Chapter 357 Seeder
On such a hot and sleepy morning, what you eat for breakfast has a great impact on your mood for the whole day. Mu Xi's breakfast today is very much to Zhao Yeqing's taste. It is nearly 10 o'clock now, and after eating a big bowl of noodles, he probably won't even need to eat lunch.
After eating, the two of them still have to take care of the animals at home.
First feed the dogs at home, let them take the cattle and sheep out to graze, open the stable and let Xiaohong graze on the grass outside the yard, and then feed the chickens, ducks and pigs.
We need to pay special attention to pig food, as the sow at home is pregnant.
The feed for pregnant sows is different from that for boars, and they need more nutritional supplements. Corn, vegetables, bran and other high-protein and high-fiber feeds are also added to the pig feed.
When I was watching live broadcasts online before, I saw some pig farmers feeding their pigs watermelons. Their pigs did not have this treatment. The watermelons planted by Zhao Yeqing this year have not borne fruit yet.
In fact, according to the time of sowing watermelons, we should be able to eat them now. However, because the weather and humidity are too high now, the watermelon seedlings have been infected with diseases several times. We cannot prevent and control them, so we have to pull them out and re-sow them. Therefore, they have just started to bloom now.
It’s still uncertain whether they can eat watermelons this summer, let alone the pigs.
Zhao Yeqing's forehead was covered with sweat while he was feeding the pigs. He went to the kitchen, peeled a sweet potato, broke it in half, and handed one half to Mu Xi. "Just now I saw two geckos clinging to the wall in the backyard. Don't forget to catch them later."
Gecko is also a Chinese medicinal herb, but Zhao Yeqing didn't want to use it to make medicine. Instead, he wanted to put it in the animal shed at home.
In this weather, there are a lot more flies in the barn than before. Even though the two of them clean the feces in the barn every day, they still can't stop their reproduction speed.
Geckos eat flies. If they could use it to help suppress the flies a little, it would save the two of them a lot of time.
There is not much work to do today. The ramie that was harvested earlier has been soaked and dried for a morning. After it was dry, I put it in the room and twisted the hemp rope while blowing the fan.
"It would be great if our wool could be turned into wool yarn by rubbing it like this."
Mu Xi recalled: "I remember that the wool was made with a winding machine. It looked a bit like a simplified sewing machine, but I don't know how it worked."
Zhao Yeqing didn't expect to really make it, he just sighed casually, and heard Mu Xi mention the machine, "I remember you said before that you wanted to make a seed drill."
Mu Xi tutted his words, "Luckily you reminded me, otherwise I would have forgotten."
He put down the ramie in his hand and took the paper and pen from the table. He was not very good at drawing blueprints. After several attempts, it didn't look like a three-dimensional object and the lines were all crooked.
Zhao Yeqing stuffed the ramie in his hand into his hand and said, "Okay, let me do it. Just explain the principle."
It is still necessary to make a seed drill. The weather is not hot this year, so maybe we can prepare for autumn sowing.
The drawing was finalized after the third drawing. The materials used were also simple. I didn’t know if it could be successful, so I used bamboo first.
Bamboo loves the current humid and warm climate the most. The bamboo forest near the path down the mountain is growing vigorously. The bamboo forest, which was originally mostly frozen to death and collapsed by the accumulated snow, has become more lush than in previous years in just half a year.
We have accumulated a lot of bamboo poles at home, so we can use them directly instead of going to the woods to dig them up.
Mu Xi was chopping bamboo strips, thinking about the current climate, and said: "I don't know if this winter will be that cold. If the current climate can continue into winter like a normal tropical rainforest, then we will be better off."
In a normal tropical rainforest, the lowest temperature in winter is only around 20 degrees Celsius, and the climate is very warm all year round.
Zhao Yeqing had already rolled a large bundle of ropes. He had to take a break from time to time, otherwise his hands would be blistered. He rubbed his red palms and asked, "Why did you suddenly think of this?"
Mu Xi: "I was thinking that we use too much bamboo. We have to run so far to look at it every time. Why not dig some and plant it outside our backyard wall? Anyway, it grows fast and we can eat bamboo shoots and use bamboo at the same time."
This is a good idea. Bamboo can grow more than one meter in one night. If it can be planted near home, you can go out and cut it when you need it.
"I think it's okay. No matter whether it's cold in winter or not, just plant it first. If it's too cold in winter and freezes to death, you can dig it up and plant it in the spring of next year. Just make sure it's far away from the wall to prevent snakes from crawling in along the bamboo shoots."
The two of them worked efficiently while chatting, and when Gou Zi came back with the flock of sheep, the seeder 1.0 was already online.
Mu Xi put a handful of corn in it and tried to roll the wheel below. The seed outlet was made into three gears, separated by a small bamboo piece. The lower the gear, the smaller the gap, which is suitable for sowing small-grain crop seeds.
The corn kernels were considered large, so Mu Xi adjusted the gear to the highest gear and pushed the seeder forward. As the rollers below moved, the seeds came out, but sometimes only one seed came out, and sometimes not at all. It was very unstable.
Zhao Yeqing put down the hemp rope in his hand and came over to help, figuring out what went wrong.
"Try grinding the bamboo strips on the edge of the seed outlet to make it smoother. It's possible that the seeds can't fall out because of the roughness here and the excessive friction."
Mu Xi used sandpaper to polish the edge of the bamboo piece until it was very smooth. After blowing off the powder on it, he reinstalled the bamboo piece. This time, the effect of version 2.0 was much better than before. At least seeds could come out almost every time.
Zhao Yeqing took another handful of wheat and put it in to try. Mu Xi adjusted the gear to the second gear, but it seemed that the second gear was still a little too loose for it. When the wheel moved forward, the wheat seeds fell down.
The two had no choice but to start debugging again. Two days later, the seeder 5.0 was launched. This time it could finally take into account the three sizes of seeds: corn, wheat, and rice.
Mu Xi's original idea was that it would be best if this could be used to sow even seeds as small as rapeseed seeds, but Zhao Yeqing directly rejected his idea.
"Rapeseed seeds can be directly sown. There is no need to make the machine so sophisticated and time-consuming. Let's not create demand for ourselves."
So Seeder 5.0 became the final version.
It was finally time for the rapeseed fields to bloom, and the second crop of alfalfa next to it also bloomed at the same time.
The two flower fields are blooming one after another, and the beehive placed between the two fields finally welcomes the first batch of bees this year.
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