"This mill is just used to grind bones. Wouldn't it be dirty to grind flour without washing the bones?"
"It's okay. After all, the flour is ground and eaten by the gentlemen in the town."
……
Being a mill steward is a very honorable position in the territory, with high salary and high status. Farmers have to call "Sir" when they see it.
So after the mill steward of Lizi Village was dismissed by the young master on the spot and appointed as the collector of materials for the compost site, his wife chased him all over the village holding a pitchfork.
In the mill, Frederick scooped up a spoonful of bone meal with a wooden spoon and studied it for a while, then walked outside and came to the open-air stove.
There are three stoves here, each with a large pot that can put Frederick in to stew.
The villagers are putting the collected broken bones and some clam shells and screw shells into the pot on the left, and then adding a large amount of plant ash and water to prepare the bones.
The bones had been boiling in the middle pot for a while. Someone removed the fat and added water to prevent it from burning dry.
The flue of the stove was transformed into a drying bed like a fire pit, where the grease-removed bones were dried. After drying, they were collected and sent to the mill for grinding into powder.
Because the finer the bone meal, the better its fertility will be. The bone meal that has been ground for the first time is sifted through a hydraulic sieve, and then the coarse bone powder has to be ground for a second time.
Frederick looked at it for a while and thought that it was inconvenient to use a stone mill to grind bone meal. He would order a ball mill later. The wooden barrel was lined with iron sheets to increase the lifespan. Instead of steel balls, large pebbles would be fine.
He turned around and asked the village chief beside him: "Are there enough bones?"
The village chief bowed his back and replied: "It is enough now, but it will be difficult to say in the future. We are going to buy it in other territories."
Frederick said "hmm" softly.
At present, farmers attach great importance to nitrogen fertilizers such as compost and green manure. They also have a certain understanding of plant ash potassium fertilizer but do not pay enough attention to it. As for phosphate fertilizer, it is just bones mixed in the compost.
Professor Matthias, now from the University of Weissenburg, began to pay attention to compound fertilizers after being inspired by Frederick, and the importance of phosphate fertilizers increased.
The problem is that the current per capita meat consumption is too low, and there are simply not that many bones to make bone meal.
Also facing the same problem is blood meal.
The pot on the right side of the stove is boiling the collected livestock blood. After it is boiled, add quicklime at the ratio of 100 kilograms of blood and 20 kilograms of quicklime. Stir quickly at the same time. When it is dark brown, take it out and dry it in the sun or oven.
Finally grind it into powder.
Before planting wheat, moisten the wheat seeds first and then dress the seeds with 4% of the weight of blood meal, which can increase the yield by 10% or even 20%.
The bones can be collected in other places, but the raw materials for blood meal are troublesome.
Today there is news that Baron Wesson is purchasing a large amount of blood. Maybe tomorrow someone like Yu Jie Yong will come to defeat the BOSS. You will have to prepare a lot of acid slimes.
Not to mention that blood sausage is a common food eaten by villagers and blood meal is difficult to store for a long time.
To solve the problem of raw materials, we need to vigorously develop the breeding industry. There is no need to think about chemical fertilizers for now. At most, we can get some potassium nitrate.
You don’t need to think about urea gypsum either. This fertilizer is acidic, and the land here is mainly acidic soil. Adding it can be used to dip dumplings.
Frederick came to the field and prepared for autumn sowing. The farmer's family, old and young, were mixing compost, bone meal, plant ash and golden garbage, and then evenly spread it into the field.
Jinkela was the first product of Frederick's hometown that he copied when he came to this world. It is actually zeolite.
It is true that Jinkeliba "does not drain or evaporate". Because of its special structure, zeolite can absorb nutrients in the soil like a sponge and release them when these things are lacking in the external soil, thus reducing the loss of fertilizer nutrients.
These fields have just been planted with peas and other beans. After harvesting the beans, the bean vines were dug into the ground, watered enough to allow them to rot. Now they are plowed deeply after applying base fertilizer, and then they can be sown.
Frederick watched for a while and found Professor Matthias, the royal planter, and several of his students on the field beside the field.
Compared with the fertilization just now, this is an epoch-making event.
Small trenches were dug out on the rammed ground of the grain drying field, and a group of students carried buckets and poured a dark red mud-like material into the trenches.
Frederick walked up to Matthias and asked curiously: "What kind of magic circle is this?"
Matthias replied: "The magic of stimulating seeds can make plants bear more fruits."
Frederick's eyes lit up and he hurriedly asked: "Is it useful for all plants?"
"That's natural." Matthias's face showed a proud expression, "Many of the plants I control use fruits as weapons, and I am best at this magic."
Frederick's eyes gleamed, thinking he had found a treasure.
At this time, a student said: "Teacher, it's because the winding department is so bad, so I'm working hard on the fruit department."
Matthias's eyes widened, and he stretched out his right hand, holding a black plant seed from nowhere on his fingers, and said in a cold voice: "Would you like to try my poor entanglement magic?"
The student shrank his neck and ran away immediately.
Matthias saw Frederick looking at the seeds in his hand intently, smiled slightly, loosened his hand, and the seeds fell to the ground.
There is a dark green light connected between this seed and the finger. As soon as the seed touches the ground, it immediately grows rapidly, and a vine grows in the blink of an eye.
These vines glowed green, twisting and growing like tentacles. After a few breaths, they formed a pavilion around the two of them, as well as two chairs and a table made of curled rattan.
Frederick was frightened by the scene in front of him, and his mouth grew big. After the green light faded, he subconsciously stretched out his hand to poke the vines, and then looked up at the green leaves.
"Take a rest." Mathias sat down triumphantly, "I may strengthen the first batch of wheat seeds in the afternoon."
After sitting down, Frederick immediately asked: "Is this... a real plant?"
"Yes." Matthias replied, "He is still alive, but he won't live for long."
"Why?" Frederick asked in surprise.
"It's very simple." Matthias shrugged, "Its root system absorbs and consumes all the water and nutrients in the surrounding soil, and it will starve to death in a short time."
Frederick immediately jumped out of the pavilion and found that the surrounding land was indeed much drier than other places.
He immediately asked the village chief to bring water to the land to water it.
The village chief and the villagers had been frightened for a long time, and it took Frederick passing over and kicking each of them before they reacted.
Matthias smiled and said to Frederick who returned to the pavilion: "If it is pruned, watered and fertilized from time to time, this pavilion can live for a long time."
Frederick did not answer the question, holding his chin and thinking.