The Sibeigou family completed their assigned tasks in two days, and were assigned to harvest rice on the third day.
Si Xiaosong and Si Xiaobai are the two grandchildren of the family. Although one is thirteen and the other is twelve, they still have to work like adults.
You have to bend down to harvest rice. Rice plants are not much shorter than corn. And they must be harvested from the roots. Otherwise, they will not be long enough during threshing.
Si Xiaosong had already reaped the rewards when harvesting sorghum. He was lazy to cut the short sorghum, and his family ordered him to thresh it himself. He almost died from exhaustion. It saved him so much effort, and he had to work three times more, and his intestines turned green.
Si Xiaosong saw that his mother was not paying attention to him, and whispered to Si Xiaobai: "Xiao Bai, do you want to make money? There is a new candy store in the city. It opened that day. You can try a piece of fruit candy for free. I ate one, sir.
Delicious.”
Si Xiaobai's mouth was about to drool. He said anxiously: "I also want to eat sweets. Last time I passed by that shop called Lollipop. I couldn't bear to leave and was kicked by my mother. Brother, where can you make money?
Say it."
"The harvest will be finished in two days, and we will herd the sheep. I have inquired about this place. It is no better than our hometown in Baoding Prefecture. The adults here say half a year of farming and half a year of idleness. In short, after harvesting the grain, we can have fun for half a year. Hehe.
It just so happens that I will take you to dig a field mouse hole."
When Si Xiaobai heard this, he lost his mind. He thought his elder brother had some good ideas. It turned out that he was digging vole holes. That one is very tiring, okay?
In autumn, voles are at the peak of pregnancy, giving birth and nesting, and are very active. They search hard for food, actively store food, and are busy running around in search of food.
Peanuts, beans and other crops in the field can be stolen and stored by voles in their holes. Generally, a vole hole can store a kilogram of grain, and a large hole can dig up to a kilogram of grain.
It causes a great loss to rural income, so digging rat holes after autumn is an important activity after the autumn harvest. Although the dug food cannot be eaten by people for fear of plague, it can be fed to poultry and livestock. It can still be sold for a lot of money.
"Xiao Bai, you don't know. There is a large pine forest in the west. There must be pine nuts and hazelnuts in the vole holes over there. You can get at least thirty kilograms out of one nest. I tell you, this thing is very expensive. Roasted nuts are sold in the city.
Boss Song told me that pine nuts cost three cents per catty and hazelnuts cost seven cents per catty."
"What, brother, you heard that right. My grandpa only has less than a hundred big coins in our family. Grandpa is reluctant to spend even a copper penny. What do you think of a trip together? It's more than the entire family's money. Do what you want.
If you say that, wouldn’t it make you rich?”
"Hey, don't even look at who your brother is. I've been asking around for the past few days, and only the guy from our hometown has the habit of digging vole holes after autumn. We don't tell other people."
Si Xiaobai immediately became excited and said, "I know the place you mentioned. It's more than ten miles away. There's a barbed wire fence there. Our family won't let us go there."
Duolun City is the starting point. The first circle is vegetable fields, the second circle is paddy fields, the third circle is dry fields, and the outermost circle is planted with sorghum.
Outside the sorghum fields are trenches and barbed wire fences, and a thorn wall was planted. They were just planted this year and have not yet grown.
Beyond the barbed wire fence, farmers are no longer within the scope of their activities. Barbed wire fences and trenches are built to protect crops from wild animals.
Outside the barbed wire fence, there are cavalry patrols day and night. Farmers are not allowed to move outside the barbed wire fence without permission. There is no chance for children. If they are caught, they will be taken back to their parents.
Si Xiaosong and Si Xiaobai thought with their buttocks and knew that if they were caught by the patrolling cavalry, their buttocks would be bruised when they returned home.
"Don't worry, when the harvest is over, the adults won't care about us. The children of each family are waiting to have a party. Let's sneak out and dig for an hour and come back. We are not greedy. We have enough time to come back and finish the meal. You
rest assured."
Duolun City has developed 200,000 acres of paddy fields around Hechazi. There are also 200,000 acres of dry land in higher areas. The dry fields mainly grow soybeans, corn, sweet potatoes, millet, large yellow rice, glutinous rice, and various beans.
The 100,000 acres closest to the city wall are planted with vegetables. Modern seeds are used. They mainly grow potatoes, Chinese cabbage, and radishes, which are vegetables suitable for storage in cellars in winter.
Because the grassland is bitterly cold, 10,000 acres of red peppers were specially planted to keep out the cold. The peppers are high-yielding and suitable for sandy soil. They are fertilized with decomposed manure, which is fermented soil from cow and horse manure.
Other materials here are expensive and scarce, and there is a lot of cow and horse excrement. The yield of good pepper seeds can reach 3,000 jins per mu. The average yield of modern peppers is 5,000 jins per mu.
After all, this year is the first winter that everyone has spent in this bitter cold land of the grassland. Yang Fan has repeatedly instructed that he must grab the winter vegetable basket.
Everything was a start-up this year, and I didn’t even bother raising pigs, and I didn’t even have time to build a pig pen.
There is a lot of public construction this year. The castle and rammed earth walls can be built thanks to the modern manpower and equipment obtained by Yang Fan.
After the spring plowing, they built the city wall, divided the homesteads, and built their own houses. Everyone was exhausted and had no rest for most of the year.
Now that the autumn harvest is here, everyone is working hard, knowing that when the work is done, they can take a complete rest.
When we recruited everyone, we were told that the winter here on the grassland is long, and the three seasons of spring, summer, and autumn only last for six or seven months. To work here is to farm for half a year and to work for half a year. In winter, the hot kang head will keep you warm. Don’t mention it.
How pleasant.
After the Si family worked for another five days, the harvesting was completely over, and An Sanxi and Huang San also breathed a sigh of relief. What they feared most was that the Mongolian coalition forces would attack during the harvesting.
An Sanxi also knew in his heart that he had so many people, so he didn't pay much attention to the four groups of people in his early 10,000s. They would wait for you to finish harvesting, dry them, and then grab them after entering the warehouse.
Your ruined city is right there, how can you still run away on your own?
There is nothing wrong with this view. The city of Duolun penetrates so deeply into the grassland. As long as it is blocked on all sides, is there any fear of the duck flying?
After all, human legs can't outrun four horse legs. This is like meat delivered to the Mongolian mouths, pies falling from the sky.
But in fact, the Mongols didn't know how so many Han people got here. They didn't know that this was not an isolated stronghold.
Duolun City has the water transport of the Luan River connecting Zunhua and Xincheng. The Hexi Guard Qianhu Station is also on the water transport line. These places are connected by canals and natural rivers.
The transport capacity of water transport far exceeds that of horse-drawn carriages, which is why Yang Fan started researching steam engines early. Only with power can water transport completely solve the problem of traveling upstream.
Even when the river is frozen in winter, horse-drawn sledges can still pass. The friction on the ice surface is small, and the transportation capacity is still large.
There is a saying in the art of war that if a small enemy is strong, a big enemy can be captured. This means that if a small force is stationed in an isolated stronghold, once it is surrounded by a large enemy force, the entire army will be annihilated.
However, if a strong fortress has transportation channels that cannot be cut off, it will be extremely difficult to conquer. Because personnel and material resources will continuously come in to support it, the place will become a meat grinder.
An Sanxi understood that only by turning this place into a meat grinder could the Mongols accept the fact that the master had wedged himself into the hinterland on the grassland.