The others are not progressing as fast as the Chen family. The Chen family started clearing land after the rainstorm and has already cleared several acres and planted vegetables. They are only now starting to clear the land.
Because they need to repair their own houses first, they can only grow vegetables in greenhouses.
Now that everyone has recovered, it's time to start clearing the land. This is something we can't be careless about; their fields were all washed away, and now they have to cultivate them back bit by bit.
As for why vegetables are planted instead of grains, it's because the cycle for growing vegetables is short, while growing grains takes too long. People would probably starve to death before the harvest. Also, growing grains requires fertilizing the land first, otherwise there will be no yield. So everyone planted vegetables first, and will grow grains later.
About ten days later, although the research on the watermill still made no progress, the Chen family did manage to recruit ten carpenters.
Some were lured in from the town, while others were introduced by villagers. Regardless of their skills, the main thing is that they are honest and won't leak any secrets.
It is very difficult to find skilled craftsmen, so the quality of this group of people is not very good. Most of them are about the same level as Chen Lao Er, and some are even worse than Chen Lao Er.
However, the Chen family didn't mind, as they could still help in some way.
If some families hadn't run out of food reserves, they wouldn't have been able to recruit these people.
Although they were worried about their families, they still left home in order to survive.
The conditions offered by the Chen family were: weekly payment, free room and board, two meals a day, all you could eat, plus two bunches of fresh vegetables and five catties of dark flour to take home each week.
For their current situation, this reward is already quite generous.
At the same time, the Chen family also recruited seven young men to clear the land, but of course, their pay was not as generous as that of the craftsmen.
Seeing how wealthy the Chen family was, the villagers felt no jealousy this time, only envy, and there were reasons for that.
Many families in the village have already bought new sleds, and about one-tenth of the families have hired workers. Although they have only hired one worker, it is a good start. They are all following the Chen family's plan.
Therefore, the Chen family was willing to help them and taught them how to sprout soybeans. This time, the Chen family did not make any demands, which surprised the villagers.
The Chen family is willing to make it public, and of course they don't mind if others spread it.
After the bean sprouts were introduced, more than half of the villagers bought new sleds, and some families even hired workers.
Today, the Chen family started planting wheat, which surprised everyone in the village. Even if they couldn't grow rice, they didn't have to plant wheat.
Although the Chen family only planted two acres of rice, they attracted the attention of the entire village.
They only grow spring wheat here; I've never heard of anyone growing winter wheat.
This time, the Chen family came in person to plant the winter wheat, but the fields were cultivated by workers they hired.
Now, the adults in the Chen family are all planting wheat in the fields.
An old man said regretfully, "Chen Dong, you should plant something else on this land. You can't plant wheat now; it won't survive the winter, and there won't be a harvest next year."
Others chimed in, "Yes, we've never seen anyone successfully grow wheat to last through the winter. Let's grow something else instead."
Old Man Chen said, "I know that planting wheat won't yield much, but my goal isn't to harvest a lot of grain, but to select some wheat seeds that can be planted in winter."
"Next year, if we continue to use the selected seeds, we might be able to get winter wheat seeds. The yield will definitely increase gradually, so we can plant both spring and winter wheat."
After listening to Old Man Chen's words, many people pondered them, and it seemed to make some sense.
After what happened last time, the distance between the village chief's family and the Chen family has narrowed, so the village chief's wife said, "Our family should give it a try too."
It was actually Chen Kai who instigated the Chen family to plant winter wheat.
It's too late to plant rice now; this is the time to plant winter wheat. However, they don't have winter wheat seeds to sell here, so they can only plant spring wheat and then select the spring wheat to turn it into winter wheat.
Chen Kai fooled the Chen family, and they agreed to use two acres of land to grow wheat.
Near the end of the month, Anping Village was attacked by about fifty or sixty people.
The Chen family's workshop for making bracken root powder has been repaired, and they are currently short of manpower to wash and crush the bracken roots.
Seeing that there weren't many people, before the village chief could even speak, Chen's wife took her three-meter-long axe and went out. Under the stunned gazes of the villagers, Chen's wife utterly defeated the enemy, killing all the tough ones and leaving the rest to do hard labor.
The villagers were startled by how formidable Chen Laoda's wife was, but they quickly calmed down. Luckily, Chen Laoda's wife was from their village and wouldn't harm them.
Fortunately, Chen Laoda's wife intervened, otherwise there would definitely have been casualties in the village. Immediately, the villagers' goodwill towards Chen Laoda's wife soared.
At this point, Chen Lao Er's wife spread the word about her eldest son's wife's reputation as the "God of War" of Anping Village. No one could take advantage of their family for nothing; at the very least, they had to have a good reputation.
However, it is a good thing that the villagers' fear of Chen Laoda's wife can be transformed into admiration.
Chen Laoda's wife's reputation as the "Goddess of War" in Anping Village quickly spread, and the village chief also lent a hand in it, after all, this title was well-deserved for Chen Laoda's wife.
And so began the legendary life of Chen Laoda's wife.
After being starved for several days, the prisoners were assigned to work in groups of three, tied together. As long as it didn't interfere with their work, they were tied up wherever necessary, and were guarded by the Chen family.
Since these people dared to attack other villages, the Chen family would not relax their supervision of them. They would let them eat only three or four tenths of their full capacity each day and then do hard work all day long.
Some people initially wanted to escape, but when they saw there was food, they all calmed down. In particular, if they did a good job, they could eat about 50-60% of their fill, so they worked even harder.
The time-consuming and laborious work in the early stages of making bracken root powder, such as digging up bracken roots, transporting them back, washing them, and crushing them, was all done by the prisoners. The more important work in the later stages was done by the Chen family.
This improves work efficiency; although the output remains the same, the production time is shortened.
A while ago, the Zhou family worked overtime to make more fern root powder, which made Chen Kai very distressed.
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