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Chapter 243 Winter passes and spring arrives
In the long years before the iron plow was widely used, the grass (yinlei fodder) has been the main farming tool in agricultural production.

The seed-seeding stick evolved from the digging stick, and a crossbar for stepping on the lower part of the pointed wooden stick was installed so that the hands could be pushed and the feet could be pushed to pierce the soil and lift it up. It became the original soil-turning agricultural tool - —Mu Lei.

The Li is a shovel-shaped agricultural tool based on the Lei, with a flat blade made of stone, bone, and mussel.

Lin Yu knew the shape of primitive farm tools very well, and Zhang Tian was one of the best carpenters of this era. One of them came up with ideas, the other came up with techniques, and soon they were tinkering with seed sticks and grass.

According to legend, Rachu was created by Shennong, who "cut wood to make Rachu and kneaded wood to make Rawe".

So when teaching the tribesmen how to make grass, Zhang Tian declared: "This is the knowledge passed down by our ancestor Shen Nong. If you use these agricultural tools during farming, you can grow more grains!"

Everyone in the Yougu tribe was particularly surprised. Miao and Kui looked over these things called farm tools, but they didn't see anything strange about them.

The tribesmen were also confused and didn't know their function yet. In fact, they didn't even understand what farming was, but they didn't ask any more questions and followed the instructions of the sky priest and wizard, and they would be right.

Plowing, land preparation, sowing, irrigation, harvesting, processing... This is the only way to grow food. Each step requires corresponding agricultural tools to improve production efficiency.

Grasses for cultivating and preparing the land, seed sticks for sowing, stone knives and sickles for harvesting, and stone grinding discs and stone grinding rods for processing are all relatively easy to make.

What is more troublesome is irrigation.

Looking at the primitive agriculture in ancient civilizations around the world, all developed due to the benefits of irrigation.

The dam water conservancy system built by my country's Liangzhu Culture represented the highest level of large-scale water conservancy structures at that time; the silt irrigation project built by the ancient Egyptians to divert the Nile River floods was the earliest water conservancy and irrigation project with written records; the ancient Babylonian construction of the Tigris and Euphrates The river valley built what was then the largest irrigation canal in the world...

The initial watering tools were pottery utensils such as urns, fou, and pots. Later, many kinds of irrigation agricultural tools were gradually developed, such as buckets, tangerines, windlass, waterwheels, barrel trucks, etc.

The bucket is one of the oldest agricultural tools for irrigation. It is usually made of bamboo strips and rattan tightly woven into a bucket-like shape with two long ropes tied to each side. It needs to be used by two people.

The production of irrigation tools is not the problem, the problem is the water source.

Zhang Tian deliberately selected a piece of land with higher terrain as the base of the camp to prevent him from being overwhelmed by water during the flood season.

The disadvantage is that the nearest weirs, ponds and ditches that store water are one or two kilometers away, making it inconvenient to get water.

Because the amount of water used in daily life is not large, it does not matter if it is farther away. When large areas of farmland are irrigated in the future and water consumption increases, this problem will become increasingly prominent.

To develop water conservancy, we must first regulate regional water regimes and improve farmland moisture conditions.

There are two commonly used methods: digging wells and digging trenches.The former is suitable for drier areas with abundant groundwater, while the latter is suitable for areas with sufficient surface water resources.

The C-shaped basin they were in, surrounded by rivers and lakes and with abundant water systems, undoubtedly belonged to the latter situation.

It is not a big project, and the crops they want to plant are mainly millet and broomcorn millet that grow in the dry farming areas of the north. They are mainly drought-tolerant and barren, and are far less delicate than rice in the south.

But we still need to plan carefully and wait until spring to break ground.

In addition to agricultural tools and water conservancy, cultivation technology is also one of the important factors affecting crop yields, including pest control, farming systems, fertilization, selective breeding, etc.

Lin Yu did not want his tribe to rely too much on the power of the five-color stone, so he did not plan to directly use the bluestone to increase crop yields.

But this does not mean that bluestone has no use - she opened an experimental field, about an acre of land, and used the power of bluestone to conduct research on selective breeding.

Tribes with valleys have not been cultivating cereals for a long time, and the degree of domestication of millet is very low.

Millet has been the most important food crop in northern my country for a long time and is known as the first of the five grains.

Millet culture has been throughout the history of the development of the Chinese nation. It is not only revered in ancestral temple sacrifices, but also has various meanings, including "a drop in the ocean" which is a metaphor for a small thing, and "a man's millet..." which can be compared to the virtues of a gentleman. "Metaphor, millet also plays an important role in weddings and funerals in some areas.

Lin Yu’s main research direction during his PhD was botanical and agricultural archeology, and he naturally knew a lot about the origin, culture and cultivation of millet.

There is a consensus in the academic community on the evolution of millet: millet was domesticated from the wild foxtail grass.

The degree of domestication can be judged based on the shape of the seeds. The length-to-width ratio of modern millet seeds is about 1.06 to 1, which is almost a sphere. Lin Yu visually inspected this batch of millet seeds from the Yougu tribe and found that the length-to-width ratio is at least 1.5:[-]. [-], far from full and round.

"Do you know how long it took the ancients to highly domesticate wild foxtail grass into a nearly modern millet?"

Zhang Tian looked at her and said nothing.

"2000." Lin Yu announced the answer, "The domestication of plants is a long process, especially in primitive societies where productivity and technology are very backward. Every high-yielding crop has gone through hundreds of thousands of years of precipitation. A small seed contains the hard work of countless people.”

After listening to her words, Zhang Tian felt that the seeds in his hands seemed to have a heavy weight.

In the experimental field, the men were digging the soil according to the instructions of the wizard.

Cold weather is not a good time for farming, but the power of bluestone can ignore these adverse conditions and at most consume more energy.

This was an opportunity for the men to practice and become familiar with farm tools and farming methods.

Zhang Tian smiled and said: "You have bluestone, which originally ripens once a year. You can dry it until it ripens once a day. The domestication time in 2000 was directly shortened to two thousand days. In other words, in six years, we can eat it." On to modern corn.”

"Thinking too much." Lin Yu disagreed, "Bluestone can improve the efficiency of energy absorption and utilization by plants, thereby accelerating plant growth and increasing yield. This process will still consume soil fertility, which is required for farming, harvesting, and soil fertility restoration. Time, so it’s impossible to ripen it in one day. If it can ripen once in a month, it would be very good.”

“According to what you say, wouldn’t it mean that we will never be able to eat modern corn in this life?”

"Not necessarily. Selective breeding is essentially selecting genes. As for genes, it depends on luck. If you are lucky, you might be able to breed a fine variety in a few days. Anyway, we have to get some fertilizer first, otherwise I will This experimental field was planted a few times before it became deserted.”

"Okay, it just so happens that the cesspool is almost full, so it's time to take a dig."

If you want to settle here for a long time, it is important to maintain long-term fertility and high productivity of the soil.

This is also a problem that has always troubled the Yougu tribe. They have tried to plant grains continuously on the same land many times, but the output often plummeted in the second year, and even the bluestone could not save it.

They know better than anyone that as long as they can solve this problem, they will no longer have to set fire to open up new farmland every year, and they can completely get rid of the reputation of the "evil tribe".

So when the sky priest claimed to teach them how to make fertilizer that could improve the properties of the soil, the valley tribe was almost in a state of excitement.

"What to do?" Miao asked impatiently.

Zhang Tian smiled and did not answer, but said: "Bring a few people, and bring pottery urns and pots. The bigger the better, come with me."

The men volunteered, picked up large pottery, and followed the sky priest step by step.

Seeing the toilet getting closer and closer, everyone felt an ominous premonition in their hearts.Miao couldn't help but ask: "What is the fertilizer you mentioned made of?"

"Shit." Zhang Tianyan said concisely.

Everyone's smiles suddenly froze on their faces.

Miao stared at Zhang Tian for a long time. Seeing that he didn't seem to be joking, he became even more confused: "I don't understand. Shit is a useless waste we pull out. How can it improve the fertility of the soil?"

He asked the voice of everyone.

Zhang Tian didn't answer but asked: "Are there a lot of flies in the toilet?"

"There are still a lot of maggots!" someone continued.

"Yes, there are maggots. Since flies and maggots like to make their homes in toilets, it means that our feces are not completely useless. At least they are somewhat nutritious, right?"

"Ah this..."

Everyone had to admit that what the sky priest said was right. Even the ashes after burning vegetation can increase the fertility of the soil. Why not feces?

“So, are we going to use shit to grow grains?”

"It's fertilizer." Zhang Tian corrected, "We have to turn shit into fertilizer before we can use it."

When they arrived at the latrine, everyone was given a handful of bone grass or stone grass and a mask. Zhang Tian directed everyone to dig out the cesspit.

This kind of dirty work makes even primitive people who don't like cleanliness feel nauseated. The extremely strong stench penetrates into the mask and goes into the nose. Everyone holds their breath and swings the shovel unconsciously. The sooner you finish it, the sooner you will be relieved.

There were originally a lot of people watching, but after everyone stirred up the smell, the smell spread quickly, and most of it was immediately smoked away.

The excrement taken out filled one pottery urn and pot after another. The men were surprisingly efficient. In less than half an hour, all eight pits were cleared, and a total of 37 large pots were filled.

Then there’s compost.

Fresh manure will generate a lot of heat during the process of putrefaction and fermentation, so it cannot be used directly as fertilizer and it is easy to burn roots.

Composting is the process of decay and fermentation of animal manure and various types of plants.

Everyone moved the excrement away from the living area, poured it out, and piled it together, about one cubic meter, and covered it with worn-out animal skins to prevent excess moisture from entering.This will be the composting area from now on.

After doing all this, everyone let out a sigh of relief.

"Is that enough?"

"It's okay for the time being, but it will need to be stirred regularly in the future."

Compost also needs air, and turning the compost pile to promote air circulation can speed up decomposition.

It takes half an hour to turn a one-cubic-meter compost pile. The heat generated by the decomposition of microorganisms can make the temperature in the center of the compost pile reach more than 50 degrees Celsius. Every turn is accompanied by hot smoke.

At first it was still smelly, the shit was stirred up for half an hour, and it was sour for several days.

The smell gradually fades, and when the compost heap turns into a black, odorless, loose mass and the raw materials cannot be identified, the compost is complete.

If your compost pile is well maintained and turned over regularly, it can usually be completed within a month or two.

Basically, the manure pit needs to be cleaned once a week on average, and each time it is about one cubic meter.

As time goes by, more and more fertilizer is piled up, and part of it has been used in the wizard's experimental field, which is equivalent to the effect of experimental manure.

When the fertilizer was used for the first time, the whole tribe gathered around to watch.

Lin Yu took this opportunity to teach the men how to apply fertilizer. Once the cold weather passes, he will change his profession to become a farmer. In the future, farming will be the main job and hunting will be a side job. There are advantages and disadvantages in learning how to apply fertilizer in advance.

Seeing the men spreading black manure into the fields, everyone had expressions of indescribable confusion.

But when the fresh corn rice comes out of the oven, it smells so delicious!
After eating fragrant corn rice, no one questions the role of manure.

Even though it was only a small experimental plot, it was enough to prove that this method is feasible. Manure can indeed increase the fertility of the soil, allowing the same piece of land to produce continuously!

The people of the Yougu tribe know what this means better than others. Miao and Aoi are very happy!
The men have no complaints anymore and work harder to dig out the cesspit. As long as it is useful, what does it matter if it is smelly?

After learning that feces and urine have such wonderful uses, the tribesmen no longer defecate in the wild. Even if they suddenly feel anxious while chopping firewood in the mountains and forests, they will grit their teeth and hold it in until they come back.

Large compost piles also attract large numbers of rodents.

What may sound foul to humans is an irresistible temptation to the noses of some rodents.

With lynxes and wolves around, these rodents are nothing to fear.

Wolves are even more accomplished than lynxes.

It’s not that I’m being nosy. Rats are already on the diet of wolves. It’s not that dogs don’t pick up rats. It’s just that they are not as agile as cats and can catch them in complex terrain. The real-life Tom and Jerry should actually be dogs. and mice.

Although cats are natural enemies of mice, lynxes often stop actively catching mice when they are full. Therefore, whether they catch mice or not depends entirely on whether they are full or in a good mood.

Wolves are different. They catch mice not only out of their instinct to find food, but also because of the wolf boy's request and Zhang Tian's entrustment, in order to complete a specific task.

The wolves feel more and more that life here is very good, with a warm nest and a stable source of food.Sometimes, they go into the mountains to hunt with hunters. They use their keen sense of smell to track the deer, and the hunters use powerful weapons to deliver fatal blows.

Just don't take it too easy!

The tribesmen have gradually become accustomed to the existence of wolves, to having them help when hunting, and to listening to their warnings at night.

There is no need to do anything deliberately, the relationship just becomes closer naturally.

Zhang Tian had seen a saying that there was an ancient contract between humans and dogs. Both parties "signed" it on a voluntary basis, and no one forced the other.All other domestic animals, like the ancient slaves, were kept in captivity for a period of time before becoming servants of humans.

So only dogs are friends, friends who are obedient, hard-working and uncomplaining.

(End of this chapter)