After being beaten by Brother Chen last time, in less than two weeks, Xu Lin returned to Xiaolushan and resumed his normal work, and the potato field is still taken care of by him. Xu Lin is still the same, usually except for working in the fields, he sleeps in a daze in a small building, the only happy change is that he drinks less often now, and the whole person doesn't look so sluggish.

After the transition to autumn and winter, there was a lot less work in the popsicle wholesale store, and Lu Ci could spend most of his time on Xiaolu Mountain, and Yunli handed over the cherry tomatoes of the eight acres of land to Lu Ci to manage. In this way, Lu Ci became the second regular employee of Xiaolushan, and Yun Li paid her a salary of 800 yuan per month, which was 200 more than Xu Lin.

Even in the peak season, Lu Ci can only earn five or six hundred yuan a month at most in the wholesale store, and now Yun Li gives her eight hundred yuan a month, and there is no limit to her working hours, as long as she does the work at hand well. Gratitude is beyond words, she can only work hard to repay Yunli's kindness.

Yun Li picked an opportunity and gave her the antifreeze ointment he had taken from Aunt Fang. In cold weather, applying this ointment to the skin can have a good anti-freeze effect and also have a miraculous effect on eliminating chilblains. In the past, Lily was very afraid of cold, so Aunt Fang asked an acquaintance to buy this ointment and apply it to her every winter, and the effect was still very significant.

After using the ointment, the chilblains on Lu Ci's face have subsided a lot, and it is difficult to find them if you don't look at it seriously now. Recently, the two have seen each other almost every day, and there are also a lot of exchanges about the cultivation of cherry tomatoes, if they were just ordinary friends who could talk before, now they have gone one step further and become friends who can make friends.

Entering December, the temperature dropped quickly, the rain decreased, and some wells dried up. In order to solve the problem of water sources, Yunli has recently visited the mountains several times, inspected all aspects of the situation on the spot, and finally finalized a solution.

The last time he went into the mountains to cut bamboo, Huang Damin once said that at the intersection of Banlu Mountain, Xiaolu Mountain and Dalu Mountain, there is a flat low valley, and every rainy season, a large amount of rainwater will accumulate here, forming a wetland.

After on-site investigation, Yunli found that this was indeed a solution, but there were still problems that needed to be solved urgently. First, the valley is large and flat, and the rainwater that accumulates is not deep enough to evaporate easily. Second, although the valley is located in the west, the altitude is almost the same as that of Xiaolushan, and the area in the north of Xiaolushan is much higher than the valley.

For the first problem, Yunli already has a specific solution, and for the second problem, he doesn't have much clue, or in other words, he has to solve the first problem first, see how this step goes, and then plan the direction of the second step.

As Brother Chen said, the road has to be taken step by step, and the meal must be eaten one bite at a time, so Yunli has decided to complete the first step first.

Yunli's plan was to dig two connected large pits on the other side of the valley, near the low-lying area of Xiaolu Mountain, to be used as reservoirs, and then dig a deep water canal in the shape of a herringbone along the junction of Xiaolu Mountain and Dalu Mountain, running through the entire southern area of Xiaolu Mountain.

The matter of digging the canal is easy to do, after all, it is within the area of Xiaolushan, but it is necessary to dig two large pits in the valley, which can only be started with the consent of the county forestry bureau, but the procedures to be done are extremely cumbersome, and it may not be successful. In desperation, Yun Li found Xu Ping and asked him to help with the staff, after all, he is also an official, and he also knows more about these operations.

To Yunli's surprise, under Xu Ping's guidance, he had two meals with the leaders of the town's forestry office, gave some small gifts, and handled this matter, without any formalities, they could start construction at any time.

As the saying goes, snakes have snake roads, rats have rat paths, and it must be very troublesome to excavate works on public land. However, if there is sufficient reason to explain that the public land hinders the rights and interests of the private owner, then the private owner can make some repairs on the public land in order to protect the rights and interests without affecting the third party.

According to the testimony of the relevant departments of Luzhen, the water in the valley hindered the business development of the contractor in Xiaolushan, so the problem of allowing the contractor to drain the stagnant water by itself was solved, without mentioning the excavation project.

Yun Li knew very well that if there was no Xu Ping, this matter would never have gone so smoothly, and it seemed that it was a very correct decision to try to win over Xu Ping and win his support.

Digging ditches is easy to do, you can ask someone to use an excavator to complete, but the excavator can not drive into the valley, and there are silt swamps inside, the excavator has no room to play in it, and the two big pits can only be excavated by human hands.

Yunli wants to do a good job of this project before the end of the year, because before the end of the year, the farmers will have another important harvest, and if they don't get it done well before the farm is busy, it will have to be delayed until next year. Therefore, Yunli hurriedly summoned manpower to dig ditches and pits at the same time, in order to complete the project.

With the income from the last batch of potatoes, Yunli still has plenty of funds on hand, so he invited three excavators to start work at one time. At the same time, the entrance to Owkayama has also been renovated, and on the left side of the stone steps, a long diagonal passage has been excavated, and gravel and fine sand have been paved for large vehicles to enter and exit Owkayama. In the future, when Lao Luo and the others came to buy, they could drive the truck directly to the edge of the field, saving the effort of carrying it back and forth.

The valley at the intersection of Banlu Mountain, Xiaolu Mountain, and Dalu Mountain is crescent-shaped, with the opening facing the east, covering an area of about 20 acres.

In the rainy season, it can still be called a wetland, but after autumn and winter, there has not been a few rains here, so now there is very little water in the valley, and the mud is full of reeds, cattails, water pines and other plants, most of which are more than two meters high, and people can't find a shadow when they walk in.

Xu Ping told Yunli that in the past, many migratory birds would settle here every autumn as a transit point and fly to Southeast Asian countries for the winter. In the past, the migration of migratory birds was quite a headache for farmers, and a large number of migratory birds settled on this side of Banlu Mountain, and during the autumn harvest season, a large number of crops in the terraced fields matured, which happened to become their granary.

After a hard time planting crops for one season, and seeing that the harvest is imminent, how can farmers be willing to be spoiled by migratory birds. So in those years, when it was the season of migratory birds, every household went out, holding shotguns, long bamboo poles, and torches, and went into the mountains to drive migratory birds, dismantle their nests, and even some ill-intentioned people came to catch those rare migratory birds to sell, so that the migratory birds did not dare to settle in this vicinity anymore.

Later, some conservationists found out about this, and they came to the mountains to have a dispute with the farmers, and finally went to the city. Both sides had their own reasons, and in the end, the relevant departments gave a certain percentage of subsidies to the farmers, and the matter gradually subsided.

Until now, there are many fewer migratory birds passing through here than in the past, and there are no more large-scale crop grabbings, which is a victory for the villagers, but a tragedy for the ecology of the entire area.

Now here in the valley, occasionally you can still see some migratory birds that have not yet migrated south, dragging their families to patrol and forage in the mountains and forests, and are very wary of the visitors, as soon as the clouds leave them to the valley, they all fly away in shock, making a resounding sound through the valley.

The farmers who came into the mountains are all old faces, Yunli wants to excavate the project, everyone is not surprised, now Yunli every time he recruits, everyone is very enthusiastic, even if they don't know Guò Xuping, they can find enough suitable candidates to work.

In addition to bags of necessary tools, each farmer who entered the mountain also carried a long thin bamboo pole, at first Yunli thought that they were going to catch birds and dig birds' nests, but when he arrived in the valley, he suddenly realized that there was another creature here that gave them a headache, snakes.

Snake, the people here are also called Xiaolong, they think that the snake is the servant of the mountain god, so there is no habit of eating snakes here, in some temples, you can also see the snake body statue, which shows its status here.

Snakes, hearing this word will make people have an involuntary feeling of resistance, and in this mountain forest, most snakes are poisonous, and if one is accidentally bitten, it will be a big trouble. The bamboo poles brought by the farmers are used to pick up snakes and drive snakes, which can be summed up in an idiom, that is, to scare snakes by beating grass.

The excavation site was selected as a low-lying area near the border of Xiaolushan and Dalushan, where there happened to be a natural ditch that could direct the water source and connect it with the herringbone canal excavated outside, saving a lot of effort. In addition, it is located in a shading position, so there is very little direct sunlight, so it is an ideal location.

According to the design of Yunli, the two reservoirs are one large and one small, dug into a circle, the diameter of the large one is more than 30 meters, the small one is less than 20 meters, they are all two meters deep, one east and one west are next to each other, the big one is in the west, and the small one is in the east. A culvert will be dug at the bottom of the two reservoirs to keep the water level balanced, and a small embankment will be built with mud and stone to regulate the amount of water discharge.

Although the dry season has begun, there is still stagnant water in many parts of the valley, and the mud and mud flats are everywhere, making excavation very difficult.

But the mountain people have their own methods, everyone first cleaned up the surrounding plants, used branches to insert the shape of the two reservoirs, and then tied a few long hemp ropes, one end of which was tied to a container such as a hemp bag and a large plastic bucket, and the other end was set on a wheel and hung on a tall tree to form a pulley group.

The farmers were divided into three groups, one with a shovel to fill the silt into the container, the other pulled the hemp rope to pull the silt out, and finally one group was responsible for dumping the sent silt and moving the container back into the mud. In this reciprocating cycle, each group of people works together in a division of labor, like a dredger with full horsepower, digging out the prototype of the reservoir little by little.