As we entered mid-July, the sun grew increasingly scorching, and the weather became hotter day by day.
The peanuts, soybeans, and cotton on the hillside have completely withered; there has been a total crop failure here.
The ground was so dry it was sandy, and even Peppa Pig wouldn't bother to come over and dig it up.
A while ago, Chunfeng selected out most of the chickens she had raised for two years.
Each time the mules transported medicinal powder up the mountain, they would bring chickens down with them, which Xiaoman would then sell to merchants at the post station for money.
The two sows that were bred in April were about to give birth, so Chunfeng simply opened the pigpen and let the pigs come out to find food on their own. This way, they could find a cooler place to stay and save some feed.
The sows, domesticated by humans for generations, have no wild instincts. They are familiar with each other every day and do not attack Peppa.
So Peppa had something else to do. She stopped bothering the cow and started taking two little sows out to find food every day. They dug up grass roots, ate berries, and took mud baths. When they got hungry, they would come back to beg for food.
With no farm work to do on the mountain, Qiaoyun instructed us on how to make incense, distill morning glory extract, harvest the herbs that needed to be dug up, and pick the berries that needed to be picked.
A month-long drought left the reclaimed land on the hillside with no harvest. An ordinary family would have to worry about how to survive the famine, but the two households on the mountain were not worried at all and continued with their lives as usual.
At this time, every household in the village was also trying to save their crops.
After selling one crop of green sorghum, the second crop of corn stalks is only half a person tall and is in the stage of rapid growth, so it urgently needs water and fertilizer.
The rice in the fields was in the flowering stage, and they dared not lack water, so people scooped water into the fields from morning to night every day.
It was indeed scooping water.
People stand in the riverbed and use wooden ladles, gourd ladles, or wooden baskets to scoop water from the lower level to the higher fields.
The fields near the water outlet are in a better position; they just need to be moved to a different elevation.
If one's own field is far away and water needs to pass through someone else's field, then a special channel for water to pass through the field needs to be separated.
To prevent leaks, it is also necessary to check the paddy field ridges every day to see if there are crabs or loaches burrowing into them.
To earn a few bushels of grain in the fall, farmers have no choice but to work in the fields under the scorching sun.
These are rice paddies near water; if they were dry land, there would be no way to draw water.
As the sun dried the corn husks until they were twisted into ropes, looking as dry as if they could be ignited by a single fire, everyone was extremely anxious.
Saving the seedlings was saving lives; they couldn't even afford to make money in the workshop, focusing solely on the crops.
People are strange like that. Even though a month's wages are enough to buy a year's worth of food, they just can't bear to leave the crops in the fields.
The affection for the land is ingrained in one's very bones.
Modern farmers take time off work to drive back to harvest rice during the busy farming season. They are exhausted, but when they do the math, they are shocked to find that they have lost money!
So, the men and women of Xujia Village all pitched in, and everywhere along the field ridges and dikes, villagers were carrying water in wooden buckets. Even the children carried bamboo tubes filled with water to the fields in baskets on their backs.
A corn stalk and a ladle of water—the water is poured in and immediately seeps into the soil, barely keeping it alive.
Each household in Xujia Village has only three or four mu of land, which is barely enough to irrigate one area.
Jiang Zhi has the most land, not only crops, but also ten mu of lilyturf planted just last year. This was under an agreement with the Huo family, and if the drought is severe, the losses will be the greatest.
Tian Gui and Xu Genyou had been watering the seedlings to save them, but even if they carried the water by hand, they couldn't save them no matter how hard they tried.
Jiang Zhi abandoned the peanuts and cotton on the mountain and began to do everything she could to save the crops on these dozens of acres of land.
Tian Gui and his group farmed the land, while the few displaced households used mules to carry water and wheelbarrows to push water, irrigating as much as they could.
Besides using the clumsy method of watering, Jiang Zhi had to think of other solutions.
At the Qingquanwan Pharmacy, Jiang Zhi sent Errui, Xiaoman, and Xu Genqing to cut a large pile of willow branches, peel off the bark, crush it, and soak it in warm water to extract the juice.
Transmigrated women usually have a spatial dimension with their own spiritual spring water.
Moreover, the spiritual spring has many uses; it can promote plant growth in the soil and can be used to heal wounds and cure diseases in people and animals.
In fact, each of us has a cheat code; we can create a magical spring even without a physical space.
That's salicylic acid, and the related drug is even more familiar to everyone: aspirin, an antipyretic and analgesic that was once extremely difficult to find during a certain period.
(Knowledge sourced from the internet)
Salicylic acid is a common organic acid, which is divided into natural salicylic acid and synthetic salicylic acid.
Natural salicylic acid is found in plants such as willow bark and resveratrol, while synthetic salicylic acid is obtained through chemical synthesis.
Salicylic acid has a wide range of applications.
Applying salicylic acid to plants can increase plant cell division and promote root growth, and it can be used as a rooting solution for crop cuttings.
Leaves will develop better, which can increase the yield of crops such as wheat, rice, and corn by more than 10%.
It can also improve plant stress resistance, enhance plant resistance and adaptability.
For example, applying salicylic acid can improve crop tolerance and enable them to adapt to harsh environmental conditions under environmental stresses such as drought, salinity, and temperature changes.
Salicylic acid ointment can be used topically to kill bacteria and treat skin diseases. It can also be used in cosmetics to soften the stratum corneum.
The diluted willow bark juice was sent back to the village, and Jiang Zhi instructed everyone in the village to use it.
In addition to watering the roots with small amounts of these liquids, it is also necessary to use a sprayer to apply foliar fertilizer to all crops.
No one asked what Village Chief Jiang was up to, and no one questioned it anymore.
Those who believe, follow along; those who don't... also secretly follow along.
This time, Errui and his three companions cut down all the willow branches in Xujia Village, boiled them in the medicine shop for two days, and used the diluted liquid to irrigate the crops throughout the village.
Using willow bark water didn't show any immediate effect on the crops; the corn leaves were still wilting and curled up like ropes, and the rice paddies were still cracked from dryness.
Xu Changming squatted at the edge of the field, looking at the cloudless sky, and sighed at the corn leaves that were curled up so tightly that even the wind couldn't move them: "No magic potion works, this year's work has been for nothing!"
Fortunately, the first crop of green grain sold for two taels of silver. If we take good care of the fields, we can still buy some coarse grains to cook into vegetable porridge in the future.
Only three days had passed, and some people had already noticed the difference.
Tian Gui found Jiang Zhi, who was tinkering with willow bark in the medicine shop: "Village Chief Jiang, I went to check on the corn in other parts of Pear Blossom Town, and a lot of them have withered and died."
"oh!"
Jiang Zhi stared blankly at the pot of thick willow bark water she had just brewed, her mind still preoccupied with her own affairs.
Three thousand years ago, traditional Chinese medicine knew that boiling willow bark in water had anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects, but aspirin, which has the widest range of uses, is a Western medicine.
Jiang Zhi now wants to use traditional methods to make tablets similar to aspirin.
However, the methods of manufacturing traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine are different.
Jiang Zhi didn't bring Wan Tong's cheat code after all, and even this pseudo-spiritual spring didn't have an immediate effect on plants, so she was a little unsure of how to develop it.
Seeing that Village Chief Jiang seemed a bit absent-minded today and didn't even seem interested in speaking, Tian Gui said anxiously, "Village Chief Jiang, after we used your medicine, the crops were still wilted, but they would revive and turn green again in the morning and evening. They only curled up into tubes at noon, and they would immediately come back to life once it rained."
The corn in other areas has all dried up and died; even rain can't save it!
Jiang Zhi perked up: "You mean our medicines are effective?"
Tian Gui nodded vigorously and said excitedly, "Yes, it works. At least the seedlings are still there and can hold on. As long as it rains, there will be a harvest."
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