30 Chapter 30
◎One dan per mu! Seeking wheat seeds◎
In Guier's opinion, Cheng Mu was only four years older than her, and they were of the same age. They could talk about private matters with each other. Moreover, Cheng Mu was knowledgeable and experienced, so she must know a lot of issues.
Just like she used to wonder why a rooster was needed for the hens to lay eggs in order for chicks to hatch.
This child needs some enlightenment on physiological knowledge.
Cheng Mu asked her, "How many people can you hire to harvest the wheat?"
"I asked several villages, six."
There is no way to hire anyone, the wheat will not wait for anyone.
When the wheat is fully ripe, it's time to harvest it. There's a saying: "When it's 90% ripe, harvest it; when it's 100% ripe, throw it away." This is because when the wheat is fully ripe, it will burst open and fall to the ground if the wind blows. If you don't harvest it quickly, a lot of it will be lost.
Fortunately, Zhao Datian had made four sickles to save on harvesting labor. "The weather will be good for the next few days. Go and let them know. We'll start harvesting tomorrow."
There are five busy tasks during wheat harvest: harvesting, picking, threshing, drying and storing.
There was no progress on Zhao Datian's thresher, and all six men had to work on the threshing machine.
The four sickles were operated by Zhao Datian, Zhao Shitou, Muyun and Guier respectively. They divided the work and each person was responsible for five acres of land. Zhao Datian and Zhao Shitou were experienced workers and the sickles were made by them, so they were very easy to use. They finished mowing the five acres of land in half a day. After they finished mowing, they came to help Muyun and Guier.
Of the six workers hired, two were responsible for bundling the harvested wheat and carrying it to the drying yard, while four were responsible for threshing the wheat in the drying yard.
In Cheng Mi's idea, this set of work processes could be completed by building a combine harvester.
The machine harvests the wheat ears and enters the threshing process. The wheat straw and wheat grains are transported out separately. Baskets of threshed wheat grains are picked up directly from the field, dried on the drying yard for a day, and then stored in the warehouse. It only takes two or three days to harvest dozens of acres of land.
How nice.
Unfortunately, the thresher was not yet built, so the wheat could only be threshed using primitive manual methods.
The four benches used for the Eight Immortals Table were brought in, and a small stool with low legs was tied to each bench. The workers stood in front of the benches, held a bundle of wheat tightly in both hands, raised it above their shoulder blades, and smashed it hard against the stool. If it didn't come down in one hit, they would smash it again and shake it again, trying to knock out every grain of wheat.
Yu, Cheng Mu, and Qi Song also came to help. They sat on the side and smashed the wheat straw with mallets until it was broken into pieces.
Xiaoliu and Xiaoqi sat in a small stroller, watching from a distance under the shade of a tree. Xiaoliu didn't sit there for long, and soon she climbed out of the stroller by herself. She crawled like a puppy, very fast, and crawled to Cheng Mu's side, grinning at her.
Cheng Mu was so exhausted from pounding the wheat that she really couldn't do such hard work. She missed the modern combine harvester so much.
"Madam Cheng, there are so many people working here, go rest in the shade."
Yu took her mallet away and said, "It's dirty here, and you'll feel uncomfortable if it gets stained with wheat husks."
Her skin is delicate, and if it gets touched by grass or shells, or if it's exposed to too much sun, it will become red and itchy, causing her pain.
In the past, when the Yu family did work, they would at most ask Zhao Datian's family to help. Now that there are so many people, there is really no need for Madam Cheng to do it herself.
Cheng Mu picked up Xiaoliu and stood there watching the bustling scene in the drying yard.
She sighed and decided to study why Zhao Datian couldn't build such a simple thresher.
County Magistrate Huang arrived two days late and did not see the harvesting and threshing, but he did see the weighing and storing.
They had two windmills. They swept the dried wheat grains into a pile and put them into the windmill. They shook the windmill handle with one hand and stirred the wheat in the windmill with the other hand. The wheat flowed down, the wheat impurities flew out from the tail of the windmill, and the clean wheat was spit out from the belly of the windmill and fell into the basket.
The wheat grains are thick, round, full and uniform, and each grain is golden.
County Magistrate Huang bit a grain with his teeth, making a crisp sound. He grabbed a handful from the basket and held it tightly, until the grains spilled out of both ends of his fist. He clapped his hands and said calmly, "Very good."
He asked again, "Twenty acres of land were harvested in two days?"
Cheng Mu said, "We invited a lot of people, and we haven't finished it yet. It will take another day."
"I heard you made a sickle and mowed twenty acres of land in one day."
In addition to the surprises of land cleaning and land modification, seed breeding, she also developed agricultural tools, which refreshed County Magistrate Huang's understanding of her every time.
"I was just thinking about it." Cheng Mu showed Huang Xiancheng a demonstration of pushing the sickle. Huang Xiancheng was silent for a long time. "Madam Cheng, you should have thought about other farm tools. What are they?"
Since County Magistrate Huang wanted to see it, he showed him the spreader and the failed thresher.
The principle of the spreader is very simple, so it was successfully made in one go. The thresher is a little more complicated, involving the coordination of various processes such as conveying, crushing, separating, and ejecting.
Zhao Datian made the feed belt, roller and screen according to her idea. The threshing mainly relies on the friction, extrusion, collision and shaking between the rack on the roller and the screen to separate the grains from the stems. There was a problem at this step and the threshing was not ideal. Not to mention the subsequent use of the centrifugal effect of the roller to eject the stems, which could not be thrown out because they were blocked.
She is powered by hand cranking like a wind bucket.
In order to test the thresher, a large bundle of wheat was specially kept from the harvest.
Cheng Mu saw that County Magistrate Huang seemed to have a lot of ideas and looked forward to his advice.
County Magistrate Huang asked her to remove all the screens on the conveyor belt. After thinking about it, he asked her to put the screens on the opposite side and took a handful of wheat himself.
His servant offered to do it for him, but County Magistrate Huang refused. "You go and shake the roller."
The servant started the drum to rotate. County Magistrate Huang seized the opportunity and placed the wheat in his hand on the rack of the drum. As the drum rotated, the wheat and debris flew towards the sieve on the opposite side. The wheat passed through the mesh of the sieve, and the debris remained in front of the sieve.
Mr. Zhao saw it with his own eyes and his heart was filled with emotions.
Huang Xiancheng put down the threshed wheat straw and said, "If we change this hand-cranking machine to a foot-operated one, one person can operate it."
"A master is a master, and his talents are extraordinary!"
Cheng Mu couldn't help but applaud him. She had thought too much about it before. Since it was unpowered, it was better to keep it simple and crude.
At this time, the wheat in the drying yard had been harvested, and Liu Zandian came over to report the weighing results.
The wheat harvested from twenty mu of land filled twenty baskets, each basket weighing one dan, for a total of twenty dan.
In the Yanbei area, the best fields only produce a little more than one stone per mu.
At this time, this number flew all over the villages around as if it had wings.
Many people who knew how to do the math started to calculate: one acre of land yields one stone, and two acres of land can feed one person. Every household in this place has at least twenty acres of land. If they can grow this wheat and some other crops, the whole family will not have to go hungry.
The success of winter wheat has resulted in people coming to the door every day to ask for seeds.
The village head discussed the wheat seed swap with the clan leaders of the surrounding families and the village heads under his jurisdiction. Everyone wanted to see their own saline land yield a dan per mu. Previously, they blamed the land for its poor quality, but now that others have successfully grown the same land, everyone blames their own seeds, leading to intense competition for the good seeds.
Mr. Zhao Ba was close to the water and had the upper hand, so he had already agreed with Cheng Mu to take care of the farmers in Zhaojia Village first.
Roughly calculating based on the requirement of 30 jin of wheat seeds per acre, the 20 dan she harvested was only enough to seed more than 100 acres of land.
Mr. Zhao asked each family how much wheat seeds they needed, but he didn't expect that there would be a blind scramble, with almost every family asking for wheat seeds according to the total number of acres of land they had.
Finally, after repeated requests and discussions by the village head, wheat seeds were exchanged according to the number of people in each household.
One adult or one mouth can be exchanged for two mu of wheat seeds. For example, in Zhao Wu's family, the two married daughters are not counted, and the two sons are under the age of sixteen, so only the couple and their elderly mother are counted, which can be exchanged for a total of one stone of wheat seeds for six mu of land.
The fact is, Zhao Wu's family doesn't have a stone of wheat in stock. He either has to buy it or transfer part of the amount to others.
Exchanging wheat seeds is a delicate job that requires counting, weighing and recording. Cheng Mu invited Qi Song, who worked in the hills behind the mountain, and asked Zhao Datian to be responsible for weighing and Mu Yun to be responsible for recording.
Dong'er's husband and her father-in-law each carried a bag of wheat over. The men were changing the seeds there. Dong'er was talking with Cheng Mu and teasing Xiaoliu and Xiaoqi.
Five months pregnant, her belly was quite big, and she said it was probably a boy, who loved sour food.
"When I think of Madam Cheng's pickled cabbage and stewed pork, I'm so greedy! I want to make it too, but I can't buy cabbage at this time of year. Oh, and I made clothes for Xiaoliu and Xiaoqi. Let's try them out to see if they fit."
Dong'er took out two small dresses and put them on Xiaoliu and Xiaoqi. They were a little big, so she folded the sleeves and trouser legs. "We're used to making them bigger here, but children grow so fast, they won't be too big for long. They look good. Oh, Xiaoqi looks so handsome in this color!"
The material of the dress wasn't very new, and it didn't fit her well, but it was obvious that Dong'er had come for the sour cabbage, so her sincerity was quite evident. Cheng Mu said, "You've come at the right time. We only have one left. Aunt Yu, tell Dong'er to take the jar away when she leaves."
Dong'er's face flushed red, and she felt embarrassed. "Madam Cheng, please stop teasing me." She thought for a moment and asked, "Madam Cheng, do you have any seeds left? Can I ask for some to plant? When the cabbage is ripe, I'll make a jar and send it to you."
"There are seeds, can you plant them?"
"I will definitely remember whatever Madam Cheng tells me."
Cheng Xi didn't have any special instructions. Cabbage can be grown all year round, but people are used to planting it in autumn and winter. She had already experimented in the space and developed cabbage seeds suitable for different seasons.
"You can plant the seeds I gave you now, no need to wait until autumn." Cabbage seeds planted in summer are more heat-resistant and have a shorter growing period. They can be harvested in about two months.
"Really?" Dong'er happily took the packet of seeds with both hands. "Madam Cheng, could it be that you are the reincarnation of the Earth Goddess? There is nothing that would be unsuitable to plant in your hands."
Dong'er's husband called her. Dong'er stretched her head and looked, and saw a person. "Why is she here?"
Cheng Mu asked, "Who's coming?"
"Widow Xu."
Widow Xu was a young widow from Zhaojia Village. After her husband died of illness, the family was left with no one, and Widow Xu had no children. The clan wanted to take back the land and house from the family and let Widow Xu marry off on her own. But Widow Xu refused to leave, and she took over both the house and the land. The land was about ten acres, and she couldn't manage it alone. She had a cousin who worked at a horse farm and occasionally came to help.
Everyone in the village said that she was a bad person and had affairs with many people.
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