Timoshenko promised to give the troops the necessary supplies, but when they actually sent transport planes over had to be discussed.

After all, they will airdrop a large amount of supplies, and the news has been passed on to the vast number of soldiers, and everyone is looking forward to it. But as the top brass of the army, both Yang Mingzhi and Yevlov even had the importance of self-reliance, and now they have finally waited for the potato season to ripen.

Therefore, Yang Mingzhi first mobilized the soldiers of the guard company, and the team was replenished to 200 people, standing neatly in the small empty field of the camp. Each of them was armed with a military shovel, the short wooden handle was changed to a long one, and then they went to the field to dig potatoes.

Yang Mingzhi's injury was a little better, and he obeyed the doctor's advice and still pulled his injured left arm down to his chest.

He looked around at his soldiers, all of them in good spirits. "Good, good. Comrades, we waited two months. That's when we first entered this swamp, we planted the roots of the potatoes, and two months later, they were ripe and it was time for the harvest! ”

The soldiers roared as they first dug up the fields near the camp of the guard company.

Star fruit and Natasha are also here, but the girls don't have to go to the fields themselves. As logistics staff, they boiled a large pot of boiled water and cooled it to cool white, and in order to get rid of some earthy taste, they even put some tea powder.

Now, Yang Mingzhi has officially handed over the responsibility of digging potatoes to the new commander of the guard company, Balzen.

"Now that you have a new position, you have to lead everyone to dig three feet into the ground, dig up all the potatoes, and not waste them at all."

Balzen saluted, he cherished his current position. The reconnaissance company also suffered heavy losses, and they were originally drawn from various battalions to be recruited into the guard company, which had lost a lot of personnel. Balzen has been outstanding in recent battles, and he came to be a company commander without complaint.

Everyone immediately sprang into action and began digging the fields near the camp, and soon clumps of potatoes were dug up.

Yang Mingzhi was injured, so he watched from the side and instructed his wife. "When they get tired of digging, they will definitely ask you for water to drink, and now pour cold water into the lunch box."

He looked at the warriors quietly, and couldn't help but think a lot in his head.

Now there are quite a lot of materials in the warehouses of the 284th Division, and the last combat unit suffered a lot of losses, but it got a lot of food. It turned out that the villagers who had evacuated with the troops, who had almost emptied their homes, opened their cellars, and contributed large quantities of food stored for the winter, such as potatoes and cabbage.

In addition, the troops also stored a lot of flour, which, of course, was captured by the Germans.

At present, the staple food of an ordinary Soviet soldier every day is bread and potatoes. The bread was not pure black bread, and the captured German flour was white flour, mixed with wheat flour with a high bran content stored by the common people of the marshes themselves, or simply baked with buckwheat flour. But when choosing between potatoes and bread, the fighters must choose bread, after all, the simplest boiled potatoes have no taste at all and are even difficult to swallow.

It's just that everyone also knows that potatoes are still the foundation of everyone's survival. This plant can still survive in the peat soil of the marshland, it is resistant to cold and salinity, the soil moisture is not a problem, and the yield is still very good.

Yang Mingzhi just watched for a while, and the soldiers dug out a large pile of potatoes, and even piled them up into a small mountain. These potatoes are not very large, mainly because of the variety. Good potatoes need to be detoxified so that they can even grow like a volleyball, but if their offspring are not treated, they end up half the size of a fist.

Even though potatoes are small, they still win by quantity.

"Let's work harder, there are many of us, we must plow the fields we are responsible for before noon!"

Yang Mingzhi's words were usually orders, and the soldiers raised their shovels one after another and shouted Ula in their mouths.

The guard company was responsible for more than 10 acres of potato fields, which were originally wild forests, but in order to build houses, all the trees were cut down, and the soldiers cleaned up the roots, so that the fields were quickly reclaimed. Because of the characteristics of potatoes, there is no need for farmers to serve them often. The soldiers also understood the importance of farm manure, and the manure of people and animals was not wasted. As for food scraps, feed the poultry.

The task given by Yang Mingzhi to the two girls is to stay honestly, and it is a little boring to wait for a long time.

Natasha couldn't help but snort.

“щиикаша，пишанаша~щиикаша，пишанаша~”

(Cabbage soup and buckwheat soup, our favorite)

She sings inexplicably to a tune, which sounds funny too.

"Cabbage soup and buckwheat soup, is that the name of the song?" Yang Mingzhi asked with interest.

"Well, almost. In the past, my mother always sang like this when she cooked, but. At this point, the girl's face became gloomy again.

"I'm sorry, dear, but it's better for me not to ask." Yang Mingzhi found that he accidentally poked her in the sore spot, and he couldn't help but blame himself.

Natasha is naturally not a vexatious person, she tries to be strong, and looks at her savior with a smile. "That's the way it is, I can only be strong. At least for my brother, be strong. “

"That's a good point." Yang Mingzhi couldn't help but applaud. Her background is very similar to that of star fruit, so the two have a common language.

It was almost noon when the fighters finally finished their mission, they dug very deep, some guys even dug half a meter deep, if you dig any further down, I am afraid that the groundwater will seep out!

Yang Mingzhi finally stood up and watched the soldiers walk to the star fruit covered in mud, and they begged for cold water to drink. Many people bring their own water and immediately unscrew the kettle and fill it.

Balzen stood in front of Yang Mingzhi, saluted and said: "Deputy division commander, the task has been completed, and our harvest this time is very big!" ”

Yang Mingzhi replied with satisfaction: "You have done a good job, our potato digging operation is an experiment, and it is obvious that we have achieved a bumper harvest this time." ”

Potatoes are crops that yield four or five thousand catties per mu when the wind and rain are good, and two thousand catties are no problem when the environment is bad. It is extremely prolific, which is exactly what led to the population explosion in ancient Chinese history.

Yang Mingzhi glanced at the tired and grinning soldiers, he didn't show his official authority to let everyone rearrange the queue, and directly gave the order: "Comrades, take a rest first, and let's start weighing the potatoes in a while." We will eat after we have completed this task, and I will inform the division commander of the results. ”

Just do it, and the intense weighing work begins immediately.

The potatoes are not cleaned, and many of them are still dirty, which affects some of the results, but the impact is minimal. The large scales of the collective farms, which were supposed to weigh fish and livestock, were now used to weigh potatoes.

The weighing took more than an hour, and it was early in noon. Although everyone was very hungry, everyone's face was filled with the joy of a bumper harvest, because the yield of each mu exceeded two thousand catties, that is, one ton, and ten acres of land produced a total of eleven tons of potatoes.

Yang Mingzhi wrote down all the data on a piece of paper, eleven tons of grain, which is a large amount, and he knows that there are a lot of potato fields in the entire camp. Because it is a command-style promotion of potato planting, although there is no serious statistics on how many acres of land there are, I am afraid that there are still five or six hundred acres.

The farmland is scattered in the forest, and many open spaces are cleared, mainly for potatoes. If there are 500 acres of farmland, the harvest will be 500 tons. There are only two or three kinds of potatoes, and the maximum is 200 grams. Under the conditions of rationing, the average peasant who has no manual labor can eat 500 grams of potatoes a day, and children need less.

But manual laborers and soldiers ate more, at least more than a kilogram a day. Yang Mingzhi simply calculated an account for himself, the total population of the army and the affiliated ordinary people was about 13,000, and everyone was distributed in a large area. Based on the consumption of one kilogram of potatoes per day, thirteen tons will be consumed per day, and this harvest is enough for all people to eat for two months.

As a result, Yang Mingzhi was excited. Facing the mountains of potatoes, I couldn't help but feel a lot of emotion. "We are lucky to get two months' rations, we have other food, we won't go hungry this winter!"

Balzen explained: "Deputy division commander, in fact, we can continue to sow seeds, we are very close to Ukraine here, and there are generally no terrible low temperatures in winter." We plant another season of potatoes and we can still harvest something. ”

Yang Mingzhi agreed, "Just do as you say, and we will continue to plant." Regardless of the winter situation, if the potatoes are frozen to death, we can still dig out the developing rhizomes, which are small enough to feed the stomach. ”

The mission was all over, and the fighters poured into the canteen. Just like Natasha's little song just now, everyone likes to drink the vegetable soup served in the cafeteria. Although it is not a grain of buckwheat or even ordinary wheat, the aunt in the cafeteria cooks a simpler noodle porridge and sprinkles some salt or even vegetable leaves to make salty porridge. This food is very easy to digest, has an excellent taste, and is a great replenishment for energy.

Yevlov and Fomin couldn't wait to know the result, and the two simply went into the cafeteria. They watched Yang Mingzhi drink two large bowls of noodle porridge, and burped happily.

"It's really delicious, you see our soldiers, they drink even more happily."

Yevlov heyed and immediately asked about the harvest.

Yang Mingzhi was about to speak, and the excitement in his heart directly evolved into laughter. After laughing enough, he spread his hands, "We all have ten fingers, and I want to tell you that the harvest is more than ten tons." I won't take off my shoes, plus a toe, a total of eleven tons of potatoes on ten acres of land, and we have a bumper harvest. ”

"So much!" Yevlov asked in surprise.

"Yes, that's it, so you hurry up and mobilize the masses, and we will start harvesting potatoes from now on. We also had to build new barns and cellars. To be on the safe side, we should temporarily reduce the supply of flour, and in the absence of military operations, we staple the potato. These new harvests, let's eat them quickly! ”

Yang Mingzhi said a lot, and Yevlov and Fuming listened to it.

"Okay, we'll do it in the afternoon. The construction of the barn took some time, so we dug up the potatoes first. ”

In the afternoon, the potato digging campaign was first launched in the catfish village. According to simple statistics, there are more than 400 acres of farmland near Catfish Village, and more than 300 acres of potatoes are intensively planted. The rest of the farmland is mainly grown with vegetables, especially cabbage.

The next day, the excavation of the Black Soil Village and the Blacksmith Village also began. The blacksmith village has more than 200 acres of potato fields, and because of the late sowing, the yield is lower. As for the black soil village, because they prefer animal husbandry, the farmland is only more than 100 acres, and the output is about the same as that of the blacksmith village.

After another two days, the harvest statistics were completely over.

"According to the field census, the three collective farms have a total of 743 acres of fields, of which 621 acres are planted with potatoes (10 meters by 10 meters per acre in the Soviet Union), and a total of 670 tons of potatoes have been harvested."

The report was simply placed in front of Yang Mingzhi and Yevlov, "Timoshenko's assistance may start in a few days, I never thought that we would harvest so much food." If we knew this, we could have asked for more weapons and less food with limited air capacity. "Yevlov was thrilled in his heart, the policy of self-reliance in the troops was really right. He couldn't help but clench Yang Mingzhi's right hand, "Berekov, it's so right for you to be the deputy division commander and our staff officer!" ”

Yang Mingzhi was touted and almost fluttered. In fact, he knew that such a yield of potatoes was quite normal, and that the Soviet Union used the unit of area that was later called "small mu" in China, which was less than half the area of "large mu". In fact, in the future, the yield of potatoes per mu is very easy, and now the yield of a small mu is one ton, which is converted into two tons of a large mu, that is, four thousand catties.

Before the crossing, he knew that there was a saying that it was the potatoes and the women of the Soviet Union who saved the Soviet Union. Men went to the front, women produced in the rear, because of the environment, the Soviet Union was more suitable for growing potatoes, where it was too easy to survive, women were able to farm the fields, and its huge production fed the whole country.

It's just that Yang Mingzhi also knows the disadvantages of potatoes, there are several essential amino acids for the human body that he doesn't have, and worse, its energy density is only 40% of that of wheat. Warriors still need to eat some pasta and vegetables to reconcile, and as for soldiers who consume a lot of money on the march, fat and red meat are king.

The potatoes were harvested, and the villagers of the collective farms began to store the grain on their own initiative, and they instructed the fighters to build barns and cellars to store food. The whole camp in the Pripett Marsh was bustling with activity, and everyone knew that they were storing more than just a bunch of plant tubers, but a hope to fight for it.

At the same time, Yang Mingzhi and Yevlov were also waiting for new radio messages to come, and they already had a premonition that Soviet aid was coming...... (To be continued.) )