Chapter 196 - 87: Earth Mortar, Water-Powered Pestle, and Millstone
Sheep over five months old are actually not quite suitable for consumption. Their bones aren't sturdy enough, and the amount of meat has room for growth.
If it hadn't been for Gadan's mistake, Chen Zhou definitely would have spared its life, waiting until it weighed around a hundred pounds before making a move.
However, since it was impossible to stop the bleeding, not killing the sheep would mean certain death, so he had to set aside his burdens and enjoy the lamb thoroughly.
With skilled technique, he quickly portioned the entire sheep.
After skinning the sheep, he spread the hide out to prepare for tanning.
The sheep's viscera were exceptionally fresh and tender, showing no signs of disease, so he cooked them and fed them to Lai Fu and the increasingly well-behaved Grapes.
The lamb was stewed into a pot of soup, and the remainder was dried into jerky to preserve for a longer period and consume gradually.
Even the "operation failure" product — the two testicles — weren't wasted. They were cut, cleaned, skewered on wooden sticks, and roasted.
...
On May 10th, when he opened the barrel to take out the flatbread as usual, Chen Zhou found it was already the last half-barrel of flatbread.
Since arriving on the island, he learned from a book in advance that the island was rich in resources, with large herds of wild goats, pigeons, fish, and fruits, which put him at ease and led to nearly unrestrained consumption.
The food brought down from the ship was a substantial fortune for one person, but consuming without restraint would eventually lead to depletion.
The best-tasting white bread was the first to run out.
The dry hard flatbread originally wouldn't have lasted this long. Luckily, he later caught two seals, which provided ample supplies of meat, allowing him to hold out until now.
In the kitchen at the moment, aside from the remaining flatbread in the barrel, there were only some dried seal meat, leftover lamb, rabbit meatballs, several large pieces of dried kelp, a small pile of lemons, two and a half crates of flour, and two bags of black breadsticks unappealing even to dogs.
Considering the current abundance of meat, which could replace more than half the carbohydrates, Chen Zhou thought that at the current speed, the food reserve would last him another two months.
Two months was adequate to wait for the first batch of crops in the field to fully mature.
However, the total of this batch of crops was actually quite small. Leaving aside seeds, the remaining rice, barley, and wheat even combined wouldn't sustain until the second batch of crops matured.
Fortunately, after the first batch of seeds matured, as long as he could hold out for another two months, he would be able to harvest the second batch of crops.
This stemmed from planting various mysterious herbs from the ship's medicine jar on March 25th in the nursery in front of the cave, where he also selected the remaining rice and wheat seeds for nurturing.
The quality of the second batch of seeds was far inferior to the first batch.
While only abundant in quantity, they compensated for the defect in germination rate.
After over a month of germination and growth, they were sturdy enough for mass transplantation into the fields.
Chen Zhou didn't value the second batch of crop seedlings as much as when he first planted the fields.
He merely counted and noted approximately 280 rice seedlings and 340 barley and wheat seedlings.
After the blow to the wild rabbits, the safety of the fields was greatly enhanced. There was hardly any worry about the tender seedlings being nibbled by rabbits. Otherwise, he wouldn't dare transplant the seedlings into the fields.
Regarding the disturbances from birds, it wasn't as severe as Robinson's experience described in books.
Chen Zhou speculated this might be due to different planting locations, much like Robinson wasn't plagued by rabbits destroying crops en masse.
The hilltop and below the hill were two different areas of animal activity, naturally leading to differing challenges.
...
During the morning inspection of the field conditions, Chen Zhou felt the rice could be harvested in another three to five days.
By calculating the time, the rice and barley and wheat were sown on January 10th, meaning it had been four months.
The 17th-century rice varieties weren't of great quality, matured late, and had low yields.
After watering and weeding and diligently nurturing all this time, reaching harvest was no easy feat.
Wheat's growth speed was originally slower than rice, and impacted by the rainy season, it hadn't even flowered. Chen Zhou estimated it might be June or later before harvesting the wheat.
...
Before the rain, plan ahead.
As the harvest approached, Chen Zhou planned to set aside matters like building the outer walls, transporting supplies, and clearing rabbits, and focus on making the rice dehusking machine and the rice threshing machine.
As the saying goes, difficult for those who can't, easy for those who can.
Having studied the structure of modern rice dehusking machines, although he hadn't had much contact with rice, Chen Zhou knew how to design and create an original dehusking machine.
The "Heavenly Craftsmanship" once recorded the earth paddy thresher, which operates through gravity, allowing the teeth on the thresher to rub against each other to peel the husk off the rice.
The earth paddy thresher's design was relatively advanced, similar to a multi-layered millstone connected up and down, etched with long grooves matching rice kernel size.
After dumping rice into the intake at the top, manpower, animal power, or wind/water power was used to rotate the millstone, letting the rice fall into the center of the groove. Under continuous friction from the thresher teeth, the husks were peeled off, completing the "slimming" process, allowing the rice grains to slide out of the millstone along the grooves into the discharge port.
The husked products were sifted through the wind to remove husks, leaving only the rice kernels.
However, reaching the rice kernels is not the end of processing rice as it still has a layer of rice bran on the surface that requires mortars and pestles to pound before consumption.
Among the processing machines, the most complex was the earth paddy thresher.
The outer layer needed a tube to contain the rice, with three internal millstone layers, wooden baffles, and a structure to rotate the millstones, along with a large round disc capping the discharge port...
All in all, there weren't any rare materials involved, mostly wood, clay, stone, etc., but it demanded higher craftsmanship from the woodworker.