Chapter 119 Farm busy
As soon as Christmas is over, East African immigrants start their busy lives again. Unlike Africa, it is really winter in Europe now, and farmers can rest for a while.
In many places in East Africa, it is the small rainy season of the year (usually November to December). While growing food, immigrants have to dredge rivers and ditches, and do a good job of drainage and water diversion.
The climate conditions of the East African colonies are not only unique, but also above the world average. As long as the water source is sufficient, for example, rice can be planted for 2.5 seasons a year (5 seasons in two years).
The land currently developed in East Africa is near rivers and lakes and other places with sufficient water sources, or places with abundant rainfall. If the water problem is solved, planting will not be a problem, so the immigrants are busy.
That is to say, when the crops are growing, there is only slack time. During the slack time, the East African colonies will recruit immigrants to conquer other regions.
This is the expansion model in East Africa. Farming is for the people, and wartime is for the soldiers. Even if there is no war, militia training will be organized. Anyway, there is very little idle time.
Neither delaying production nor delaying fighting is the basis for the orderly expansion of East African colonies, and in addition to militias, East Africa already has a standing army.
Under normal circumstances, the militia is enough to deal with the aborigines, and it will be the turn of the regular army to deal with the hard stubble that cannot be taken.
However, this situation will only appear when East Africa is expanding. In the future, East Africa will stop expanding, or if the population is sufficient, there will be no need for militias to participate in the battle.
The main thing is, to clean up the aborigines, there is not enough manpower, and it will definitely not work. They are still familiar with the terrain, so they drilled into the mountains and forests.
With the strength of the regular army, it is impossible to play hide-and-seek with the natives, so the militia must be mobilized to conduct large-scale investigations of the land in the conquered area.
Even if there are a small number of fish that slip through the net, they are not afraid. For example, many invasive species, even if two or three individuals break in, they cannot find a mating partner and cannot reproduce the population.
This is the current situation in the East African colonies. There must be fish that slip through the net in East Africa, but they are separated from the society. Even the primitive society of the indigenous tribes can hardly survive in the wild.
After all, the good places are all occupied by East African immigrants. They can only be with wild animals. Even if they rely on their skills to escape the beast's mouth and the investigation of the East African colonies, and live to the end, they can only die alone in the end. .
For example, wild animals in Africa mostly live in groups and rarely move alone. Animals are much more adaptable to the East African environment than humans.
They still need to hug each other for warmth, not to mention human beings. One of the important reasons why East Africa is not as densely populated as West Africa is that there are fewer people.
The indigenous tribes in East Africa are at most 50-50 different from the animals on the East African prairie. The reason why the colonial immigrants in East Africa are different is because of the dimensionality reduction blow of thermal weapons.
No matter how powerful a wild animal is, it can be shot down with one shot, while the indigenous people need to unite and cooperate. It takes at least four or five people to deal with a wild animal, and large animals like elephants and hippopotamuses require the cooperation of the whole village to capture them.
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Christmas, on that day, being able to take time out to celebrate is already regarded as the East African government's respect for traditional festivals.
The annual rainy season is the busiest time in East Africa. The development and infrastructure in East Africa are weak.
This is also the reason why the aborigines do not live close to the river. They generally only need to go to the river to fetch water. Anyway, they live by hunting.
So in documentaries, Africans can often be seen carrying kettles on their heads to fetch water from very distant rivers. Of course, there are more wild animals near some water sources, which is more dangerous, which is also the reason why Africans do not live near water sources.
But the East African colony is not good. Agriculture is the most important industry in the East African colony, and the closer the agricultural planting is to the water source, the better. As for the beasts, they have been eliminated by the East African government long ago, so most of the East African immigrants live near water sources such as rivers and lakes. .
In order to draw water from the river to irrigate the fields, it is necessary to dig canals and build water diversion facilities such as waterwheels.
In East Africa, when the rainy season comes, some river sections are prone to flooding. Therefore, in order to avoid floods posing threats to residential areas and farmland.
During the rainy season, dredging the river and building embankments became a necessary means. These large-scale projects required the joint action of all the colonists.
Of course, the main thing is prevention. The chance of flood disasters is not high. Only in extreme years will there be too much rain.
As long as preventive measures are taken in advance, even if they suffer losses, the East African colonies can bear it.
After all, the land developed by the East African colonies is relatively large in area, and the part along the river is only a small part, which is mainly irrigated through ditches.
Now the conditions are relatively poor, but in the future when the conditions improve, we must introduce important tools such as water pumps. At that time, there will be no need to rely on manpower to drive the water pumping device.
It doesn’t even take that long to wait. Raw power machines like windmills can be introduced in advance. Ernst plans to send people to the Netherlands to learn experience.
In fact, the windmills in the Netherlands were first introduced from the German region, but the Dutch played various new tricks on the windmills.
In addition to water absorption and drainage, windmills are also used by the Dutch as an important source of power for grinding grain, tobacco leaves, oil pressing, felt, papermaking...
With the advent of the steam age, the windmills in the Netherlands have gradually declined, but this thing still has a lot to offer in a wild place like East Africa.
Anyway, there is no shortage of materials in East Africa. The main timber and masonry are sufficient, and other materials can also be imported from Europe.
The current conditions of the East African colonies are still unable to enter the industrial age, but all the advanced tools and experience of the agricultural era can be used.
The main reason is to save costs. The threshold of industry is too high, and it cannot be accomplished overnight. Traditional agricultural tools can be made by the East African colonies themselves.
Combined with those thousands of years of experience, the advanced experience of the agricultural era can at least raise the production efficiency of East Africa to the extreme of the agricultural era.
The agricultural era is only a transitional stage of the East African colonies and will not last forever. Ernst also knows that industrialization is the future, but the foundation must be laid first to build a house, and an industry without agriculture as support is just duckweed without roots.
Of course, it is not impossible to engage in small-scale industrialization. The problem is this. Ernst might as well just enclose the land in the small place of Hechingen. The talent in East Africa is so good that it cannot be wasted, and big industry cannot do without Start farming independently.
It is a kind of progress for the East African colonies to improve the original primitive social and economic system of East Africa to the agricultural age, let alone take a few decades to complete the agricultural civilization that other countries have experienced for hundreds of thousands of years.
(end of this chapter)