Chapter 222 Corn Harvest!
Seeing Mu Xi coming safely, Zhao Yeqing hurried forward and checked if there were any bees on his body.
There are no living ones left, but there is still one dead one.
The spikes on the tail had pierced into his clothes. Mu Xi took off his clothes and hat and cleaned off the spikes.
Zhao Yeqing looked at the dead little bee in his hand. Its body was hairy, fat and round.
Mu Xi said: "Once their stingers are inserted, their internal organs will be pulled out, and they will die."
She placed the fat, round body of the bee on the meadow and looked Mu Xi up and down, making sure he was not stung.
"How is it going? Is the bee colony in good condition?"
Mu Xi smiled and replied, "Don't worry, with the queen bee inside, things will be stable."
After receiving the good news, Zhao Yeqing smiled, took Mu Xi's hand and was about to go home.
I looked down and saw the dog at my feet, and then I suddenly remembered,
She had come to see the condition of the pasture.
We went around the hill to the back of the pasture, avoiding the beehives, and found that several pastures had signs of being eaten.
Once the roots of the grass are eaten, the leaves on it begin to wilt.
Now the two have almost no particularly effective methods to prevent and control rat infestation. They can only harvest the grass as early as possible to avoid greater losses.
The forage grass that could have been harvested two or three times has now had nearly one-fifth of its roots eaten, and has to be pulled out and replanted.
Mu Xi put on his windbreaker and modified hat again, and moved the beehives near the alfalfa field a little further away to make it easier for the two to come and harvest the grass in the near future.
After returning home, Zhao Yeqing went to sort out the small amount of silage left in the silo. The unused residues were a bit moldy inside, so he had to clean them all out and then rinse the silo clean.
Mu Xi rebuilt a second cart to pull hay.
The wooden planks prepared earlier had become sleds, so the body and wheels of the cart had to be remade.
There was some unused wood at home, so Mu Xi drew the blueprint and then carved out the parts according to it.
It certainly couldn't be done in one day, so Zhao Yeqing dragged the first cart out the next day, harvested three carts of crops, and cut them into small pieces with a guillotine.
This batch was intended to be made into small packages of silage. After she finished packing all the small packages of silage, Mu Xi's second cart was also made.
Mu Xi moved both carts to the vicinity of the pasture. He planned to fill one cart first, and then load the next one after transporting the goods back by horse.
"Now Xiaohong can find her way back by herself, so I can cut the grass by myself."
After Xiaohong has returned with one load of goods, she can tow the empty cart back to the pasture by herself, and then harness the second fully loaded cart to it and bring it back.
Cows can pull more, but there are not enough people now, and the corn in the field needs to be harvested as soon as possible.
Zhao Yeqing shook his head. "The two baskets of corn are enough. The rest can be ground into flour. I'm afraid Xiaohong can't stand running back and forth. Let's use oxen to pull it in turns."
The harvested grass has to be cut and stored. If you want to eat corn, you can just plant a few more for yourself.
However, Mu Xi also considered that corn stalks could be used as feed. After the corn reaches the waxy stage, the stalks in the field will be dried into golden yellow by the sun, and cattle and sheep probably won't like to eat them.
At this time, it can be used as roughage if it is cut.
Zhao Yeqing threw the hay in his hand into the cart. Looking at the increasingly hot sun, he suddenly felt like giving up.
"They can eat or not. If they don't want to eat, they'll eat hay. Herding a large group of cattle and sheep is exhausting." She sat down on the grass. "If all else fails, we can slaughter the sheep before winter and only keep a few. We'll eat the rest."
Mu Xi smiled when he heard this, "Okay, I have no objection."
The more Zhao Yeqing talked about it, the more he thought it was feasible. They now had so many sheep that they couldn't sell, and wool wasn't scarce, so they might as well just raise a few and not have to work so hard.
But we definitely can't slaughter the sheep now. It's too hot and the mutton can't be kept.
Now the cattle and sheep can go out to graze on their own, and it is not difficult to supply feed. They just put some night grass in the barn at night and put some feed in the barn when the two of them are going out.
After I thought it over, I no longer felt that working in this hot weather was so difficult. I could just take my time.
I originally wanted to leave the alfalfa unharvested so that I could raise bees, but I was worried that voles would cause more damage.
Mu Xi: "Anyway, there is still half a field planted with alfalfa for seed, so we can just mow this field."
"Then harvest it. By that time, the crops on that field will be gone and the rapeseed flowers will be in bloom."
Just like last year, Zhao Yeqing brought two trucks of feed back home and unloaded the goods into the hay house.
If left outside for too long, it will dry out, and when the moisture content of the grass decreases, it will be difficult to ferment.
After all the grass was harvested, the two of them cut it together and piled it into the silo.
It took nearly a week to finish the hay processing, and it was almost time to harvest the last batch of corn.
Now all the corn in the cornfield has become hard, and the yellow-green corn stalks have been turned golden by the strong sun.
The golden corn stalks were chopped into pieces with a guillotine, including the stems and leaves, and then mixed with green fodder and thrown into the troughs in the sheep and cattle pens. It was found that the food the cattle and sheep ate was relatively clean.
Chopping it up takes time and effort, so Zhao Yeqing tried throwing a whole corn stalk in, but they only ate the leaves and wouldn't even touch the stalk.
Well, it still has to be chopped up.
This time, when harvesting corn, we didn't break off the corn cobs directly. Instead, we harvested the entire corn plant and then broke off the corn on the cobs and threw them in the yard to dry.
Zhao Yeqing's job of cutting corn stalks was not the hardest. In comparison, Mu Xi's job of peeling corn kernels was really tiring.
You have to use a screwdriver to poke down a row of corn kernels first, so that there are spaces between the kernels on the corn cob, and then you can peel off the remaining kernels.
Corn kernels are now very rough and hard. If you peel them by hand, they will peel and get blisters after a day. You have to use a corn cob as a tool to help peel the corn kernels.
Corn kernels stored after being peeled are less likely to be infested with insects, and are easier to mix when feeding.
After Zhao Yeqing cut the corn stalks, he did not forget to deal with the fields where rice seedlings were about to be planted.
If rice is to be planted in the originally planned wheat fields, the straw in the fields will have to be harvested or burned.
Zhao Yeqing had never done any serious pest control work before, so this time he planned to burn the straw to fertilize the fields and get rid of pests, and maybe even suffocate the field mice that might be living in the fields.
However, there are still crops that have not been harvested near the wheat fields, so they need to be isolated.
There are corn fields and soybeans, and there are rapeseed fields next to them.
Zhao Yeqing dug the soil and made the ridges between the fields thicker and higher to prevent the fire from spreading or burning the crops next door.
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