Xiao Changyi said, "Hmm, it should be soon."
Usually, the government collects the tax grain within two months after the rice is harvested. Now that more than one month has passed, almost reaching two, it is indeed time for the tax grain to be collected.
Grain taxes are levied per mu, and generally, farmers pay in grain, but they can also choose to pay in Silver Coin.
However, paying in Silver Coin is more expensive than paying in grain.
Here, ’grain’ refers to unprocessed rice, not the polished rice that has been milled. Although paying the tax in Silver Coin is more expensive than grain, the total cost is still much cheaper than buying polished rice.
The tax for one mu of land is half a dan of grain, regardless of the yield; that is fifty jin of rice. With the market price of rice being eight coins per jin, fifty jin of rice amounts to four hundred coins.
If you choose to pay in cash, that would be five hundred coins per mu for taxes.
Polished rice costs twenty coins per jin, and usually, a hundred jin of rice can yield about sixty to seventy jin of polished rice, meaning fifty jin of rice could produce over thirty jin of polished rice. Over thirty jin of polished rice is worth over six hundred coins.
An Jing and Xiao Changyi still had some money on hand, and now they also had a grain rice mill, which made milling rice much faster. Therefore, An Jing and Xiao Changyi would not even consider paying in rice; they chose to pay in Silver Coin.
As for the rice at home, An Jing and Xiao Changyi had already decided to keep it for milling at home for their own consumption.
An Jing even had plans to buy some rice from others and mill it themselves, which would be much more cost-effective than just buying polished rice.
With that in mind, An Jing said to Xiao Changyi, "Husband, let’s go to Xiaolan’s house to see if they’re selling their rice. If they are, we’ll buy it all."
Because milling rice with a stone mortar is so time-consuming and labor-intensive, producing only a little polished rice each day, and considering there are other farm chores to be done, one can’t mill rice at home every day. Consequently, very few farmers are able to mill all their rice at home.
Typically, a farmer will divide their rice into three parts: one part to pay the grain taxes, another part to mill into polished rice to sell for money, and the rest is sold directly to rice shops at the market rate of eight coins per jin.
Rice shops employ professionals to mill rice, who do this task every day.
"Hmm," Xiao Changyi had no objections about buying the rice.
If they didn’t buy rice to mill themselves, they would have to buy polished rice later on, as the amount of rice they had at home wasn’t enough for the two of them to eat for a long time.
Then, An Jing and Xiao Changyi went to An Village to find Shi Xiaolan, who said she had originally planned to sell a hundred jin to the rice shop. Now, selling it to them worked out perfectly.
After that, An Jing and Xiao Changyi bought a hundred jin of rice from Shi Xiaolan.
An Jing had thought about suggesting to Shi Xiaolan that, if she wanted to mill rice, she could use the grain rice mill and Stepping Dehusking Machine in An Jingxin’s house, which would be faster. However, upon reflection, she felt it was inappropriate; her home was not a rice milling site, and while she might not mind the intrusion, she feared her husband might find it bothersome.
Her husband was a very aloof person who didn’t like mingling with others at all.
Moreover, she also preferred her husband’s company alone, not fond of having other people constantly in their yard.
So, An Jing did not mention the grain rice mill and Stepping Dehusking Machine to Shi Xiaolan.
Nevertheless, An Jingxin had already decided that when she had the time, she would draw a more detailed diagram of the grain rice mill for Shi Xiaolan to take to someone to make. Even if Shi Xiaolan’s family couldn’t afford to build one, all of An Village could pitch in to construct one together. Having one grain rice mill for the whole village was still faster than using a stone mortar.