Who knows! As soon as I returned to the mountains to farm, I encountered a natural disaster.

In addition to mosquitoes, there are also more snakes in the house.

It's just that the outer wall is smooth, so they can't climb the wall to get in, so they like to hide in the sweet potato field in the vegetable garden outside.

Mu Xi said it was because when the sweet potatoes mature, they may attract mice or voles, which naturally attracts snakes.

The potatoes have been taken back, and no traces of mice have been found. This further confirms Mu Xi's statement. No wonder Zhao Yeqing has not seen any traces of voles since installing the camera.

At first, except for some foxes and weasels seen near the yard, there were no other animals approaching.

There are no large carnivores. After the beginning of spring, the number of small carnivores in this meadow was much more than before. However, since the weather has become hotter and the rainfall has increased, the number of these animals has decreased again.

Instead, the animals that moved closer to home walls became snakes and geckos.

The reason why I hadn't destroyed the snake nest before was because the sweet potatoes and grain fields hadn't been harvested yet. Now that it's time to harvest, the first thing to do is to destroy the snake nest.

Mu Xi first cut off most of the sweet potato vines covering the ground, found two snake holes hidden in the sweet potato field, and cleaned them before harvesting the sweet potatoes.

Zhao Yeqing stopped going to the sweet potato field. She took a sickle and went to the field to harvest and thresh the wheat.

Less than half of the wheat had been harvested when a light rain fell. The harvested wheat was still lying on the ground and had no time to be threshed. So I had to quickly gather it into a pile and pull a plastic sheet over it.

It doesn't rain heavily this season, and it stopped within an hour.

The meadows have been wet recently, and it rarely gets completely dry. It seems that the mature crops are about to be harvested soon.

The sweet potatoes are harvested because there is not enough feed for the pigs at home, and the wheat is harvested because of the weather. If we don’t harvest the wheat, the wheat will spoil in the fields if it is exposed to rain for a few more days.

After Mu Xi finished harvesting the sweet potatoes, he came over to harvest the wheat together. The harvested wheat had to be dried quickly during the few sunny days.

The wheat hadn't even dried out yet. Within two days, small green grass sprouted densely in the cleared wheat field.

Even the unpaved backyard was covered with grass. The two of them had no time to clean it up, as they were worried about not being able to dry things in the weather.

"If this continues, the wheat will become moldy."

Zhao Yeqing was sticky, so he took off his outer coat and changed into pants when he entered the room. He only wore a white vest and denim shorts, fanning himself in the room and drinking a cold drink.

No matter how hot the weather is, I don’t dare to take off my clothes outside. There are also a lot of mosquitoes in the daytime. Only the bedroom with the door closed and smoked with mugwort 24 hours a day is safe. Once inside, I can finally get cool. clothes.

There's just not much ventilation.

Mu Xi took a tape measure to measure the size of the window. "If it doesn't work, let's dry the wheat. We just don't have a drying room. It's a bit troublesome to build. I'll drive to the meadow later to see if there are any intact mobile houses that can be demolished." Come out, take down some screens and put them back on."

There are no screen windows in the room. In order to prevent mosquitoes, the doors and windows can only be closed tightly at all times. The air is not circulated, and the air conditioner must be turned on for a while every day to cool down and ventilate.

But Zhao Yeqing adapted well to this temperature and really couldn't bear to turn on the air conditioner. "It's good. Having a screen can save electricity."

It was not easy to find a screen that fit perfectly. Mu Xi could only cut a piece of screen mesh and nail it to the window frame. But once it was nailed to the window frame, it would be difficult to open and close the window. Every time he closed the window, he could only go to the house. Go outside and close it.

The mobile board house is built in the corner of the front yard, on the right side of the main courtyard door, so that the recovered grain can be transported directly to it to dry and then stored in the hay room.

The area of ​​this wooden house is not large. The two people set up wooden boards and bricks inside and made a simple drying device.

Someone has to guard the drying of wheat, and the wheat is turned over with a small wooden rake from time to time to prevent it from being overdone.

But it was really uncomfortable to stay in the drying room in this weather. Big drops of sweat were falling from his forehead. Mu Xi had to come out for air after staying in it for a short while.

Looking at Zhao Yeqing in the yard, he took some wooden boards and knocked them, "What are you doing?"

Zhao Yeqing built two small houses with wooden boards. "I want to put this on our roof to see if any birds will live in it. Once there are birds in the house, there will be a lot less mosquitoes."

The characteristics of the rainforest are not only the increase in snakes and insects, but also the increase in birds. From time to time, I see some birds with bright feathers trying to fly down to eat the crops in the food fields.

None of the bird species were known to Zhao Yeqing, and her target was not those birds.

"It's a good idea, provided it attracts mosquito-eating species."

The most common natural enemy of mosquitoes among birds is swallows, followed by wrens (jiāo liáo), both of which are good at eating mosquitoes.

Both kinds of birds can be seen in the tropics. Zhao Yeqing made round bird's nests out of straw in two simple bird's nests and placed them inside, hoping to attract them.

She was quite confident. After all, there were a lot of mosquitoes in the house because the lights were on. With so many baits around, they should also take the bait.

One bird's nest was placed on the edge of the eaves, and the other was placed among the wisteria bushes.

Zhao Yeqing went to see if any birds had come in every day, but until all the wheat was dried and the rice in the rice fields had gradually turned yellow, there was still no movement in the bird's nest.

Mu Xi took out two sweet sticks from the refrigerator, peeled off the outer skin and handed them to Zhao Yeqing: "Don't worry, if you don't look at them for a few days, maybe they will be there."

Zhao Yeqing took a hard bite, sucking the sweet juice in the sweet stick, and then threw the chewed-up dregs into the fire. After burning, the sweet stick dregs exuded a fragrant caramel smell.

"Okay, I have to get all the corn back in the next two days anyway, so I won't go to see it yet."

The corn in the field has entered the wax ripening stage. Every corn cob is very plump, and every corn kernel has a beautiful waxy luster.

Breaking corn is not the most tiring part. The hardest part every year is to rub the corn off the cob. There is a corn threshing machine at the foot of the mountain.

It's just that it's not a small hand-operated machine, but a large electric machine, the kind that can lift tens of thousands of pounds a day and cannot be carried back at all.

The two of them could only rub their hands in resignation, and then put the kneaded pieces in sacks.

This year's corn output is also quite large, and wheat output is nearly one-fifth more than last year.

Judging from the situation of rice, as long as we are not too unlucky during this period and the rice ears become moldy due to continuous rains, the yield will definitely be 20% higher than before if harvested normally.

But in this case, the aluminum tube may not fit in it.