Flowers in full bloom

Chapter 638: Caught in a Dilemma?

I took out the celery stalks, let them cool, and fed Jinnian some celery juice. This time, he felt much better, and he drank a lot of it hesitantly.

Then I chopped the celery sticks into fine celery paste with a knife and stuffed a small amount of it into Jinnian's mouth. After trying for two or three days, Jinnian still couldn't defecate.

Instead, his appetite became worse and he would cry from time to time. Seeing Jinnian's face turn red every time he tried to poop, but still unable to poop, Hualei became even more anxious.

So, I took out the yogurt I made and prepared to give it to Jinnian to try. Yogurt is rich in probiotics, which can regulate the stomach and intestines if used properly, but can cause diarrhea if used improperly.

After bringing the yogurt to room temperature, Hualei fed Jinnian a few mouthfuls of yogurt. Seeing Jinnian licking his little mouth, Hualei took the opportunity to feed him a few more mouthfuls.

Then, I held Jinnian and began to massage his abdomen, massaging clockwise for a quarter of an hour, and then counterclockwise for a quarter of an hour, hoping to speed up the child's gastrointestinal motility and promote defecation.

I don't know if it was the celery juice or the yogurt that worked. An hour later, Hualei breathed a sigh of relief at the pile of feces. Raising a child is really hard, but fortunately there are many helpers, and Hualei can still insist on going out to work.

Since Hualei invented the hoe and the hoe cart, the speed of reclaiming and planting official fields in the Ministry of Revenue has increased exponentially. Moreover, Minister Zhang has also used the hoe and the hoe cart in more places without any instruction.

Later, whether it was planting beans, wheat in autumn, or rapeseed in winter, Minister Zhang used the plow and the plow cart.

For leveling the fine soil, the harrow and square rake are indeed very useful and efficient. And Zhang Shilang found that using the harrow to sow wheat was more suitable and convenient than sowing soybeans.

If you want to plant wheat densely and abundantly, you should drive the oxen to walk faster, and the faster they walk, the more seeds will be scattered. On the contrary, if you want to plant wheat sparsely and less, you should control the oxen to walk slower, and the wheat seeds will be scattered less.

The stone weight towed behind the plow cart compacted the soil in minutes and covered the wheat seeds. If there was some that was occasionally missed, someone would follow behind and use an iron rake to dig it away. One plow cart could replace the work of many people.

With the combination of several other farm tools and a few strong oxen, the planting area was rapidly increasing, and Minister Zhang was very satisfied.

Minister Zhang was very satisfied, but Minister Li of the Ministry of Works was not satisfied because the Ministry of Works did not have enough carpenters.

In order to build the state capital, many carpenters were making doors, windows, beams, etc. In addition, in order to irrigate the official fields, carpenters also needed to make water wheels, which was very time-consuming.

Minister Li wanted to split every craftsman into two and use them. As a result, Hualei made a new hoe and hoe cart. Minister Zhang asked the Ministry of Works to make all of them. There was not enough manpower, and Minister Li was very depressed.

So, the depressed Minister Li blocked Minister Zhang and Hua Lei in the government office and asked Minister Zhang to allocate a batch of manpower for land reclamation and planting to the Ministry of Works to offset the working hours of the Ministry of Works on plowing and plowing carts.

How could Minister Zhang agree to this? So, the two old foxes, no, the two champions, started to wrestle with each other openly and secretly.

Hualei, the culprit who started the whole thing, had no other options except to be caught in a dilemma and try to please both sides. However, being caught in a dilemma and trying to please both sides suddenly turned into being able to please both sides.

Because Hua Lei and Minister Li suggested that the Ministry of Works did not have enough craftsmen, they could ask their own lumber shop to help with simple, unskilled tasks such as making beams and rafters.

Besides, our own wood workshop can also help make simpler hoes. When Li Shilang heard this, he thought it was feasible. So he signed a purchase agreement with Hualei's wood workshop.

However, when paying the deposit, the "cunning" Minister Li suggested that the cost of the plowing should be borne by the Ministry of Revenue itself.

This……

"Master Zhang, what do you think? The Ministry of Works is indeed short of carpenters. If..., how about we still use harrows to level the land in the second half of the year?" Hua Lei said cautiously, observing his words and expressions.

"That's definitely not possible. We don't have enough manpower to use a rake." Minister Zhang rejected it outright.

"Then...?" Hua Lei pretended to be embarrassed.

"Forget it, then the Ministry of Revenue will bear the cost. It's not much anyway. You go and withdraw the deposit." Minister Zhang hesitated for a moment and made a decision.

Therefore, Hualei, who was in a dilemma, managed to get two agreements for her timber workshop, which made Pei Jingyang laugh and be extremely satisfied.

The tatami chairs ordered from our own lumber shop have not been doing well recently, probably because the market in Mobei has reached saturation.

The two purchasing agreements from the Ministry of Works and the Ministry of Revenue once again brought business to the timber shop, so they could have enough food and drink for the next period of time.

As for their own brick kiln, due to the increasing number of new immigrants and the recommendation of Hua Lei "seemingly", business has been booming and the demand for clay bricks has been in short supply.

Fortunately, Hualei used student loans to supplement the family with sufficient manpower, so the brick kiln shop operated very well.

The scale of Hualei's rabbit farm is expanding rapidly. Now, no matter which village, as long as they ask Hualei to rent breeding rabbits, Hualei will agree.

Although the scale is certainly not as large as the rabbit raising villages one and two, and each household only has a dozen rabbits for the time being, but a little adds up to a lot, and for Hualei, the rabbits and rabbit fur he has collected have increased exponentially.

As the amount of rabbit hair increased, the subsequent washing, spinning and weaving also increased exponentially. The income of each village also increased sharply, and the villagers were happy, and Hualei was even happier.

Looking at the warehouse full of rabbit hair, Hualei began to look for a new way out.

Since the paper mill and printing house were already there, Hualei originally wanted to replicate her own bookstore. However, the new state government was not yet completed, and the shop had not yet been acquired.

So Hualei had to put the bookstore business on hold. After flipping through many books, Hualei decided to start making brushes with rabbit hair. In the Great Sheng Dynasty, there were many raw materials for making brushes.

The most familiar one is the wolf hair brush. However, in addition to wolf hair, other wool, rabbit hair, weasel hair can be used to make brushes, and even pig hair and chicken hair can be used to make brushes.

Rabbit hair is used to make brushes, which are soft and flexible and can write smoothly. It is said that the first brush in ancient times was made of rabbit hair.

In the prosperous period, rabbit hair brushes also occupied a large share. The finest purple hair brushes are made of the top quality rabbit hair, and the brushes made are worth a fortune.

However, purple hair is quite rare, and Hualei’s rabbit farm does not have such raw materials. So the brushes made are just ordinary rabbit hair brushes. However, in order to make the brushes more durable and of better quality, Hualei also added wool.