The Lucky Farmgirl
Chapter 363 - 352: Cooperation

Chapter 363: Chapter 352: Cooperation

On this side of the Daling, there’s a large irrigation canal passing through, directly crossing the hundred acres of land belonging to Old Master Bai’s family. Their winter wheat this year is planted on both sides of the canal, totaling around twenty acres.

Beyond that, the rest of the land is just a patch of weeds, as no other households in this area plant winter wheat; all this prime land is in the hands of Old Master Bai.

Therefore, it’s also Old Master Bai who had spent a great deal of money to have the canal built, and then the villagers contributed labor, because the canal stretches from the riverside, benefiting all places it passes through.

Manbao is now looking at this large canal with great satisfaction.

With this canal in place, everything will be much more convenient.

It would be impossible for the three children to have walked through a hundred and twenty acres of land and a mountain in such a short time, so they just stood on the rock chosen by Zhou Silang and surveyed the area.

Then, Zhou Silang made a casual gesture, drawing a large circle with his hand, and said, "Look, all of this land is yours."

With a "wow," the three children were amazed. They had seen plenty of fields before; there were fields before they even left the village, and once outside the village gate, there were even more – everywhere they looked was farmland.

But that wasn’t their land. There was no special feeling in looking at it, but now all this land was theirs.

The eyes of the three children were sparkling.

Manbao waved her hand and declared, "Over here we’ll plant beans, over there we’ll plant wheat, and in that area, we’ll plant rice..."

Zhou Silang: ...

Bai Shanbao expressed skepticism, "Isn’t it said that we need to plan? The land that was planted with wheat last year needs to be planted with beans, and the land that was planted with beans can be changed to wheat."

"Er, I forgot, no worries, we still have time. We’ll slowly plan it out when we go back," she said.

Erlang couldn’t contribute to this kind of conversation; his main task was to run errands.

For example, which of their hundred acres had been planted with wheat or beans this year—he would have to run around and ask the farmhands at home.

Now, walking through the fields, Erlang, who usually didn’t recognize the farmhands, could call out each of their names upon seeing them.

Moreover, it had been a while since he last played with his friends. Sometimes, during the bitter cold days, they would follow Manbao to Daling to check out the land covered with weeds.

He really couldn’t understand what was there to see, but both Bai Shan and Zhou Man enjoyed looking at the land with great interest, and Zhou Man would occasionally dig up some soil to take home.

What was the use of bringing it home?

The land was already so poor; would taking the soil home and then bringing it back once make the fertility increase?

Indeed, the soil Manbao took home did have this effect; she dug up several piles of soil to send to Doctor D for analysis.

Although the farming manual was very easy to understand, Manbao still had many questions and inevitably had to ask Doctor D for advice.

These types of inquiries were naturally delegated to Doctor D’s graduate students, so lately the students were using Doctor D’s account to communicate with Manbao.

Doctor D’s research seemed to be going somewhat poorly; Manbao’s exchange objects that she had provided were almost all used up, including the China root soil exchanged for wheat seeds.

If she were to ask Manbao for China root, Manbao wouldn’t have any to give, but she still had plenty of China root soil.

Manbao was particularly stingy when trading; although the China root soil couldn’t be sold for the time being, she only gave Doctor D a small handful during their last exchange.

Bear in mind that, at the beginning, she had collected quite a bit of soil in her space when Zhou Silang was digging up China root, and some of it even contained bits of mycelium.

Lately, Doctor D and her graduate students had been very attentive in helping Manbao answer questions about agriculture, knowing that she was setting up a small farmstead. The graduate students even thoughtfully made some planning suggestions for her.

So Manbao sent them a small handful of soil.

The eagle-eyed graduate student discovered a trace of mycelium in that small handful of soil and was extremely delighted.

Doctor D was also pleased; by now, she had gotten a grasp of Mr. Zhou’s temperament on the other side, realizing he responded better to a soft touch rather than a hard approach, and thus she also generously offered her assistance in other areas.

Such as analyzing soil composition and offering fertilization advice.

Doctor D had already guessed from the existing data that the world in which Manbao and the others were was a very primitive one, where plant nutrition solutions were out of the question, to say nothing of the pesticides and fertilizers that were popular in ancient times.

Doctor D speculated that they only had farmyard manure, what was traditionally known as flower fertilizer.

Generally, such farmyard manure was an all-round supplement for the soil’s fertility, but even if it was all-encompassing, it would have its points of emphasis. For instance, if a certain type of decomposing matter was abundant, the nitrogen content would be higher...

Of course, Manbao didn’t understand this. Not only did Manbao not understand, but even Old Zhou, who had been farming for many years, didn’t grasp these distinctions.

He only knew that when the soil wasn’t fertile enough, he would apply more fertilizer, and if there wasn’t even fertilizer available, then he would plant beans and let the land rest for a few more years.

But this method was laborious and time-consuming, and now that there was a better way, Manbao naturally accepted Doctor D’s suggestions.

So every time she went to the fields, she would dig up soil she deemed different to send to Doctor D’s graduate student for testing.

After the tests, not only would he provide a soil composition report, but he would also give her the corresponding composting ratios.

To the biology graduate student, such tasks were trivial; they didn’t require his research, as the information was all readily available in the materials.

Manbao could find some of the composting materials, and some she could not, but that wasn’t a problem. As long as Manbao provided some more China root soil, the graduate student would adjust the formula based on the materials she gave.

Both parties helped and collaborated with each other, working together happily.

Manbao, too lazy to spend time copying, would let Keke print out these formulas, and the next day she would take them to Bai Shanbao; the two of them started planning to begin composting.

And the land needed to be plowed as well.

Now in the cold winter, plowing the land could turn up the dormant insect eggs, possibly freezing them to death.

Then the weeds would also be turned under the soil, which might decompose and fertilize the soil.

So Bai Shanbao flipped to the farming tools page in the agriculture book and said, "Do we need to make this thing?"

Manbao replied, "We don’t know how to make it, uh, I showed my brother, and he said it’s almost the same as our plow at home, there are some differences, like our home plow is straight, and this is curved."

"The carpenter can definitely make it, we could draw a picture and take it to the county city for the carpenter to see. If he can make it, we’ll have my grandmother invite him over to do it," Bai Shanbao suggested, since it was his grandmother who would be paying.

Manbao had no problem with that, so she pulled out a large sheet of paper, dipped her brush in the ink, and handed it to Bai Shanbao.

Bai Shanbao looked up at her.

Manbao stretched out her chin, signaling for him to take it and get started.

Bai Shanbao didn’t take it and said, "I can’t draw."

Manbao was dumbfounded, and after blinking her eyes, she asked, "Do I know how to draw?"

"Don’t you know whether you can or not?" he replied.

Manbao bit on the brush handle and seriously examined the plow illustrated in the book, trying her hand at drawing, but after a long while, Bai Shanbao criticized, "You drew it wrong, didn’t you? It’s not that crooked here, and look, this and this are separated, but they’re clearly connected in the illustration."

Manbao then put down the brush and said, "You draw it."

"I don’t want to," he huffed. Humph, he wasn’t dumb; he knew he wasn’t good at it and wouldn’t draw.

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