Farm Girl's Manor
Chapter 488 Busy Farming in the Deep Mountains (2)_1

Chapter 488: Chapter 488 Busy Farming in the Deep Mountains (2)_1

Now, the seedlings raised in early April by the Mo Family were grown, and the terraced fields were filled with spring water, just waiting to be transplanted. Transplanting is easy work, aside from getting a bit sunburned, and having sore waists and legs from bending for too long, it didn’t require much effort. Each day, there was also a wage of fifteen to twenty wen, so every villager who had time and could transplant quickly made their way to do so.

The rice variety was a hybrid from a previous life, and there were certain requirements for the spacing between seedlings and rows; they couldn’t be too dense, or it would lead to decreased yield, and weeding and pest control would also be inconvenient.

Despite having cautioned them at the beginning, Mo Yan still worried that some people would transplant according to the spacing used previously. Once she was done with the tasks in the herbal garden, she made a special trip to that terraced field.

When she arrived at the field and saw the dense clusters of seedlings that had been transplanted too close together, with spacing only half of what she had mentioned, Mo Yan didn’t know what to say.

An old man Ding, seeing her troubled expression, earnestly advised her, "Yan girl, I’ve farmed all my life, and I’ve never seen anyone’s seedling spacing as wide as you say! The soil layer of this paddy field is shallow, and it’s unused virgin land. If we transplant at the spacing you suggest, the seedlings will certainly not close up once they grow, wouldn’t that be a waste of good land?"

Knowing that old man Ding meant well, Mo Yan wasn’t angry but simply pulled up a few seedlings to explain, "Old man Ding, you are skilled at farming, and what you say makes sense. It’s just that these seedlings really are different from before; their tillering is quite strong! Look, ordinary seedlings, once raised, are all single stocks, while what you hold now has at least grown into three stalks. Isn’t this tillering better than previous seedlings? Continuing this way, once they take root and start tillering, they will be even stronger. But with such narrow spacing, they will not have room to grow, and in the end, they will crowd each other and surely die!"

Hearing the old and the young debate, the other villagers, while transplanting, pricked up their ears to listen. They too noticed the difference in these seedlings; however, they had also raised seedlings before and had never seen ones like this. They didn’t fully believe Mo Yan’s words, thinking these seedlings, as she said, were new varieties brought in from other places and thus required wider spacing when transplanting.

Old man Ding looked at the seedlings in his hand compared to those he’d raised before displacement, and couldn’t help but nod, "Indeed that’s the case. The seedlings have been raised in the same amount of time as previous ones, but their tillering is much more vigorous. Just transplanted, they look as if they’ve been in the field for seven or eight days."

Seeing that he finally acknowledged this point, Mo Yan pressed on, "Old man Ding, I don’t know what’s changed with these seedlings, but since they tiller so quickly, they will certainly tiller more than the original seedlings. With such narrow spacing, won’t they be crowded? Moreover, wider spacing means we harvest a bit less grain, but if it’s too narrow, the stalks in the middle of the field will probably die from overcrowding, and then we really would have a total crop failure!"

At the mention of "total crop failure," old man Ding’s expression finally changed. Peasant families rely on the land for their livelihood. If crop failure was caused by incorrect seedling spacing, wouldn’t that be devastating?

Ultimately, the villagers heeded Mo Yan’s advice and widened the spacing of the seedlings. As for the few acres that had already been transplanted, Mo Yan didn’t ask them to redo it, leaving it as a negative example so that people wouldn’t always think narrower spacing and more seedlings would yield a better harvest.

The area of one hundred and twenty acres of paddy fields wasn’t small. Without a rice transplanting machine and relying only on the labor of a hundred and fifty people, it took a full three days to finish transplanting. The seedlings’ transplantation was just the first step. Whether or not there would be a good harvest depended on subsequent management. After all, Spirit Spring Water wasn’t a cure-all; it enhanced the growth of the seedlings, promoting rapid development, but it also benefited the field weeds and even fattened the pests. Therefore, the follow-up management had to be meticulous.

Mo Yan had only grown rice in Space, where there were no weeds or pests to deal with—planting just meant waiting for the harvest. She had no experience in managing rice, so she planned to find someone to take care of it.

She had a good impression of Old man Ding, a lifelong farmer skilled in cultivation, so with a monthly wage of 300 wen, she asked him to check on the seedlings daily. As soon as irrigation, weeding, pest control, or fertilization was needed, he would help find people to do it, and if he did the work himself, she would pay him extra.

In this way, he secured a good monthly income. For Old man Ding, who was struggling to make ends meet, this was a "lucrative job," and he agreed almost without hesitation.

With no need to worry much about the fields, Mo Yan focused all her energy on the winery and herbal garden.

After months of searching and deliberation, she had settled on a location for the winery. It was upstream about three miles from Liu Yang Village, where the outlet of a small river was located—a large, flat, and open valley with several slopes of varying sizes on both sides, perfect for building houses and planting grapes.

As for the herbal garden, she hadn’t found a suitable caretaker, and it couldn’t be left unattended daily. Mo Yan spent almost every day there, but fortunately, she had the Space, which operated in a different time zone. After working there, she could rest inside, slowly preparing for the winery; otherwise, even if she had an extra pair of hands and a head, she might still have trouble coping with everything.

However, on the tenth of May, Mo Yan set aside all her current tasks and followed three beasts into the mountains, meeting with the Red Python, which hadn’t come down for a long time and had grown thicker. Under their cautious guidance, she entered the deep, unexplored parts of Yuhua Mountain.

The stacked peaks, the dense forest that blocked the sky, and the strange noises that occasionally came from the deep woods caused even the three beasts and the Red Python to change their usually playful attitude when entering the mountains, becoming cautious. All this made Mo Yan involuntarily tense, carefully observing the surroundings, ready to shelter in Space with the four beasts at any sign of danger.

No one knew the true extent of Yuhua Mountain. With the naturally enwisened Dabai, the century-old Red Python, and even the Black Lingzhi, which had disappeared from outside the mountain, who could tell if there were beasts more powerful than Dabai and the Red Python inside?

Although the heart of Yuhua Mountain was a tremendous natural treasure, Mo Yan didn’t dare to be careless. Previous forays into the mountain were safe since they took place within the territories of the Red Python and Dabai. This time, however, was different; no one could anticipate what might happen...