Chapter 135 Mud Brick Thatched House
The Crow Tribe and the Jackal Tribe were busy fighting each other, but neither could destroy the other.
As a result, the Teng tribe gained a period of relatively stable development, and was able to build the tribe with peace of mind and enhance its strength.
Peaceful days always pass quickly, and in the blink of an eye, several months have passed.
September 5th.
Vine tribe, altar.
"Moo..."
Five young bison were tied tightly and placed on the altar, howling in panic.
Chishao stood in the middle of the altar and prayed to the vine god with dry and difficult to understand spells to tame these little wild buffaloes.
“Buzz!”
On top of the stone mountain, the divine vine bloomed with green light, and vines hung down from the stone mountain, quickly wrapping around the little bison.
Soon, the bison stopped howling in panic.
When the vines retracted, the five little bison struggled for a few times, then looked at the people under the altar with their innocent big eyes.
On their foreheads, there are faint totem marks of the Vine Tribe.
Jiang Xuan, who was standing below the altar, said, "Go and carry it down."
"yes!"
Shi Qiu and other warriors walked up to the altar excitedly, and then carried the five bison calves to the open space in front of the altar.
Jiang Xuan said again: "Untie the rope."
Shi Qiu and others untied the ropes as instructed, and the five little bison immediately stood up and looked around curiously, with no fear in their eyes.
Jiang Xuan sighed inwardly: The speed of domestication is too fast. If it relies on artificial domestication, I wonder how many years it will take to reach this level.
These little bison were captured by the second hunting team. This time there were no accidents and they were successfully brought back to the tribe and domesticated by the Fujishen.
Of course, the Vine Tribe cannot always let the totem god do this kind of work. After the first generation of bison grow up, they will give birth to calves and become the second generation of bison.
How to tame the second generation of wild buffaloes into working domestic cattle depends on the efforts of the Teng tribe members themselves.
In addition to the five young bison, six adult giant deer were also sent to the altar and tamed by the vine god into mounts.
The Teng tribe already has hundreds of big-horned deer like this.
These big-horned deer will become powerful mounts for the Vine Tribe, and will hunt and charge into battle with the warriors of the Vine Tribe.
After the young bison and the giant deer were domesticated, Jiang Xuan and his companions offered some sacrifices to thank the vine god for his help.
"Okay, take these bison calves to the breeding team, and you can take the bighorn deer back with you."
"yes!"
Shiqiu and the warriors of the second hunting team took the young bison and the bighorn deer away. They expected that these young bison and the bighorn deer could bring new changes to the tribe.
Chishao and Jiang Xuan cleaned the altar together, because there were some residues of the offerings that had been enjoyed by the divine vine.
After finishing, Chishao returned to his yard to continue working, while Jiang Xuan walked into the fields.
After half a year of hard work, the red crystal rice is finally about to mature!
Looking around, you can see stretches of red crystal rice three or four meters high. The thick purple-red stems and leaves are very eye-catching, and bunches of plump red ears hang down, which is very pleasing to the eye.
Because of the accumulated planting experience and the extensive use of compost, pond mud and crushed animal bones, the yield of each of these red crystal rice plants is higher than last year.
After this year's harvest, the Teng tribe no longer needs to save all the red crystal rice for seeds, and can use more than half for food.
If there is a good harvest next year, the Teng tribe will be able to feed half of its members with just the red crystal rice.
In addition to red crystal rice, the growth of tuber crops such as round potatoes, stone eggs, and polygonatum is also quite good, and a real bumper harvest is expected.
Gan Song and Jiang Xuan walked along the path in the farmland, and said excitedly: "Leader, this year the planting team has more people and the harvest has also increased. I think those two granaries will definitely not be able to hold more!"
Jiang Xuan smiled and said, "You mean you want me to build a granary?"
Gan Song said confidently: "Yes, we must build a granary!"
Jiang Xuan looked at the crops that were almost ripe and said cheerfully, "Okay, then let's build a granary. A very large granary!"
"Chief, our food will definitely fill up the new granary!"
"Then I'll wait and see."
Jiang Xuan was not just trying to fool Gan Song. After leaving the fields, he immediately began to prepare to build a granary.
In the past, the houses of the Teng tribe were built with bamboo and wood.
Because these two materials are easy to obtain, the house can be built quickly.
But the disadvantages of this type of house are equally obvious.
They will soon rot under the wind, sun, rain, snow, and erosion by a large number of termites.
The bamboo house that Jiang Xuan and his four companions originally built has been reinforced several times and may collapse one day.
A house with a bamboo or wood structure can only last for a long time if it is painted with several layers of tung oil to prevent insect infestation and cracking, and is covered with tiles to block out the sun and rain.
But given that the Teng tribe is still struggling to make ends meet, it is obviously impossible to build such a house.
Therefore, Jiang Xuan has been thinking about how to build a house that is strong enough and durable enough, does not require any technology, and has easily accessible raw materials.
The first thing that came to his mind was the rammed earth wall, which is made of mud as the raw material, with strong wooden strips added as "reinforcements" inside. It is pounded tight with heavy hammers, and after drying, it is very strong and resistant to weathering.
But the problem is that rammed earth walls require tools, and the Teng tribe cannot make even the simplest mortise and tenon structure plywood.
Now let's talk about the tile issue.
Jiang Xuan can make pottery, so making tiles should naturally not be a problem for him.
But a house requires a lot of tiles. With the few small earthen kilns in the Teng tribe, it would probably take a very long time to burn enough tiles for a house.
There are currently at least hundreds of houses in the Teng tribe, and the number of tiles needed is extremely large.
Therefore, the idea of building rammed earth and tiled houses has been temporarily abandoned. We can try it when the Teng tribe becomes stronger in the future.
However, Jiang Xuan thought of another type of house, which was much simpler to manufacture than a rammed earth and tile house, and was also just as sturdy.
That's the mud brick thatched house.
Mud bricks are made by adding plant straw to soil and kneading the mud into long square bricks. After drying, they are very strong and can be used directly for building walls.
The production process of a thatched roof is not complicated. You only need to put up beams, tie wide bamboo strips to form a grid, and then bundle the thatch layer by layer to make a thatched roof.
If conditions permit, you can also lay a few layers of bark on the roof, which will be much more waterproof than thatch alone.
The Teng tribe has no shortage of soil, plant straw, thatch, or tree bark, and has all the conditions to build mud brick and thatched houses.
Even for making simple molds for mud bricks, Jiang Xuan could use clay to burn several thick clay molds instead of wooden boards.
For example, instead of the hard work of planing wooden boards and joining them together with mortise and tenon joints, for Jiang Xuan, firing ceramic molds is still easier.
After figuring it out, Jiang Xuan immediately began to prepare to build a sturdy and spacious mud brick thatched house as the new warehouse of the Teng tribe! The first thing to make is the mold of the mud brick.
Considering that pottery is easy to break, Jiang Xuan plans to make ten molds so that more people can make mud bricks together, and it is acceptable if one or two are broken.
He first found some ropes, and using a small piece of rope as a basis, he used the Pythagorean theorem, that is, the hypotenuse is three times the leg is four times the side is five, to carve a right angle on the ground, and based on this right angle, he drew three other right angles to form a more regular rectangle.
Then, he found the clay he had dug earlier, mixed it with mud, made a rough draft of a mud brick mold, and placed it in the carved rectangle on the ground, constantly adjusting the angle.
This work is very important. If the mud brick mold is not made well, the mud bricks made later will be crooked, and it will be difficult to build the wall well.
In order to prevent the mold from serious deformation, he made it very thick. After adjusting the angle, as long as you don't move it, it will basically not deform unless it cracks.
He then used the same method to make nine more molds and let them dry in situ to prevent the molds from deforming during movement.
After a day, the surface of the molds was dry and basically fixed. Jiang Xuan moved them into the house and continued to dry in the shade.
The drying process lasts for six or seven days. If it is not completely dry, the water vapor inside will expand after being fired in the kiln, causing the pottery to crack.
When he looked at the ten mud brick molds, he felt a wonderful sense of satisfaction.
While waiting for the grass to dry in the shade, Jiang Xuan found a dozen soldiers, cleared a piece of flat land, and asked them to collect a large amount of reeds and dry them in the sun.
Ordinary thatch is very light and easily blown away by strong winds, but reeds are different. Not only are they not easily blown away, but because they grow tall, when making roofs, they do not need to be tied up layer by layer like ordinary thatch. This makes it convenient and practical.
The most important thing is that there is a large reed marsh beside the Feiyu River, and there is plenty of material.
After seven days, the mud brick molds were completely dried. Jiang Xuan placed the ten mud brick molds into two earthen kilns respectively and lit a fire at the same time, which burned all night long.
The next day, when the temperature of the earth kiln dropped, Jiang Xuan opened the kiln and obtained nine successfully fired mud brick molds, and one that was cracked for some unknown reason.
With the prepared ground, the mold, and the reeds, Jiang Xuan found some leftover wood from building a house, and the construction of the new granary could finally begin!
Jiang Xuan found a dozen soldiers, dug up mountain mud, mixed it with plant straw and mud, and then put it into molds and pressed it tightly to make mud bricks.
After a few days, they had produced enough mud bricks to build a house.
After the mud bricks are dried, they can be used to build houses.
According to his plan, Jiang Xuan built the wall first after the mud bricks dried. He mixed mud and lime as cement and glued the mud bricks together.
After the wall was built, they used thick logs as posts and beams to support the roof of the new granary.
On the roof, bamboo strips and beams are tied into a grid and covered with two layers of strong bark.
Finally, they tied large amounts of reeds neatly to the roof, laying two or three layers in a row to complete the roof.
It took nearly a month, and with the efforts of Jiang Xuan and a dozen soldiers, a brand new mud brick thatched house was finally built!
This thatched house is three meters high and covers an area of about one hundred square meters. Although it is relatively rough, it can be regarded as a mansion among a large number of low and simple bamboo and wooden houses! When the new granary was built, Chishao, the old witch, Uncaria, and many warriors of the Teng tribe all stood in front of the house, staring blankly at the brand new house.
The old witch exclaimed: "Who would believe that this is a house that a small tribe can build?"
In fact, the old witch has traveled to so many places and has never seen such a house.
Nan Xing couldn't wait to ask Jiang Xuan: "Chief, can we all live in such a nice house in the future?"
Jiang Xuan smiled and said, "Of course, we can all live in a big, solid house in the future."
Chishao said: "I really hope that day will come soon."
Everyone nodded, looking forward to living in such a sturdy and spacious house one day.
Gan Song was the most excited because he did not expect that the leader would actually build a new granary as he said, and it would be better than all the existing houses.
The new granary had been built. Now it depended on whether the harvested crops could fill up the new granary and the two old granaries! After seeing the new granary, Gan Song immediately returned to the fields to work.
The autumn harvest has begun.
Many vegetables and grains that mature earlier are being harvested, dried, and then stored in warehouses.
The red crystal rice plants are tall and have a very high yield. Although the growth cycle is a bit long, they have matured in the past two days and can be harvested.
After the new granary was built, Jiang Xuan immediately participated in the busy autumn harvest.
But the first things he harvested were the crops he grew in his own yard.
He has picked three batches of ripe bell peppers and obtained a lot of seeds. After drying them, he stored them in small ceramic jars.
Moreover, the bell peppers are still blooming and bearing fruit, so it looks like they can be picked until the snow falls.
The black bean is also ripe. This soybean is the size of a quail egg and looks like a black pearl. It is not what Jiang Xuan expected. It is actually a vine plant.
In order to give them a place to climb, Jiang Xuan inserted some large branches where the black beans were planted.
Now, the pods of black beans have dried up and some have cracked.
Jiang Xuan picked all the pods of black beans from a plant and filled them into a half-animal skin bag. It was estimated that the peeled black beans weighed five or six kilograms, and the yield was incredibly high.
After he harvested dozens of black bean plants, he actually filled several large animal skin bags, which made him very happy.
Jiang Xuan sighed: "The yield of grain crops in this world is really too high!"
However, he thought again, the animals in this world are all very large, even the insects are ridiculously large, and without these high-yield plants, they really cannot be fed.
In addition to bell peppers and black beans, Jiang Xuan also planted some vegetables and spices, and he harvested all that could be harvested.
Finally, there is the frozen lotus root in the pond.
The frozen lotus root has already produced several lotus pods, which were collected by Jiang Xuan. He didn't know whether the lotus seeds could grow if planted.
In addition to lotus pods, the most important thing in the mud is lotus roots.
Jiang Xuan did not dig up all the lotus roots because he hoped that these lotus roots could continue to grow next year.
Jiang Xuan walked into the pond barefoot, first scooped out the water in the pond with a large clay pot, then followed the stem of the frozen lotus root, reached his hand into the mud, and touched a frozen lotus root.
"Gah..."
Jiang Xuan broke the frozen lotus root and picked it up.
He first cleaned it in a bamboo tube under running water, then picked it up and looked at it.
"it's beautiful."
This piece of frozen lotus root was obviously grown this year. It is relatively tender and translucent. It is as beautiful as a crystal sculpture, but it is a little small.
"Try how it tastes."
Jiang Xuan cut a piece of frozen lotus root with a stone knife, then put it in his mouth and took a bite.
However, the next moment his brows furrowed slightly.
"It doesn't seem as tender as the ice lotus root from the Otter Tribe, nor as sweet."
Jiang Xuan took a few more bites and found that it was indeed not as delicious as the ice lotus root produced by the Otter Tribe, and he did not feel the blood rushing after eating it.
Jiang Xuan said a little disappointedly: "It seems that this thing can't be grown everywhere. Let's dig a lake next year and try again."
He put the remaining frozen lotus roots away, then placed the bamboo pipe with running water back on the pool and continued to work on other things.
Thanks to the helmsman "Hao Qingtian" for the reward of 1,500 book coins.
In addition, the editor has informed us that the major recommendations will begin on May 1, and we will try to add updates every day until after the May 1 holiday.
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
