The Lucky Farmgirl
Chapter 364 - 353: Agricultural Plow

Chapter 364: Chapter 353: Agricultural Plow

Both of them looked over at Bai Erlang, who was buried in eating snacks.

Bai Erlang didn’t even look up, "If you trust me to do it, then I’ll do it."

They immediately turned their heads, "Never mind, we’ll figure it out ourselves."

Both children loved books; they certainly couldn’t tear out these few pages, right? Nor could they hand the whole book over to the carpenter—if he ruined it, what then?

Manbao and Bai Shanbao subconsciously knew this agricultural book was important and couldn’t easily show it to others.

Bai Shanbao scratched his face in distress. Was it too late to learn how to draw now?

Of course, it was too late.

When Ms. Zheng brought them snacks, she found three kids sitting at their desks, two of them struggling with drawing and one with homework.

Bai Erlang, who was sitting beside them working on his homework, every time he felt too frustrated to continue would look up at the pair furrowing their brows over their drawings, and it calmed him enough to keep going with his work.

The pair beside him were worse off, weren’t they?

He was a child who could do homework, while they didn’t even have time for that, having to draw first.

When Ms. Zheng glanced over and saw their drawings were all smudgy, she couldn’t help but say, "That’s not how you draw."

Manbao and Bai Shanbao looked up sharply, their eyes glittering as they looked at Ms. Zheng.

"Mom, can you draw?"

Ms. Zheng hesitated for a moment, "I know a bit."

Manbao immediately put down her pen, jumped off her chair, and eagerly helped Ms. Zheng to sit in her spot. She dipped the brush in ink and offered it to her, "Auntie, you do it."

Ms. Zheng hesitated somewhat.

Bai Shanbao was already nodding repeatedly, quickly scrunching up and tossing aside their smudgy, formless drawings. He then spread out a fresh, large sheet of white drawing paper for her.

Ms. Zheng, faced with her son’s hopeful, shining eyes, couldn’t help but take the pen from Manbao’s hand. After a moment’s hesitation, she said, "The thing you’re drawing, is it that new farming tool you mentioned?"

The two children nodded.

Ms. Zheng didn’t understand farming, so she couldn’t see the difference in the tool, but she knew a bit about drawing and was quite good at design patterns.

So she thought for a moment and said, "These drawings need to be proportional, right? Get me a ruler; I’ll use that."

Bai Shanbao and Manbao eagerly brought her a ruler, served her with snacks, and poured water for her.

This was the first time Ms. Zheng enjoyed such treatment from the two children, smiling coyly as she refused Manbao’s snacks and bowed her head to draw attentively.

The graduate student had thoughtfully provided the structure of the plow in separate parts and also explained the principle of assembly.

So Ms. Zheng had to draw each of the parts down one by one, with measurements included on the diagram.

Ms. Zheng copied them down too.

After inspecting it closely, Manbao said to Bai Shanbao, "It looks better than what you drew, and it resembles it more."

"It’s better than what you drew too."

Bai Erlang couldn’t help peering over for a look as well.

Bai Shanbao shooed him away disdainfully, "Go back to your homework."

Ms. Zheng, also annoyed by the disturbance, waved them off, "You too, go do your homework."

Bai Shanbao and Manbao then dragged two chairs to sit behind Bai Erlang’s desk, the three kids sharing one desk.

Bai Erlang, sitting across from the two of them: ...

Manbao took out her own homework and saw Bai Erlang looking stunned, so she asked, "What are you doing, is your homework done?"

Bai Erlang huffed, packed away his homework, and said, "I’m not doing homework with you."

Even though the homework on both sides was different, Bai Erlang still felt a blow to his pride, so he didn’t want to sit at the same desk as them to do his homework.

After Bai Erlang left, Manbao and Bai Shanbao didn’t mind and continued to work on their homework, head down.

Mr. Zhuang wouldn’t assign them less homework just because they had a new toy of over a hundred acres.

The drawings, after being meticulously compared by Manbao and Bai Shanbao and confirmed to have no issues, were folded and handed over to Daji to take to the county town to find a carpenter, to see if it was possible to craft the tool.

Of course, Daji wasn’t the one to go to the county town; he handed it over to another servant.

Ms. Liu had said, the Bai family servants were at Manbao and Bai Shanbao’s disposal so long as it was for legitimate business.

As the weather grew colder and the Old Zhou Family’s yams were all harvested, prepared for the next seed planting, the Bai Family’s servants finally shouldered a plow back from the county town.

Old Master Bai and Old Zhou couldn’t resist coming to join in the excitement.

Of course, Old Master Bai didn’t understand much about it, so he stepped back, leaving the center stage to Old Zhou.

Old Zhou curiously touched it, saying, "It’s not much different than the plows we’re used to. Hmm, this part is much shorter, and it’s curved..."

Manbao urged him, "Dad, try it and see if it works well."

"Okay," Old Zhou turned to his sons.

Zhou Dalang and Zhou Sanlang moved forward to pull the plow, and Old Master Bai quickly said, "We have cattle at home."

He then had someone bring over the cattle.

But Old Zhou waved them off, "No need, no need; I’m used to people pulling it, I wouldn’t be comfortable with cattle."

Every spring plowing season, cattle were shared among the Qili Village families, allocated by the imperial court—of course, the cattle were raised in Dali Village.

The Zhous would have to wait a long time for their turn, and Old Zhou, of course, couldn’t wait for that to plow his fields, so he was accustomed to people pulling the plow. When it was their turn, they would then sow the less fertile fields that they hadn’t managed to plant in time.

Zhou Dalang and Zhou Sanlang slung ropes over their shoulders, and once Old Zhou steadied the plow, they began to move forward.

They had only walked a bit when both stopped and turned around in surprise.

Old Zhou too sensed the trick to it, stopped the plow and used his foot to roll over the soil it had turned, then knelt down to measure the depth with his hands.

He looked at his sons and asked, "Is it tough?"

Zhou Dalang replied, "No, it’s less strenuous than before."

Old Zhou nodded and said, "I felt the plow was lighter too, but it seems to plow deeper than before."

Old Master Bai joined in, asking, "Is it deeper because this is a new plow?"

Old Zhou glanced at this layman and inwardly scorned him before smilingly replying, "The newness is one aspect, but the main thing is, this plow is good. I don’t know how it saves effort, but even if you put two brand new plows side by side, this one is still the more efficient."

Zhou Dalang and Zhou Sanlang nodded; they were the ones who regularly pulled plows and knew best about the effort required.

Now in the dead of winter, with the ground dry and hard, it was difficult to plow.

The brothers exchanged glances and decided to get a better feel for this new plow, so they said, "Let’s pull it again and see."

Old Zhou also wanted another go at it.

So he steadied the plow once more, and as his sons pulled, they went all the way to the end. When it was time to turn the plow with his sons, Manbao quickly said, "This plow can turn."

It took some puzzling before everyone understood what Manbao meant by turning: there was no need to lift the whole thing; just raising the rear of the plow was enough to turn it completely.

Old Zhou became even more fond of it, and even Zhou Dalang and Zhou Sanlang couldn’t resist coming forward to feel it, asking, "Manbao, did you come up with this plow?"

"Not me, it was the carpenter; I don’t do woodworking."

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