Chapter 157: Buying Leaves on Credit

The news that the Shen family was offering leaves on credit spread throughout the village like wildfire. It was said to be the intention of Shen’s master, Master Zhao. The leaves could be bought on credit regardless of the amount, at a price of one mace of silver per dan, with a monthly interest of one percent. Just like the rice loan, the debt could be repaid with cocoons at market value after the harvest.

“This is practically a charity!” Duoduo Niang’s husband exclaimed, his face beaming as if he had gotten a huge bargain. “The price of leaves is soaring right now! At the morning market today, the leaf firms in town were selling at four mace of silver per dan! I heard from the shopkeeper that it will rise to five mace in a few days!”

Shen Kaibao’s heart pounded with anxiety when he heard this. Five mace of silver per dan! That would be the death of him. He had found it unbearable even at three mace per dan a few days ago.

The Shen family’s terms could indeed be considered a charity. Even if Master Cao were willing to lend now, the interest would be two and a half or three percent, and then they would have to buy leaves at the current market price. He calculated and recalculated, and it seemed that this season’s silkworms were being raised for someone else.

The Shen family was only charging one mace of silver per dan, and the monthly interest was only one percent. It was indeed a charitable act.

At this moment, he finally let go of the grudges in his heart and repeatedly urged Daqing and Sanqing to prepare the boat and go to the Shen family to buy leaves on credit.

A long queue had already formed in front of the Shen family’s house. Although they were buying leaves on credit, the leaves were not actually at the Shen family’s house. Mulberry leaves were a very perishable commodity. Leaves picked in the morning could hardly be kept until the next day to be sold, so the leaf firms only traded for the day’s supply. There was no hoarding in advance.

Those who bought shaoye traded at the leaf firms and then went to the mulberry groves to pick up the goods themselves. Zhao Yigong’s leaf credit operation was handled in the same way. The Shen family’s house was just the place where the promissory notes were signed. After signing the note, a tally was issued, and the holder would go to the mulberry grove to get the leaves.

In ancient society, road conditions were poor and people’s range of activity was limited. Therefore, Zhao Yigong’s shaoye operation had to accurately estimate the approximate yield of the mulberry groves and the range of the villages they could radiate to. The former was not a big problem; the mulberry grove owners generally knew how many commercial leaves their groves could produce during the entire spring silkworm season. The latter required a fairly accurate estimate. In the water towns of Jiangnan, farmers relied on boats to transport agricultural products and go to the town and city. Spring was the busy farming season, and the strong laborers could not spend too much time on boating. Therefore, the supply location had to be within a one-day round trip by boat from the end user.

This year, he did not plan to operate on a large scale. It was just a trial run. On the one hand, he had little understanding of the specific situation of shaoye. On the other hand, he did not know how much resistance he would encounter in the specific operation. Therefore, whether it was sending Shen Da and Wang Siniang back to the village to start a cooperative or the shaoye operation, they were all carried out on a very small scale.

Including Shen Da’s Jixian Village, he had only launched the cooperative work in three “central villages.” These three villages could roughly cover fourteen or fifteen surrounding villages that were mainly engaged in sericulture, with a total of more than six hundred households. The number was not large, and the number of cocoons obtained through small loans would also be very limited. But this was just a “model.” He was fully confident that as long as the implementation plan went smoothly this year, the surrounding sericulturists would see it and would be eager to participate in the “cooperation” the following year. At that time, it would naturally come to fruition.

The sericulturists did not know Master Zhao’s intentions. Their only thought at the moment was to get mulberry leaves as soon as possible. The silkworms that had already passed their fourth instar were at a critical moment of spinning cocoons. If the supply of mulberry leaves was cut off at this time, all the hard work and expenses of the past month would be in vain.

After Shen Kaibao signed the promissory note, he took the tally and immediately set off with Daqing to get the mulberry leaves. That evening, they returned by boat, with forty dan of leaves piled on the boat.

Before the boat even entered the village, Daqing’s son was already looking out at the entrance of the village. Seeing his grandfather and father return, he ran home as fast as his legs could carry him, shouting “They’re back!” as he ran.

It turned out that the silkworms in Shen Kaibao’s house had been without leaves for more than half an hour. This was a matter of life and death. On the boat, Shen Kaibao saw his grandson running and knew the situation was urgent. He didn’t care that he was so hungry that his chest was sticking to his back. He quickly stood up and helped Daqing row the boat desperately. The boat swayed so much that it almost touched the water.

The boat shot through the canal like an arrow, almost hitting several moored boats. It rushed all the way to their own river landing. Seeing that his family were all standing at the river landing, Shen Kaibao became even more anxious and repeatedly urged, “Row faster!”

The father and son had gone out in the morning and had been rowing all day. They had only eaten one meal and were already tired, their legs and hands sore, and their bodies weak and dizzy. But they knew that the silkworms must have missed a meal. If they couldn’t get the leaves on them in time, all their previous efforts would be in vain, and everything would be lost.

When the boat reached the river landing, before it had even stopped, Sanqing had already jumped onto the boat, shouldered a basket of mulberry leaves, and sent it to the shore. As soon as his foot stepped on the stone steps, several hands came to help, carrying it home together. Daqing saw his own son among them. He rushed to help. The boy was small and the basket was heavy. He immediately fell and rolled a long way. A pang of pity shot through him. He quickly shouldered a basket of mulberry leaves and went ashore.

Shen Kaibao urged anxiously, “Quick! Quick!” He disregarded his old age and weakness and also helped to move the mulberry leaves.

Those plump white “silkworm babies” had been hungry for a while. They were all sticking out their little mouths and swaying left and right. Shen Kaibao’s heart ached to see them. When the leaves were spread, the silkworm room was immediately filled with a rustling sound, and people could hardly hear each other speak. In a short while, those “round trays” were all white again. So another thick layer of leaves was spread.

The people were so busy just “feeding the leaves” that they could hardly breathe. But this was the final hurdle. With enough mulberry leaves, they only had to endure for another two days, and the spring silkworms could go up the mountain. The people squeezed out their remaining energy and worked desperately.

Duoduo Niang didn’t know how busy her own family was now, but a few days ago, when her husband came to buy leaves on credit, he said that the silkworm harvest was very good, at least seven or eight-tenths. This made her feel a little relieved. She had been out working as a “seasonal worker” for more than a month and would also get more than a tael of silver. With a good silkworm harvest, her family would have hope for this year.

Between the fourth and fifth instars was the most laborious time for raising silkworms, and the sericulture work at the Shen family’s house was also at its most intense. The Shen family had many silkworm trays, and the workload of feeding leaves and cleaning droppings every day was huge. The sericulturists worked day and night, only sleeping one or two hours a day, dozing off against the wall in a nearby room, and then getting up again to feed the leaves and patrol.

Wang Siniang and Lizheng took turns patrolling day and night, especially Wang Siniang, who was in high spirits. Because she knew that the master had sent her to the village to raise silkworms this time was an “important matter.” If she did it well, she would be the “manager” of the estate in the future. If she messed it up, she could only be a “forewoman.”

Seeing that the silkworms had entered their fifth instar and their consumption of mulberry leaves was beginning to decrease, Wang Siniang and Lizheng both knew that they were about to start spinning cocoons. The traditional method of mounting was mostly to raise the temperature to make the silkworms mount and spin cocoons. However, because the silkworms matured at different times, forcing them to mount all at once would often result in some silkworms being over-mature and some not yet mature. Those that mounted too early would not spin cocoons, the amount of silk would be small, and the color of the cocoons would be unclean. If they mounted too late, they would crawl around on the mounting frame, wasting silk, and after mounting, they would rush to spin cocoons, resulting in too many bad cocoons.

Therefore, the method used here was the more labor-intensive but higher cocoon-yielding batch mounting method. Lizheng first taught the sericulturists how to distinguish between ripe and ready-to-spin silkworms. They patrolled regularly every day, transferring the ready-to-spin silkworms from the large silkworm trays to the small ones, and then moving them to a special mounting room, mounting them at a density of five hundred per square meter.

It was the first time Duoduo Niang had seen such a mounting method. They didn’t use mountain sheds or straw mounting frames. Instead, they used square grids made of thick paper, which were hung one by one directly above the mature silkworms. This method took advantage of the mature silkworms’ habit of climbing upwards, allowing them to automatically climb onto the mounting frames to spin their cocoons.

In the mounting room, there were still ground dragons and water basins, as well as the strange glass tubes and glass bulbs. The windows here were all hung with bamboo blinds, making the light that shone in soft and dim—strong light was the most taboo thing when spinning cocoons.

In the early stage of mounting, the mature silkworms had to excrete feces and urine before they could spin silk, so the humidity in the mounting room was very high. The humidity had to be monitored, and once it exceeded 75%, the doors and windows had to be opened for ventilation and dehumidification. The room temperature was best at 25°C. If it was lower than 22°C, it had to be heated. Too high or too low temperature, too high or too low humidity, all affected the cocooning rate and the quality of the cocoons, so very precise control was needed.

Following the method taught by Lizheng, Duoduo Niang and the other sericulturists picked out the mature silkworms every day and sent them for mounting. The silkworm trays for mounting were marked every day. At the same time, they also had to remove the dead silkworms from the mounting frames and catch the wandering silkworms that had not spun cocoons and mount them separately.

Five or six days after mounting, Lizheng instructed them to start picking the cocoons. If they were picked too early, the unmorphed pupae would be easily injured and contaminate the cocoons. If they were picked too late, the pupae would have turned into moths, which would also affect the quality of the cocoons. When picking the cocoons, they were collected in batches according to the mounting date. The picked cocoons were spread thinly on the silkworm trays, not pressing against each other. The upper cocoons and the lower cocoons had to be placed separately. All cocoons with relatively firm, white, and uniform shells were considered upper cocoons. Dead cocoons, yellow-spotted cocoons, cocoons with wood imprints, pierced cocoons, thin-skinned cocoons, deformed cocoons, and cocoons with fly maggots were considered lower cocoons. Double cocoons were placed separately.

This daily mounting and daily harvesting made it difficult for Duoduo Niang to estimate the quality of the Shen family’s silkworm harvest. But every time she went to collect the cocoons, the white cocoons in the square grids were mostly top-quality cocoons, and she rarely saw dead silkworms that had not spun cocoons. This Guangdong breed not only had larger cocoons than the local breed, but the silk layer was also thicker and the cocoon body was firmer. The silk threads were also very clear. Wang Siniang had been raising silkworms for decades and had never seen such good cocoons! Even the best Huzhou silk cocoons she had seen could not compare.

When she took the snow-white, firm cocoons one by one from the square grids, Duoduo Niang would always feel an inexplicable sense of joy in her heart. Although these cocoons were not hers, the fruits of more than a month of careful care still made her feel the joy of a good harvest, and it made her happy from the bottom of her heart.