Chapter 352 Baking Wheat
In addition to mosquitoes, there are also more snakes in the house.
But the outer wall is smooth and they can't climb in, so they like to hide in the sweet potato field in the vegetable garden outside.
Mu Xi said that when sweet potatoes mature, they may attract mice or voles, which naturally attract snakes as well.
The potatoes had been harvested, and no signs of being bitten by mice were found. This further confirmed Mu Xi's statement. No wonder Zhao Yeqing had never seen any signs of voles after installing the cameras.
At first, apart from some foxes and weasels roaming around the yard, no other animals came near.
There are no large carnivores. After the spring, the number of small carnivores in this meadow is much more than before, but since the weather has become warmer and the rainfall has increased, the number of these animals has decreased again.
Instead, the animals that moved closer to the walls of the house became snakes and geckos.
The reason we didn’t destroy the snake’s nest before was because the sweet potatoes and grain fields had not been harvested yet. Now that it’s time to harvest, the first thing we do is to destroy the snake’s nest.
Mu Xi first cut off most of the sweet potato vines that blocked the ground, found two snake holes hidden in the sweet potato field, cleaned them out before harvesting the sweet potatoes.
Zhao Yeqing didn't go to the sweet potato field. She took a sickle and went to the field to harvest and thresh the wheat.
Less than half of the wheat had been harvested when a drizzle began to fall. The harvested wheat was still lying on the ground and had not yet been threshed, so we had to quickly gather it into a pile and cover it with plastic sheeting.
The rain was not heavy at this time of year and it stopped in less than an hour.
The meadows have been wet recently and are rarely completely dry. It seems that the mature crops need to be harvested quickly.
The sweet potatoes are harvested because there is not enough pig feed at home, and the wheat is harvested because of weather reasons. If they are not harvested, the wheat will rot in the field if it is rained on for a few more days.
After Mu Xi finished harvesting the sweet potatoes, he came over to harvest the wheat. The harvested wheat had to be dried quickly during the few sunny days.
The wheat hadn't dried up yet, but in just two days the cleared wheat field was covered with green grass.
Even the unpaved backyard was overgrown with grass. The two had no time to clean it up, as they were worried that the weather was not allowing the food to dry.
"If this continues, the wheat will get moldy."
Zhao Yeqing was sticky all over. As soon as he entered the room, he took off his outer coat and changed into pants. He was only wearing a white vest and denim shorts, fanning himself in the room and drinking cold drinks.
No matter how hot the weather is, I dare not take off my clothes outside. There are many mosquitoes even in broad daylight. Only the bedroom with the door closed 24 hours a day and fumigated with mugwort is safe. I can finally change into cool clothes when I enter the house.
There's just not much ventilation.
Mu Xi took a tape measure to measure the size of the window. "If it doesn't work, we can just dry the wheat. But we don't have a drying room, so it's a bit troublesome to build one. I'll drive to the meadow to see if there are any intact mobile houses that can be dismantled, and by the way, I'll dismantle a few screen windows and install them back."
There are no screens in the room, so in order to prevent mosquitoes, the doors and windows have to be kept closed. The air is not circulating, so I have to turn on the air conditioner for a while every day to cool down and ventilate.
But Zhao Yeqing adapted well to this temperature and was reluctant to turn on the air conditioner. "It's good. With screens on the windows, we can save electricity."
It was not easy to find a screen window that fit perfectly, so Mu Xi could only cut a piece of the screen net and nail it to the window frame. However, after it was nailed to the window frame, it was difficult to open and close the window, and he had to go outside the house to close the window every time.
The mobile board house is built in the corner of the front yard, on the right hand side of the main entrance to the courtyard, so that the collected grain can be directly transported inside for drying and then stored in the hay room.
The area of this wooden house was not large. The two men put wooden boards and bricks inside and made a simple drying device.
Someone has to watch over the drying of wheat, and turn the wheat with a small wooden rake from time to time to prevent it from being over-roasted.
But it was really uncomfortable to stay in the drying room in this weather. Big drops of sweat were dripping down his forehead. Mu Xi had to come out to get some fresh air after staying in there for a while.
Looking at Zhao Yeqing in the yard, he was banging on some wooden boards. "What are you doing?"
Zhao Yeqing nailed two small houses with wooden boards. "I want to put this on our roof to see if there are any birds that will live inside. Once there are birds in the house, there will be fewer mosquitoes."
The characteristics of the rainforest include not only more snakes and insects, but also many more birds. From time to time, you can see some birds with colorful feathers trying to fly down to eat the crops in the fields.
Zhao Yeqing didn't recognize any of those bird species, and those were not her targets.
"That's a good idea, provided you can attract species that eat mosquitoes."
The most common natural enemy of mosquitoes among birds is the swallow, followed by the wren (jio lio), both of which are good at eating mosquitoes.
Both species of birds can be found in the tropics. Zhao Yeqing made round bird nests out of straw in two simple bird nests, hoping to attract them.
She was still quite confident. After all, there were a lot of mosquitoes at home because of the lights. With so many baits, they should be able to take the bait.
One bird's nest was placed on the edge of the eaves, and the other was placed among the wisteria bushes.
Zhao Yeqing would go to see if there were any birds coming in every day, but until the wheat was all dried and the rice in the paddy fields had gradually turned yellow, there was still no movement in the bird's nest.
Mu Xi took out two sweet sticks from the refrigerator, peeled off the skin and handed them to Zhao Yeqing: "Don't worry, wait a few days and check, maybe there will be some."
Zhao Yeqing took a big bite, sucking the sweet juice from the sweet potato stalk, then threw the chewed dry residue into the fire. The burning sweet potato stalk residue gave off a fragrant caramel aroma.
"Well, we have to pick all the corn these two days anyway, so we won't go to see it for now."
The corn in the field has entered the waxy stage. Each corn cob is very full, and each kernel has a beautiful waxy luster.
Breaking corn is not the most tiring part. The most difficult part every year is rubbing the corn off the cobs. There is a corn threshing machine at the foot of the mountain.
But it was not a small hand-cranked machine, but a large electric one that could produce tens of thousands of pounds a day, which was impossible to carry back.
The two of them could only resign themselves to their fate and rub the dough with their hands, then put the finished dough into a sack.
This year's corn production is also considerable, and wheat production is nearly one-fifth more than last year.
Judging from the situation of rice, as long as we are not too unlucky during this period and do not have continuous rains causing the rice ears to become moldy, if we harvest normally, the yield will definitely be 20% higher than before.
But in this case, the aluminum tube may not be able to hold it.
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