North and South groceries

In the fourth month of the lunar calendar, after two spring rains, the feeling of spring is even stronger, and the swallows who flew south for the winter earlier also flew back one after another.

In this era, there are no pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and there are bugs growing in the ground. Apart from relying on manpower to catch them, the second is to rely on animals such as swallows and frogs. Xipo Village has a lot of dry land, and frogs are relatively rare, but swallows are common.

The villagers hope that the swallows will like their place and come back every year instead of going to other places, so they are very friendly to the swallows, and they are just enshrined.

If any naughty child dared to poke the swallow's mud nest with a wooden stick, broom, etc., a fat beating would definitely be inevitable.Don't blame the parents for being ruthless. Swallows are too important to the farmers. If they are offended, these naughty children may not even be able to eat in the future. A beating is nothing.

In fact, swallows are also nostalgic. Last year they built their nests under the eaves of that family, and most of them still go there this year. Last year’s little swallows grew up, and this year they came back with their parents to form new families and build new nests.

A pair of swallows chose to build their nests in Luo’s yard. Luo Yong was very happy with them. The two young ones squatted under the eaves all day long, watching the two swallows come back with soil bit by bit. , little by little to build a swallow's nest.

As the weather warmed up, Liulang and Qiniang were also alive recently, chasing the chickens in the yard and running around. When they were happy, they let out a burst of giggles, and the chickens were also caught. They chased and chattered.

Although the two brothers and sisters are twins, they don't look very much alike, after all, they are still fraternal eggs.

Qiniang's little girl looks clever, but Liulang is more refined and delicate than Qiniang. They are the same age, and they often fight. After each fight, Liulang is usually the one who cries. No way, I can't beat it.

Luo Yong came out of the house, led the donkey and hitched it to the cart. When the two little ones below saw it, they quickly surrounded him: "Brother, brother, where are you going?"

These two little Doudings are also said to be four years old during Chinese New Year, but in fact they are not yet three years old. They can still talk, just mumbling, and sometimes they are not very clear. Before Luo Sanlang had no accident, he The two didn't remember much, and when Luo Yong woke up later, the two of them were a little skeptical, but they had been fed delicious food and drink for the past few months, and they were already cooked.

"Brother, go to the field to water the fertilizer, you two stay in the yard obediently." Luo Yong lifted a few wooden barrels from the bottom of the wall and put them on the donkey cart, and took a long-handled water ladle.

"Brother, I'm going to water the fertilizer too." Liu Lang said in a childish voice.

"I want to water it too, I want to water it too." Qiniang also shouted.

"Goro, Goro." Luo Yong stood in the yard and shouted.

"What for?" Goro poked his head out from the canteen.

"Take Liulang Qiniang to play for a while, don't let them run around." Luo Yong couldn't do anything with the two little ones, so he called Wulang to help.

"They don't know how to play by themselves." Goro groaned, "I still have to work."

"Take them to play well, and when the two of them grow up, they will be able to help you." Luo Yong coaxed him.

"How long will it take?" Goro worried.

"It's only two or three years. You can see that many children in the village who are six or seven years old can work." Luo Yong said.

"Okay." Goro thought for a while, and felt that this investment could still be made.

"Brother, I want to take them with me, and let them work for me." Si Niang heard the news, and came out with her baggy cloth shoes.

"Well, Liulang will bring it to Shiro, and Qiniang will bring it to you." Luo Yong made an assignment for them.

Then Si Niang and Wu Lang happily took Liu Lang and Qiniang into the canteen and taught them how to work. They were picking beans at the moment, and the bad beans had to be sorted out in time so that the good ones would not be lost. The beans were also infected with worms.

Seeing this scene, Luo Yong also heaved a sigh of relief. Seeing Er Niang in the next room looking over her head, he waved his hand to signal her to do her own thing.

Too many children in the family is also a problem, especially for a doll as big as Liulang Qiniang, no one will look at it, and Luo Yong and Erniang have their own affairs to be busy, so they had to coax Siniang and the others to take care of them. These two are small.

Luo Yong drove the donkey cart out of the yard, down the small slope in front of his house, and went to the ditch behind the pigsty to scoop up some pig urine.

When his apprentices were repairing the pigsty for him, they considered that the terrain behind the pigsty was relatively low, and pig urine and dung flowed there all the year round. It was broken, so I found some stones and built a low wall with stones, and then built adobe on it.

In the ditch behind the pigsty, a lot of manure has been accumulated recently. When those things first came out, they smelled very strong and didn’t look very good. It’s just that after a period of fermentation, and the temperature has started to rise recently. Gradually, the dirty water in the ditch turned dark green, and the smell was not so strong.

Luo used about one-fifth of the fat and water in each wooden barrel, and then drove the donkey to his field. When he passed a ditch, he added some clear water from the ditch to the barrel to blend it. , this fertilizer and water are not easy to burn seedlings.

The wheat in his wheat field has grown tall now, and the millet has sprouted.

Taking care of the crops is not an easy job, and some delicate farmers can't wait to work in the field every day.Luo Yong's land is only about ten mu of land. Generally, a small household has a hundred mu of land, and some people have to open up some wasteland for planting.

Luo Yong has recently spent some thought on farming. He saw that the people here are still quite backward in terms of planting technology. Although there is fertilization and watering, the fertilizer is mainly human and animal dung and birds. There is a saying of composting. But I don't know much about the appearance of retting fat.

The soil in Luo’s field is not considered fertile either. Luo spent the past two days looking through the book “Soil and Fertilizer Science” in the space. This book is mainly based on the analysis of soil structure and various elements. Lord, I also talked about some organic fertilizers.

Luo Yong saw a section about green manure earlier, so he wanted to try it out, but thinking about it, those things were buried in the fields to rot, and they were afraid that they would attract pests. There are no pesticides to control diseases and insect pests these days.

As for composting, he is also doing it now. The straw that was pulled out of the pigsty is piled up on a small piece of sand and gravel behind the pigsty. When the weather gets hotter and the sun shines, it will probably be ready for use. up.If you want to make it more detailed, you have to dig a hole and fertilize it. Luo Yong hasn't spared time to do this yet.

Luo Yong saw a note in that book last night, which should be a class note made by the previous owner of the book. It said: "The method of burning soil and manure, "Chen Fu Nong Shu", using hay and fine soil... ..."

Using this method to make fertilizer can not only obtain effective fertilizer in a relatively short period of time, but also has the effect of killing bacteria and insect eggs, which can suppress pests and diseases to a certain extent. Luo Yong thinks he should give it a try.

I transported several carts of fertilizer and water back and forth to irrigate the field, but failed to irrigate all the wheat in the five mu of land. It seemed that it only watered more than one mu of land. Luo Yong made a mark there, and he will follow it tomorrow Follow this mark and pour back, and within three to five days, all the wheat will be watered again.

When I went back, I passed by the pigsty, and I watered the vegetable field that my family opened there. Vegetables drink water quickly. When it doesn’t rain, I have to water it almost every day. I have to water it twice, but fortunately, it is close to home, and the vegetable field is not too big, so it is not very difficult to water it.

Two days later, in the evening, according to what was written in the note, Luo Yong burned soil and dung on a barren slope outside his yard.

Seeing the thick smoke soaring into the sky, many villagers thought that Luo's or Yao's family had run into water. Those who were enthusiastic rushed out of their houses with wooden buckets, fetched water from the ditch by the roadside, and walked all the way. He ran towards the entrance of the village, but ran over to see where the water was, and saw Luo Sanlang and Rao Weng standing beside a smoking mound and talking, both of them looked okay.

"Sanlang, what's going on here?" After everyone came, these people were not in a hurry to go back. In the evening, it was the most leisurely time for the villagers.

"I'm going to burn some fertilizer for the millet in the field." Seeing that many of them were carrying buckets, Luo Yong also laughed.

"What kind of fertilizer needs to be burned, but it needs to be burned?" They also have the habit of using plant ash to fertilize the field, but looking at the small smoking mound, it doesn't look like it needs to be burned.

"Hay and leaves are added in there. I reckon that the crops in the field will like these. When it is cooked tomorrow, some pig urine will be mixed in." Luo Sanlang pointed to the pile of things and said to everyone He squinted and smiled.

"What kind of strange method are you doing? Don't ruin the crops in the field." The villagers kindly reminded.

"You see, as long as you feed the pigs some cooked food, they will grow so fat. If you make some cooked food for the crops in the field, they might like it too." Luo Yong combined his current situation Age, said this slightly naive words.

When the villagers heard what he said, they seemed to have some reason. When Luo Sanlang and the others cooked hot food for those piglets, everyone thought it was a little weird, and some of them were not acceptable.

But the development of things afterwards is obvious to all.During this period of time, the pigs of the Luo family have been getting fatter day by day, and their round and fat appearance is no match for other pigs.So now the villagers say that Luo Sanlang is really smart, he can think of things that others can't think of.

This time Luo Yong said that he wanted to cook food for the crops in the field, which was even more absurd than the previous pig food, but with the previous incident, this time no one interrupted him on the spot, he just watched it as a novelty and planned to do it later. They have to pay attention to the movement of the Luo family for a few days. If the fertilizer burned is really good, they will naturally have to follow suit.

When they came back to see it the next evening, Luo Yong had already poured pig urine on top of the burnt dung. The soil that had been dried by the fire had absorbed enough water, and it looked damp and dark in color. It looks like a lot of fat.

The farmer's house is not too dirty, so he stretched out his hand and grabbed it. It was soft, and it would not form a ball when squeezed. An old farmer with decades of planting experience immediately said: "It is really a good fertilizer."

When the other villagers heard this, they immediately became bustling. It turned out that hay and fine mud can also be used to burn fertilizers. In this way, how much manure can they save.

In this era, the land is sparsely populated, and due to the implementation of the equal-field system in the early years, each farmer has a lot of fields. So many fields need to be fertilized, and the little human and animal excrement produced by the family is simply not enough.If Luo Sanlang's method is practical, then they will hardly need to worry about the problem of fertilizer shortage in the future, which is a great thing for farmers like them.

"For things that have just been burned, it is better to put them for two days to remove the fire, so as not to hurt the crops." Just now the old farmer reminded Luo Yongdao.

"Thank you for reminding me, old man." Luo Yong also acted very modestly.

Afterwards, the villagers asked Luo Sanlang for advice, what kind of things were used to burn the soil dung, how to pile up these things, and how to burn them.Luo Yong didn't hide his secrets either, he told everything he knew.

Then, without waiting for the next day, the villagers began to collect such things as dry grass, dead leaves and fine mud. That night, someone lit a mound of soil and dung near their house, and the thick smoke drifted farther and farther under the dark sky. Until it disappeared among the mountains, the sunset glow on the other side seemed to have a bit of smoke and fire.

Because many villagers in Xipo Village are engaged in tofu business and have close contacts with people in several nearby villages, the method of burning soil and dung spread quickly.

"Such a good idea, I really don't know who came up with it." One day, in a certain village, a villager was overjoyed with a pile of soil dung, holding a handful of dark and soft soil dung burned by himself in his hand. The neighbor sighed.

"You don't know?" His neighbor said: "The method of burning soil and dung was passed down from Luo Sanlang in Xipo Village."

"Luo Sanlang?" The villager felt that these three words sounded vaguely familiar.

"Isn't it Na Luo's coffin board?" His wife asked carefully.

"Yes, that's him." The neighbor nodded first, and then immediately said: "Hey, what a coffin board, don't talk like that again in the future, be careful to tarnish Luo Gong's reputation."

"That's right..." The couple quickly agreed.

At the same time, the same conversation is happening in many other places.

……

"Who are you talking about?"

"Royal."

"I've never heard of that name before."

"It's Naluo's coffin board."

"Oh! That's him!"

"Hush! Don't talk about coffin boards anymore."

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"Where did you say this method came from?"

"The Luo family in Xipo Village."

"The Luo family?"

"That's the one……"

"Oh, I remembered, it's that Luo's coffin board, right?"

"Hey, stop calling me that."

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"Luo coffin board..."

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"Luo coffin board..."

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"Luo coffin board..."

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