Picking Up a General to Plow the Fields

Chapter 246: Start of Spring

The three of them returned home.
One the way, Lian Che was still very excited.
His pair of eyes were shining as he chatted with Lian Fang Zhou non-stop.
Lian Fang Zhou listened with a smile before finally distracting him.

On the tenth day of the first month, all of the doors and windows of the compound were installed.

For now, the weather was getting warmer and warmer by the day.

Although the north wind was still blowing and the temperature of the sun was still not high, not to mention there was still not much new green grass in the landscape, the bitter cold was no longer there.
On the contrary, this made people feel that spring was brewing and was about to break out.
The air was filled with vitality.

The arrival of spring was very close and though they could not see it yet, it couldn’t deceive people.
The villagers were all very busy.

Regardless of whether last year’s harvest was good or not, there was a sense of hope for the new year.
Every family was full of energy and enthusiasm, striving for a good harvest.

According to Lian Fang Zhou’s plan, the land in Shitouping and Sanchakou should also be sorted out now.

The first step was to hire twelve cattle and add them to the two she owned and plow the fields.

These fields had just been reclaimed and cleaned up at the end of last year, so the plowing was much easier and the speed was very fast.
It took less than two days to finish it.

After the infiltration of snow water, the burned wasteland had a lot of vegetation and ash mixed into the  ground, so the soil was very fertile.
Qin Feng and Su Zi Ji saw this and both said that it was very good.
Lian Fang Zhou thought so too.

In order to minimize the weeds in the spring, Lian Fang Zhou asked Qin Feng and Su Zi Ji to go to the drugstore and buy a lot of thunder god vine (Tripterygium wilfordii) and quicklime from the market.
When the thunder god vine was soaked in water and dried by the quicklime, it could be used to kill weed seeds and insect eggs in the soil.

The vitality of the weeds was extremely strong.
Even if the wasteland had been burned, some of them would survive.
After carefully sorting out the land, most of the roots had been destroyed.
After all, this was a fresh land that had never been cultivated before.
If they did not do enough treatments, after the cotton was planted, the job of weeding would be exhausting.

The weather this year was extremely cold and there was another heavy snowfall.
Lian Fang Zhou was already very lucky.

Lian Fang Zhou discussed this with Su Zi Ji.
After tossing some ideas for improvement, Su Zi Ji made a sprayer.
The body was made of thin tin, the nozzle made of brass, and the hose was made of cow hide, which was easy to use.

After things were finished, Lian Fang Zhou and Su Zi Ji admired each other.
Lian Fang Zhou was impressed with his ingenuity and technical skills and Su Zi Ji was amazed by her fantastic ideas, eagerly asking her if she had any other things she had kept to herself?

Lian Fang Zhou smiled and said: “I will buy two spinning wheels and looms after a while and you can study them.
Naturally, you will have many important things to work on in the future!”

Su Zi Ji smiled happily and agreed.

It was enough for Qin Feng and Su Zi Ji to lead the eleven workers to do the weed spraying, Lian Fang Zhou did not need to hire anyone else.

The fruit tree seedlings on Xiaohuaguo mountain were ready to be transplanted.

Transplanting at this time, before the spring breeze and rains arrived, the saplings would quickly set roots and shoot buds.
If they waited until the buds appeared to transplant, it would not be as good as doing it early.

From the tree stumps that had been planted earlier, you could already see the buds forming in gray husks.
Only when the spring breeze blew, would these buds appear to have a little bit of green overnight.

The first to be transplanted was the more than 2,000 persimmon saplings brought back by the gardener from the city.

Lian Fang Zhou, Lian Ze, and Ah Jian drove the saplings back in a donkey cart.
The four siblings and Ah Jian went to work, as well as Zhang Xiao Jun, Zhang Liang, Zhang Xiu’er, and Sun Zhang Xing.
Aunt Li Shu and Li San He also spent three days helping with the planting.

Because they had already dug the pits beforehand, a lot of time was saved.

Looking at the large fruit trees, Madam Sun’s heart was moved.
She smiled and said to Lian Fang Zhou: “Miss Lian, there is a big open space around our house on top of the mountain.
Would you like to plant some bamboo? If you plant it now, in just over three months you would be able to eat bamboo shoots!”

Lian Fang Zhou smiled: “You have reminded me that we should plant bamboo but not in the open space around the house.
That space is for building the house.
Just plant a few threes along the edge!”

It was pretty good to imagine the shade from the green bamboo and the summer breeze in the future.

Lian Fang Zhou took the Sun couple up to the top of the mountain and pointed out a few placed to plant.
She said: “Let’s grow phoebe bamboo, it grows very tall and the shoots taste good.”

“Okay!” Madam Sun said with a smile: “Don’t worry, Miss Lian! We will dig it back and plant in the next few days.”

It was the fifteenth in the blink of an eye and the Lantern Festival finally finished in the city.
However, almost no country folk went to see the excitement.

So far away from home, how would they get back after watching the lanterns?

After this festival, it was common to eat glutinous rice balls.

Early in the morning, Third Aunt asked Ah Jian to help grind the flour for the rice balls.
Because the compound was almost finished, Lian Fang Zhou was afraid that Ah Jian was too tired and planned to go to the city to buy premade rice balls.
However, Ah Jian smiled and said that it was fine, it was easy to grind the flour for the rice balls in less than an hour.

A total of several fillings were mixed, including red bean paste, sesame sugar, peanut cream sugar, and Osmanthus white sugar.

After this, the Chinese New Year was official over and the busy spring plowing began.

On the sixteenth, after breakfast, Lian Fang Zhou, Ah Jian, and Lian Ze went to the Lin family Orchard to move the fruit tree seedlings.
Nearly two thousand fruit trees of various kinds were brought over.

When Lian Fang Qing heard that they were going, she made a fuss about going to play with Lin Zao’er so Lian Fang Zhou brought her and Lian Che along as well.

More than 2,000 acres of land had now been sprayed with the homemade weed and pesticide.
Qin Feng and Su Zi Jji led the workers to start preparing the 60 acres of paddy fields.

Plowing the fields, dredging the canals, trimming the ridges, picking up dung and spreading it, were all important.
The acres that had been planted with milkvetch would not be plowed for the time being.
They would wait for a while, so that the milkvetch had time to mature.

In the surrounding fields, there could be seen the busy figures of every household.
From time to time, you could hear the yelling of cattle drivers and the sound of the whip.

When everyone saw the busy figures of Qin Feng and the others, all of whom were hardworking, fast-paced, and organized, they couldn’t help but sigh with envy and emotion.

“Lian Fang Zhou is really good! Living like a small landlord!”

“Yes, not only the size of the land, there are so many subordinates! Alas, people like us, I’m afraid we wouldn’t be able to compare to them in our entire lives!”

“Why don’t you have any good relatives?”

“If you had a good relative, they’d still need to be generous enough to help!”

“Lian Fang Zhou has a good fate, both her and her siblings all have good fate!”

“…”

Everyone was gossiping and sighing so of course they had to mention Lian Li and Madam Qiao.
They laughed at them for not knowing how to enjoy happiness.
If it hadn’t been for their domineering and callous actions at the beginning, the relationship between the two families would not have broken down this way.
Now it was a big gap!”

However, their son was very good.
Don’t just look at his potential as a scholar, he was also courageous! When the wolves came, he dared to go out and help call people from their houses at night! Really, how could Lian Hai be the son of such a couple?

Some of these words passed to Lian Li and Madam Qiao’s ears and some didn’t.
Lian Li sneered, regret and suffocation in his heart, but Madam Qiao was so angry she shouted and dared to go to Lian Fang Zhou’s house again.