Shao Yuanyi's home is at the west end of the village, under an extremely thick Paraná pine tree. At this time of summer, it is a good place for everyone to cool off under the shade of the trees. It is said that when I first came here last year, there were still a lot of big trees, and it was only less than a year later, and many big trees were cut down and became people's house beams, furniture, doors and windows, farm tools and other items.

And because people often come here to chat in the shade, the people of the village office often put some notices on this tree, and sometimes even meetings are held under the tree. Shao Yuanyi glanced at it casually, and saw that there were several new notices on the tree during the time he was away from home.

The first notice was issued by the village office. The content is that each household takes turns to go out to inspect the canal and do a good job of irrigating each acre. Each person who has his turn must be responsible for cooperating with the people at the water lifting station, when to draw water, when to stop the water, and how high the water level in the field must be controlled.

The second notice was issued by the township government. Roughly speaking, a team of technical experts from the Animal Husbandry Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture from the south will demonstrate to the farmers in the village how to artificially inseminate their livestock in order to increase the pregnancy rate of the mother animals and quickly increase the number of livestock. The notice asks everyone to properly arrange the work at hand and try to observe and learn as much as possible.

The third was issued by the Township Armed Forces Department. After the end of the farming season, it is time for the militia to conduct a routine militia training period, when the village militia directors will arrange for all adult men to undergo intensive military training, including platoon training, live ammunition shooting, firearm maintenance, battlefield first aid, and so on. And after a period of training. The militia of each village should also gather in the township to conduct a drill. Every year after the autumn harvest, the militia of the forts on the East Coast Frontier, led by the regular army mobilized by the military headquarters, will clear the neighboring indigenous tribes to ensure that they do not pose a threat to the East Coasters.

The last notice was a wanted warrant issued by the Ping'an County Police Department in the north. Two months ago, a criminal gang of Mameluko (Portuguese and Indians) wandered to Coal River Township, Ping'an County, to abduct and sell people, and when they were discovered by local militia, they killed two people on the spot, while the other five escaped by chance. At present, it may have flowed to the area of Dafengbao and Mucaoling, and the township police station issued a high bounty for these people, and the general faces of several people were painted behind.

After silently writing down the contents of the notice, Shao Yuanyi pushed open the courtyard door and walked into his home. Someone is walking around in the kitchen at home. The chimney on the roof was also belching smoke. His new wife, Natasia, was sitting by the well in the courtyard killing fish. When he heard the sound of someone pushing the door, he looked up, and then shouted with surprise on his face: "Honey, you're back!" ”

Shao Yuanyi also nodded with a smile on his face, and then asked, "Anna is cooking?" "Anna is Natasia's cousin. I just came to the East Coast from Russia a few months ago. He is currently living in Shao Yuanyi's house. Wait until the end of the language learning and get the ID card. She plans to try her luck in Ping'an County in the north, where textile factories are always recruiting, and she wants to become a high-paying textile worker. However, Shao Yuanyi persuaded her that it was better to go to school. Although she is older, it doesn't hurt her to go to elementary school. After graduating from primary school, he returned to the township, and with the thirst for talents here in Mucaoling, it is no problem to become a clerk in the township government. Although the income is not as high as that of female textile factory workers, it is better to be idle. However, young girls always yearn for life in the big city and can't bear the loneliness of the countryside, and Anna is always a little resistant to going to school.

Shao Yuanyi and Natasia have just been married for a few months. They got married in West Lake Fort, and Shao Yuanyi still remembers the scene on the wedding day: when the wedding was halfway through, several navy soldiers wearing sky-blue navy uniforms hurriedly sent a large number of gifts that were difficult to see on the market: silk clothes, whale oil soap, whale oil candles, high-end leather goods, and red envelopes that totaled nearly six hundred yuan, which made Shao Yuanyi a little dumbfounded.

Later, he asked his wife Natasia and father-in-law Petrov to learn that these things were sent by Petrov's dead son Yuri's comrades-in-arms and classmates. One of the most valuable was a hand-made table clock with an auspicious pattern of dragons and phoenixes given by Major Lu Ming, commander of the First Fleet of the Navy.

A wolf and green dog raised at home pounced on Zhao Cai happily and wagged his tail around Shao Yuanyi. Shao Yuanyi hugged it and scratched the bottom of its neck, and Zhaocai narrowed his eyes comfortably. Anna came out of the kitchen, whispered "brother-in-law" in Chinese, which she was not very proficient in, and then walked to the courtyard by the wall like a mouse seeing a cat, smoked a bundle of firewood in the pyre by the wall, and then slipped into the kitchen again against the wall, making Shao Yuanyi look funny.

A pot of soup was simmering on the briquette stove at the kitchen door, and the pungent aroma made Zhaocai stay next to him and reluctant to leave. Shao Yuanyi lifted the lid of the pot and found that the stewed soybean belly and lung soup was his favorite food, and it was also the favorite food of many Ming people in this village. In fact, at first, some immigrants from France in the village did not know whether to eat these things because of religion or other reasons, but the power of the environment was huge, and after seeing that the Ming and Estonians in the village were eating happily and the price was really cheap, these French people gradually ate and gradually left their original customs behind. Assimilation, or change of customs, is something that comes little by little between these details.

Lunch will take a while to finish. Shao Yuanyi first walked to the pigsty and added some pig food to the pigs in the pen, and then walked through the hall to the back of the house, and there was a large meadow behind the house until the river, where Shao Yuanyi built a cowshed out of wood and raised four or five cows. In fact, almost every household in this small village is like this, and everyone has planted large patches of alfalfa on the hilly slopes in front of the village. Alfalfa grows extremely fast, and harvesting alfalfa is also convenient due to the fact that the village has a horse-drawn forage harvester that the village has borrowed from a loan officer from the Northwest Reclamation Bank. Therefore, every family in the village has more or less two cows and more than a dozen sheep, and the same is true for Shao Yuanyi's family, the difference is that he does not raise sheep, all of them are cattle.

Next to the barn is a hay room where harvested alfalfa is stored. Some farmers in the neighborhood also grow a lot of sweet potatoes in front of and behind their houses, and when the sweet potato vines grow, they cut some of them and use them to feed pigs and cattle and sheep, which is also very practical. Artificially bred cattle grow faster and are willing to produce meat than cattle grazing in large pastures, and can grow more than 300 kilograms in a year, and can be slaughtered in two to three years. There are many types of cattle that come down from the top of the head, from beef cattle to dairy cows. The cow adopted by Shao Yuanyi is a Holstein cow, which is a kind of beef cow, in addition to long meat, it can be milked regularly, and most of the milk is sold to the dairy factory in the township for his own consumption, processed into cheese, milk powder and other foods, and then exported to all parts of the country.

Last year, a cow in the pen gave birth to a calf, and now it's only a few months old. Shao Yuanyi grabbed a handful of silage-fermented corn stalks and sweet potato vines, then crushed them with a guillotine, mixed some alfalfa and soybean meal, and used them as special feed for calves. These feeds are easy to digest and have a high nutritional value, making them ideal for calves that are growing their heads.

Looking at the few cows grazing with their heads bowed in the pen, Shao Yuanyi was a little depressed. The cow that was just brought back not long after the beginning of the year was forgotten, but a bull and two cows raised last year actually gave birth to only one calf, and Shao Yuanyi was very unhappy with such bad luck. However, he is not alone, and many families in the village have not given birth to every cow. In this way, the artificial insemination method of livestock mentioned above also has merits, which can increase the pregnancy rate of female animals and increase the number of livestock, which is indeed a good law.

Shao Yuanyi is not an unheard of person, and he has vaguely heard people mention this method that has been used by breeding stations for a long time. In the past, mares were mainly used for breeding in military horse farms, but after the development of animal husbandry in the hilly areas of Huxi, the upper authorities finally decided to introduce this method here to quickly reproduce the domestic livestock population. For this reason, I heard that the Ministry of Agriculture also organized people to make a lot of sets in Luoqia Leather Factory (the role is known to everyone), the sleeves are made of whale intestines, which are strong and durable, and the size is about the same, which is very suitable for the needs of the breeding station.

I heard that after using this method in the military horse farm, the pregnancy rate of mares has directly increased by more than 30%, which has greatly increased the number of horses on the east coast, and effectively guaranteed the demand for horses for national defense and industrial and agricultural use. Today, there are hundreds of cattle in one village here, an increase of 30 percent, to one to two hundred cattle a year. If it is placed in the entire township or even the entire agricultural area of Huxi, then adding more than 2,000 cattle a year is not a problem at all. This figure is huge, based on the preferential price of beef cattle imported from La Plata, more than 2,000 cattle is 30,000 yuan, and this is not counting the milk production, if you count these, then the economic benefits will be even higher.

"Well, it's time to go to the lecture in a while and see how the experts from the Ministry of Agriculture do it. If it really works, then I'll be satisfied with adding one more cow a year. Shao Yuanyi pondered in his heart. And at this time, the voice of the front yard sounded calling him to eat. Shao Yuanyi answered loudly, then closed the cowshed, washed his hands by the river, and then walked slowly towards the front yard. (To be continued......)