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

Zhao Yeqing grabbed a handful of rice brought back from the mountain and sprinkled it on the ground to soothe the hen's injured heart.

I took Rhubarb and the three puppies to get to know the new rabbits and chickens at home, and after ensuring that they would no longer kill each other, I felt relieved and continued to build the shed.

Because the ground behind the house was frequently moved around, there were not many weeds, so it was not troublesome to deal with it. In less than an hour, Mu Xi had plowed the ground.

Zhao Yeqing left the task of building the greenhouse to him and went back to the house to prepare vegetables.

The seeds were a little delicate in the germination stage, so Zhao Yeqing planned to raise the seedlings in the house first, and then sow them in the ground.

She used to have a seedling box at home, but now the conditions are limited. She split the remaining bamboo used for cooling equipment, filled the groove in the middle of the bamboo with soil mixed with fertilizer, and drilled a few holes to facilitate drainage and avoid root retting.

Bamboo itself has knots, which can separate several kinds of seeds. Zhao Yeqing sowed the seeds in bamboo seedling pots, watered them thoroughly and waited for them to germinate.

The food waste compost that they used to make at home is no longer available. The two of them can't even eat fresh vegetables. There is no such thing as food waste.

Fortunately, there are more than a dozen fertilizer suppliers in the sheep pen.

When they first arrived, when Mu Xi cleaned the sheepfold for the first time, he piled the sheep dung aside, and now it was all processed.

Sheep manure needs to be composted before use. Animal manure that has not been composted is easy to burn roots and worms.

Zhao Yeqing said something to Mu Xi and went into the forest.

Like food waste compost, manure also requires carbon to decompose, which is hay straw or dead leaves.

In temperatures in the forties, these things are not scarce.

The woods near the meadow area are not like the evergreen broad-leaved forests in the south, but are more deciduous broad-leaved forests here.

The forest was busier than the grassland, so Zhao Yeqing quietly caught several cicadas.

She remembered the summer before, and there was a saying - if you catch the cicada, you catch the summer.

But now she was numb from the heat, and she just wanted to take all these summers back and feed them to the chickens.

Walking around in the forest, the ground is covered with birch leaves.

Birch trees are resistant to cold but not heat. Birch trees that are supposed to have green leaves in summer are inevitably losing their leaves all over the ground even though the weather has not yet passed summer.

The birch forest is very beautiful, with gray-white bark and green mixed with yellow leaves on the branches.

The yellow leaves stay on the tree for a long time and then swirl down.

The dead leaves were very light. Zhao Yeqing packed them hard in the basket on his back, and it didn't weigh much even if the basket was full on his back.

I carried the leaves back and forth several times, piled the leaves and sheep dung together, mixed them well, sprinkled water on them, and covered them with plastic film to maintain a humidity of about 50%.

It takes time for sheep manure to ferment. Zhao Yeqing looked around the house, looking for work that needed to be done, and saw that there were still goats in the sheep pen that had not been shaved.

This is the life she least wants to face.

Mu Xi set up the shed and came over. Seeing her like this, he knew that she had been tortured by the sheep's wool. He went back to the tool room to get the scissors and entered the sheepfold.

They have to be caught one by one and sheared.

The sheep are captured by grabbing their necks and choked, and the goats are captured by grabbing their two horns.

The trained sheep were very docile, and Mu Xi gently put them down on the ground without struggling at all.

Goat hair is different from sheep hair. Sheep hair is curly hair, while goat hair is white and long.

In terms of the value of wool, goats are much more expensive than sheep. What is more expensive is not the long white hair, but the cashmere underneath.

Goat cashmere is not as thick as sheep wool, and shaving is relatively easy. However, both of them are inexperienced and are afraid of scratching the sheep, so they move cautiously and the efficiency is not high.

The wool is shaved into pieces, and there are a lot of dirt in it that need to be removed manually.

It took Mu Xi three days to shave the seven goats and four days to clean them. He felt Zhao Yeqing's pain firsthand.

Seeing that Mu Xi was more efficient than himself, Zhao Yeqing patted him on the shoulder and said, "From now on, this great and arduous work will be left to you."

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The sheep dung had been rotting for a week and was stirred several times. Zhao Yeqing picked up the sheep dung pellets and crushed them into pieces in his hands.

She stirred it again with a shovel and saw that there was a lot of white matter in the sheep manure pile that looked like mold. This was the fermentation of the bacteria in the sheep manure. After another week, it would be almost ready for use.

Zhao Yeqing returned to the house and pulled off the plastic film covering the bamboo seedling pot to keep it moist, and the vegetable seedlings underneath sprouted lushly.

The seedlings had grown too densely and needed to be thinned out. She was unwilling to throw away the seedlings or feed them to the chickens, as she had done at home before.

She hasn't had fresh vegetables for almost a month.

The small seedlings that were harvested were gently put aside. The bamboo seedling pot was very long, and half of it was not used.

Zhao Yeqing filled this half with fertilizer-added soil and carefully planted the seedlings underneath.

After the sheep dung has decomposed, the seedlings are transplanted into the ground.

Mu Xi walked into the house from the outside. He stayed at the foot of the mountain last night and came back from the foot of the mountain early in the morning.

The family has almost finished eating rice. He went down the mountain yesterday and took out the millet from the village barn to thresh new rice. He was delayed and only came back today.

The villagers had some rice that was infested with worms, and Mu Xi also carried it back, just in time to feed the chickens.

Zhao Yeqing was very relieved to see that there were no more chickens and dogs jumping around in the yard.

Recently, I often take a few puppies to play on the grass near my home, and the puppies are much more lively.

Xiaohua's front leg was broken, and she was holding it in front of her. She could run very fast on three legs, but she was the liveliest one among the puppies.

"Little flower!"

"Wang!"

The little flower already understood its own name. As soon as it heard Zhao Yeqing calling it, it stuck out its tongue, grinned, and rushed over with a smile.

Zhao Yeqing stuffed a piece of dried meat into its mouth. Seeing the snacks, Xiao Huang and Xiao Hei also ran over wagging their tails.

After feeding a few small ones, she did not ignore Rhubarb. She walked over and fed the snacks, touched its head, and sat with it under the eaves to look at the meadow outside.

Originally, sheep grazing was supposed to start in the morning, but now the sun is too strong, so we have to wait until the sun is blocked by the mountains in the afternoon before rhubarb can start grazing.

The sheep also have to graze in the morning.

When Mu Xi was cleaning the cashmere a few days ago, Zhao Yeqing went outside to cut grass for a few days, and now he is almost finished.

When Rhubarb goes to graze, she also has to go out and cut the grass.

She now knew what the place she and Mu Xi saw surrounded by wires on the meadow was for.

From the old man's notes, I saw that those areas were called Cao Kulun, which is a transliteration of Mongolian, meaning grass circle.

It means to encircle the pasture within a certain range and cultivate the pasture inside.

This can increase the yield of forage and prevent overgrazing, which is also an over-grazing during winter and spring when forage is not abundant.

When the sun turned west, Zhao Yeqing and Mu Xi went out with Dahuang.

In addition to mowing the grass, they also need to investigate how many grass circles are around.