Ancient Eden - Chapter 146
Chapter 146
(45.3)
When Mu Qing left the settlement, she brought out a bag of millet, which she had been carefully saving until now, to use as seeds.
Millet was just slightly smaller compared to rice, their plants were a bit taller than the modern rice and wheat she had seen, and when it bore fruit, those were spread out in spikes. She asked Li Mang how the seeds were sown here. But Li Mang actually scratched his head and said he didn’t know. She laughed, dumbfounded.
Perhaps because of the limitations of the tools or the yield, in their minds, planting crops still remained only optional, and it was likely that they thought it was something for the women to do, and that it was only proper for the men to go hunt and bring back enough meat.
But from now on, she wanted him to slowly learn that farming, once it reached a certain point, could slowly replace hunting as a more stable source of food for them. That way he wouldn’t have to go out hunting every day to feed themselves, and could have more time to do something else.
Mu Qing’s hometown was in the southern countryside. Although she did not go to the fields when she was a child, she still had some impression left regarding farming matters. Thinking back carefully, she put the millet in warm water and soaked it for one day and one night, and on the next day, she took the soaked seeds and went to the field with Li Mang to start sowing.
Li Mang squatted down to sow the seeds and she followed him. He was digging a shallow hole and burying a few seeds in it, and then she used her tools to rake the soil back to cover the seeds.
Approximately one hole was sown at an interval of one hand each time. They did it this way until the seeds were all sown, it was approximately less than an acre of land.
Mu Qing couldn’t help but regret a little not having saved more millet back then. But very quickly, she began to focus on her potato roots.
Last year they had stored up a lot of potato roots before winter, and there were still some left. Before spring, Mu Qing selected a pile of full-sized ones, sprayed them with some water and stacked them in a corner beside the fire, covered them with branches and leaves, and they ended up sprouting.
She cut the buds and stacked them in a separate layer with soaked grass, the purple buds that emerged grew the length of half a knuckle, with some white fibrous roots coming out from underneath. She then estimated that it was almost ready, and after a day of rain, she and Li Mang once again planted the sprouted pieces into the land.
For the rest of the land, she and Li Mang went outside together, and looked for all kinds of wild vegetables that could be eaten, and dug them up with the soil and the roots, wrapped it in animal skins and transplanted them back in the land. She even picked up a large piece of rotten wood as it was covered with newly sprouted mushrooms. Of course, Li Mang had examined it beforehand, and those were completely edible mushrooms.
When the season entered the month of April, as estimated by Mu Qing, her large piece of cleared land was already filled with all sorts of crops. In addition to the patch of millet and potato root that had been planted earliest and had sprouted neatly, the rest of the plants could really only be described as a hodgepodge of things. And while some of them grew well, some of the transplants failed and died. But she didn’t care much.
After all, this was the first time, these wild vegetables that she had planted, besides eating, she had also planted them for accumulating experience in transplanting. After this year, she would know which varieties were high in yielding and suitable for transplanting, and would selectively sow them next spring, or continue transplanting new plants.
When Li Mang went out hunting now, he no longer killed all the prey like before. He would try to catch alive some of the smaller bird species that Mu Qing mentioned to him. Because she said she wanted to raise them.
He was a little puzzled at first by this idea of hers. But when he heard her list the benefits of raising small animals, such as being able to slaughter them whenever she wanted meat without him having to go out hunting, or the fact that they could also eat the eggs laid by the wild chicken, or let the eggs hatch into chickens, so they would have more and more chickens in the future, and so on, he instantly felt that the words she had said were too good.
It was a bit of a hassle to raise them, but it would give him more time to stay here with her and the growing child in her womb later on, and that appealed to him.
Translator : Laura
Other novels : His One Love & After Being Kidnapped by the Crown Prince & Unaware that My Legitimate Sister is My Husband
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