From Chief to Ball

"Perhaps the women mend clothes in the house."

Someone looked at the painting and dreamed leisurely, but the people next to him kept nodding in agreement with such childish words. Some people wanted to reach out and touch the house on the painting, but others opened their hands forcefully, for fear of blurring the image on it. carbon.

The twelve people picked up the wine at the same time. While looking at the painting, they drank the wine, but forgot to eat the plate of fish and boiled beans.

The best appetizers are not fish.

The best appetizers, or stories, or hopes.

Chapter 66 Spring Breeze ([-])

Hope always comes in spring, winter is gone, spring is coming, the warm wind blowing from the lower reaches of the Caohe River melts the snow, flows the river, greens the leaves, and wakes up Xiacheng.

The spring a year ago was also spring, but it didn't look like this. It seemed that the times had changed. From a dark cave to a bright city, people in the city would always remember the change a year ago. They didn't know that the summer city would change again this year. What does it look like.

The wheat seedlings began to turn green, and the first ten-day break in spring was postponed. People used soil baskets to carry struvite and fermented dung to the fields.

Mu Ma was not angry because the ten-day break was postponed, because the land outside the city that would belong to him had already been surrounded by lime.

He always felt that something was going to happen this year. What were the oxen, wood and stones that Jixia collected all winter?What were the slaves upriver cutting down the trees for the winter?Will people from Echeng and Acropolis come to the sacrificial gathering in May this year?

Even when he was fertilizing the rejuvenated wheat seedlings, he would always turn his head and look at the grass river. He always felt that this spring not only took away winter, but also seemed to take away many old things, as if last spring took away gathering and hunting. Bringing the city planting, what will this spring bring?

The Grass River behind has been civilized, and the logs cut by the slaves all winter floated along the river to the pier. The slaves on the pier were driven by whips to jump into the icy river, and pulled the logs to the bank row by row. , Alternately roasting the fire.

A mountain of timber covered the river bank. People in Xiacheng were discussing what the timber was for. They always felt that the city was going to undergo large-scale construction again, but they didn't know that this construction was for expropriation of corvee?Or use slaves?Or use money to hire?

When the top dressing of the wheat field was over, everyone in Xiacheng could see the clues that the city was really about to carry out a large-scale construction.

Every day, Ji Xia in their eyes led a few people to patrol a flat hillside outside Xia City, and sometimes set up some wooden sticks to measure.

There is a flat valley with low mounds on both sides, and the timber felled in winter is basically piled there.

Probably because the land has not fully melted, the construction has not started for a long time, and no one knows what will be built there.

After more than ten days of measurement, the tribesmen were distracted by another matter. Compared with the purposeless speculation, this matter is closely related to them and can attract their attention.

After the land along the Caohe River had melted out of the permafrost, people guessed that the combination of wood, stones and cattle sheaths in one winter appeared on a piece of fertile land that had not yet been drilled.

The curved and strange stone plow appeared in the eyes of Xiacheng people for the first time. A cow was pulling a bronze plow. Mu Ma saw the ox she cut off in winter and put it on the neck of the cow. The strong gelding cow lowered its head. , the flesh on the neck was piled up in a pile, and the rope was tightly tied around the neck, as if about to suffocate, he opened his mouth and gasped.

The rope passed through the ox harness stretched backwards and was pulled under the curved wooden plow. Behind the wooden plow, Chen Jian held the wooden plow with one hand, and brandished a long whip with his right hand, beating the gelding in front of him vigorously.

Occasionally stop, lift the wooden plow, knock off the soil on it, or pull up the bronze plowshare, and then clamp it with a wooden wedge to adjust the plowing depth.

Red Fish is leading the ox in front, walking straight along the white-gray line drawn. The rope passing through the nose of the ox is pulling the ox that has never pulled the plowshare. Although it is heavy, the ox is more willing than the pain on the nose go forward.

The gelding ox is very obedient and can't stand up to people, and loses the courage of the bull, but in the eyes of people, a bull with courage is not a good bull. Even a cow and a horse violate the laws of nature. Whether it is good or bad, it is no longer natural to decide, but to declare.

How much land can a person dig in a day?

The record of Xiacheng people is three and a half acres, and the winner gets a pig-toothed dagger that symbolizes honor. The price is that after the planing, he was tired and had diarrhea and lay on the kang for five days. It is both a legend and a joke.

How much land can a cow dig in a day?

Can't dig a single point.

How much land can one person and one cow plow?

The people of Xiacheng have never seen it, and neither has Muma, so in the first ten days of spring, thousands of people in Xiacheng stood on the bank of the river. I have been seeing lunch at noon.

Two long black wounds were left on the greenish-yellow land. The smell of newly plowed soil wafted around people with the slightly fishy spring wind. A few black long-tailed sparrows stood on the newly plowed soil Looking for the waking insects on the ground, he used his free wings to taunt the resting cow lying on the ground next to him with a harness and rope on his back.

Chen Jian and Hong Yu were drinking water on the field, while Yu Qian'er led several younger brothers and sisters to measure the plowed land in the morning with the city standard Mubu rope.

The onlookers watched as the coiled rope straightened, and was rolled up again in the middle of the ground and stretched again, their eyes widened.

When Yuqian'er ran back dragging the rope, before she could say anything, the people nearby shouted in unison: "Four acres of land!"

The person who had been rewarded for digging the ground and was the first to taste cooking in Echeng took out the pig's tooth pendant hanging around his neck, ran to the old cow, and put the pendant on the pendant in a devout and jealous mood. The pendant hung on the cowhide, looking at his palms that were covered with calluses from digging the ground, he choked speechlessly.

The newly dug ground is deep and straight.Chen Jian, who had plowed four acres of land, was not tired of diarrhea. He drank a can of water, wiped off his sweat, and joked with a few people next to him.

The clansmen stood on the ground, and the sound of drums for lunch in the city could not bring them back to their senses, until they were driven back to eat by Chen Jian.

After lunch, the heavy plow pulled by two horses appeared on the land that had been planed last year and was going to be broken into furrows this year and planned to plant corn.

This is arable land, not open land. The already soft land only needs to change the convexity of the ridge top into a concave one, which amazed the tribe even more than in the morning.

When the sun was setting, the onlookers counted loudly, as if they were encouraging Chen Jian, but Chen Jian was not tired, it was only the horse who was tired, but the horse couldn't understand.

"eighteen!"

"If you can turn back and forth one more time before falling down the mountain, that's twenty!"

"My God, twenty acres of land? It's better than digging with a hoe. Look, it takes a lot of effort to dig so deep with a hoe. Some people just dig a shallow layer to save effort..."

"If so, how much land can one person plant?"

"One hundred acres?"

"Give me a cow, I can plant a hundred acres, I can definitely plant a hundred acres!"

"This year's spring plowing won't be so tiring!"

The people next to him were talking, staring numbly at the harness on the back of the cow in the distance, and suddenly understood in their hearts.

The cowhide was made by myself. Although the plowshare is bronze, it is very similar to those stones polished in winter, and those bent wood...

One winter, everyone was guessing what those things were for, and now they finally have an answer.

On the first night after knowing the answer, many people did not sleep well, and even dreamed that they were walking on flat land while holding a wooden plow.

It seems... In the dream, there was also a woman, a woman who only slept with herself, pulling the rope on the nose of the cow in front of the cow, but she couldn't see clearly, but it was a woman after all.

The next day is not a ten-day break, and there is still work to do, but many people didn't get up when the drums sounded in the morning. They talked for too long last night and their dreams were so beautiful that they didn't want to get up.

When everyone was called up, there were two more rules in the city that did not exist before.

Before yesterday, these two rules were inconceivable, and even if the clansmen accepted them, they would not understand them; but after yesterday, these two rules became logical and taken for granted.

"Any clan or individual is strictly forbidden to kill cattle and horses to eat meat. If the cattle die, they need to report to the city, and the city can only eat the meat after inspection by the city, otherwise they will be fined."

"In future sacrifices to ancestors, cattle will replace pigs and sheep and become the most important sacrifice."

This is a day when the historical status of pigs and sheep has declined, but everyone thinks it should be so. Until a long time later, there is even another unwritten rule or custom: before the spring plowing in April every year, the cows will eat vegetarian dumplings .Some children even made up nursery rhymes: all kinds of beatings, all kinds of scolding, just for the meal of spring plowing.

The cattle that were originally only used for eating meat and occasionally pulling carts have become the most important supporting role in the life of farming peoples. The important thing is no longer meat and milk, but the strong body and hard work.