It is already May, and by the end of June, the farmland will begin to enter the mature harvest stage.
Eight hundred acres of farmland have to be harvested, and the workload is more than double that of last year. Because the farmland is farther away, it takes more time to come and go. And during the harvest season, birds will come in groups to steal food, and it will be a day late.
If the harvest is put into the warehouse, there will be one more day of loss.
So there must be enough vehicles.
With a group of carpenters working hard every day, cars of all sizes are constantly being built.
There are two carriages, three human carts, and two push carts. In addition, according to Xu Chen's request, a batch of ten wheelbarrows are being built.
These vehicles are crudely made, but quite strong.
It is not a problem for six or seven adults to sit casually in the carriage.
Human powered carts and bucket carts are slightly smaller and can be pushed by three or four people.
The balance of a unicycle is not very good, but it is easy to sit on one and push it around.
The reason why Xu Chen wanted to build so many wheelbarrows was because there were no roads in the valley. These wheelbarrows could be walked freely on the field ridges and river beaches. They were the most convenient means of transportation, far more labor-saving and convenient than carrying baskets and carrying burdens.
With these vehicles, the Ba people's freight and food harvest will be much more convenient and faster in the future. Therefore, watching the large and small cars being built one after another, the tribe's men, women, and children are immersed in incomparable excitement and joy.
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Xu Chen selected a group of men to continuously train them to push carts, pull carts or drive carriages.
In addition, he also planned a road along the farmland and river beach that can accommodate two-wheeled vehicles. He will speed up the road construction when it is not raining or when it is cool in the morning and evening, and try to repair the road as much as possible before the autumn harvest to prepare for future traffic.
Of course, he will not fully participate in these physical activities. They are mainly demonstrations and command. There are many people in the tribe, men, women, old and young, working together. They go out early and come back late every day. It only takes ten days. There is a road leading from the compound and the kiln gate.
The road towards Taniguchi is slowly taking shape.
The reason why the repairs were carried out so quickly is related to the fact that a large number of tools such as hoes, pickaxes and rakes made of bronze were put into use one after another.
If we had relied solely on the wooden hoes, stone hoes, wooden sticks, or even hand planes we used before, this project would not have been completed in two or three months.
While the entire tribe was preparing for the autumn harvest, Xu Chen, in addition to taking advantage of the cool weather to ride his horse back and forth to inspect and provide guidance, started to arrange another thing in his spare time.
As cultivated wheat beans gradually become the staple food, this pure seed type of food has a big disadvantage: it has a husk and tastes very bad, especially this wild variety that has not been successfully domesticated at all and has small particles.
Not to mention, the seed coat is very thick and hard. Whether it is made into pancakes or cooked into porridge, eating it in your mouth is as uncomfortable as eating sawdust and bean dregs.
Although women would use pitted stones to smash the grains before processing them when cooking, the rough and hard shells could not be broken into fine pieces, making them very uncomfortable to eat.
Of course, the savages don't feel anything. Not only do they have thick skin and rough flesh, but they also have a steel stomach and a rough throat. They can swallow and digest anything. But for Xu Chen, the memory of food that never tires of fine food or fine food is still
Let him miss all kinds of soft rice and pasta.
Therefore, he decided to make some equipment for processing grains.
The simplest one is naturally the stone mortar.
And he not only wanted to make stone mortars, but also stone mills.
With these two tools, you can not only eat pasta in the future, but also various soy products that are common in later generations, such as soy milk, tofu, dried tofu, and fermented bean curd.
There are even more types of pasta, including noodles, steamed buns, steamed buns, dumplings, pot helmets, bread, etc.
You can't think about this thing, your mouth will be drooling every time you think about it.
A big bowl of noodles, topped with a big spoonful of hot and fragrant beef offal or sausage, is simply so delicious that you will be addicted to it.
Therefore, since Xu Chen started planning to make stone mortars and millstones, he drooled all day long, a symptom of polio.
In order to build these stone mortars and stone mills, Xu Chen braved the scorching heat and personally took a few big-bodied guys to Yelang Valley and used a carriage to select more than a dozen large bluestones weighing tens or even hundreds of kilograms.
These stones are all broken rocks washed out from the valley. After years of water erosion, what remains are the hardest parts. The resulting artifacts are strong enough. As long as nothing goes wrong, they are estimated to last tens of thousands of years.
Still well preserved.
So in the hottest season of May, when men, women, old and young were training on large-scale road construction and driving and pushing carts, there were a few more barbarian-turned-masons in the woodwork workshop.
Masons are not required to be very strong or particularly strong, but they are required to have some experience in handling stones. Therefore, the few old and weak men who were responsible for making stone knives and axes but are now unemployed have officially begun to become a new generation of skilled workers.
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The craftsmanship of the stone mortar is simple. It is just to dig a hole in the middle of a large, slightly regular stone. If the stone is big, dig a bigger hole. If the stone is small, dig a smaller hole. It does not affect the use.
At present, there are more than a hundred people in the two families, and they consume hundreds of kilograms of grain every day. If they want to crush and process them all, one or two stone mortars are simply not enough.
These masons had just begun to learn, and it was definitely not realistic to make stone mills, so Xu Chen asked each of them to build a few stone mortars to practice their skills first.
Therefore, the large pavilion of the woodwork workshop became more and more lively because there was a group of stonemasons who used copper hammers and drills to jingle and hammer on the stones all day long.
A group of women were the happiest about the stone mortar that Xu Chen mentioned.
There is an ancient tradition of using pitted stones for processing various foods.
In fact, even if there is no copper hammer, they will use stones to hit each other to make a pit to process food. However, this simple processing of stone against stone is very difficult, and the pit cannot be made very big and deep, so
When food is processed, the wheat beans that are put in will easily pop out.
But it is different when using a copper hammer and a copper drill. Although the hard bluestone will wear the copper drill quickly, bronze is far more wear-resistant than stone, and it is processed with a purpose. Under the circumstances, this kind of stone mortar
It looks very quick to build.
In only five or six days, a stonemason completed the first small stone mortar, which was about one foot in diameter and half a foot deep. Although it looked extremely rough and the pits were as crooked as if a dog had gnawed it, it had to be admitted.
, this thing is really convenient to use.
When Xu Chen was experimenting, a large group of craftsmen and women stood around and exclaimed.
This stone mortar may not seem big, but it can hold seven or eight kilograms of grain at a time. Use a stone pestle tied with pebbles to pound the pestle vigorously. During the bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, the grain inside is tumbling, which is visible to the naked eye.
The speed continued to break, and in just over ten minutes, most of the wheat beans in this mortar turned into broken grains.
Of course, it is impossible to break it completely, but even like this, the effect is much better than the ordinary women slowly beating stones in a small pit. As for the speed, it is even more different.
On weekdays, it takes a woman at least an hour to process seven or eight kilograms of grain.
In order to satisfy the diet of a large family of hundreds of people, at least three women have to be arranged to hammer all day long every day. In addition, there are other foods that need to be processed. Currently, there are seven or eight people in the kitchen who are responsible for making food.
I work from morning to night every day, just to meet the food supply for two large families.
If there are several such stone mortars, the process of grain crushing and processing can greatly save manpower and time, and can satisfy the entire family's grain processing. Only one person is enough.
And this is the smallest stone mortar that has been built. The largest one currently being built seems to be able to hold thirty kilograms of grain, so only three or four mortars per day are enough to eat.
So when Xu Chen finished his performance and handed the pestle to a woman with a smile, there was a burst of lively cheers, and then several strong women couldn't wait to carry the stone mortar into the courtyard and put it in the corridor outside the kitchen.
After a while, there were constant banging and banging sounds inside, and sometimes the voices of women talking excitedly and cheering could be heard. It was obvious that this newly manufactured food processing tool had solved a huge problem for them.
Technology has changed life.
Although the stone mortar is not considered a technology, it is a product after the emergence of bronze ware.
The smelting and processing of bronze are definitely technological advances.
Therefore, the stone mortar can also be regarded as a derivative product of technology.
Just like woodware cannot be regarded as a technological product, but it is a product that only appeared after the emergence of bronze knives, axes and other woodworking tools.
Therefore, in the final analysis, metal smelting is the source of the emergence and realization of all this.
In the following time, as more stone mortars were successfully built, stone tool manufacturing began to become a new industry. Under the guidance of Xu Chen, a group of stonemasons began to build more stone troughs, stone piers, stone slabs, and stone mortars.
and other items, and in this continuous process of building and processing, the skills of a group of stonemasons are also rapidly improving.
After all, stone processing is all crude material, which is much simpler than wood processing and pottery processing, and it is purely physical work. There is no skill at all. If there is any, it is slow work and careful work. It only requires
With enough time and careful consideration, you can make crude stone tools more delicate, and you can even carve out exquisite patterns and characters on them for the sake of beauty.
May passed by in a blink of an eye, and after entering June, the weather became hotter and hotter, but the rain began to gradually decrease, the plants in the mountains, rivers and fields began to grow strong and old, and the roots of various wild fruits also began to enter the maturity stage.
Counting the time, this is already four full years after Xu Chen traveled through time.
Xu Chen no longer paid attention to the changes in the tribe.
The men, women, and children of the entire tribe have also become accustomed to this seemingly small change, but it can be called rapid progress.
The small river that had been wreaking havoc all summer finally began to slowly recede, revealing large swaths of river beach again.
Although the weather has not become cooler, the climate has gradually become drier.
In the farmland on both sides of the river, the wheat and beans are still growing vigorously, the green stalks are beginning to droop, the ears of wheat and the pods are full, and they have entered the final stage of maturity.
In order to welcome the upcoming autumn harvest, the entire Ba people began to get busy on a large scale, leveling the drying grounds inside and outside the compound, packing and expanding the granary, and making rattan baskets, baskets and other tools.
Although it is a foregone conclusion that some 20 to 30 acres of farmland on the other side of the river will suffer from waterlogging in summer and will lose production, most of them have matured smoothly.
After inspecting the farmland several times, Xu Chen made an assessment of this year's output. It is likely that the harvest will exceed 30,000 kilograms for the first time. The two houses used as granaries could no longer meet the demand, so two more houses were packed up to build a new granary.
The new granary is no longer built with clay bricks and lime, but with wooden boards.
The emergence of bronze knives and axes has made wood processing no longer difficult. Although wooden granaries are not as strong as masonry, they are more insulated from moisture and can preserve food better.
It was busy in mid-June when the first batch of harvest began, and there were still milk fruits on the hillside.
Although milk fruit is no longer an important food for the tribe, due to its delicious taste and rich nutrition, it has become an indispensable high-end snack for the tribe, especially for pregnant women and children, and it is a rare and high-quality snack.
Nutritional supplements.
Therefore, Xu Chen and the entire tribe were very concerned about harvesting milk fruits. A group of young and agile young men and women spent four or five days picking all the milk fruits on the hillside. Ye and the little witch led a group of half-people.
The older child dug it out and dried most of the yard.
Of course, the output is similar to previous years, only three to four hundred kilograms.
In fact, Xu Chen was also very sorry.
It is a pity that such good and high-quality nuts cannot be artificially expanded.
Because he had carefully investigated, the large hillside on the cliff seemed to be covered with milk fruit vines, but in fact it was just a main vine, which grew from a gap in the cliff near the spring under the crooked neck tree.
The main stem is like a coiled python, climbing along the stone cracks to the sloping stone slope, and then branches and leaves spread all over the steep slope, splitting out a large number of roots and vines like a creeper and sticking to the stone slope.
In the dense gaps between the small stone bars on the slope, a large amount of soil and humus have been fixed by years of growth, providing nutrients for the growth and maturity of the milk fruit.
This is a very special plant, drought-tolerant and tenacious, and likes sunlight, but it seems that the seeds cannot germinate, because Xu Chen has even found some hillside woodland to plant in front of and behind the house in the past few years, but not a single one has germinated.
Just like the vines he planted, neither the fruits nor the cuttings survived.
Is this cliff really a geomantic treasure with aura of aura?
Xu Chen always has such a weird thought every time he sees the milk fruit and the huge vine fruit vines on the crooked-neck tree.
It's a pity that this is not a different world with the aura of fairy spirits. It seems that there is no such thing as aura. However, these two special plants have always made him worried because they cannot be introduced.
No matter how good things are, they have a lifespan. Once they die of old age, they will never be available again.