Chapter 81: Grain Storehouse Full

On the very night Baifeng and his people finished harvesting the wheat, the rain began to fall again. However, this time no one was worried; everyone even felt this rain was a good thing, as it could cool down the sweltering weather.

Work on the fish pond Baifeng had previously started had stopped after only half was dug. Now that the grain was harvested, the tribespeople were no longer in such a rush to go out hunting; it seemed that being able to obtain sufficient food from their own home was far better than tiring themselves out hunting outside.

Therefore, the strong men all joined in, digging vigorously at the chosen site. A massive artificial lake began to take shape, but after measuring it with his paces, Baifeng felt it was still too small—only about the size of a soccer field—so he simply doubled its area.

Baifeng was not afraid of the fish pond having issues with seepage, because the water table at their location was relatively high. When they had dug water cellars before, they had struck water at nearly four meters, though the water was quite salty and tasted poor, not as good as the quality of the lake water, so they had simply abandoned using well water.

Moreover, with such a large lake, even if it seeped, as long as water was constantly flowing in every day, how could it ever dry up? Thus, Baifeng was not worried about this at all, only that the fish might not survive.

They packed the massive Threshing Ground until it was solid and dumped all the wheat sheaves there. As it turned out, one session wasn't enough to spread them all out. Everyone swung their arms with all their might, beating them with flails; those without flails made their own bamboo rafts to beat them with. In short, as long as they could knock the wheat out of the sheaves, it was fine.

After the wheat was threshed, they had to take advantage of the evening breeze to toss the mixture of wheat and chaff into the air, letting the wind blow away the light chaff and leave behind the heavy wheat grains. By repeating this process over and over, the wheat would become very clean.

They had no bags to hold the wheat, so they used Cement to build a Grain Storehouse. After all, whether it was bamboo or wood, both were troublesome to make, and the gaps were too large, causing the wheat grains to leak out. Furthermore, things made of Brick and Cement could be reused; by installing a valve at the bottom, one only needed to pull out the jammed wooden board, and the wheat would flow out like water under the force of gravity.

Although the chaff had been blown away from the winnowed wheat, things like clods of dirt, pebbles, and various insects could not be blown away by the wind. So, when they carried it to the storehouse in pottery or wooden basins, children would squat nearby and stir it by hand, picking out the dirty bits bit by bit.

Except for the strong men digging the fish pond, almost all the other tribespeople were busy at the Threshing Ground. The skinny savages they had previously incorporated had now recovered their health, and they were already the main force for threshing.

They had truly contributed a great deal to the tribe's grain planting and harvesting. Because their bodies were poor and they had no skills, they couldn't do other work, but fortunately, weeding and cutting wheat didn't require them to have a very strong physique.

Based on their contributions in this regard, the tribespeople accepted them, feeling that they were also qualified to become true members of the Baifeng Tribe. That is to say, ever since the wheat harvest, they no longer had to eat the worst, most basic food; they could eat the same food as the other, older tribespeople.

The new tribespeople knew they had been treated differently, but none of them felt the slightest dissatisfaction, because they knew they weren't qualified yet. However, even this kind of food was something they had previously found very hard to eat so consistently every day.

Now, besides the change in their food, they could also have work points recorded for them. The work points of the Baifeng Tribe were different from the methods of later generations; you only had work points recorded for the portion that exceeded the minimum requirements of your own job. This way, it was easier to calculate, it did not exceed the capabilities of the Shaman, and furthermore, there would be no inflation.

Currently, very few people had received work points, and only a few Artisans could earn them, as it only required being faster with their hands and working longer hours. But for the Hunter Team and the Fishing Team, it was different; besides their own strength, luck was also a very important part.

The wheat was successfully stored in the Grain Storehouse, but that very evening, Baifeng let them taste the new grain. Moreover, he gave them quite a lot, letting them have a wonderful meal. The method of preparation was just boiling porridge—wheat and meat porridge. Everyone ate very comfortably; after all, porridge with wheat added was thicker and more filling.

The stones for making the millstone were chosen; they were granite, which was everywhere. However, chiseling them was too exhausting. The Iron hammers and Chisel caused sparks to fly, and they only managed to chip off a little at a time. To finish making the mill, it would likely take several more days.

After expanding the area, the fish pond was now only dug to a depth of about one meter. Transporting the soil out had become a troublesome problem. When it was shallow, they could just throw it out, but now that it was so deep, even if the tribespeople were strong, they were finding it a bit too much to handle.

Therefore, Baifeng had people plant wooden frames by the pond, install pulleys made of wood, and use grass ropes, bamboo baskets, and bamboo creels to lift the soil out bit by bit. Then, they would dump it into a Handcart and pull it to the city wall to continue building the wall.

They had been digging for over half a month, and almost everyone had not left the city. Only the people from the Fishing Team went to Dahu every three days. After all, the harvest from fishing was more stable compared to hunting; a single day's harvest was enough for the whole tribe to eat just fish for two days.

Baifeng's estimated depth was about three and a half meters; this depth was completely sufficient for raising fish. However, when they had dug to just about three meters, water began to seep out from the bottom of the pond. Previously, they had to dig over three meters, nearly four, to strike water; Baifeng had not expected the current water table to be even higher than before.

Since water was coming out, they stopped digging. They dumped cartload after cartload of gravel they had collected into the pond, along with burnt or broken Brick and Tile, throwing them all down to roughly pave a layer at the bottom of the pond. This way, they could find the bottom when clearing silt in the future, and it could also provide a slight anti-seepage effect. Besides, didn't people lay these things in fish ponds anyway? Even if he didn't know what other benefits it had, at least it wouldn't do any harm.

Previously, Baifeng's requirement for fishing was that if they caught a female fish with roe, as long as it wasn't dead and the tribe wasn't short on food, they could release some of them. This was also to ensure the reproduction of the fish.

Now it was different. Baifeng thought about specifically having the Fishing Team take containers to catch some fish with roe, and then catch some live male fish, and put them all into the fish pond to produce some fish fry for them.

However, the people from the Fishing Team said quite bluntly that the fish had basically passed their breeding season. The small fish in the lake had all hatched and were everywhere, thick as can be, more numerous than tadpoles.

Baifeng was already used to this kind of awkward situation, so he said with no fluctuation in his emotions that they should just go catch the fish fry instead. Although the tribe couldn't yet make sturdy fishing nets capable of catching large fish, making things to scoop up small fish was very simple.

Besides the fish fry, they had to bring back various plants from the lake, such as water grass or any other miscellaneous plants and animals, and put them all into the pond. Baifeng didn't know what these fish actually ate, but they would just raise whatever was in the lake; that way, there wouldn't be a shortage of food for the fish, right? Not to mention they could also cut grass and the like to feed them.