Chapter 237: Misfortunes Never Come Singly

Given the current situation, Baifeng can only install more Traps and have the tribespeople increase the intensity of their patrols; ultimately, one must rely on the restorative capacity of Nature itself, for human strength is far too insignificant in the face of Nature.

Furthermore, Baifeng must not only focus on the rabbit problem but also on the most important thing: the crops. They are all beginning to head now, which is a critical time; if problems had occurred earlier, there would have been a chance for replanting, but now there is no chance at all.

The new grain seeds from the Xuanyuan Clan that he brought back are all to be planted in large quantities next year; soybeans will surely replace Millet and buckwheat to become the grain crop with the higher share. Soybeans are a very important source of protein and plant fat, and whether the tribespeople can put on weight depends entirely on the soybeans.

The gourd seeds that Baifeng collected were all planted in the vegetable garden of Sui, and Baifeng planted a very large quantity; hundreds of seeds were sown, and he even planted them in areas that had not yet been cleared.

At first, they were just vines creeping on the ground, so Baifeng had people cut bamboo and wood to build gourd trellises, allowing the gourd vines to climb up along them; in this way, not only do the gourd vines grow well, but the shape of the gourds is also attractive.

Moreover, this is also a good vegetable; when they are green, they are perfectly edible. Of course, one must be careful to note that some gourds cannot be eaten, as special varieties may appear due to various factors. It is easy to judge: after peeling the skin, lick it; if it is bitter, it is poisonous, and if it is not bitter, it is edible.

After Baifeng confirmed the gourds of the Baifeng Tribe, they were completely non-toxic and edible. Furthermore, because the yield was truly too enormous, the gourds taken down from the trellises every day could not be finished even if every tribesperson ate one; therefore, not only the gourd pulp, but sometimes even the melons themselves were used directly to feed the chickens and cattle, and neither the chickens nor the cattle showed any symptoms of poisoning.

Their current variety of vegetables is still considered rich. After several years of selective breeding, the primitive Chinese cabbage is already very different from the wild ones. Radishes have not changed much and are still particularly spicy; the spiciness that Baifeng can taste in this era basically comes from radishes, though after radishes are boiled, they don't have much flavor, so they usually use radishes to make soup.

Methods for preserving vegetables are also being explored and mastered; from the initial frantic addition of salt to make salted vegetables, they are now able to make pickled cabbage and pickled radishes. These are the vegetables they can eat during the long Winter.

A long time passed, and the scale of the wild rabbits basically stabilized; he did not see the number of rabbits here increasing further. Baifeng thought that this should be the peak, and it would be best if this disaster just ended like this.

But what made Baifeng even more anxious was that the rainy season had still not arrived, the weather was scorching, yet not a single cloud could be seen in the Heaven. The wheat was heading and about to fill, and the Rice stalks had also grown to about the right size; it was precisely the time when they needed water.

The fields were already very dry, and even digging ten centimeters down, the soil was not moist. Seeing that time was running out, Baifeng was also incredibly anxious in his heart. In previous years, the monsoon would have blown over by this time, bringing moist water vapor from the southeast ocean; back then, he only worried about too much precipitation and never thought about the matter of drought.

Seeing that one could no longer count on rain, Baifeng decided to start self-rescue and organized the tribespeople to begin irrigating the farmland. There was no rush for the Sorghum and Millet; the priority had to be the wheat and Rice.

However, because of the prolonged drought, the water level in Dahu had dropped quite a bit, and the water intake of their water conservancy project was already very close to the lake surface. If they used the water from Dahu for irrigation, the tribe's water usage might run into problems.

They had no choice but to turn their eyes to the now-thinned Dahe. Dahe had not received any replenishment from precipitation, and its water level had also dropped a lot, but because it mainly relied on the melting water from the glaciers and Snow mountains upstream, it had not yet ceased to flow; however, this also made the already not-very-turbid Dahe even clearer.

The former riverbed on both banks had been exposed, and the silt had cracked open after drying out; however, the lotus flowers remained firm. The high temperature and drought did not seem to have caused them any impact; on the contrary, because the temperature was suitable and they were by the river, they bloomed even more brilliantly and lushly. Baifeng estimated that their lotus roots would definitely have a Harvest this year.

Because the area of the farmland was large and the distance from Dahe to the fields was relatively far, they could only rely on their hands to carry water to irrigate, bucket by bucket, vat by vat, pouring it into the fields. It was only because the Baifeng Tribe had enough Slaves; otherwise, with just their few tribespeople, they could not have accomplished the task at all.

It was too late to make waterwheels now; the wheat would only take a few days to fill, and by the time the waterwheels were built, the wheat would have turned yellow.

Because one could not enter the fields, in order to preserve the majority, Baifeng had people shovel away a portion to increase the water channels, so that the water would flow along the channels in the fields and then seep into the soil, ensuring that all the wheat could absorb moisture.

It was just that carrying by hand was truly too slow; later, two people carried water together, and they even used carrying poles, but the efficiency was so slow that Baifeng was anxious.

For buckets, they could only use wooden buckets, which were thick and heavy, and the water they could hold was little; most of it was wasted effort, and they had no way to make light and large plastic buckets.

Moreover, going into the river to fetch water was very dangerous; one had to step on the silt to get to the riverbank to fetch water with buckets. In just one day, there had already been many incidents of Slaves falling into the water. Because the water's edge was relatively shallow, they were all rescued in time without issue, except for one who could not swim at all and struggled so hard that he even dragged the person rescuing him into the water.

After being pulled ashore, the person was already unconscious. Fortunately, Baifeng was patrolling nearby and immediately took action to save the person, only then pulling them back from the gates of the ghost realm. However, this also caused many people to develop a sense of fear and start to slack off.

Baifeng saw that this would not do, so he directly had the Slaves line up to start transferring water bucket by bucket; each person only needed to stand in place and pass the bucket to the next person. The efficiency of this was not slower than the other way, and they had enough people, so the operation was completely fine.

Having one person stand still to fetch water was also relatively safer, though that person had the most strenuous job, having to bend over and stand up, then bend over and stand up again.

Although the efficiency was a little higher, they could not keep doing this forever, so when the sun was too hot, he let everyone rest and at the same time arranged for many people to go cut bamboo—the thickest kind—split them open, remove the bamboo nodes, and stack them layer by layer like a Tile.

The position of Dahe was elevated, and the position of the farmland was lower, so a few people just took turns pouring water into one end.

Of course, one could not let them be idle during the installation process; was it just that a portion of the people were pulled away to install the channels?

Although there was a lot of loss this way, as long as the quantity was large, it did not affect anything at all. After building three lines, everything became smooth, and soon many more bamboo water channels were added.

After a few days of struggle, everyone had become much darker. Baifeng broke off a wheat ear and rubbed it open; the wheat grains were quite plump. Their efforts in irrigating the wheat had finally not been in vain.