When the crops were all harvested and laid out to dry on the threshing floor, the retired emperor walking next to Zhang Deshui was dressed exactly like Zhang Deshui.

He wore a light gray short jacket, light gray wide-leg trousers, and a straw hat.

Li Lanzhen thought to herself: "Hmm, not bad, a farmer with an innate air of nobility and refinement!"

Since these two arrived at Peach Blossom Spring, Xuan Shen has no longer been in charge of the daily affairs of the training camp in the back mountain, and has handed them all over to An Yi for management.

He followed the retired emperor closely every day, and the empress dowager also had two maids by her side, but Li Lanzhen knew that these two were also top-notch experts.

Li Lanzhen has been busy dealing with matters in Lishu Village lately.

The emperor gave her Lishu Village and the surrounding mountains, so she had to transform this barren land into a prosperous place with abundant fish and rice, and grazing cattle and sheep.

After the retired emperor learned of this, he began to follow the same routine as Li Lanzhen and temporarily left Zhang Deshui.

First, wasteland was reclaimed, and then the soil was improved.

She organized people to dredge a lot of silt from the reed marshes of Peach Blossom Spring and transport it to the wasteland reclaimed in Pear Tree Village.

Zhang Deshui said that the silt in the river is good fertilizer for fertilizing the fields.

Next, truckloads of already composted manure were transported from the Taohuayuan breeding farm to Lishu Village and spread on the reclaimed wasteland.

A year later, the soil in these wastelands was improved, and corn, sweet potatoes, and potatoes were planted on these lands.

With the problem of soil infertility solved, the problem of irrigation difficulties arose one after another.

Irrigating the paddy fields in Lishu Village was not easy, as they were almost entirely dependent on the weather. After conducting an on-site survey, Li Lanzhen had no choice but to draw up a design for a waterwheel and hand it over to Li Erhan to build.

More than a month later, two waterwheels, one large and one small, were transported to Lishu Village and installed on the riverbank.

The irrigation canal leading from the river mouth to the fields of Lishu Village has already been dug.

All that's left is for the waterwheel to be installed successfully and for water to be diverted into the canals, so that the farmland can be irrigated freely.

The waterwheel was operated by two people pedaling. The waterwheel carried river water, which flowed into the irrigation canal and then raced towards the vast expanse of land.

At that moment, everyone was shocked and surprised, realizing that farmland could be irrigated in this way.

Unsurprisingly, the blueprints for the waterwheel were seen and taken by the retired emperor. He rolled them up, put them in a small bamboo tube, and a pigeon carried them to the capital.

After three years of renovation, Lishu Village is now surrounded by irrigation canals, and an artificial lake has been dug in the valley of Lishu Mountain. The lake is also planted with reeds and lotus flowers, and is full of fish and shrimp.

Although the soil in Lishu Village has gradually become fertile, Li Lanzhen has not planted wheat here, but only corn, and the yield per mu of corn has been increasing year by year.

Li Lanzhen then came up with a solution for corn flour, improving the processing procedure by repeatedly grinding the corn kernels and sifting them through a sieve, ultimately obtaining three types of corn flour.

There are three types of cornmeal: one is fine cornmeal, the second is slightly coarser cornmeal, and the third is the coarse cornmeal commonly found in the market today, which is rough on the throat.

The finely ground cornmeal went directly into the Taohuayuan kitchen to be made into various kinds of noodles.

Cornmeal steamed cake, cornmeal cornbread, cornmeal porridge, cornmeal and date cake, cornmeal potstickers...

Various kinds of cornmeal pasta dishes are now the favorite foods of adults and children in Peach Blossom Spring.

The two of them also developed a liking for cornmeal noodles. After eating a bowl of cornmeal porridge, their stomachs felt much better.

Similarly, these three types of cornmeal quickly dominated the grain shops in Youzhou City and entered people's homes.

In recent years, apart from Dunzi and Maisui, Li Lanzhen has brought more than 300 people back to Lishu Village from human traffickers to supplement the number of farmers.

The Emperor Emeritus has witnessed the gradual changes in Lishu Village, and now he admires Li Lanzhen from the bottom of his heart.

Every few days, he couldn't help but feel regret. If Li Lanzhen had been a man, it would have been a blessing for the country. Whenever this happened, the Empress Dowager would scold him, "She was born a woman, but she was still a great contributor to our country!"

She also warned him that he should not show any neglect or contempt for her as a woman in his daily words and actions.

The retired emperor was certainly aware of this, but in his heart, he compared Li Lanzhen with all the ministers in his court.

Afterwards, he would always think of a certain minister with disdain, saying that he was not as good as Li Lanzhen in this aspect and in that aspect!

Finally, he sighed deeply, relieved that he had already left that position and could avoid seeing it from his mind.