CHAPTER 25: CHAPTER 25: DIVIDING LAND AND BECOMING A SMALL LANDOWNER

EDITOR: ENDLESSFANTASY TRANSLATION

Regarding Lin Wanwan’s behavior of wearing beautiful Hu clothing and dressing as a man to work in the fields, the clansmen simply considered it a playful act.

The little lady raised in a noble family, she doesn’t understand farming at all, must be here to have fun? And that foolish kid Lin Mengbo really followed her in this nonsense. What they’re planting is something unheard of called sweet potato, who knows if it’s edible, how to eat it?

It’s always hard for people to accept each and every new thing that comes along.

However, nobody openly joked about it, they all kept it to themselves. Because through word of mouth, the clansmen had already heard about Lin Wanwan’s plan to set up a clan school, which was a beneficial thing for the entire clan.

As long as Lin Wanwan is willing to stay in this impoverished remote place to teach the children reading and arithmetic, bringing the seeds of education to Lin Family Manor, they have no objections to however she wants to mess around.

From that day on, the building of the house and farming began simultaneously.

Through practical work, Lin Wanwan also learned many farming skills. Combining theory with practice, her farming techniques improved significantly.

Now Lin Wanwan travels back and forth between Wanghai Town and Lin Family Manor every day, and the first thing they built was the road leading to the village entrance.

From then on, the village had its first carriage coming in, and the children could not only ride horses for fun but also received yogurt drops or fruit every day, making them incredibly happy.

During these days, the Clan Leader Lin made time to help Lin Wanwan settle the matters for agricultural female household registration (with the dual role of monetary power and Lin Clan Leader’s local connections).

As a farmer, Lin Wanwan was also allocated twenty mu of permanent land outside the manor and ten mu of allocated land.

Under the land distribution order at the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, adult males over eighteen and ding males were allocated eighty mu of allocated land and twenty mu of permanent land each.

Older males and disabled were allocated forty mu of allocated land, widowed wives, and concubines were allocated thirty mu of allocated land; if these people were household heads, they received twenty mu of permanent land and thirty mu of allocated land.

Mixed households received land like the common people. Artisans, merchants, and government households received half of what commoners had. Daoists and monks received thirty mu of land, nuns and priestesses received twenty mu. Additionally, common women, servants, and slaves did not receive any land.

However, in the actual operation, there were distinctions between wide regions and narrow regions. In sparsely populated wide regions, one could obtain full land allocation, but the area around Wanghai, where Lin Wanwan was located, was considered a narrow region, so naturally, the land allocation was not as abundant.

Clan Leader Lin showed Lin Wanwan her allocated permanent land, which was semi-barren, reclaimed from sea saline-alkali land plains.

With the Tang Dynasty’s farming level, salt-alkali soils with such a high salt content and hardened soil were not conducive to the absorption of nutrients for plant growth, with severe cases causing physiological drought in plants, essentially making agricultural production impossible.

Thus, this piece of permanent land basically belonged to the useless type, and it was for this reason that Lin Wanwan got her hands on it.

But Lin Wanwan was quite satisfied, for she had a thousand years of civilization supporting her, what’s a little difficulty? She would go back and thoroughly research, consulting agricultural experts!

Clan Leader Lin looked at the vast areas of the saline-alkali wasteland and said with worry: "Actually, if you set up a fishing household, we could gather enough from the clan to pay your taxes each year.

But now you opted for a farming household, and this saline-alkali land can’t sustain anything, only the ten mu of allocated land could be a little promising. But the annual taxes and labor duties aren’t cheap, and the clan can’t help. If you can’t grow anything, you’ll end up exhausting your savings."

Lin Wanwan said confidently, "Uncle Clan Leader, don’t worry, Master taught me a lot about agriculture. What others can’t grow, I can."

Clan Leader Lin looked at the confident noble girl Lin Wanwan with lips twitching, unable to understand her mysterious confidence in farming.

This little girl, does she think farming is like reading books?

Oh well, she’ll learn once she faces a bad harvest. She’s been raised too well by an ethereal master and hasn’t experienced the hardships of reality yet. Luckily, she can afford to play around for a while, so let’s just let her be.

Lin Wanwan really has nothing to worry about, she can smuggle modern knowledge here, what’s there to fear even if her farming theories don’t pan out?

Moreover, she can easily buy an endless amount of pepper to exchange for money, in the Great Tang, she is standing undefeated.

In the early Tang, governance was relatively clean, and taxes were light, at a rate of forty taxes for one. Farmers annually paid the court the "rent" for their allocated land, which was two dou of millet, approximately equal to 200 jin of grain.

Although Lin Wanwan didn’t receive her full allocation, this "rent" still had to be paid in full. This amount of millet was a mere trifle to Lin Wanwan.

As for labor duty, this was a compulsory labor obligation citizens owed to the state, calculated as twenty days a year. During leap years, it added two more days.

As Lin Wanwan registered as a female household, she could convert labor duty into payments. Each day required a payment of three feet of silk or three feet and 7.5 inches of cloth, completing twenty days would suffice. This had a historical term called "money in lieu of labor duty," and for Lin Wanwan, who could travel through time, it was no big deal.

There was also a levy, which was a portion of woven fabric each household had to submit. For lands granted by the state, some fields had to be planted with mulberry or hemp because every year, they had to submit two zhang of silk fabric, three liang of floss, or two zhang and five feet of cloth, three jin of hemp.

If not planted, one had to buy them. For farmers, spending money to buy was a heavy burden, so of course, they had to plant themselves. But for Lin Wanwan, this wasn’t an issue either.

She didn’t like hemp; she wanted to plant cotton here!

In the early Tang, cotton wasn’t mainstream yet, with cotton fabric and silk being items only nobles could afford. Cotton planting techniques had not yet been widely introduced. But Lin Wanwan knew that cotton would be the trend in the future.

Back then, the quilts in ordinary Tang households weren’t filled with cotton but made from kudzu hemp, filled with poplar, willow, or thatch, which was prickly, and only understood once slept on.

While Tang nobles slept under silk fabric filled with floss.

Lin Wanwan brought a silk comforter as her own bed cover from modern times with a light and soft woolen blanket, she could get by just fine.

But while Lin Wanwan could use silk comforters herself, her clansmen could not afford them! Hence, she wanted to grow cotton for everyone, improving lives.

Cotton is generally planted in March and April of the solar calendar, but now the season has passed and the weather is getting hotter, so she would have to wait until next year, not in a hurry.

After seeing her permanent and allocated lands, Lin Wanwan returned to the manor, basically a landlord now, and life was looking increasingly promising!

Lin Wanwan was utterly immersed in the life of the Tang Dynasty, unable to extricate herself.

Having to rely on farming to survive wouldn’t be a happy thing. But now, farming was just an extra pastime she thought of in her days of counting money while lying down, which made it very interesting!

Imagining the future, when she would lead the clan in food and clothing security, getting rich together would certainly be even more fun!

This feeling is like playing a real-life farming simulation game; she wants to create her own Peach Blossom Spring!