Chapter 394 Mass Production
"That's it for now, son. How much do you think it will cost to hire an excavator?"
Father Lin asked curiously.
"I'm not sure. It's calculated based on the day. We'll definitely need a dirt truck when the time comes. We can dump the extra dirt from the platform at the bottom of the mountain where we dumped it before, and create a large flat area."
Lin Heng pointed to the place where the soil had been dumped before at the foot of the mountain and said that sesame seeds were now planted there and had matured.
That place was originally a pit full of weeds and trees belonging to his family. Now there is still a lot of soil outside that can be filled in. Once it is all filled in, it will create a flat land of more than two acres.
"It's better to do it on your own land. At least you're spending money to build your own land. If you rent someone else's land and then they take it back after you're done, all your work will be in vain," said Lin's father.
"When I have some free time in a few days, I'll go ask someone." Lin Heng nodded. The feed factory in the city doesn't have enough money at the moment, so let's use the money to transform Hongfeng Mountain and expand the scale of breeding.
Otherwise, the more than 20,000 yuan will become less and less valuable if kept in your hand. In fact, now you can start buying assets that will increase in price in the future. In fact, the domestic environment has been changing dramatically year by year since this year.
"It's getting dark. You should go and help drive the cattle and sheep back. Mom will be eaten by mosquitoes soon." Xiulan said to the two of them.
"I'll go right away."
Lin Heng nodded, took the slingshot and went to the mountain with his father.
"Finally you're here. If you don't come, you won't be able to see it again."
Mother Lin said quickly when she saw them coming.
"We were delayed for a while discussing things." Lin Heng took the bell from Lin's mother's hand, looked at Xiong Ba and Lu Tong and shouted, "Drive the cattle and sheep back home."
“Ouch!!”
The two dogs raised their heads and barked, then ran to the hillside to look for cattle and sheep.
"It's time to eat! It's time to eat!!" At the same time, Lin Heng picked up the bell and shook it while shouting.
Hearing the bells and shouting, the cattle and sheep immediately came over reflexively. With Xiongba Green Eyes chasing behind them, their speed was extremely fast.
Lin Heng walked in front, Lin's father and mother walked behind, and with Xiongba and Lutong father and daughter, the cattle and sheep were quickly driven back.
After entering the clean cattle and sheep pen, everyone scrambled to lick the salt bricks hanging in the air.
These cattle and sheep habitually came into the pen where they stayed, and only a few of them wandered around randomly, led by the three big rams.
“Mee-mee!!”
These guys were pulled out by their horns by Lin Heng, and they howled in dissatisfaction.
“I’ll kick you if you scream again.” Lin Heng put it into the pen and kicked it. The guy was still unconvinced and rushed over to push him, as if the authority of the leader of the flock was inviolable.
Then Lin Heng beat him all the way to the corner of the sheep pen, where he lowered his head and dared not move.
After arranging the disordered cattle and sheep back into their own pens and feeding them some mixed fodder of hay and grass, the two men withdrew.
After washing his hands, Lin Heng said to Xiulan Caiyun, "Let's go, let's go back."
"Aren't you going to eat before leaving?" asked Lin's mother.
Lin Heng grinned: "I'm afraid you'll poison me."
"Get out, get out now." Lin's mother came over and slapped him twice.
Lin Heng smiled and said, "I was just kidding, mom. I'll get you something nice to honor you later."
"No need, get out of here now." Mother Lin snorted.
After a few words, Lin Heng, Xiulan and Caiyun took their six children home.
On the way home, Caiyun looked at Lin Heng and said, "Second brother, I think you can ask Liu Ciwen's family to help you with the work. Although his father is a little stupid, he works very hard."
"Okay, then I'll go to his house tomorrow to help with the work." Lin Heng nodded. He knew that Caiyun was worried that Liu Ciwen had no money to go to school and therefore dropped out of school.
But in fact, Caiyun's worries were completely unnecessary. He had long thought of sponsoring Liu Ciwen, but the time was not right yet. When they graduate from junior high school in June next year and Liu Ciwen has no money to go to high school, he will offer to sponsor him.
"Thank you, second brother." Caiyun said quickly. She liked her second brother's attitude of agreeing without asking any questions. Liu Ciwen was a very hard-working person. She didn't want him to be unable to continue his studies because of lack of money.
"I also wanted to find someone more honest." Lin Heng said.
At this time, Xiaoxia held Lin Heng's hand and didn't want to walk anymore. She said coquettishly, "Dad, I'm hungry."
"Then let me hold you. Your mother will do it when we get back." Lin Heng said as he picked her up.
"She just wants to be hugged." Xiulan said with a smile.
Xiaoxia curled up in her father's arms without saying a word, which made Lin Tao, who was standing next to her, miss his father a little.
As soon as he returned to the village, he met an uncle who was collecting corn. When he saw Lin Heng, he smiled and said, "Hello, Mr. Lin, come in and have a drink of water."
Lin Heng waved his hand: "No, no, you have a good corn harvest this year."
He was not very familiar with this uncle and had almost forgotten which company he was from.
The uncle grinned and said, "Thanks to the seeds you bought for me, although I didn't harvest as much as your family did last year, I can still harvest 800 kilograms per acre."
He was naturally happy about such a good harvest. Even though Lin Heng made some of their money from selling seeds, most people were still grateful.
"That's good." Lin Heng nodded with a smile.
Lin Heng refused to go to the uncle's house to drink water and continued walking home.
He met many people on the way. Some asked him where he got the roe deer this time, and some, like the uncle just now, were grateful to him for the good harvest.
Now the grain production has increased a lot compared to before, so everyone has enough to eat and can even eat better. Life will get better and better.
Lin Heng didn't stay for long. He sent his three nephews back to his eldest brother's house, and then they went home.
In the evening, Xiulan cut some braised meat and cooked some noodles, and Lin Heng drank some rice wine and fell asleep comfortably.
The next morning, he woke up and found it was drizzling outside.
"It's good that it's raining. It'll be cooler now so we can go pick wax gourds." Lin Heng turned his head and looked at Xiulan and said.
"Then let's go after breakfast." Xiulan said with a smile.
After getting up, exercising and having breakfast, Xiulan first fed the children and then made a lot of complementary foods for them. As they grew older, the types of complementary foods became more and more abundant.
After feeding the child, Caiyun studies at home and helps look after the child.
This time, Lin Heng and Xiulan took plastic buckets with lids and each put one in their backpacks.
Carrying buckets on their backs, they went to Shibadanggou in the drizzle. There were a lot of wax gourds here. They used hooks to hook down the low ones, and cut down the trees to make the high ones fall down.
After picking the wax gourds, Xiulan broke them open, took out the kernels and put them in a plastic bucket, and threw away the peels.
The peel of an August melon occupies at least half of its volume and weight, so it can hold more after processing.
You can just take it home and cook it to make jam without worrying about it going bad.
In one morning, the two of them picked hundreds of wax gourds on both sides of Shibaidanggou. This thing grows very densely by the water, and there are often more than a dozen on a vine.
"That should be enough, right?"
At half past ten, Lin Heng looked at the two full plastic buckets and said that the fruit pulp alone could weigh about sixty to seventy kilograms.
Xiulan nodded: "That's enough, I can just pick a few more and bring them back for my daughter to eat."
Lin Heng nodded, and went back to look at the walnut tree where he found the ornamental walnuts last year. Sure enough, he found a few very good ornamental walnuts.
"Do you want some wild plums over there?" Xiulan said on the way home, pointing to a tree of red plums not far away.
"Go and have a look."
Lin Heng said something, and the two of them put down their things and came under the tree together. They picked one and tasted it, and both of them felt that their teeth were so sour that they could almost make their teeth fall out.
But I still picked some and took them home to put in the jam. It can add some sourness and make the August melon jam not so sweet.
When she got home, Xiulan cleaned the pot three times and started making jam.
Lin Heng helped her add the fire, and while he was making jam, Xiulan was making lunch.
For lunch, we had knife-cut noodles and the dish we cooked was the simplest pickled cabbage. Although it was simple, it tasted very good.
After lunch, he went to help his father harvest corn.
Although it is drizzling, the corn still needs to be harvested. If we don't, it will be destroyed by wild boars.
They harvested some corn in the afternoon, and deliberately left the field that had been eaten by wild boars unharvested. Lin Heng set up several traps nearby so that if the wild boars came again, he could teach them a profound lesson.
When Lin Heng returned home after harvesting corn, Xiulan had already made the jam and placed it on the table. There were 6 bottles of August melon jam, each weighing one pound, and on average, ten pounds of fruit pulp were used to make one pound of jam.
In addition, there is a bottle of autumn pear paste, which is made from the pears that were not eaten a few days ago mixed with some thick-skinned pears picked in the village.
However, they didn't eat jam in the evening. Instead, Xiulan fried roe deer meat, cut some braised meat, made four dishes and a soup, and ate rice.
The next day, they had steamed taro for breakfast, which was crushed and eaten with jam. Xiaoxia liked it very much, and her two sons also ate some.
It rained a little harder today. The drizzle was much heavier than yesterday, so we couldn't go to harvest the corn.
After breakfast, Lin Heng played with the walnuts. He had polished the two pairs of the best walnuts he harvested last year until they had some patina.
The rain was lighter at noon, so Lin Heng asked his elder brother to go and look for the traps together, but unfortunately they didn't find anything.
Because it was raining, we didn't worry about hurting anyone, so we just kept letting it rain, hoping to catch a wild boar.
The autumn rain continued until the 28th. That morning, Lin Heng went to retrieve the traps. He had rained for several days but had caught nothing. It seemed that the wild boar knew there was a trap here.
At noon, Xiulan and her friends went to pick some mushrooms. The weather was a little cooler at this time of year. The main three types of mushrooms were pine mushrooms, egg mushrooms, and broom mushrooms. Occasionally, you could also see some oyster mushrooms and chanterelles.
Xiulan and Caiyun picked up more than 20 kilograms of pine mushrooms and two egg mushrooms in the morning, and Lin's mother picked up 15 or 16 kilograms of pine mushrooms alone.
Lin Heng was happy that he could finally eat fried bacon with mushrooms again. No matter how many times he ate it, he would never get tired of it and it was always delicious.
In the afternoon, Lin Heng continued to help harvest corn, and also asked Liu Ciwen's father and third father to come to his house to help with the work, and they were paid one yuan a day.
With their participation, the corn was collected in one day and braided into pigtails and hung up to cool.
Their next job was to help dig the astragalus in the apple orchard and loosen the soil. This year, the apple trees have grown to more than two meters tall, and their trunks are as thick as an adult's wrist.
In a blink of an eye, it was September 1st. Caiyun went to school, and it was difficult for Xiulan to do anything else as she had to take care of three children alone.
Liu Ciwen's father Sandie, under the guidance of Lin's father and mother, first cut the astragalus plants. After drying, one acre of land could produce twelve or thirteen kilograms of seeds, but eight acres of land only produced one hundred kilograms of seeds.
After the seeds were harvested, Lin Heng gave them the plants. They took them back and used them to feed the cows. The ones they couldn't use were left there to rot and compost.
After harvesting the astragalus seeds in the apple orchard, they went back temporarily and were busy harvesting rice at home. They had no time to work for Lin Heng's family.
Lin Heng's family is also about to start harvesting rice, but the rice has not been harvested yet. On the morning of September 3, Lin's mother was having breakfast when she ran over and said, "Son, three ewes are giving birth in a row. Come over and help."
"Okay, I'll be there right away." Lin Heng nodded, drank the milk in one gulp, and walked out with the potato pancake in his hand.
"Will you come back for lunch?" Xiulan asked.
"Come back, I'll be back in a moment."
Lin Heng replied.
Driving to Hongfeng Mountain with Lin's mother, Lin Heng quickly went to the sheepfold to help.
When he came over, Father Lin had already moved a pregnant ewe to a clean, grass-covered compartment.
"There are two more. Their water has broken and they are giving birth." Father Lin said, pointing to the cubicle next to them.
"Understood."
Lin Heng nodded, put on his protective gear and clothes, walked over, picked up the ewe about to give birth, and put it in the grass pen next door.
After putting the sheep away, Lin Heng observed the other ewes again and only felt relieved after making sure that none of them were about to give birth.
Then I came over to check the production status of the three black goats.
"It looks like a normal birth. We don't need to help." Father Lin said nearby, because at this moment the lamb was already half-born.
"Well, there should be no problem with these three." Lin Heng nodded.
If there is a problem, he bought some oxytocin, which can be used to induce labor.
"Do you think this arrangement of the sheep pen is okay?" Father Lin said, pointing at the sheep pen.
In addition to the three stalls for cattle, there are seven vacant stalls.
Two compartments were taken out to temporarily lock up the twenty-five non-pregnant sheep, including three male black goats, a ram that had been sexually abused, and some non-pregnant ewes.
Of the remaining five compartments, one is left as a place for farrowing, and the remaining four compartments each hold six pregnant ewes, with one compartment holding one more, making it possible to fit exactly 25 ewes in total.
After giving birth, the birthing cubicle is no longer used and can be used to graze sheep. At that time, one cubicle will be able to accommodate five ewes with their lambs.
Lin Heng looked at his father's arrangement and nodded, "No problem, we just have to come over more often recently to provide more nutrition for the sheep."
Father Lin nodded: "I have already added it. I feed him a meal of cooked corn paste every day. But we have to thresh the millet in the next two days, so you have to come over to help watch over it."
"Just leave it to me." Lin Heng nodded in agreement.
After talking, the two of them quietly watched the ewes giving birth. They were looking forward to how many lambs the first batch of ewes would produce. It is said that black goats have a very good ability to give birth.
(End of this chapter)
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