"Waterfront City", the secondary nest that the protagonist took advantage of the winter defense battle to completely control for several months, is the ideal sub-base.

According to the sub-base plan, this place will be used as a forward base and logistics base for the Northern Expedition of Paving Ants.

Farms and farmland are a crucial part of the plan. The location of the farm, the protagonist chooses to place it under the roots of a large banyan tree.

The reason why it is not placed in the "Waterfront City" is because the Waterfront City is built inside the banyan tree, and it is difficult to expand the nest space with the existing processing capacity of the big-headed ants, and the original space is already overcrowded with ants.

Although most of the small islands at the roots of the big banyan tree are rocky chassis, a lot of soil has accumulated near the roots of the banyan tree over time.

Before the onset of winter last year, in order to expand the nest, the protagonist organized people to excavate the ground of the island. Although it was finally determined that the underground of the island was full of rock clatters, and it was impossible to build new nests, there were still many empty caves or rock crevices, which were not suitable for nests, but more than enough as a breeding farm.

At the command of the protagonist, the big-headed ants dig a downward passage from the ground, hollow out the dirt in these caves and crevices, and then strengthen the walls. In this way, a prototype farm was built to shelter from the wind and rain.

Because the rock walls are rough, hard and cold, the ants also collect weeds to dry and lay them on the surface of the breeding ground as bedding.

Because of the poor drainage of the caves, waterproofing facilities have been built at the entrances of these farms, including drainage ditches, flood walls, etc.

The farmland is demarcated on a piece of fertile soil about three meters away from the river bank on the south bank of the river, and the area initially demarcated by this farmland is 20 meters long and 5 meters wide, with an area of nearly 100 square meters.

The ants put in a lot of labor to cut down all the plants in the land, and plucked out the grass roots and threw them on the ground. Some of these plants, which are edible or used as fiber, are transported to the "Waterfront City" warehouse, and the useless ones are left in place to dry, and finally burned to ashes to be used as fertilizer before farming.

- I'm the dividing line -

A few days later, the convoy from "Dongyang City" arrived at "Waterfront City" as scheduled.

The convoy brought 200 mealworm eggs that had not yet hatched, 100 flies that had not yet hatched, and 500 grass seed seeds. At the same time, there are a hundred experienced worker ants from the agricultural team.

When the protagonist reformed the "Dongyang City", he divided all the soldier ants and worker ants into five types of professional teams:

The first is the Standing Army, which currently has four Legions of the Emissary King and two Garrison Legions.

The second type is the construction team, which has 30 squads, composed entirely of worker ants, engaged in engineering construction.

The third type is the grain collection team, each team has two soldier ants and 48 worker ants, a total of 100 squads. The food brigade is responsible for collecting food, grazing aphids, and assisting the Standing Army squad in hunting. At the same time, it can be put into battle as a reserve.

The fourth category is the breeding team, which has five squads. Four of the squads each had 50 large-headed workers, and the other team had 43 paver workers and seven big-headed workers. Responsible for taking care of mealworms and maggots in the farm, planting fluorescent bacteria, etc.

The fifth category is the miscellaneous service team, and the soldier ants and worker ants that have not been included in the previous four types of teams are counted as miscellaneous ants, responsible for taking care of ant eggs, larvae and ant pupa, taking care of the queen ant and male ants, cleaning up garbage and feces, etc.

With the expansion of the scale of the farmland, the breeding team was later reorganized into the agricultural team, which was increased to ten squads, and the responsibilities of farmland cultivation were increased.

This group of workers from the agricultural team had experience in raising insects or cultivating farmland in "Dongyang City", and half of them were farmers and half planters.

The protagonist immediately divides the workers into ten groups, five each in the breeding group and the farmland group. Subsequently, the protagonist recruits 200 worker ants from the "Waterfront City" garrison to join these teams, and work in a new way.

Mealworm eggs and fly eggs are placed in the nest room at the right temperature and humidity, and are carefully cared for by the big-headed ants.

The hatching of mealworm eggs and fly eggs requires a moderate environment of ventilation, temperature and humidity, such as the optimal incubation temperature is 21~27 °C, and the optimal relative humidity is 65%, these fragile eggs are also afraid of predation by natural enemies, and the larvae that hatch first will also eat the unhatched eggs.

Although the conditions are quite demanding, the ants are capable enough to take care of the eggs.

In order to ensure temperature and humidity, the ants will carry out water replenishment operations in a timely manner, or introduce dry, warm air from the combustion chamber. With the protection of big-headed ants, no other insects dare to come here to feed. The newborn larvae are transported to the farm as soon as possible to prevent cannibalism.

After a few days of hatching, the hatching rate of the eggs reached 80%, which is a good result, which is not far from the average level of 85% in Dongyang City, which was achieved when two-thirds of the workers in the agricultural team of Linshui City were inexperienced.

In terms of farmland, 1,000 seeds brought by the convoy were not enough to sow all the fields. The protagonist then orders to find more than 400 whole seeds that have not been eaten from the stockpile.

These seeds were planted on more than 70 square meters of farmland, and nearly 30 square meters of farmland could only be used for the time being.

These seeds are not all varieties, but all kinds of grass grains, such as: dogtail grass, barnyard seeds, hemp, alfalfa, millet, wild sorghum, etc., the only thing in common is that the seeds are edible.

Among them, the bast fibers of hemp such as hemp can also be woven with hemp rope, and alfalfa and other leaves can also be eaten.

With so many plant species and different requirements for light, fertilizer and water, it will definitely create competition for sunlight and water, and it is not conducive to field management, fertilization and drainage. However, the ants are now very backward in agricultural technology, and there is a shortage of seeds, so they can only maintain this low-level agriculture similar to slash-and-burn farming.

As for the harvest, it depends entirely on the weather.

If this 100-square-meter farmland is all put into cultivation, according to the harvest of "Dongyang City", in a year, if the wind and rain are good, it can produce about three seasons of grass seeds, six or seven catties of grass seeds per 100 square meters per season, and 20 catties of grass seeds in a year.

But at present, only more than 70 square meters have been sown, and we can only hope that the last two stubbles will be fully planted, so that we can harvest 178 catties of grass seeds in a year.

For humans, this is a pitiful amount of production, but for ants it is already a large amount of food.

The protagonist is full of expectations for the farm and farmland, and if all goes well, then the Divine Envoy King's army will have two logistics bases, one north and one south, which will greatly alleviate the dilemma of food shortage. It will play a decisive supporting role in the war that is bound to break out this year.