducks. After all, with more than 400 acres of land, more than one or two oxen are needed for working, and some pigs, chickens, ducks and so on will also be raised.

Although the other two places were smaller than this one, they also had five rooms in a row, with nine rows of houses of different sizes in front and back. However, the warehouses were empty, and the remaining rice was almost gone. It was estimated that the people in the village would run out of food in three to five days.

To the south of Zhuangzi is the original east-west Nanwaicheng River, which is 12 to 13 meters wide and is one of the most important transportation hubs in Shangjing City. At this time, there are many ships coming and going on the river.

Many boats also have sails hanging. I wonder if Zhuangzi’s name was taken from the Tang Dynasty poem “A solitary sail disappears into the distant blue sky.”

To the east is the newly dug moat running in the southeast, northwest and northeast directions. The moat is not wide, only about 60 to 70 meters, but it is said to be very deep, with the moat embankment nearly half a meter higher than the paddy field.

The whole village is in the shape of a right-angled trapezoid. The original area of ​​400 mu was cut off due to the digging of a new moat, so now it should be more than 360 mu. Nearly one-third of it is puddles. From a distance, it looks like ponds of different sizes.

I heard from the village head that the deepest and largest depression is about ten feet, covering an area of ​​six or seven mu, and most of them are gathered in the east and south of the village. The shallower ones are less than one foot. The terrain of the whole village slopes from northwest to southeast, and the terrain becomes lower as you go to the southeast. It feels a little tilted.

The wheat that had just been harvested last month had only one or two inches of stubble left in the sparsely exposed fields, and it seemed that there were some large and small insects crawling on the roots. There were puddles of water or ponds on the side, which looked very dilapidated.