Farmer’s Stepmother’s Skillful Farming

Chapter 390 Dragon Boat Festival

 Otherwise, if the over-wet wheat grains are harvested, they will become shriveled grains after the moisture is dried, and the harvest will be greatly compromised.

But then again, the wheat cannot be ripened too hard, otherwise when the wheat ears are touched when cutting the wheat, the wheat grains will fall down and fall into the ground, making it much more difficult to pick up and it will also be wasted. .

And it is already summer, and it is always easy to have showers in summer. If there is a wind and rain, the wheat will lie on a large area and get wet on the ground. Before the harvest, the wheat will sprout again...

 So when to start harvesting wheat is a very learned matter.

Farmers have been farming all year round and are quite experienced in this. Looking at the growth of the wheat, they have begun to sharpen their sickles and prepare food, ready to harvest wheat at any time.

 For this reason, festivals like the Dragon Boat Festival are not taken seriously here.

And wheat cobs are abundant here. Rice and glutinous rice are okay to eat occasionally, but they are not eaten as staple food for a long time. Many people are even not used to eating rice dumplings because of this.

During the Dragon Boat Festival here, they pay special attention to eating steamed eggs with their shells intact, and whole steamed garlic with their skins on. In addition, they twist colorful ropes for the children to tie their bracelets. Those who are wealthy and have spare time at home sew sachets for them. The children took them out to show off.

　　Even when it comes to hanging mugwort on the door, some people do it and some don't.

Because of this custom, on the Dragon Boat Festival, the whole village is filled with an indescribable smell.

After all, steamed garlic has a much stronger smell than raw garlic. When people eat it, they talk to each other like this...

Paired with the strong smell of scattered inferior spices from the sachet, and the smell of mugwort...

 Sumlan Dang even decided to plant less garlic this year.

 After the Dragon Boat Festival, every family enters the busy farming period.

The soil was dug up in advance and pressed flat with stone rollers, and it became a wheat field.

The harvested wheat was spread flat with the ears and rods on top of the field. The cattle were brought over, and the stone rollers were pulled over the wheat to continuously crush the wheat grains to completely separate the wheat grains from the ears.

After making sure that all the wheat grains have fallen off, take the top layer of wheat straw with a wheat fork and put it aside to form a stack of wheat straw. Then take advantage of the evening wind to blow away the broken wheat grains, so that the clean wheat grains can be packed. After taking the sack, he pulled it into his yard and left it in the sun for two or three days. When it was completely dry, he took it to grind flour, exchanged it for money, or returned it to a warehouse for storage.

But this seemingly simple job of wheat threshing requires three important things: a supermarket, an ox, and a stone roller, and not every household has these.

 So every year at this time, Bai Kangyuan would gather the strong laborers and cattle in the village in advance to do these tasks.

Those who do not have these things and want to thresh wheat will be paid per acre if they transport the wheat. Those who contribute labor and oxen can thresh wheat for free, and depending on the length of time the person and oxen work, the amount will be paid. Get some extra money.

In order to return the wheat to the warehouse as soon as possible and avoid wind and rain damage to the harvest, several wheat threshing fields were built in the village. Work started at dawn, and only after dark did the busy people pack up and return home.

In this way, it can be said that every household can have time to thresh wheat, and can avoid unnecessary losses caused by not threshing wheat in time.

 (End of this chapter)