"Come on a few people, hang the mineral sand, coke."

In order to facilitate feeding, Fang Xiaoyue also built a ladder from high to low next to the small blast furnace, and made a pulley at the top, which could make the bamboo basket filled with mineral sand and coke easily hoisted to the blast furnace for feeding.

The first feeding was carried out by Fang Xiaoyue and her son-in-law Ding Shengming in person.

A layer of ore, a layer of coke, and a layer of limestone are put in, so that the iron ore can be fully reduced at high temperature.

With the ignition of the furnace, the slag outlet and the molten iron port were sealed, and the high temperature began to penetrate from the inside of the blast furnace to the outside, and Fang Xiaoyue, who had been pulling the bellows by the side of the blast furnace, was also hanging in her heart.

Well, he'd read a lot of books and probably understood how to do it, but it was his first time.

Under such circumstances, he was still a little worried.

If he fails, he will not only lose his old face, but also hit the morale of the entire Taoyuan Valley.

After two days and one night of suffering, Fang Xiaoyue and the young men were all red and tired.

Whether it works or not depends on this wave.

"Open the furnace!"

Fang Xiaoyue gave an order, and Ding Shengming immediately opened the molten iron mouth with an iron hook, and the white-red molten iron slowly flowed out of the hole, like a sticky bee candy, and like an ice cream forming a fountain.

Several young men led by Zhang Ping'an immediately pushed the steel sink made of refractory bricks forward to catch the hot molten iron.

The women, young and old, who came to see the bustle, were almost stunned when they saw the sparks splashing molten iron.

In the past, Ding Shengming's kind of iron smelting would have such momentum.

This is a symbol of industrial power!

"Stand back!! Stay safe! ”

Fang Xiaoyue could only drive the crowd loudly.

No, the people here don't have much safety awareness at all, and a child even wants to reach out and touch the fiery molten iron, isn't this death?

He may have thought that the molten iron was a delicious sugar water?

As the small blast furnace began to operate normally, the young people in Taoyuan Valley became busy.

The quality of the first molten iron is not bad, and it even surpasses the hundred wrought iron forged by Ding Shengming before!

The small blast furnace that is running normally needs to be re-fed every eight hours.

In order to produce as much steel as possible, Fang Xiaoyue even took people to carry ore and coal for more than 20 days in the heavy snow.

But to support this small blast furnace, this is still not enough.

In just three days, more than seventy percent of the ore and coke stored in Taoyuan Valley were consumed.

This forced Fang Xiaoyue to lead the team to set off again, dragging war horses and mules to transfer ores, coal and limestone.

But there is always an end to manpower.

A week before Chinese New Year's Eve, the small blast furnace had to stop.

But the steel produced exceeded Fang Xiaoyue's previous expectations.

Most of the steel was stored directly in the stone chamber, and a small part of the steel was directly watered into agricultural tools, weapons, and so on.

Even the oldest old farmer had to admire the material of the farm tools at this time, which was beyond their imagination in the past.

In the past, those sickles, hoes, etc., at most needed to be repaired or completely scrapped after a year of use, so many farmers from poor families often used wooden farm tools.

No, we all know that wooden farm tools are not as good as iron farm tools, but they really can't afford to use inferior iron farm tools.

In addition to the steel, Fang Xiaoyue even collected and stored the steel slag together.

Steel slag is useful, in addition to being used as part of the refining raw material in a small blast furnace, it is also mixed with limestone, coal, clay, etc., to make cement.

Of course, if you want to make cement, it is still very difficult for Fang Xiaoyue.

After all, just grinding cement raw materials into powder is a very troublesome thing.

Those travelers always describe how easily and easily cement was made, and it was sold cheaply.

But in fact, in ancient times, the labor cost of grinding cement raw materials alone would make people jump off the building.

Before the advent of high-power steam boilers or gasoline engines, if you want to rely on manual grinding to obtain cement raw powder, you can only say that you want to eat fart.

Therefore, Fang Xiaoyue left the steel slag, mainly to prepare for use in construction.

After all, steel slag has high strength, rough surface, good durability, and is not easy to crack at low temperatures, and is used as some special building materials, which is much stronger than gravel.

As the small blast furnace goes out, the daily rhythm of Taoyuan Valley turns to the festival.

In this plane, the Chinese New Year is still an extremely important thing.

Everyone prepares food for the holidays, paper cutting, etc.

The only regret is that there are no firecrackers.

However, Fang Xiaoyue made some lanterns with bamboo, dried them with animal intestines, and then dyed them with a kind of cochineal, put a rosin wood inside, lit it, and hung it on the upright wooden poles and the four corners of the house, which added a lot of festive atmosphere to Taoyuan Valley.

Of course, before the Chinese New Year, the most important thing is to hunt as much as possible.

For this reason, Fang Xiaoyue even stopped the young men's daily sword practice, and divided the young men into a team of ten people, armed with scimitars and spears, and went out hunting.

The wild creatures within a radius of dozens of miles in this Taoyuan Valley can be regarded as eight lifetimes of blood mold under the human desire for meat.

However, this is not surprising, there are hundreds of wars in this noodle, the people are not living well, animal husbandry is not developed, and many people are hunting and fishing to obtain meat.

On the third day before the Chinese New Year, Fang Xiaoyue returned to Taoyuan Valley with the young people.

After a simple skinning and dehairing process, the captured prey is buried in the snow, and it only takes a few hours for the meat to freeze hard.

It's the New Year, Fang Xiaoyue couldn't help but feel a little relieved when she looked at the lively Taoyuan Valley, the casing lanterns that could be seen everywhere and the children flying everywhere.

According to this progress, it is not difficult for this Taoyuan Valley to build a real Taoyuan.

In this Taoyuan Valley, the New Year is naturally a big bowl of food, and a large piece of meat.

Fresh rice is milled and turned into snow-white rice, which is boiled into rice, with a few slices of cured meat and some fried nuts, which is a delicacy that is difficult for the villagers to eat.

During the Chinese New Year, it became a regular practice to drink nut porridge in the morning, white rice at noon, and barbecue in the evening.

But a week after the Chinese New Year, Taoyuan Valley returned to normal.

The young men trained their swordsmanship every other day, and went out hunting every other day.

Ding Shengming took a few talented young men to completely break away from training and hunting, and was responsible for the creation of iron tools, weapons, etc. in the valley.