Chapter 262: Silkworms, planting trees, seedlings, and the arriving Donkey Tribe.
A gentle breeze blew, and the wind chimes under the eaves tinkled softly. The lazy spring sun bathed everything in warmth.
Han Cheng sat against the southern wall, holding a stick in his hand. He carefully examined it in front of his eyes, straining his eyes a bit, but he still couldn't see any patterns on the stick.
Han Cheng rubbed his slightly sore eyes and put the stick back into the clay pot by his feet.
The clay pot was dry, and some tender yellow leaves inside were this year's newly sprouted mulberry leaves.
He never forgot about the silkworms. Even with the current technological means, even if he managed to raise silkworms, turning the delicate silkworm silk into magnificent silk was almost impossible. However, Han Cheng never gave up the idea of raising silkworms.
The silkworms were still quite primitive, far from mature domestic silkworms, and there was still a long way to go. Since that was the case, he decided to start with a small-scale breeding.
Not for making silk but to cultivate silkworms that could produce larger and better cocoons.
Compared to the advancement of weaving technology, the evolution of silkworm cocoons was undoubtedly more difficult and required a long time of generation-by-generation cultivation.
When the weaving methods reached the point where they could use silk to weave silk, it would be too late to start cultivating domestic silkworms.
After waiting for a while and not seeing any silkworm larvae emerge from the silkworm seeds, Han Cheng placed the small clay pot on the windowsill and walked towards the courtyard outside.
Outside the Green Sparrow Tribe, it was a busy scene.
Led by the Eldest Senior Brother, they were using spades to dig something on the softened land after a winter.
They weren't plowing the land but digging holes.
The digging spots were on the east side of the Green Sparrow Tribe, on the open space bordering the forest, and near the small river some distance away from the Green Sparrow Tribe.
These pits were dug about every two meters.
Don't doubt why they dug so accurately because the Lame was measuring with a two-meter-long stick.
These pits stretched from the small river on the south side to the foot of the mountain two or three miles away.
There were two rows of such pits.
After someone dug the pit, the person behind them picked up a small sapling and put it in the dug pit. Following the previous demonstration of the Divine Child, they straightened the sapling while Liang next to them used a spade to tamp the soil piled up on the pit's edge and firmly packed it with their feet.
After doing this, they took the spade and the sapling and went to the next pit, then repeated the previous actions.
Ru Hua carried a bucket of water from the river and walked to the newly planted sapling, where she put it down.
With one hand holding the rope on the jar and the other hand lifting the bottom of the jar, she slowly tilted it down, pouring the cool, bright water from the jar into the pit where the new sapling was planted.
Sometimes, after pouring out a jar of water, there would be one or two jumping little fish at the bottom.
If it were before, in the old tribe, Ru Hua would be very happy to hide the little fish in her hand secretly, find an opportunity where nobody could see, and put the little fish into her mouth, chewing nervously while sincerely marveling at her good luck today.
But now, she would never do such a thing again.
Three meals a day, each meal eaten to the full. After getting used to this kind of life, thinking back to the past, she couldn't help but wonder how she managed to survive and grow up.
Ru Hua watered the plants very carefully and conscientiously. Sometimes, when she saw a sapling leaning, she would stop and straighten it out.
Like everyone else in the tribe, she executed the tasks assigned by the Divine Child without any discount.
These saplings were not random trees but fruit trees brought by the tribe's people from the surrounding area in the past few days.
Only after Ru Hua made sure the saplings wouldn't lean anymore did she release her hand, showing great care towards these saplings.
While doing these tasks, scenes from a few days ago that the Divine Child had described involuntarily floated into her mind
The gentle wind blew, the branches swayed slightly, and the rich fragrance of fruit filled the entire courtyard with the wind.
The planted fruit trees had grown not far from the courtyard, and the branches were laden with fruit, bending them down.
There was no need to go far to pick fruit. One could easily obtain fruit just by walking out of the courtyard.
Just thinking about this scene made people intoxicated and fascinated.
At the same time, she wondered why they hadn't considered planting wild fruit trees near the tribe before.
Qi Qiu didn't participate in the tree-planting activity; he had other things to attend to.
Squatting at the edge of the rapeseed field, he was inserting many sticks about five centimeters long into the turned soil.
The sticks weren't completely inserted; one or two buds without leaves were exposed outside.
He was doing it very seriously, but he didn't quite understand the Divine Child's explanation that these sticks would grow into trees when the time came.
After watching for a while, Han Cheng pulled out a few sticks that Qi Qiu had inserted upside down and reinserted them.
He was trying to develop this area as a nursery, mainly planting mulberry branches and some fruit trees. Han Cheng didn't know whether these fruit trees would succeed.
The fruits at this time mainly were not as tasty as those in later generations.
Fruits with small pits and lots of flesh were considered heretical, while fruits with thick skin, little flesh, large pits, and a bad taste were mainstream.
Thinking about it, one could understand. After all, the fruits eaten in later generations had undergone countless generations and breeding techniques to finally become what they were, naturally much better than these primitive, pure wild ones now.
Han Cheng knew little about fruit tree cultivation. One method was grafting, and the other was selection, similar to cultivating rapeseed.
However, no matter what, this had to be explored and tried. With more exploration, the experience would gradually accumulate.
"Someone's here! Someone's here!"
The person standing on the low wall to the east shouted.
Before he shouted, the Eldest Senior Brother digging pits in the east with others had already noticed the visitors.
Because these people came from the forest to the east.
After a brief moment of tension, it quickly calmed down. The visitors were from the Donkey Tribe, not enemies.
Han Cheng was a little puzzled. It was just the beginning of spring; why were people from the Donkey Tribe here? Hadn't he given them enough salt before?
After confirming the visitors' identities, the Eldest Senior Brother asked the Third Senior Brother and others to put away their bows.
The Third Senior Brother and the others were very vigilant. They also brought bows and arrows when they came out to dig pits.
The leader of the Donkey Tribe looked at the curved wood carried by the people of this tribe behind their backs, puzzled.
Using such curved wood as a weapon, he didn't understand what this wealthy tribe was thinking. They even treated it so solemnly.
That curved wood was far less lethal than the wooden sticks with bone fragments held by other people in this tribe.
The source of this c𝐨ntent is freewe(b)nov𝒆l