Chapter 134 - 53: The Final Reward Before the Rainy Season (Part 2)
Recently, the previously clean condition of the field has vanished, and weeds keep sprouting up every few days.
To address this, he specially made a small wooden hoe.
This weeding hoe has a crescent-shaped blade, with edges sharpened very thin, usually with a cutting edge.
In Chen Zhou's hometown, it's called a kua hoe, a tool specifically for dealing with weeds.
The wooden kua hoe lacks a cutting edge, and can't effectively cut through the roots of the weeds. Fortunately, the soil is soft, and if necessary, Chen Zhou can still pull the weeds out by the roots.
Altogether there are over two hundred crops, which don't take long to weed.
While removing weeds and counting the crops, walking slowly to the end of the field, Chen Zhou discovered that at the very end, a stalk of rice and a stalk of wheat had fallen.
Upon inspecting the plants, he found the telltale signs left by the real culprit on the stems of the wheat and rice — two deep imprints pressed in.
These are the unique wounds inflicted by a bird's beak.
After painstakingly taking care of these crops for so long, losing two stalks for no reason made Chen Zhou hate this damn bird.
But after damaging the crops, the bird can flap its wings and fly away. It might even be back in its nest sound asleep by now, and it's too late for revenge.
Chen Zhou had no choice but to make another scarecrow, placing it at the edge of the field, hoping it would be effective.
The crops are not yet ripe, and there are no seeds that birds love, except for a few unruly ones that like to cause random damage; most seed-eating birds would not visit here.
But there are exceptions — if an insect leaves the woods and lands on the crops and is spotted by a bird, the bird might affect the plants while pecking at the insect.
Encountering such a low-probability misfortune, Chen Zhou is left speechless.
The main reason he cannot accept these losses is that the total number of crops is too small, making every single seedling extremely precious.
If the crops were on a large scale, numbering in the thousands, this small loss would not have caught his attention.
...
After weeding, Chen Zhou took Lai Fu with him to check the rabbit traps.
It had been a long time since he thoroughly checked the traps, only glancing at them in passing on his way up or down the mountain.
This casual attitude of course yielded no favor from the rabbits.
In fact, after catching a doe and a little rabbit in January, over the course of nearly twenty days, he had only caught one and a half rabbits.
One rabbit refers to a complete one, of course.
As for the half rabbit, it was because by the time he found it, a wild cat had eaten half of the strangled rabbit, leaving only a rabbit head and front legs.
Even this was found with Lai Fu's help.
If it weren't for Lai Fu, with his forgetful habit of leaving one trap behind for another, he probably wouldn't have any harvest for another month.
The reason for Chen Zhou's laid-back attitude is partly due to being too busy with work and unable to dedicate as much time to searching for rabbit trails, setting traps, and checking them like before building the walls.
Another reason is the influence of the two seals.
After having tasted fresh, tender, and flavorful seal meat, rich in fat and delicate in texture, who would still cling to the dry and tough rabbit meat?
As someone with normal discerning taste, Chen Zhou is inevitably swayed.
While checking the rabbit traps, playing with Lai Fu, unwittingly, he walked through a large part of the forest.
Seeing that Lai Fu was no longer as excited, knowing it had played to exhaustion, Chen Zhou then returned to the cave.
The foundation at the entrance of the bedroom had already been dug, and now there's a 40cm wide, 1.2 meters deep trench. Next to it lay a newly made iron-head wooden pick and a bucket for soil.
After taking a brief rest, Chen Zhou picked up the pickaxe and began to slowly build the wall from bottom to top.
...
The trench was too narrow, barely able to accommodate Chen Zhou's lower body.
Hastily mixing the mortar and stacking stones, he worked until nightfall to complete the foundation about five meters long and one meter high at the entrance to the bedroom.
Stones are larger than bricks; most of the time, just choosing stones with the right shape allows completion of the stacking, so even though Chen Zhou isn't a skilled bricklayer, he can build this fast.
At both ends of the built stone wall, the trench was widened into squares with sides of 1.5 meters.
This was a pre-reserved wall pier foundation; Chen Zhou would build the piers to be exceptionally wide, thick, and solid to prevent the outer wall from toppling over in an earthquake.
...
Clouds had been gathering for most of the day and dispersed gloomily before nightfall, no rain fell, which was conducive for construction.
Since the stove suitable for a flat-bottomed copper pot had not been constructed yet, dinner was still stew.
But these days, Chen Zhou's stews are no longer monotonous.
The earliest dried seal meat had completely dried out; it was cut into small pieces and placed into the gruel with batter, alongside fried liver, a sprinkle of salt, and some seal oil.
Once cooked to taste, accompanied by two glasses of liquor, the taste was so delightful, it was beyond words.
Thanks to the improved diet quality, even though Chen Zhou worked longer hours and had less rest time, his weight didn't drop; instead, his muscle mass increased, and he became more robust.
He used to be tall but rather skinny, often called a "thin bamboo pole" by relatives at home.
Now his shoulders are broad, his latissimus dorsi well-developed, his biceps hard as iron after flexing, his forearms thick, and his thigh and calf muscles have swelled two circles, his physique is developing towards a "double-door" size.
If he wore a large sailor's duty uniform, donned a wide-brimmed hat, and picked up a long-handled axe, his physique and deterrence would climb two more notches, akin to a robust crazed killer in a western horror story.
...
February 11th.
He got up early in the morning, picked up the balsa wood wedge from the bedside table, examined the marks on it, dressed, and set out towards the base of the mountain.