Chapter 122 Harvesting Rice
Yi Ke ordered Zi Yi and Du Jiankang to pack the fermented organic fertilizer into woven bags and put them in the hidden cave. This cannot be left in the open air. Even if it is placed in the hidden cave, it must be separated from the ground by wooden boards.
This time, the fermented organic fertilizer was packed into dozens of bags, weighing almost one thousand kilograms. Du Qingcang's family and Ziyi were very happy. Next year, there would be fertilizer in the rice fields and the rice yield would definitely be high.
"Actually, this can also be fed to pigs as pig feed." Yike said in a low voice.
"Really? How to eat it?" Wang Cuihua asked excitedly.
Yike scratched her head in annoyance. She had only heard of this in her previous life, but had never done it herself. That's why she was not confident enough and muttered it in a low voice. She didn't expect Wang Cuihua to be so sharp-eared that she heard it.
"What and how to eat it?" Du Jiankang asked her mother puzzledly.
"Yike said that this organic fertilizer can be fed to pigs." Wang Cuihua said to Yike with shining eyes.
"Really?" Du Jiankang also looked at Yi Ke and asked.
Now everyone was staring at Yike, wanting to know if it was true.
"This, I've only heard of it, I haven't seen it, and I don't know the details." But I'm really not sure about this, because if it's not done properly, it may cause bacterial infection.
"If we don't know, we won't feed the pigs. It's not like the pigs have no food." Ziyi said hurriedly when he saw Yike was in trouble.
"Yes, now we have these fertilizers, and we have learned how to hatch chicks artificially. Oh my God! I feel so happy. I never dared to imagine that my life could be like this before. If sister-in-law Yuling were at home, she would be very happy. Yike, all this was brought to us by you, thank you so much!" Wang Cuihua suddenly said emotionally.
"Yes! Yike, our good life is brought by you, and we all should thank you!" Du Qingcang thought about his previous life and compared it with his current life. The difference is like heaven and earth.
"No, no, I'm happy this year because of you relatives. I should thank you. So let's not thank each other. How about we have an extra meal tonight and celebrate!" Yi Ke felt a little embarrassed and changed the subject.
"Okay! We'll have an extra meal tonight. Let's see if there's any meat left in the ice storage. We can take some out and eat some of the pheasant we caught in the trap this morning. Should we kill it and make soup or something? We can decide now." Du Qingcang suggested.
"Yike, there is wild ginseng there. How about stewing pheasant with ginseng?" Ziyi wanted to give Yike some nourishment.
"Great! Everyone has worked hard during this period of time, so it's good to have some nourishment." Yike also wanted to eat chicken soup.
So, that night, there was a plate of braised rabbit meat, a plate of scrambled eggs with leeks, a plate of wolf meat stewed with peppers, a plate of stir-fried rapeseed, a plate of cold houttuynia cordata, wild ginseng chicken soup, and a big pot of dry white rice on the table.
No one was talking at the table. The only sounds were the smacking of food and the rapid chewing of food. Occasionally, someone would say, "Delicious!"
Everyone was very satisfied with the meal, and they were so full that they went outside for a walk to digest the food.
Time flies, and autumn comes quietly. Li Haoran was outside helping the production team harvest crops, while Zhang Yuling came back with Ma Youcai, Wang Feng, Dong Guoqing and Liu Bing. Ma Youcai and a few others came in to help harvest the rice, and also to harvest their sweet potatoes and corn.
"Godfather, Uncle Li and Uncle Hu don't grow rice. Should we ask them to help harvest the rice?" Ziyi suggested.
"Okay, I'll go call people after breakfast. Everyone get the tools ready." Du Qingcang said vaguely while eating a steamed bun.
After breakfast, the whole family and Ma Youcai went towards the rice fields.
It’s a good day today. The white clouds in the sky are moving slowly, and the sun has shown its round face early.
The big rice bucket for harvesting rice was placed on the ridge next to the rice field yesterday. In those days, there were no threshers, so harvesting and threshing the rice had to be done manually. The big straw barrel is made of wood and is square, making it convenient for four people to wrestle with it.
Yike arrived at the edge of the field, rolled up his trouser legs, picked up a sickle, and cut the fields side by side with Wang Cuihua. After a while of cutting, the families of Li Youcai, Hu Haohan and Chen Shengli all came to help.
Women and children helped to harvest the rice, Li Youcai, Hu Haohan, Chen Shengli and Du Qingcang were responsible for beating the rice stalks, Ma Youcai, Wang Feng, Dong Guoqing and Liu Bing were responsible for passing the rice stalks, Ziyi, Li Dashan, Chen Dawang and Hu Xiangdong harvested the rice, and occasionally took turns to exchange beating the rice stalks with their fathers.
When there are too many grains in the rice barrel, one of them will put the threshed rice into a basket, and another will carry it to the drying mat in the open space to dry. The drying mat is woven with bamboo strips, in a rectangular shape, about three meters long and two meters wide. It is fixed at both ends with a long bamboo stick and can be rolled up and placed when not in use.
Li Youcai and his three companions swung the wet rice and slammed it hard onto the threshing bucket. After repeating this several times, all the golden rice grains were beaten down. The bucket was filled with rice, which made me very happy. The white rice seemed to be waving in front of me. Yike worked even harder to cut the rice.
Starting from the next day, Yike and Li Xiaoying no longer went to the paddy fields to harvest rice. They were responsible for drying the rice. In three and a half days, the rice in more than 50 acres of paddy fields was harvested.
The sun was particularly good these days, and Li Haoran prepared a lot of drying mats, so while he was harvesting the rice, the millet from the previous day was half-dried.
Drying millet is not an easy job. There is the scorching sun above your head and hot air under your feet. There are still a lot of leaves on the millet that has just been brought back. You have to use a bamboo rake to rake the leaves together and pick them up and throw them out.
After the millet has been dried for two hours, the rice needs to be turned over with a scraper. In the afternoon when the sun goes down to the horizon, the millet needs to be scraped into a pile with a scraper and then put into a basket with a dustpan.
If the millet is dried, it is the adults' business. The adults would use a windmill to winnow out the empty grains in the millet, leaving only the full grains for storage.
"Mom, I won't go to dry the millet tomorrow. I want to go pick corn with you." Yike said to Zhang Yuling during dinner.
"Okay, tomorrow it will be your brother Jiankang's turn to dry the rice. The earliest harvested rice can be packaged after drying it for a day tomorrow." Zhang Yuling said.
So, the next day, Yike and everyone else braved the scorching sun, carried baskets on their backs, and walked through the corn fields. They broke off the corn cobs one by one, and then carried them out of the field in baskets and poured them onto a wooden cart.
After the wooden cart was full, Ma Youcai and Ziyi pulled it out and took it back home.
Fortunately, this road was paved with stones when the creek was cleared, making it convenient to transport corn now.
After picking the corn, everyone cut the corn stalks and spread them on the ground to dry. After they were dry, they were transported back home and stored as cow fodder in the winter.
There was no way to rest early at night. Torches were lit in the cave for illumination, and everyone was working hard with the corn - peeling the leaves, removing the seeds, and taking the corn kernels out to dry during the day, which often took until midnight.
Yike was so tired that he lay down on the bed and didn't want to move, so Ziyi gave Yike a full body massage, and Yike fell asleep during the comfortable massage.
It took more than half a month from the beginning of rice harvesting to the drying and storage of millet and corn kernels. We had to rest for two days because of the rain, and everyone looked very tired.
Because the rice was planted late and there was heavy rain, the millet harvest from more than 50 acres of paddy fields was less than 20,000 kilograms, while everyone reclaimed more than 50 acres of land and harvested nearly 18,000 kilograms of corn kernels.
Millet was only the harvest of Ziyi's family, but corn was shared by everyone. It was agreed at that time to divide it according to labor force, that is, calculated according to the work points outside. Ma Youcai and four people, Du Qingcang, Ziyi, and Li Haoran were the strong laborers, followed by Zhang Yuling and Wang Cuihua, and finally Yike and Du Jiankang.
Later, after discussing it, Ma Youcai and several others disagreed, saying that it should be divided equally among everyone, because they were not in the mountains most of the time and did not do much, so it would not be good to divide it according to labor. Even if it was divided equally, they would already be at an advantage. In the end, everyone had to agree to divide it equally.
So after the 18,000 kilograms of corn were divided equally, each person could get more than 1,600 kilograms.
According to the supply and marketing cooperative's price of corn at 1 cent per pound, each person would have 170 yuan. If sold on the black market, it would cost at least two hundred yuan.
There are still sweet potatoes on the reclaimed wasteland that have not been dug up, which must cost a lot of money. Everyone was very excited. This year is really a bumper year.
"It's the harvest season now, so we probably can't get a high price. Let's put it aside for now and sell it in winter or in February or March next year. Liu Bing, you guys can see if you can sell it all on the black market by then." Ziyi saw that everyone was so happy, so he made a suggestion.
"Yes, we can't sell it now. We'll weigh 100 kilograms for ourselves first. You guys can weigh some to take back and we'll deduct the price when the time comes." Du Qingcang said to Ma Youcai.
"Okay, let's weigh 100 kilograms and take them back to eat." After everyone discussed it, they went to bed and decided to see if the sweet potatoes could be dug the next day.
The next day, everyone went to the sweet potato field together and found that Li Youcai, Hu Haohan and others were also looking at sweet potatoes.
"Haohan, Youcai, can we dig the sweet potatoes?" Du Qingcang shouted from afar.
"We can't dig yet. It can still grow for another half a month." Hu Haohan also answered loudly.
"Mom, how do we know it's time to dig?" Yi Ke asked curiously.
"If the leaves of the vines on the ground turn yellow and the vines dry up, then the sweet potatoes can be dug up at this time," Zhang Yuling replied.
Yike looked at the leaves on the ground. Some of them were indeed half-turned yellow, but the vines were still not dry.
"Does that mean we can't dig it up? Only half of the leaves have turned yellow, but the vines are still fresh."
"Well, we can't dig it yet, but it won't take long, about half a month."
Since sweet potatoes could not be dug, everyone bundled up dried straw and corn stalks and carried them back to the cave to feed the cows during the winter.
Ziyi suggested planting rapeseed in rice fields and wheat in corn fields.
So after several days of busy work, the rapeseed and wheat were planted.
Ma Youcai and Wang Feng and a few others went out of the mountain. They mainly went out to purchase wheat seeds and some vegetable seeds. After digging the sweet potatoes, they would continue to plant wheat and some vegetables, otherwise they didn't want to go out.
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