The happy little days of the Ye family

The road to the valley was finally built, and then the land reclamation of the valley began.

The valley is not very flat. The terrain of the valley is high on both sides and low in the middle. There is a river at the bottom of the valley, and the water flow in the river is quite large.

Now there is a question, the river is at the bottom of the valley, how to lead the water to the higher ground on both sides.

Although Tangshan grew up in a village, he went out as a escort when he was young. In fact, he didn't know much about farming, let alone opening up wasteland.

And Tang Xiaojing had never farmed land at all. The father and son basically didn't know anything about land reclamation. If they had any questions, they had to ask Mr. Ye for advice.

It can be said that the land reclamation in the valley all depends on Mr. Ye's command and idea.

Mr. Ye has been cultivating land all his life, and he is quite good at opening up wasteland. He has already thought of a way to deal with it.

Mr. Ye: "The river flows from the entrance of the valley. The terrain at the entrance of the valley is higher. Canals can be dug from the entrance of the valley to divert water to the fields."

Mr. Ye attaches great importance to land reclamation and spent a few days dividing the valley's land reclamation into four steps.

The first step: first cut down the weeds in the valley, and then pick out all the large and small stones in the valley.

Step [-]: Build ridges according to the topography of the valley and divide the valley into long strips of paddy fields.

Because the valley is high on both sides and low in the middle, the paddy fields must be divided into long strips along the direction of the river, so that the terrain of the same paddy field can remain flat.

If the terrain of the paddy field is uneven, the rice on the higher ground will be easily short of water, and the rice on the lower ground will be easily soaked.

The valley is most suitable to be divided into long strips of paddy fields, so as to ensure that the land of the paddy fields is flat.

Step [-]: Dig a water diversion channel on the edge of the paddy field.

Canals are dug from the high ground at the entrance of the valley to divert water, and when water is released from the paddy fields, excess water can be drained into the river at the bottom of the valley.

Step [-]: Divert water, fill the entire paddy field with water and soak it. When the mud in the field is soaked soft, you can plow the land.

The land must be plowed several times to dig out tree and grass roots, so that the valley can be reclaimed.

This valley is so big that it took three days just to cut weeds and collect stones, and a full 3 days to build the fields and dig ditches.

After water was diverted from the fields, it took five days to soak the paddy fields until they were soft, and then plowing began.

Fortunately, the Tang family has two strong oxen in their prime. Only strong oxen can plow this newly opened land that is still solid, and donkeys cannot plow it at all.

This is the first time that the ground in the valley has been plowed. Even after being soaked in water for 5 days, it is still very hard and the progress of plowing is very slow.

It was not until the end of the year that all the people who went to do corvé work came back and the land in the valley was finally plowed.

The people who served in the corvee all came back together. They were all in ragged clothes, thin and had wounds of various sizes on their bodies.

The group of people looked unrecognizable. When they came back, they all thought they were refugees who had fled somewhere.

Although the people who served as corvees in the village suffered a lot, at least they all came back neatly.

And this time the corvee was paid. Although he suffered a lot, he came back with at least two months' wages.

The men who came back with their wages all returned home with smiles on their faces.

Except for a few of the villagers who came back with serious injuries, the others all had superficial injuries. They looked scary, but they would be healed in a few days.

At night in Taohua Village, almost every household in Taohua Village killed chickens, and there were bursts of violent crows in the village.

When eating in the evening, the whole village is filled with the aroma of chicken soup. At this time, every household in the village is filled with loving fathers and filial piety.

When Mr. Ye saw that all the corvee workers in the village had returned, he remembered that the rivers in the valley also needed to be dredged regularly.

The valley is low-lying, and Mr. Ye doesn't know if there will be flash floods during the spring and summer rainy seasons.

However, if there is too much rain, the valley will be easily flooded, so regular dredging of the river is necessary.

The next day, Mr. Ye went to Tangshan specifically and told him about regular river cleaning.

Tangshan was also reminded that flash floods are likely to occur in low-lying valleys.

"I see that the river in the valley is quite strong, and there are mountains on both sides of the valley. There may be flash floods."

"But this is just a guess. The valley is relatively far away, and we usually don't pay attention to whether there will be flash floods. We still need to take more precautions and take measures in advance."

There is no problem in cleaning up the river. The people doing corvee work in the village have returned. We can hire someone to dredge the river in the valley later.

These young adults in the village have been dredging the river for two months, so they should be quite experienced in dredging the river.

However, Tangshan had no idea how to guard against this flash flood.

"Uncle Ye, how can we prevent this flash flood?"

The fields of the Ye family are all in flat and open areas, and Mr. Ye was not sure how to prevent flash floods.

"I don't have any good ideas now. I'm going to ask the old farmer in the village for an idea, and we can discuss it together."