Chapter 330 New Plow
It is a bit risky to go to the village at the foot of the mountain at this time, but Mu Xi wants to take the dogs with him, so there shouldn't be any problem. After all, several actual combat operations have proved that the dogs are quite powerful.
When the two men came back from chopping wood, they analyzed the footprints they saw near the path down the mountain and found that the creatures active near the path were relatively small, and no social creatures were found, which directly ruled out the jackals and the wolf pack that they had seen previously.
The terrain of the jungle at the foot of the mountain is not suitable for those ferocious and fast-running carnivores, so there should be no problem if we take four dogs with us.
The house cannot be left without someone to look after it. Zhao Yeqing thought about it, compared his own fighting power with those of the four dogs, and felt that it would be safer for Mu Xi to take the dogs with him.
It was a bit heavy to carry the entire plow back, so the two men originally planned to go to the village below to find the wooden plow and then remove the iron plowshare from the wooden plow.
But unexpectedly, when Mu Xi came back, he still brought a whole plow, and this plow was not made of wood. No one knew where he found a big iron plow and carried it back.
Mu Xi lifted the plow with one hand and handed it to Zhao Yeqing: "It just looks heavy, but it's actually not heavy."
After saying that, he weighed it with his hand and added, "It should be around 17 or 18 pounds."
Zhao Yeqing reached out and took it easily. It looked heavy, but actually it was not. The light weight of the plow made it easy to hold the plow when plowing. In comparison, the original wooden plow was much heavier.
The two men took advantage of the fact that the ground was moist and soft and plowed the land over the next few days.
The meadow looked bare after the snow melted. The weeds that withered in autumn had long been pressed back into the soil. I don’t know if it was because the weather was still too cold or because there had been no light before, but there was no green at all on the meadow this year.
Looking around, the whole meadow seemed extremely desolate and gray everywhere.
However, Mu Xi said that when he went down the mountain this time, he found that on both sides of the road, some green buds were slowly emerging on the branches that seemed to have withered when he was cutting wood before. It must be a matter of time before the meadow regains its vitality.
Each person brought a cow to the field. The area of cornfield that Mu Xi was working on was relatively large, while the area of the wheat field that Zhao Yeqing was plowing was only two-thirds of the cornfield. In addition, Mu Xi gave her the newly brought back iron pear, so when she finished working on the entire field, Mu Xi had only worked on half of the cornfield.
Zhao Yeqing originally wanted to finish the rapeseed field in one go, but it was already past noon and the two had not yet had lunch.
He asked Mu Xi to transfer the iron plow to his cow, and he took the calf back to feed it some grass and make lunch.
Mu Xi discovered that the land this year was unusually fertile. Some of the turned-over soil was shiny black. The earthworms that had been hiding underground in the winter were forced to come to the surface to breathe by the snow water that had flowed into the soil.
He did not move the living earthworms, but let them stay in the soil to help loosen it. If there were any earthworms that were accidentally cut off by the plow, he would pick them up and put them aside. When Zhao Yeqing called him home for lunch, he would throw the broken earthworm bodies into the chicken coop as a snack for the chickens.
Once they start working on the farm, their lunch becomes very simple. Zhao Yeqing fried a lot of pancakes today and put enough eggs in them to make the dough turn light yellow.
"I don't know if it was because it was too cold before, but the chickens basically didn't lay eggs during this period. But now that the temperature has warmed up, we forgot to check for eggs this morning. I just checked and found more than a dozen eggs."
After counting, she found that there were more eggs than hens. Even if she picked out the unfertilized eggs, there were seven or eight.
Five eggs were beaten into the freshly ground flour, and a handful of fresh green onions were sprinkled on the flour and spread out in a hot oil pan. Each pancake was very thin, and it was almost translucent when you held it up.
Zhao Yeqing liked the taste of onions, so she took a sweet onion, cut it into shreds, and wrapped it in a scallion omelet. She felt it tasted better this way.
Mu Xi's taste in this respect is different from hers. He thinks eating raw green onions is a bit spicy, unless it is paired with a strong-flavored sauce, similar to the sweet bean sauce or sour plum sauce for Peking duck.
About ten thin pancakes were all eaten up. After working, the food tasted especially delicious.
After dinner, Mu Xi said, "You don't have to go to the place that you're leaving in a while. Just prepare the lime to be spread. I've changed the iron plow and it's very fast. You can just plow the other areas directly later."
Zhao Yeqing nodded and agreed: "Okay, you plow the original peanut field and rapeseed field first, and we'll work on the rice field and vegetable garden tomorrow. Let's just plow these fields today and sprinkle them with lime and that'll be enough."
When Mu Xi went to plow the land in the afternoon, Zhao Yeqing was preparing lime at home. Not every piece of limestone dug back was broken into pieces. There was still a large piece that had not been broken. All of them had to be broken into pieces and then ground into fine particles before being sprinkled on the ground to achieve a good effect.
After spreading the lime to disinfect it, let the land dry in the sun for a few days and then plow it again. After that, spread the base fertilizer and prepare the seeds for sowing.
Zhao Yeqing used a hammer to smash the large grayish-white limestone chunks into small pieces, then ground them into smaller pieces and put them into buckets to sprinkle on the field.
In fact, we could have plowed the rice fields and vegetable fields together today, and then sprinkled lime on them all tomorrow.
But Zhao Yeqing saw that the weather was good today, sunny and windless, so he thought of spreading lime on the plowed planting fields as soon as possible. If it was windy tomorrow, he would not be able to spread the lime.
Whether it is spreading lime, fertilizer, or pesticide on the land, farmers generally choose to do it in clear and windless weather to avoid the splashed substances getting into the eyes or on the body, and also reduce the impact on the surrounding environment.
After cleaning up the originally planned plots of land, the good news was that there was no wind the next day, so the two men successfully plowed all the vegetable fields and rice fields and sprinkled lime.
Zhao Yeqing plans to rebuild ridges in the rice and vegetable fields this year.
The year before last, when the two were preventing and controlling voles, they had to deal with the ridges and dikes in the vegetable fields and rice fields. This year is the same. They have to be knocked down and rebuilt, otherwise the voles will like to build nests underneath over time.
Although the number of voles has probably been greatly controlled after this winter, I am afraid that there may still be nests down there that have not been destroyed. It would be a problem if new voles move in directly.
After the two men flattened all the ridges of the field, Zhao Yeqing actually discovered their hideout.
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