Owari Yumeki Golden Day.

It's easy. When I read tomb raiding novels before, someone mentioned the Luoyang shovel.

8. Freight cost in exchange for sandbar

Shichibei inquired about this matter not to grow rice, firstly because he lacked the financial means, and secondly because he lacked the resources to protect it.

Even if he were a wealthy merchant with a thousand or two thousand kan, Shichibei could still find a way to protect the newly developed paddy fields. But he was just a small merchant with sixty kan; he couldn't protect a large tract of paddy fields.

But Shichibei was in the horse breeding and transportation business, so he couldn't have too many alfalfa fields.

What kind of soil does alfalfa prefer? It prefers loose, sandy loam, and of course, well-drained sandy loam. Alfalfa cannot be grown in low-lying areas prone to waterlogging, or in severely saline-alkali soil.

That's why Shichibei said to look for a sandbar with a solid foundation, rather than a shifting sandbar formed by the accumulation of quicksand.

Find those sandbars with foundations, build polder fields, and plant hundreds of acres of alfalfa—wouldn't that be wonderful? Others may not know, but Shichibei knows that Nobunaga will eventually conquer the land, and then he will begin constructing a road network within his domain. If we stockpile horse feed now, we'll gain a significant advantage over others.

As I've already said, Shichibei is a direct retainer of Oda Nobunaga!

Do you understand the value of a loyal retainer? He's not just a loyal retainer, but a hereditary vassal of Oda Nobunaga's family since his founding. From now on, it would be an injustice if the horse-riding business in Nobi Province didn't go to Shichibei.

My Kawamura family has served you, Oda, for generations. Now that you, Oda, have prospered, you can't just kick me aside like Hayashi Hidesada and Sakuma Nobumori did.

Quietly calming himself, Shichibei patted his horse's neck and turned to head towards Komakiyama Castle. Two things he needed to do: find a blacksmith to forge two Luoyang shovels, and settle accounts with Nobunaga regarding the money to transport Oichi's dowry to Odani Castle.

Previously, Sugaya Nagayori made a very nice offer to pay Shichibei double. Now that the trip is over, Shichibei naturally has to go and settle the bill with Murai Sadakatsu.

The Luoyang shovel is easy to obtain; its design is simple, and the materials are readily available. Just explain the situation to the blacksmith below the city and wait to pick it up. However, doubling the horse fee is a bit more difficult, as Murai Sadakatsu is playing hide-and-seek with Shichibei.

The round trip takes more than ten days, and the cost of the horses for more than twenty horses is only a little over three strings of cash. Even double that would only amount to seven or eight strings of cash, which is not worthwhile.

Bribing Azai Nagamasa could bankrupt Oda Nobunaga? Don't even mention Shichibei not believing it; you could drag anyone off the street and they wouldn't believe it either.

Actually, that's not necessarily true. Nobunaga, who had plundered 2,500 kan from Owari and then added a large sum of money of his own pocket, managed to marry Oichi off to Azai Nagamasa in a grand and lavish manner. Nagamasa, who received a huge dowry, was very satisfied, and the marriage alliance between the two sides was formed.

If that were all, Nobunaga might not have been completely drained. At that moment, Nobunaga was carrying out the Inuyama campaign. Previously, Nobunaga had led his foot soldiers and pagemen in a fierce attack on Oguchi Castle, a branch castle of Inuyama Castle. The castle lord, Nakajima Bingo-no-kami, fought desperately to defend the castle and actually repelled the army personally led by Nobunaga.

If they couldn't even take down a branch castle, how could they possibly attack Inuyama Castle? Nobunaga was certainly not convinced. So he sent Niwa Nagahide to try and sow discord between Nakajima Bingo-no-kami and Oda Nobukiyo.

To be fair, Nakajima Bingo-no-kami (the governor of Bingo Province) has demonstrated his value in the united front; his ability to repel Nobunaga naturally earned him Nobunaga's high regard. Now that Komakiyama Castle is complete and intimidating Inuyama, further resistance would certainly not end well.

So Nakajima Bingo-no-kami said that he could surrender to Nobunaga, but many of his retainers, samurai, and foot soldiers who came to defend the castle were loyal to Inuyama, and he needed money to dismiss them so that they could go and join Oda Nobukiyo.

Five hundred kan, if you give me five hundred kan I will pledge allegiance to you, Nobunaga.

As everyone knows, Nobunaga is a man who should spend money when he should and save when he should. With a wave of his hand, he brought 500 kan into the city. Nakajima Bingo Governor pushed the gold mountain and the jade pillar over, and kowtowed to Nobunaga's horse.

From then on, Oguchi Castle took on Oda Nobunaga's surname, but the five hundred kan of cash was indeed spent.

The autumn harvest is still pending, and the lords' most important annual tribute rice income has yet to arrive, while the gold reserves of Komakiyama Castle have already been emptied. Even a skilled cook cannot cook without rice, so Murai Sadakatsu has no choice but to avoid Shichibei.

Unfortunately, Shichibei was young and strong, and he easily stopped Murai Sadakatsu. "Lord Minbu, you are a magistrate of the Oda clan, how dare you avoid a mere 60 kan of a minor official's name? It's truly disrespectful."

The forty-year-old Murai Sadakatsu could only smile, then put on a very dignified expression and asked Shichibei why he had come to see him.

Asking a question you already know the answer to is going a bit too far.

Murai Sadakatsu, having seen his share of storms, maintained his composure and didn't break down. He simply asked Shichibei how much he wanted to pay. "How much?" "A little over seven kan. Do you have an abacus? I'll show you."

and many more!

“Minbu, I can waive the horse fee.” Shichibei suddenly remembered the matter of the sandbar.

"Oh!" Murai Sadakatsu, who was searching for the abacus at a snail's pace, immediately straightened up upon hearing this.

“There are some drifting sandbars at the mouth of the Kiso River. If you can include them in my harvested land, I don’t need the money.”

"Huh? Sandbar? What sandbar?" Murai Sadakatsu never expected Shichibei's request to be like this.

"You can send someone to Tsushima to take a look." Shichibei wasn't afraid of being seen.

Those sandbars have always been ownerless, appearing one year and disappearing the next, never having had an owner since ancient times. In fact, they don't even need to be ancient; go back a few hundred years, and Jin Island might have only just appeared.

To save those extra seven kan, Murai Sadakatsu actually rode alongside Shichibei to Tsushima, even going so far as to climb onto a sandbar to take a look. He wasn't stupid; he was certain that rice couldn't be grown on that sandbar. After learning that Shichibei intended to grow alfalfa, he even thought Shichibei was a fool.

How much alfalfa do we need to plant to recoup the investment of more than seven strings of cash?

But even if you're naive, Murai Sadakatsu thinks this is a perfectly good thing to do. And there's no need to go to Oda Nobunaga for this. He took Shichibei and went to Sakuma Nobumori to ask him to make a decision. He said that part of the Kawamura family's arsenal land near the river had been washed away by the flood, and now, after re-verification, the sandbar at the river mouth would be assigned to the Kawamura family.

It's not about granting knowledge and action, but about clarifying the scope of existing knowledge and action!

There is a fundamental difference between the two. In the Oda clan, only Oda Nobunaga was able to grant authority and provide a certificate of comfort to his retainers. However, accepting lawsuits from samurai retainers regarding their territories was the business of Sakuma Nobumori.

The Muromachi Shogunate even had stewards to accept lawsuits from samurai families. This was the same for all daimyo. For lawsuits in small territories, the chief retainer and the magistrate in charge of the matter would make the judgment.

With Murai Sadakatsu's influence and explanation, Sakuma Nobumori confirmed that Shichibei was a hereditary retainer of the Oda clan, and that the old Owari was an old Oda clan. He readily signed the document, clearly stating that the river mouth sandbar also belonged to the Kawamura family's ceded land.

9. It all depends on the heavens; start working now.

For the first time, Ai, who had always been obedient, said some unpleasant things to Shichibei. The Oda family did not accept the horse fee and even spent the family's savings to buy ten horses. Now the shop doesn't have much cash left.

Dowry or not is a minor matter; what we do is worry about any other expenses in the family.

"Oh dear," Shichibei slapped his forehead. "That was too reckless. I was only thinking about riding on Oda Nobunaga's path to unifying Japan and expanding my business, without considering my current abilities."

It's like that joke about a farmer who tells a landlord, "Give me one grain of rice as payment on the first day, two grains on the second day, and four grains on the third day." He's happily imagining he'll have twenty million grains of rice by the thirtieth day, but in reality, he starves to death on the seventh day.

Don't think about value investing when you don't have money, because you can't afford to wait.

The key is to make quick money. And how do you make quick money? Of course, it's written in the criminal law. Whether it's robbing ships traveling to and from Tsushima or stealing the gold and warehouses of various trading houses on Tsushima, you can acquire a large amount of wealth in a short period of time.

However, selling stolen goods is a problem, and Shichibei doesn't have any usable weapons. On the other hand, Boss Ito has two or three hundred weapons he recruits, including ruffians and exiled samurai, and several skilled ones.

No, no, no, robbery is absolutely inappropriate. I come from a respectable family, at least in terms of legitimate social standing. It's one thing to rob on the battlefield, but how can I rob my own hometown? Even a rabbit doesn't eat the grass near its burrow.

Seeing Shichibei's troubled expression, Ai finally stopped talking. After all, the family still depended on Shichibei to support them. Female warriors weren't uncommon these days, there were even female emperors, but ultimately, a man was needed to inherit the family name and carry on the family business.

“If we can really grow a few hundred acres of alfalfa on the sandbar, at least we can save on horse feed.” Ai was giving Shichibei a way out.

"How about this, I'll go borrow some money from Mr. Kato in Atsuta." Shichibei immediately backed down, indicating that he could go out and borrow money and would definitely not make things difficult for Ai.

“This is a matter for you men…” Ai handed the ledger to Shichibei and said no more.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes." Shichibei nodded hurriedly.

Being criticized by my sister isn't anything shameful; self-esteem isn't something to be wasted on.

Just borrowing money? At least not now. We have to wait until the alfalfa on the sandbar is planted and Kato Nobutaka takes notice, then borrowing ten or twenty kan will be easy. Even if Shichibei can't repay it then, he can still come and harvest the alfalfa to feed Atsuta's horses, so he'll have collateral.

Fortunately, the horse-riding business brought in money every day, which provided some cash flow. Moreover, the Kawamura family had no debts or loans; they only needed to pay wages.

We can't be too ambitious. We need to quickly assess the sandbars clearly. For those that can be secured, we should try to build dikes and silt up the land, and plant alfalfa as soon as possible so we can harvest two crops this year. Besides what we need for ourselves, we can also sell horse feed in the city to recoup some of our investment.

Just as Shichibei had predicted, there were indeed two types of sandbars at river mouths and estuaries. One type, even after digging five or six meters down, still yielded soft, mushy mud and sand, which couldn't stand up at all, remaining one year and disappearing the next, shifting between the river mouth and the coast.

However, if you dig deeper, you'll find that underneath is already solidified loam, and in some cases, it's even sandstone. These sandbars with fixed foundations, even if they seem to be shifting—growing 30 meters east this year and receding 30 meters west next year—have actually taken root in their center.

Such sandbars can be used to establish polder fields. All that is needed is to determine the area around the central root zone, build a dike to retain water, and then dig ditches and sluice gates.

The problem remains the lack of manpower. Shichibei's men are mainly responsible for managing the household affairs. It's impossible to easily divert them to do farm work, and he can't ask the families within his own territory to serve for no reason. Conscription and taxation are Oda Nobunaga's prerogative, and have nothing to do with Shichibei.

There's nothing more to it than having money and not having money.

The dikes will not be repaired for the time being, and the waterways will not be opened for the time being. We will sow seeds on the sandbars where the foundation has been established. Whatever we harvest is profitable, and if we harvest a lot, we can sell it.

Moreover, it was previously estimated that there were only two or three hundred mu of usable sandy land on the river estuary, but now it seems that there are probably more than a thousand mu. With proper restoration, there could even be several hundred more mu.

The first step was that the sandbar wasn't empty land; it was overgrown with thatch, and people needed to be hired to cut it all down. These days, especially in rural areas, nothing is completely useless. Thatch can be sold for money; otherwise, why would Zhu Yuanzhang have herded cattle as a child?

It's just letting the cows eat thatch.

If the cost of delivering hay to the cattle is the same as hiring someone to herd them, most people will choose to buy fresh hay directly for their cattle. Cattle are the most important production tool in rural areas, and people feel most at ease keeping them under their own noses.

Can it be sold for money? That makes things easy. Tsushima is full of people who come to worship there; in modern terms, these are "backpackers." They go to a place, do short-term work for a few days, then save some money to continue their budget travel.

Hire these people, pay them whatever amount of grass they cut, the more they work, the more they earn. Shichibei is responsible for hauling the grass to the village and the city to sell; we're in the transportation business ourselves, this is no problem.

The second step was also simple: after cutting the floating grass, they set it on fire, burning the remaining withered grass and stems to use as ash for fertilizer. Yes, some people will definitely ask, what do you do with the grass roots?

What to do? Nothing. I'm penniless right now, I have no ability to mobilize people to dig up grass roots. Alfalfa is grass too, so let nature take its course and survival of the fittest prevail.

It's all up to fate!

We'll harvest as much as we can. Alfalfa seeds are free for Shichibei, who grows alfalfa year-round. We can just scatter them without needing many people. We brothers can do it ourselves without spending any money.

So came the third step: after sowing the seeds, we waited for them to grow for more than a month. Alfalfa is very suitable for making horse feed, but nobody wants it loose; it has to be cut, dried, and then bundled to make it easier to sell.

At this point, Shichibei had no choice but to ask Kato, the owner of Atsuta farm, for a loan. Seeing the field full of alfalfa, Kato would surely be happy to lend the money. After all, he had many horses, and although he also had his own harvested land, it was unlikely to be enough to feed them.

The plan is in place, let's get started.

Fortunately, the Kawamura family was a long-established temple in Tsushima with a good reputation. Travelers who came to Tsushima to worship were willing to work for the Kawamura family, simply hauling people to the sandbar every day.

Oh dear, I forgot, there's another problem: we need to hire a few small boats to haul the cut grass ashore.

10. Borrowing a boat without spending a penny.

Kato Nobutaka, who was also chasing after Murai Sadakatsu to settle his debt, overheard a rumor at the foot of the castle. It was said that Kawamura Shichibei, who had come to collect the debt earlier, had not accepted Murai Sadakatsu's money and had Murai Sadakatsu decide to allocate the sandbar at the confluence of the Tenno River and the Kiso River to the Kawamura family's harvested land.

Since they were all involved in horse racing, Kato Nobutaka immediately guessed that Shichibei was going to plant alfalfa.

He and Shichibei's father were from the same generation, both having served Oda Nobuhide. They were seasoned veterans; they could easily guess what was going on. Just as Shichibei had guessed, Kato's horse-breeding shop was also short of enough horse feed.

It's true that Mongolian horses are hardy and can withstand roughage, but the Mongols also knew that they needed to feed their horses plenty of autumn grass seeds before going to war, so that they could ride them south to invade while they were still fat.

Horses that work in the transportation industry every day, whether carrying people or hauling goods, need to be fed. What good is eating only hay and straw? Sometimes they even need to eat millet, beans, and salt.

Therefore, Kato Nobutaka desperately needed alfalfa, a reasonable alternative to horse feed. However, his harvested land was only sixty kan, likely acquired through illicit means from the national domain centuries ago, much like the Kawamura family. Later, he accepted the patronage of Oda Nobusada and Oda Nobuhide, becoming a merchant and samurai serving the Oda clan.

Why didn't I think of that?

Muttering to himself, Kato Nobutaka and Murai Sadamatsu continued their haggling. In the end, Murai Sadamatsu paid half the money, agreeing to settle the other half after the autumn harvest.

That's normal; nothing unusual. A merchant once lent grain to the Mori clan to attack Harima Castle. When the Mori clan delayed repaying it, the merchant filed a lawsuit against Mori Terumoto.

He peeled off Terumoto Mori's face and made the Mori family pay.

In the end, Mori Terumoto had no choice but to pay the money, plus interest. The checks and balances between different social classes in feudal society were actually quite strong, and such situations were not uncommon.

After sending his assistant back to Atsuta with the money, Kato Nobutaka eagerly rushed to Tsushima. At that moment, Shichibei was busy calculating how to squeeze out the money to hire a small boat to transport the grass cut by the backpackers back to the town.

Upon seeing Kato Nobutaka, Shichibei immediately went to greet him. While colleagues meeting should normally be envious, the two remained separate, keeping to themselves, and there was no real conflict.

If Shichibei's adoptive father were here, Kato Nobutaka might have been more formal, since they were of the same generation. But Shichibei was quite naive, and since Nobutaka was a senior in the same field, he didn't put on airs and directly asked Shichibei if he was planning to plant alfalfa.