Chapter 126 – Wooden Fork
The harvested and transported rapeseed did not go into a stack; instead, it was spread out on the threshing floor for drying. The weather had been good these days, with the warm sunshine making it ideal for harvesting and drying grains.
Taking advantage of the favorable weather, Han Cheng naturally took action. He urgently needed to dry the rapeseed while the opportunity was rare. If rain fell later, it would be troublesome. After all, this was not the modern era where plastic sheets could cover the grains in the threshing floor during rainy days, waiting for the weather to clear.
There were no plastic sheets available, not to mention straws…
Once it rained, besides rushing to transport some to the deer’s enclosure for shelter, Han Cheng couldn’t think of any other solutions.
A thick layer of rapeseed had already been spread on the threshing floor. It was quickly evaporating moisture under the late spring and early summer sun.
Han Cheng, who hadn’t grown much in height yet, held a wooden fork and turned over the drying rapeseed. While turning, he also tried to loosen the rapeseed as much as possible, promoting ventilation and accelerating moisture evaporation.
With his right hand in front and left hand behind, Han Cheng used the wooden fork to stab some rapeseed. Then, with a little force from his right hand near the rapeseed, he lifted it slightly while simultaneously pressing down with his left hand behind. Leveraging the principle of leverage that could lift the Earth, these rapeseeds were naturally lifted effortlessly.
Then, based on this posture, he tilted the top of the wooden fork slightly downward, shook it a few times continuously, and the rapeseeds on the fork dropped successively. He changed to a more comfortable posture and continued enjoying the sunlight.
This was not considered difficult for Han Cheng, who had been accustomed to farm work since childhood. Even though he lived in a different era, using a wooden fork to turn the threshing floor was still just as handy.
It was uncomfortable for people like Mu Tou, who had just started to learn about these things. This strange stick, a “wooden fork,” was not easy to use. They felt that they could do it faster with their hands directly.
However, the Divine Child forbade them from doing it that way. They had to use this strange stick to do these tasks.
Looking at Mu Tou and others awkwardly using the wooden fork to turn the rapeseed, Han Cheng couldn’t help but sniff. Wasn’t it said, “Farming work doesn’t need to be learned; just do it the way others do?” Why were these guys learning so slowly?
This made him sigh with a somewhat settled heart. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he walked to Mu Tou and others, conducting hands-on teaching.
Han Cheng made this wooden fork to welcome the first harvested grain batch in the Green Sparrow Tribe.
The structure of the wooden fork was very simple. It was a wooden stick about four centimeters in diameter and one meter five to six in length. At the top of the wooden stick were three forked sticks, each about the thickness of a thumb and around forty centimeters long.
The three wooden sticks were not in a straight line between the small wooden stick and the handle. They had a certain curvature, bending downwards after about ten centimeters of depth and extending forward.
Moreover, at the upper part where the three “fork teeth” intersected, a small wooden stick protruded upward, about two to three centimeters long.
This was done to facilitate the wooden fork’s ability to scoop enough rapeseed while preventing the scooped rapeseed from slipping off.
In Han Cheng’s childhood in the future, when the wheat season was approaching each year, there would be many people selling wooden forks on the streets, along with long-handled brooms, iron sickles, rakes, straw hats, whetstones, and other items related to farming.
The market was probably the liveliest at that time, except for the period before the New Year.
After all, every household needed to go out to the market, more or less procuring some things. Otherwise, finding time to go to the market once the wheat was harvested would be difficult.
In the future, most wooden forks will be made from mulberry wood. People who specialized in producing wooden forks generally had mulberry orchards, although different from the mulberry orchards for silk production.
There were no large mulberry trees in the mulberry orchards producing wooden forks; they were all small mulberry trees.
The mulberry trees were cut at the base in the first year, and in the second year’s spring, many tender shoots would emerge.
After the tender shoots grew into normal branches, one or two straight and robust ones would be selected from each plant, while the others would be cut off from the base.
When these selected ones grew to one to two meters, the top of the mulberry tree branches would be cut off from about one meter fifty-six above the ground.
After the tops were cut off, new branches would sprout from there, and it wasn’t just one branch.
After these new branches grew, the others would be broken off, leaving only three at approximately equal distances.
After some time, the three wooden bars about to become the “fork teeth” would be transformed. They would be pinched into the required curvature and fixed. They would maintain this shape after growing for a while and not change back.
In this process, a small wooden peg at the intersection of the three “fork teeth” would be left in a suitable position.
The mulberry wooden forks would be cut down when they grew to a suitable size.
Taking advantage of the fact that they hadn’t dried completely, they would be burned in the fire, improving the previously imperfect parts. When the mulberry wood cooled down, the previously shaped form would be completely fixed, and no further changes would occur.
Afterward, the bark would be peeled off, tools like axes and planes would be used to refine it, and a wooden fork would be born.
Han Cheng had not been in this era for a long time, and he hadn’t thought about making wooden forks until the rapeseed flowers fell, reminding him of this matter.
It was impossible to make a wooden fork like those in the future.
But fortunately, there were many trees in the primitive era. With some effort, he eventually found some usable ones.
After laboriously chopping them down with a stone axe, he brought them to the outer side of the tribe’s wall, lit a pile of fire, and called for the help of the hunchback, who was absorbed in burning holes on wooden pillars to make wooden ladders.
After burning, these wooden sticks were transformed into wooden forks.
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