Chapter 64 Little Pheasant
The chick had just hatched today and was unable to walk steadily. It was held in Zhao Yeqing's palm and was shaking with fear.
She was afraid that it would be frightened and hurt, so she quickly put it on the ground.
Mu Xi squatted down to identify it. "This seems to be a gray-breasted bamboo partridge. When it grows up, the feathers on its chest will be gray. It is not visible now."
Pheasants are not easy to raise. Most pheasants are protected animals and cannot be completely domesticated.
The three little pheasants have been following the old black hen. They must have been hatched by her. Zhao Yeqing is not sure if he can keep them alive, so everything depends on this hen.
Pheasants love to eat insects, and the feed at home is a mixture of corn, peanuts and wheat, which should not be suitable for pheasants.
All the earthworms we dig out from the cellar will be kept for these three.
Zhao Yeqing asked Mu Xi to have breakfast first while she went to water the vegetable garden.
The first batch of okra from the large vegetable garden can be harvested. They are all about the size of a finger and are the most tender when eaten at this time.
The beans, bitter gourds and cucumbers were also quite mature. Zhao Yeqing simply took a basket and collected all the fruits that could be harvested. It was better to put them in the cellar instead of being exposed to the sun at over 40 degrees.
The similarity between fruit vegetables is that when they bear fruit, the leaves at the bottom will begin to turn yellow and fall off, and all the nutrients will be supplied to the fruits above. If the branches and leaves are lush, no fruit will be produced.
This requires manual plucking of the leaves.
Zhao Yeqing pulled out all the leaves on the main trunk of the pepper, leaving only the leaves on the side branches for the plant to photosynthesize.
Many kinds of peppers have matured, and the yield is high, with more than 20 peppers per plant. There are fewer colored peppers, but they are all very plump.
She picked all the fruits that were ripe and could be kept for two days.
The tomatoes in the small vegetable garden are the most difficult to care for. When the weather gets hot, the fruits that have not yet swelled are infected with navel rot, and the navel area turns black.
The grown fruits didn’t turn red. After growing them for so long, this was the first harvest and I could only get three tomatoes.
She never thought that scrambled eggs with tomatoes would be so hard to get.
Due to the recent temperature, the pumpkins have stopped growing and the flower buds will no longer bear fruit. Zhao Yeqing simply picked all the flowers. Rather than leaving them to wither, it is better to pick them and fry them.
Pumpkin flowers taste sweet and have the fragrance of pumpkin, which is perfect for this summer when we have no appetite.
The sun had already risen over the horizon and the water in the rice fields had been placed in place. Zhao Yeqing turned off the faucet and threw two handfuls of sweet potato leaves into the rabbit pen.
Mu Xi finished his breakfast and went back to the pit to continue digging.
The shoveled soil piled up at the entrance of the cave. Zhao Yeqing filled an old bamboo basket with it and carried it to the woods on a shoulder pole to dump the soil.
If you find earthworms in the soil pile, grab them and put them in a plastic bottle, then go back and feed them to the pheasants later.
By ten o'clock in the morning, you have to go home. If you stay outside, you will easily get heatstroke. If you stay outdoors for a long time in such high temperatures and still work, you will easily get heat stroke and sudden death from high temperature.
Mu Xi packed up and went to the pond to collect the fish cages as usual.
Zhao Yeqing handed him a water bottle and said, "Put some water in it, put the fish you caught in it, and pour it into the field to see if they can survive."
Mu Xi raised an eyebrow and took the bottle, "So you don't plan to fertilize it?"
Zhao Yeqing took back the water bottle instantly.
"That's all right."
I'm being stupid again.
Rather than eating fish, she would rather eat delicious rice.
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The sun is too strong, so Huhu and Xuebing don’t like to go out.
Zhao Yeqing thought that she would sleep in the cellar tonight, and these two could move in together.
The nest I made for them before was padded with cotton wool, but they didn't like to go in when the weather got hot, and the nest was a bit small, so I just made a new one.
Zhao Yeqing put on his sun-protection clothing, zipped it up to the top to cover half of his face, put on a straw hat on his head, rushed out and dived into the woods before stopping.
She first collected some velvet grass, which is tender green, hardly ever ages, feels soft to the touch, and is most suitable for making bedding.
There were vines climbing up many trees in the forest. Zhao Yeqing pulled down the vines, plucked off the leaves, and rolled them up one by one to collect them.
He didn't stop until he had collected a bundle, then he sped out of the woods and ran home.
She used a knife to carefully remove the rough skin on the vine, turning it milky white and softer, and then she began to weave.
First use rattan to fix the bottom of the cross-shaped base and then start wrapping the rattan around the bottom.
Just wrap it around in circles and you can finish one in less than ten minutes.
The most difficult part of weaving rattan is that it takes effort to tighten the gaps created during weaving. Since she doesn't use it to hold things, there's no need to make it so tight.
I made a round rattan sleeping mat for each of them, covering it with soft straw.
The white rattan sleeping mat is covered with tender green and fluffy grass, which looks pretty nice.
Zhao Yeqing carried Huhu and Xuebing up. The plush grass was cool, and the two of them lay down as soon as they touched it, and lay there unwilling to get up.
It made her feel the full sense of accomplishment from being a mother.
Mu Xi came back with some bad news.
He found that the water level in the small pond seemed to have dropped a little.
The water source for their family is the spring on the mountain, which is the same source as the small pond.
Zhao Yeqing turned on the faucet and the water volume seemed to have decreased.
If it doesn't rain and the temperature continues to rise, the water supply will be cut off, which will be a real desperate situation.
If the temperature continues to rise in the next few days, we will have to start storing large amounts of water.
Mu Xi gutted the small fish he had just caught, strung them together with a thin rope, and hung them above the stove.
The wooden pillars and boards had been drying in the sun for a whole morning, and he slid the boards down the cellar wall from the entrance to the cellar.
Several square wooden pillars had grooves cut in half, so the ungrooved ones were hammered into the grooved ones to make the bed frame first.
The walls around the bed are made of stone bricks, not sealed with cement, but just buried in the middle of the soil layer. A headboard is also needed, otherwise it is easy to hit your head on the mud.
The head of the bed is simply made of wooden boards spliced together and stuck in front of the bed frame. The mattress board does not need to be fixed, just place the wooden boards on the horizontal bars of the bed frame.
The two beds were finished quickly. Zhao Yeqing pushed Huhu and Xuebing off the sleeping mats, picked up the sleeping mats and threw them into the cellar.
The two beds are one meter wide and two meters long, and when placed side by side, there is only a five-centimeter distance between them.
There is less than one square meter of space left at the end of the bed, enough to fit two sleeping mats.
Zhao Yeqing threw the cotton wool and pillows for the bed down, and Mu Xi caught them and made the bed.
The area inside the cellar was too small. Zhao Yeqing had not gone down when Mu Xi was putting the bed together. Only after the bed was made could he not help but climb down out of curiosity to feel it.
The two small beds took up most of the space and looked quite decent. Zhao Yeqing took off his sun-protection jacket and climbed onto the bed to lie down.
It was like the bed I slept on when I was in school. The wooden bed board was padded with a layer of cotton wool and was a bit hard, but acceptable.
The experience of sleeping in the cellar was a bit novel. She turned around and wanted to say something to Mu Xi, but the two beds were too close, and for a moment their eyes met.
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