Chapter 27: Shijimi Cooperative (5)

The General continued speaking.

“And if you intend to continue reclaiming land in Sidimi, I would like to recommend cultivating fodder grains.”

“Fodder grains?”

“There is rye, barley, and corn, but of course, there are also oats. Isn’t it obvious that it’s a grain horses love?”

I was already thinking about producing fodder grains myself.

“Actually, I was already considering fodder grain production. I’m not sure about corn, but oats, rye, barley, and millet are possible. Oats would certainly be the best.”

“Rye and barley aren’t bad either. Corn is worth feeding when the animals have worked a lot.”

“I understand. I have some land reclaimed this year anyway, so I plan to try planting various things. By the way, since you’re being promoted, you’ll be stopping by Saint Petersburg, right?”

“That’s right. Since I’m being promoted to General, I must have an audience with His Imperial Majesty and pay my respects.”

The General had a look of immense pride at the fact that he would have an audience with the Emperor due to his promotion.

Wait, come to think of it, who was the Russian Emperor right now? I think it was Alexander II or III…

“What is the name of the current Emperor of Russia?”

The General looked at me with a pathetic expression and said, “I know it can’t be helped since you arrived from abroad last year, but you should at least know the name of the head of state of the country you’re in. The current Emperor of the Russian Empire is Alexander II. His name is Alexander Nikolayevich Romanov.”

“Saint Petersburg must be very magnificent, right? I wonder when I’ll ever get to see the Imperial Palace.”

“Of course, it’s incomparably more magnificent than this backwater village. But this is just my guess—I think you will be able to meet His Imperial Majesty someday. For my part, I intend to report your merits to His Imperial Majesty immediately.”

“Even so, I don’t think His Imperial Majesty would meet a kid like me.”

“No one knows for sure. Even if you’re young, you’ve already achieved a significant amount. Just the merit of introducing the United States’ advanced agriculture here to Russia is no small feat, and haven’t you solved the fodder and hay issues for the Russian Army in this region? This is truly a great achievement.”

***

While harboring the ambition to cultivate rice, I realized that Rice Transplanting was essential to grow rice in this northern land.

I immediately prepared the seedlings and pondered how much rice paddy to create.

Because I had an obligation to supply hay, most of the land had to be planted with hay.

However, since there was more land being reclaimed this year and a significant portion had already been newly reclaimed, I decided to try cultivating rice on only about 100 Dessiatines of land near the Sizimi River, where it was easy to supply water.

So, even before harvesting the wheat, I decided on the land to be converted into paddies and prepared the seedlings to be planted there.

As soon as the wheat was harvested, I immediately plowed the land intended for paddies, leveled the ground, created new ridges, and filled it with water.

I had to start the Rice Transplanting as soon as I returned from finishing the wheat delivery.

Most of the preparations were already in place before the wheat was delivered, but the reason I had to be at the transplanting site was because of the use of lines during the process.

If you use a line to plant seedlings during Rice Transplanting, ventilation between the plants is improved, helping the rice grow well, and it also becomes more resistant to pests, significantly increasing the harvest.

However, the reason it took quite a while for this method of planting in rows to spread was that people didn’t believe in its effectiveness and rejected it.

Even here, there were people who talked back and refused my suggestion to plant the seedlings in straight lines.

“We’ve been farming for how many years? We’ve never heard that planting rice in rows increases the harvest.”

Many farmers protested like this, but my existing results were too excellent.

“Then have you heard about the existence of these agricultural machines? You use the agricultural machines so well, so why do you refuse the suggestion to plant in rows?”

Because my achievements were already so great, none of the people who came with me from Joseon or the Joseon people living in Sidimi opposed my opinion.

It wasn’t as if the rice wouldn’t grow because it was planted in rows, and how would they know if the yield would increase or if the rice would grow better as I said?

However, a few people among the newly migrated Joseon people who came from southern Hamgyeong-do and had experience in rice farming did not understand why they had to do it.

They couldn’t accept why they should change the methods they had used for a lifetime of rice farming.

However, since the land where the rice was to be planted was my land, they had no choice but to follow my words.

I first marked the ridges at intervals of about 30cm and had the lines moved accordingly.

Then I distributed the 300 or so Yangma I had prepared to the people.

In fact, most of the Joseon people were from northern Hamgyeong-do and had never cultivated rice before.

In this region, most people grew and ate millet, and only a very few had ever eaten rice.

Only a few people from southern Hamgyeong-do had experience with rice farming and had done Rice Transplanting.

The people sat on the Yangma in the water-filled paddies and waited for the lines to be set.

When the people standing on both sides of the ridge lowered the line, they planted about 6 rows of seedlings in the ground in front of them according to the line.

When they finished planting, the people immediately moved back a bit, and the line was lowered 30cm.

I also had the experience of doing Rice Transplanting exactly once in my past life, when I went out as a volunteer to help nearby farmers in high school.

My high school had many rural kids, so about half of them had experience with Rice Transplanting, and I learned from them right on the spot.

Bending over to plant the seedlings was incredibly grueling, and moving legs that were sinking deep into the mud was no easy task.

However, using the Yangma, there was no such hardship at all.

Since they were planting while sitting on a chair, there was no need to bend over, and they didn’t have to struggle to move their feet because they could move backward just by lightly pushing with their feet while sitting on the Yangma.

It was to the point that I wondered why this convenient thing wasn’t used in Joseon or Japan.

Even if the Direct Seeding Method was the mainstream in the Joseon era and Rice Transplanting was a secondary farming method so it didn’t spread then, it seemed likely that Korea or Japan would have used it after liberation, but even then they didn’t use it, so I couldn’t understand the reason.

Well, there was nothing I could do by dwelling on things I didn’t know.

While I was lost in thought, I heard people transplanting rice marveling at the Yangma.

“This is really comfortable and fast. The speed must be about ten times faster.”

Although the area to plant rice was as large as 100 Dessiatines, the number of people had increased to over 300 just for planting, and with the use of the Yangma, the Rice Transplanting ended much faster than expected.

Even though it was farm work, Rice Transplanting was something that even children and women could easily do, so everyone except for very young children and those preparing meals and snacks could be mobilized.

Finishing the Rice Transplanting didn’t mean all the farm work was done.

For those farming rice, finishing the transplanting meant they could take a breather, but we had to plant hay.

“On the remaining land, plant only Timothy and Lucerne (Alfalfa).

And on the newly reclaimed land, plant oats. However, these oats are not for hay; we will be harvesting the oats, so keep that in mind.”

Once the work of planting hay and oats was finished, was the work done?

No, it wasn’t.

This time, we had to reclaim new land.

However, the new land to be reclaimed was land to be distributed to the people who had newly migrated to this region, so I lent them agricultural machinery, including the Reclamation Plow and horses, and taught them how to use them.

The newly migrated people only realized how we could reclaim so much land so quickly after they tried using the Reclamation Plow.

With a total of 8 Reclamation Plows, we could reclaim 160 Dessiatines of land in a month.

Because the ground in this region freezes severely in winter, reclamation is only possible from June to October, a total of 5 months.

The ground that had been plowed was harrowed with a Disc Harrow, and then the ground was packed with a roller.

After this was finished, we just had to put oat seeds into the seeder and plant the oats.

***

While everything was going smoothly, there was also a problem: if we continued reclaiming at the current speed, all the flat land around Sidimi would be completely reclaimed by next year or the year after.

The flat land around Sidimi is only about 2,000 Dessiatines, and the other land is mountainous, making reclamation difficult.

If that’s the case, we have no choice but to go north along the coast where there are plains, but if we go up that far, the distance becomes too great, so it would only be possible to farm that land by creating a new village.

And going north along the coast doesn’t mean land will come out indefinitely.

That land will also run out after reclaiming about 2,000 Dessiatines, and after that, the only way is to go up to Ussuri along the Subunha River.

The Subunha River is over 100km away from Sidimi.

Subunha is the Joseon reading of the Chinese characters, and here it is called Sui-fen.

If you go further up along the Subunha to Ussuri, the land is truly infinite, spanning over 1 million Dessiatines.

If that place is developed, it would be possible to support a population of over ten million in this Far East Russian region.

Of course, thinking that far is a matter for the distant future; for now, even if we just reclaim this nearby area, it will be enough to supply all the grain consumed by the current citizens of Vladivostok and more, so we’ll have to worry about the market for the crops.

Well, since there is a region like Japan that suffers from chronic food shortages, I’m not particularly worried about the market, but that’s the story if we only think about Russia.

I gathered Uncle Taeseok and a few people who were the leaders of the Joseon people and talked about this issue.

One of them asked, “So, what is it that you’re thinking?”

Since all the achievements so far were done by me, my opinion was the most important.

“What I mean is, we shouldn’t only do farm work; we have to do other things.”

“We are all farmers, yet you’re saying we should do something other than farming?”

“Just because you only farmed in Joseon doesn’t mean there’s a rule saying you have to keep only farming after coming here. Right now, the women are already collecting a lot of sea cucumbers, and you know they’re earning more than they do from farming.”

Sea Cucumber Collection was already progressing quite successfully.

The women of the newly migrated households noticed that the women in this region were going out to sea in rubber diving suits to collect sea cucumbers and that they were being sold for a quite high price, so they also started going out to sea.

There was no way the tough Hamgyeong-do women would just stand by once they discovered a way to make money.

Since it was currently summer, they learned to swim hard and began entering the sea to collect sea cucumbers, wearing only fins and lead weights around their waists without even wearing diving suits.

I made a few more diving suits, but because there were too many volunteers who wanted to dive, I was only supplying them with fins and lead belts due to a rubber shortage. Besides, I told them to go to other parts of the sea since the sea cucumbers might run out if too many people went in, and I bought them a few small boats to make the diving easier.

Originally, the reason Joseon people farmed was to obtain daily necessities with the harvested crops, but fundamentally, the biggest reason was to live off of them.

However, seeing me earn money with hay and buy rice from Japan, they learned the fact that if they make a lot of money by growing cash crops, they can just buy and eat food from outside.

And I buy all the sea cucumbers the women collect once they are dried into dried sea cucumbers, and since this was quite profitable, they realized that the money women earned from Sea Cucumber Collection was more than the income they had earned from farming so far.

“But even the sea here won’t have infinite sea cucumbers; won’t there be a limit?”

“That’s the same for the land here. After a while, the land to reclaim will also disappear; what will you do then? So, we must naturally move toward fishing and industry.”

“I understand that fishing means catching fish, but are you saying we farmers should even do the work of a lowly Artisan?”

“In Joseon, people look down on Artisans, but here they are seen as higher than farmers. How long has it been since you left Joseon? How much longer are you going to care about your status in Joseon?”

“We also know that your words are right. You have accomplished great things that we couldn’t even imagine, so how could we ignore you just because you’re young? It’s just that we’re saying we don’t know what to do. Even if it’s an Artisan’s work, it won’t be like pounding brass bowls like we saw in Joseon, will it?”

“That’s why you have to learn skills. Even if it’s hard for the older folks, the children must also learn Russian.”

“Where do they learn Russian?”

“People will come from the Russian Government for that. Now that the scale of Sidimi has grown, people will probably come from Vladivostok to build a school and dispatch teachers.”

“If you say teachers…?”

“Yes, it would be the people from the Russian Orthodox Church that you saw in Yeonchu.”