Chapter 491: The Threshing Machine
Translator: Lonelytree
Little Three and the others quickly added, “The seedlings in the field have started to bear grains. They are in bunches. They bear good and many grains. I believe it will not be long before we can harvest them.” As a young man who grew up in the countryside, he knew when rice could be harvested.
When they heard that the rice was slowly maturing, they were really excited and happy.
One had to know that from planting the rice seeds, transplanting them, blossoming, and maturing, they were all carefully protected.
The paddy fields were like their children. Now that the child had grown up, how could they not be happy?
Upon hearing this news, Jiang Zhennan immediately became excited and said, “Really? When I went to take a look two days ago, it was just blooming. How could it be maturing so quickly and be ready to be harvested soon?”!!
Little Six nodded and explained, “Boss, the rice ripened very quickly.”
Jiang Zhennan didn’t know much about farming, but he knew that Little Three and the others wouldn’t lie to her.
He nodded and said, “That’s good, that’s good.”
Previously, when he went to take a look, although it wasn’t very ripe, the bunches of flowers were in full bloom. They were so many that even the paddy stalks were bent from the pressure. One look and he could tell that it was a good harvest.
He still remembered that Lin yuelan had said that such a yield could reach Seven Stones, but according to his estimation, it would definitely be more than Seven Stones.
Lin Yuelan had also gone to the fields to take a look and watered them with some Spirit Water. She estimated that they would be ready to harvest in a few days.
The only thing that made Lin Yuelan a little worried was that in modern times, all the harvesters were mechanical, and dozens of acres of land could be harvested in less than a day. But here, it was purely human labor.
First, they cut the rice with those curved sickles and tied them back to their own courtyards. Then, the family wrapped their hands in cloth and beat them against the baskets or rolled them off the straws. Those who were better off bought a cow and rolled the grains down with a big stone.
These two methods were both physically and mentally taxing, and they were not efficient at all.
One mu of land might require at least five people to work for a day.
In this way, it would take at least ten days to harvest the seedlings and thresh the grains on the five mu of land. This was too time-consuming. If there was a change in the weather during the process, the grains could very likely be destroyed.
Lin Yuelan lowered her head in deep thought. She had to solve these problems before the harvest.
She couldn’t build modern mechanical harvesters. Other than not knowing the manufacturing structure, the most important point was that the conditions here didn’t allow it.
Therefore, she was thinking about some of the techniques she had learned when she was studying ancient history.
Flail, rice husks, buckets, rice beds, and so on …
Lin yuelan thought for a while. The most suitable ones were the paddies and the rice bed. She thought about the structure and principles that her teacher had explained when she first learned this, and she felt that she could make one by herself.
The grain bucket was relatively simple.
The barrel was made from a large wooden barrel. One-fourth of the edge had to be sawed off, and the height had to be lower than the other edges. A wooden board had to be placed there to secure it. Two holes had to be dug on both sides of the wooden board. These two holes were for inserting a woven mat. The woven mat would be fixed on top to prevent the rice from flying in all directions when the rice was being hit.
All in all, the bucket was relatively simple, but one person could only work on it at a time.
The rice bed was an upgraded version of the rice bucket, which made up for this flaw. A very wide bed with fences around it and a wooden frame with a bamboo surface in the middle. The rice could be threshed by hitting the bamboo surface. This could be done by multiple people at the same time.
However, both of these methods were still time-consuming and laborious. Therefore, she had to think of a way to improve it.
Therefore, in the first few days, Lin Yuelan closed her door and did not go out. She closed her door and meditated in her room, writing and painting. She was simply at the point of forgetting to eat and sleep.
When it was time to eat, she only asked people to send over a few steamed buns or get some food from the rice bowl next door.