Chapter 305 Planting Cotton
"Shopkeeper Yu, it's time to go." The merchant carrying a bag of pancakes waved his hand.
"Are you coming back this year or next year?" Sui Yu asked.
"Probably next summer."
"See you next year then, and have a safe journey."
"I'll give you my good wishes."
The camel bells, after having their hair plucked off, began to jingle again. Camels, laden with bright silk, swaying water jars, sacks smelling of flour, and large bundles of grain, stepped out of the guesthouse.
Sui Yu waited until the wind blew away the rolling yellow smoke before he carried the shovel and went to the field.
"A Shui, you and Hua Niu keep an eye on the guesthouse. If you are unsure about anything, go find me in the fields. I'm on the two acres of land west of the river." Sui Yu instructed.
"Okay." Ah Shui agreed readily.
The fat cat official also meowed.
Sui Yu glanced back, her eyes glancing at the teahouse. She added, "A Shui, ask Da Zhuang to open the door to dissipate the smell, and then leave someone to guard it to prevent the chickens from getting in."
"Mom, where are you going? Wait for me." The little cub shouted loudly when he heard the sound.
Sui Yu didn't see him, but judging from the sound, this kid was probably walking his golden wheat ears.
"I'm going to work in the fields. You go do your own thing and come find me when you're done." She shouted loudly and walked away quickly.
The snow had melted, the sun wasn't strong, and the wind was strong. The damp ground had blew out a layer of hard scabs, but beneath them, the soil was still moist. Camel hooves crushed the wind-dried earth, revealing moist soil. Sui Yu walked along, smelling the rotten earth all the way, the scent of grass leaves and stems that had rotted all winter.
Across the river, the smell of the wind changed again. Erhei and Ding Quan were turning the soil, mixed with manure, and the smell wasn't very pleasant. Sui Yu paused at the edge of the field. She leaned on her shovel and dug down. The fertile soil had a glossy, oily hue. She used the shovel to push aside the clumping dirt, picked up a soft bean stalk, dug it, and saw with satisfaction a small earthworm.
Not only can poor soil not support crops, it is also disliked by earthworms. Only where there are earthworms can the soil be considered fertile.
Sui Yu threw away the bean stalk, patted the dirt off her hands, walked to the edge of the field near the river and shoveled the soil with a shovel.
Ding Quan saw this from a short distance away. He strode over and said, "Master, tell us what to do. Farm work is tiring. If you keep shoveling like this, your hands will be covered in blisters in just half a day."
Sui Yu then remembered that she had brought a piece of cloth to wrap her hands.
"It's okay, I have my own plans, you guys go about your business." Sui Yu took out a piece of cloth to wrap his hands.
Ding Quan watched for a while, corrected her shoveling posture and the length of her shovel grip, and then left to continue plowing the soil.
It was just past the middle of February and the weather was still cold, especially at night. We slept with two reed-feather mattresses and a wolfskin mattress on top. If we dug up the ground at this time, the insect eggs hidden in the soil would freeze to death.
After a stick of incense had passed, Sui Yu felt warm. She straightened up and took a break, raised her neck to look at the geese flying by, then bent down and continued to shovel the soil with the shovel.
The cat owner came strolling over. Sui Yu dropped the shovel and sat down to pet the cat. She unbuttoned her clothes and panted heavily.
"You are so comfortable, never worried about anything, eating a lot of delicious food, and you can't even catch mice, right?" Sui Yu held the fat cat on her lap and listened to it purring. She suddenly thought that the cat official was an old cat.
"Let me think about it. You should have come to our house when Shui was born. You were already an adult cat then, one or two years old? So you're older than Shui. No wonder I didn't see you sneaking into town to kidnap female cats this year."
The cat meowed and wagged its tail.
Sui Yu took off her jacket, folded it up and put it on the ground. She put the cat official on it and said, "You sleep, I still have work to do."
Sui Yu felt much more relaxed after taking off her heavy reed jacket. She picked up the shovel with renewed energy. She bent down, stepped on the ground, raised her hand, and threw it out. A shovel of soil was thrown out. She felt that her movements were perfect.
When the cub came with the golden wheat ears, Sui Yu had already shoveled out an area of flat ground that was two feet long and one foot wide. She was sweating from the heat and felt very relaxed all over.
People still need to work to be energetic.
"Mom, are you going to plant wheat?" The kid walked over and said, "I'll do the shoveling, you go and take a rest."
Sui Yu didn't refuse and actually handed the shovel to him.
"Is there no class this morning?" she asked.
"The old teacher had a cough, so he asked Aunt Shui to give us homework. However, Aunt Shui was busy in the morning, so she told us to go to the school in the afternoon."
"The old man has a cough? Is it serious? Has he seen a doctor? When your father comes back, ask him to go to the city and get a doctor."
As he was speaking, the sound of hooves was heard on the road east of the river. It was Gu Dalang coming with the doctor, followed by Zhao Xiping.
Zhao Xiping went back first and came back after half an hour. He took the shovel from Sui Yu, looked at it, and continued working according to the depth of the soil she shoveled.
"How is Mr. Chen's health?" Sui Yu asked.
"Put on your coat. He got a cough from sitting by the wall in the sun at noon, got too hot, and then took off his sheepskin coat and caught a cold. It's nothing serious. The doctor gave him a few needles in his hand and told him to walk around more and take a few doses of bitter soup, and he'll be mostly better."
Sui Yu let out an "Oh" and drove away the sleeping cat owner. She shook off the mud and grass and put her clothes on again.
"Our cat official is thirteen or fourteen years old. He's an old cat," Sui Yu said. "Looking at his figure, you really can't tell he's old."
"It's old, and including this year, it hasn't been to the city for three years." Zhao Xiping shoveled the soil skillfully. This was hard work for Sui Yu and the kid. In his hand, the shovel was swung like a whip to drive sheep.
"What are you shoveling this for?" he asked.
"Plant the seeds and grow cotton seedlings."
"What?"
"I asked five male slaves I bought from outside the Great Wall to dig silt in the lower reaches of the river. I planned to use the silt to make a piece of land. After drying the silt for a few days, I would dig holes and sow cotton seeds." Sui Yu explained.
Zhao Xiping didn't understand. He thought about what she said again, but still couldn't figure it out.
"It's still a bit early to plant crops now. We plant wheat and beans at the end of March, and even if the weather gets warmer early, it's still in mid-March," he reminded.
"I know, but I have a solution."
Zhao Xiping tilted his head to look at her. Seeing that she had made up her mind, he could only advise her, "Then save some seeds. Don't waste them all at once. If they die this time, you can try again in a month or so..."
Sui Yu didn't wait for him to finish and raised his hand to slap him on the mouth, "Pooh, what unlucky words are you saying?"
Zhao Xiping turned his back to avoid the slap, still sticking to his farming experience: "Why don't you stop interfering, I'll do it for you."
"If I trusted you with the farming, I would have followed the caravan to Chang'an long ago." Sui Yu snorted, "Just work hard and stop complaining."
She was still humming, and Zhao Xiping wanted to hum even more. This guy really doesn't listen to advice and won't turn back until he hits the wall.
It was noon when the two plots of land were dug. The family of three carried shovels, held the cat, and led the pony across the river and walked back.
There were not many cotton seeds in the first crop, so six loads of silt were enough. When the servants were carrying the silt, Sui Yu followed them closely. Twelve buckets of silt were poured on the ground, and she personally used the mud board used to scrape mud for building houses to flatten the fishy-smelling silt.
"The thickness of the mud is about one finger long. When scraping the mud, pick out and throw away any grass stems, stones, and grass seeds you encounter." Sui Yu explained.
After the clay blocks are made and dried for five or six days, Sui Yu comes to inspect them daily, making six or seven trips to the fields. Once the mud is no longer too soft and sticky, she calls Zhao Xiping over, and the two use hemp rope to cut the blocks into countless small cubes.
The cotton seeds have been taken out and placed in a warm warehouse for three days. Before that, Sui Yu pressed five seeds into the mud and sprinkled some water on them every day. At this time, when the seeds were dug out, they were different from other cotton seeds.
To make sure that these cotton seeds were still active, Sui Yu personally carried the cotton seeds to plant them. She did not allow others to interfere in this matter. She searched through her memories of her previous life, pressed a mud pit with her fingertips, and then threw the cotton seeds into it.
Whenever Zhao Xiping got off duty, he would rush home as fast as he could and not let anyone interfere. He would just watch from the side.
"Who did you learn this method of growing crops from? Did Sui Wen'an tell you?" he asked curiously.
Sui Yu mumbled, then instructed, "Go back and bring me the rice sieve. Sift two buckets of fine soil for me."
"Oh, sure."
After the soil was sifted out, Sui Yu instructed him to sprinkle the soil on the clay block with seeds. He was busy and had no time to ask anything.
Sui Yu didn't plant many cotton seeds during her first planting attempt. She planted a total of 850 cotton seeds. Before Zhao Xiping went on duty, she brought rattan and white oilcloth. There were two kinds of white oilcloth, one was silk cloth brushed with tung oil, and the other was linen cloth brushed with tung oil. She made both of them herself using the tung oil she bought.
The vines were inserted on both sides of the clay block, and Sui Yu and Zhao Xiping spread the oilcloth on it, leaving enough length and width for the oilcloth.
"Press the tarpaulin tightly with some soil to prevent it from being blown away by the wind," Sui Yu instructed.
Zhao Xiping did as he was told.
The oilcloth can keep out rain and wind but not cold. Sui Yu was still worried even after covering the field with the oilcloth, fearing that it would be too cold at night and the cotton seeds would freeze to death. After sunset, the temperature dropped, so she asked Erhei to carry two bundles of hay to the field, and she spread the hay on the oilcloth.
In the days that followed, Sui Yu would wake up and stare at the sky. When the sun came out and the wind was warm, she would start to cover the house with hay. When the sun went down and the temperature dropped, she would busily cover the house with hay again.
This went on for seven days. One afternoon, when Sui Yu lifted the oilcloth to ventilate the area, she saw cotton buds slightly emerging from the clay.
"I grew it!" She jumped up and shouted happily.
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