OBS Chapter 332 Sweeping the snow on the ground?
Chapter 332 Sweeping the snow on the ground?
Li was about to cry when she saw this. She felt heartache, relief, and a mixture of all kinds of emotions.
Although there is no farming season in winter, people are not really idle. As soon as the snow falls, we have to go to the woods to catch more prey before the mountains are closed. We don't raise them at this time. We just process the prey after catching them, rub them with salt, build an enclosed space under the eaves, and smoke them with the pine and cypress branches we cut. After smoking for ten days or half a month, it becomes bacon.
Li looked at the piles of meat and felt emotional. She couldn't help but recall the past. "In the past, my family raised two or three pigs. At the end of the year, we sold the others and kept only one for ourselves. There was too much meat, so we smeared it with salt and smoked it until it turned yellow or black. It could be kept on the stove for a long time. During festivals, we would cut off a piece when we hired people to work. We could eat it slowly for a year and have new meat at the end of the year."
Zhou Xing and Zhou Guzhi nodded, "During the busy farming season, we exchanged jobs with others. Every time, we had to cook this meat. We would stir-fry a bowl of meat and put some other vegetables in it. It was delicious."
Unfortunately, I never had it again.
Zhou Guo said, "It's okay. When we go back to town for the market, we'll drive the ox cart to cut off half of the meat, rub it with salt, and hang it in here to smoke. We'll be able to eat it in half a month."
In fact, she thinks that the smoked wax rabbit is similar to lean bacon pork. The meat is firm, but the taste is a little worse. However, they both have the taste of bacon. Maybe they are both smoked with pine and cypress branches?
As soon as these words were spoken, everyone shook their heads.
"There's no meat at home, so why spend that money?"
No one agreed, even Zhou Su nodded.
Zhou Guo had to give up the idea. It was a pity. Although these were all meat, pork was different. Home-raised pigs were even more different. They were fatter than wild boars, had thicker fat, and had a different taste.
She decided to buy half a pork when she bought oil next time. Her family had always eaten pork from the mountains, and they had only eaten pork from there a few times. She also decided to buy some pork belly to make braised pork, which she hadn't eaten for a long time.
The snow fell intermittently for five or six days and then stopped.
There was no need to go into the mountains to hunt. Since there was nothing to do at home anyway, Zhou Guo simply took his brothers and went to the fields with hoes and shovels.
"See? Just use the hoe to press the snow into the ground, deeper and deeper."
Everyone did it, but they didn’t understand, “Why do we do this?”
Zhou Guo used the hoe to pound the soil, not even looking up, and said, "There's a saying that goes, 'Auspicious snow means a good harvest.' Snow is a good thing. If we press it down like this, the pests in the soil will freeze to death in the spring, and the ground will retain moisture, so the crops will grow better."
Everyone was stunned.
Zhou Gu slapped his thigh and said, "In the past, the older generation would be happy when they saw the heavy snow, saying that the crops would be good next year, but we never took care of it. Do we have to keep pushing it in like this?"
Zhou Mi nodded and said, "In that case, the plants that have been pressed down by the snow may grow better than those that have not been pressed down by the snow. I just don't know if the difference is that big."
Zhou Mai said: "It should be bigger. Think about it, after the snow left in the ground melts, most of it flows away, and there is still a small part left. If you press it in like this, most of it will go into the ground, there will be more water, and most of the insects will be frozen to death, so the yield will definitely be higher."
Several people were unable to reach an agreement on the topic for a while.
Zhou Guo raised his head and said, "This is easy. We choose two plots of land with similar fertility, press one in and leave the other unpressed. After the spring comes, we plant the same crops, fertilize, weed, and loosen the soil all in one day. We'll know the result by weighing them when we harvest."
Although the method is feasible, everyone is somewhat unhappy about it.
Zhou Mi frowned and said, "If this happens, how much less food will we have to harvest? It's not worth it, right?"
Zhou Mai said: "It's not worth it. Just to see how much difference there is in the harvest, it's a bad deal to collect so much less grain."
Zhou Guo pointed to one of the plots of land and said, "Then let's not have two plots of land, just one. I think the small plot of land that Master has is very good, only about five or six points. Divide it into two plots, half for cultivation and half for non-cultivation. Even if the harvest is very different, it doesn't matter. With so little land, you can't harvest much food anyway."
Everyone looked in the direction of her finger and saw that the gentleman's land was squeezed into a corner, neither too big nor too small, just right to be used as two experimental plots.
"Okay, then we'll use this piece of land and the big rock as the dividing point, and we'll press this half."
After the discussion, everyone was very excited and couldn't wait for spring to come to see if this method could really help them harvest more grain.
When Li heard that pressing the snow inside would help the crops grow better, she smiled and said, "Then I'll go with you guys tomorrow. Anyway, I'll just do some mending work when I'm idle at home."
The whole family spent three or four days pressing all the snow into the ground.
The villagers saw them going to the fields in the middle of winter, and they were puzzled and curious, "Guoguo's mother, what are you doing? You are still digging the snow on the ground. Are you going to plow the soil?"
Li said, "I'm just sitting around doing nothing at home anyway, why not go take a look at the fields, sweep the snow, and stretch your muscles? Do you want to come with me?"
Everyone waved their hands and said, "No, no, we won't go. We've been busy for a year. If we don't take a break now, when will we take a break?"
"Yes, I finally have some free time, I have to take a good rest, I can't be busy all year round, even cows can rest in winter."
Everyone nodded and went to visit each other, carrying the leftover melon seeds from the corners of their own fields. They didn't take a break in the middle of winter, so why did they go to the fields to sweep the snow when they had nothing to do? It was like taking off their pants to fart. Don't they know that auspicious snow means a good harvest?
What a foolish family.
Within half a day, the news that the Zhou family had nothing better to do than sweep the snow from the fields spread throughout the village.
The villagers laughed behind his back, "These people from the south are different from us. The snow in front of their own house is not enough to be swept, so they go to sweep the fields. Have the southerners never seen snow? They are so idle!"
"It's hard to say. I think they don't know the benefits of snow covering the ground. I think we should talk about it. We live in the same village. If they find out about it, it would be bad if they see that no one in our village said anything to stop it."
Everyone pondered and saw the joke. It was time to remind them that food was a very important matter. As fellow villagers, they couldn't just sit there and watch.
The local villagers were laughing at the joke.
When the other families who had fled here together heard the news, they could no longer sit still and went to the fields.
This snow cannot be swept.
No family was left out, and several families were dumbfounded when they arrived at the fields.
The snow in Zhou's field had really disappeared, not a single piece was left, and the ground looked as if it had just been turned over, bare.
"Where is the snow?" I looked around but didn't see any snow piles anywhere. Where did the snow go?
"This shouldn't be the case. Didn't Li handle everything? How come he managed to sweep away all the snow?"
"It's okay. I heard that it snows a lot here in winter. It snows every now and then. Winter is still long."
The Zhou family had finished their work and went home happily.