Chapter 148 She doesn't want to wait that long
"Xia Xia!"
At the other end of the field, Uncle Xu raised his sickle and asked, "Where did you draw the line? Can all this be collected in one place?"
Sang Zhixia rubbed her nose and quickly ran over.
"I won't harvest the ones on the left. I'm saving them for breeding. First, harvest the ones along this ridge that are next to the ridge so the boundaries are clear."
Uncle Xu hummed in confusion, rolled up his sleeves, bent down and grabbed the yellowed rice stalks.
Sang Zhixia was just trying to find something to separate the two sides when a familiar voice rang out from behind her: "Want some water?"
"I'm not thirsty, first..."
Sang Zhixia's mind went blank and the action of pulling the rice stalks suddenly stopped. She turned around in surprise and met Xu Yu's smiling eyes.
After not seeing him for three months, I found that he had lost a lot of weight, probably because he didn't pay much attention to eating. The contours of his cheeks became deeper, and his figure became more powerful, like a Tairan steel knife drawn from its sheath.
But the curve between his eyebrows remained the same, and the corners of his lips still hid a playful smile, as if nothing had changed.
Xu Yu handed the bowl of water to Sang Zhixia and raised his eyebrows, saying, "Give me the sickle. Can you go and rest for a while?"
Sang Zhixia moved her lips but couldn't utter a word. Her sickle was taken away and her bowl was stuffed into her. She looked down at the ripples in the water, then seemed to come to her senses. She said in a daze, "You're back?"
He actually came back as promised?
Xu Yu rolled up his sleeves and said with amusement: "What else?"
"You're waiting at home, simmering in anger. How dare I not come back on time?"
Sang Zhixia subconsciously frowned and hesitated to speak, then glanced in the direction of Xu Wenxiu and others.
There are so many people talking here that it’s inconvenient to talk.
She took a deep breath and gave Xu Yu a warning look: "I'll talk to you again when we're alone."
She tilted her head back to take a sip of warm water, then climbed up to the ridge and stood there. She pointed out the direction to Xu Yu, who had just returned to help with the labor. "Just this one lap. Call me when you're done."
Xu Yu nodded happily and agreed. Sang Zhixia didn't even have time to rest and hurried to the other end.
The temperature in the greenhouse was well maintained, and the harvest of this batch of early rice was estimated to be good. The villagers who heard the news and rushed to see the commotion kept exclaiming in admiration.
This was the first time for these people to see rice being harvested in early spring, April, in this desolate and bitterly cold land that had existed for so long!
However, these are still not enough in Sang Zhixia's eyes.
not enough.
It’s far from enough.
The neatly cut rice stalks were bundled into piles and placed upright in the field. Sang Zhixia did not accept the villagers' suggestion to move the threshing bucket to the field and operate it on the spot. Instead, he plunged into the harvested rice piles, grabbed bunches of heavy rice ears, found the ones that met the requirements, picked them out one by one, and put them aside separately.
The old man walked around the ground, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sickle. "Xia girl, are you going to choose all of these?"
The two greenhouses cover an area of four mu. All the harvested rice ears and rice stalks weigh nearly seven or eight hundred kilograms. How long will it take to select all these rice ears and rice stalks one by one?
Sang Zhixia also knew that the workload was heavy, but thinking of the already terribly poor breeding conditions, she nodded with a wry smile.
"There's no other choice."
The existing conditions are already very bad.
If we continue to be lazy and slack in this manual selection process, who knows when we will see results.
She didn't want to wait that long.
The old man didn't quite understand the deeper meaning of it, but he had one good point: he never interrupted or stopped people when they didn't understand, and he was even willing to help.
His old waist could not bear the pain of bending over to harvest, so he simply walked across the rice stalks on the ground.
"Tell me how you chose it."
Sang Zhixia made room for the old man to sit on the ground, held up the rice ears she had selected, and said softly, "Grandfather, look, this kind of ear is regular and round, the grains are as full as possible, there are no black or gray spots on the husk, the rice grains are close together, and the size and shape of the rice grains are similar. This is the right one."
Xu Yanran, who was also squatting nearby and listening, stood up and turned around. She carefully selected two rice ears and handed them over. "Sister-in-law, is this true?"
Sang Zhixia gave a thumbs up: "Smart!"
Xu Yanran smiled shyly, turned around and slapped Xu Mingyang on the back of the head while he was playing in the mud.
"Stop playing around, come here and I'll teach you how to pick rice ears!"
"Help!"
Led by Xu Yanran, the little ones rushed into the bundled rice stacks, playing and choosing, and they actually picked out quite a few suitable ones.
Sang Zhixia sifted the results of their initial screening again. His hands moved faster and faster, and more and more rice stalks fell under the sickle in the field.
Xu Yu arrived late but acted quickly.
Uncle Xu, who had been working hard for half a day, was easily caught up by him. He held his aching waist and laughed sadly.
"Why is it better to be young?"
"Look at that enthusiasm!"
Xu Yu, from being unfamiliar with the technique, quickly became proficient. He neatly tied the cut rice ears together and arranged them before saying, "Third Uncle, are you accepting your age?"
Uncle Xu glared in dissatisfaction: "Who are you calling old, you little brat?"
Xu Yu smiled but said nothing. Uncle Xu wiped his sweaty palms roughly on his clothes and muttered unhappily, "Nonsense!"
"I, your Third Uncle, am in the prime of my life, and I'm no match for a greenhorn like you!"
"I'm letting you do this, do you know?"
Xu Yu made a subtle "tsk" sound, and Uncle Xu's long-lost desire to win was aroused. When dusk finally fell, he came out of the field holding his waist, and he felt it was difficult to breathe.
Fortunately, the sweat was not in vain.
Tomorrow, the rice in this greenhouse will be harvested all at once.
Uncle Xu sat on the ridge, gnashing his teeth and breathing hard. Aunt Xu, who had also been busy all day and was unable to straighten her back, poured him a bowl of water. "We can finish harvesting everything in the upper and lower sheds in three to five days. But I heard that threshing is more difficult, but I don't know if it's true."
Sang Zhixia rubbed her aching neck and sighed, "It's true."
In an era when agricultural labor was low, every grain of rice was earned with sweat.
She had seen the threshing bucket that was most commonly used in the village. It was the most primitive version of the manual threshing roller, which was vague and had little effect without any force.
It’s not difficult to collect the gnawing teeth in the two greenhouses, but what about next?
You've reclaimed over a hundred acres of wasteland, and you're still doing this in the golden autumn of October?
Sang Zhixia's head grew bigger when he thought about it.
She tried to recall the various threshing tools she had seen before, stroking her chin and saying, "Don't worry about threshing yet. I'll go back and study it and find a carpenter to try it out first."
"carpenter?"
Aunt Xu wiped the sweat off her face and said with a smile, "Xu Yu is back, why are you still looking for a carpenter?"
She raised her chin towards Xu Yu and said, "Xu Yu's carpentry work is pretty good, and if that doesn't work out for him, there's still your Third Uncle!"
Mr. and Mrs. Wu Changgui who came to help haven't left yet, so it's too inconvenient to go into details.
Xu Yu stepped forward and said in a voice only Sang Zhixia could hear, "Third Uncle worked in the Ministry of Works for ten years. He was fascinated by all kinds of tricks and techniques, and was famous for his dexterity and ingenuity. If you're thinking of woodworking techniques like farm tools, Third Uncle truly knows more than the average carpenter."
The little skills he had were learned from playing with Uncle Xu.
Sang Zhixia thought that one should not judge a person by his appearance, and turned around in surprise. Uncle Xu, whose head and face were covered in mud and sweat, looked disheveled and was smiling complacently.
"Niece-in-law, are you underestimating your uncle?"
"Anything related to objects, as long as you can name it, I can roll up my sleeves and make it for you!"
"Just say it!"
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