As soon as February passed, the snow that had covered the Emster Mountains for four months also began to melt under the warmer sun.

After accumulating the strength of a winter, the grass seeds calmly burst out of the ground under the moisture of snow and water, and bloomed with pleasant new shoots. It's March in the other world, and the white Emster Mountains are full of life in the spring breeze, and the cattle and sheep who have been curled up in the shed for a winter are driven by the herdsmen, wading through the mountains and rivers, and gnawing on fresh grass sprouts.

In the new year, the valley bought by Liu Ci is also changing.

As soon as the day dawned, a group of baby soldiers were already fully dressed, and under the leadership of the captain Kerry Blatter, they marched through the valley to the foot of the North Mountain wall.

The ropes on the mountain wall have changed color after being blown by the wind and snow. Twenty-one and a half years old children are also growing up rapidly after being blown by the wind and snow. In the beginning, it took them a day to make a round trip from the top of the mountain, and practice makes perfect, and they kept climbing so that the steep mountain wall could no longer be an obstacle to the children's footsteps.

In the beginning, they made a round trip, only for dinner.

Now twenty-one children, young and old, set out from the valley at dawn, and were able to go back to the top of the mountain and return for lunch with the spoils.

Their palms have a thick layer of cocoons, which are the friction of ropes and rocks, and bring "badges" to children. Strangled on the rope, healed again, blistered again the next time, and in the cycle of climbing, the human body has a cocoon in the palm of the hand to protect the flesh in order to adapt to the environment.

Liu Ci's training is very hard, and if you want the alchemy girl to look at it alone, it must be child abuse.

But it is undeniable that these harsh trainings have refreshed the children of the hired families, both physically and mentally. With the help of ropes, they can already go up and down the North Mountain freely.

The slender arms became stronger, the children ate more, their faces were ruddy, and even the weakest girls walked with vigor. After only two months of training, most of the children are a few centimeters tall.

With a new mental outlook, more and more confident and relaxed looks, other children who have not joined the team are very envious, especially the eight-year-old little Harvey, who watches the team training every day, and secretly gritted his teeth and swears that he must join the team this year!

Twelve-year-old captain Kerry Blatter, strong as a calf, very serious in everything, Liu Ci basically only needs to teach him the training method, and a group of children can train strictly under Kerry's supervision, which makes Liu Ci very worry-free.

After breakfast that day, a team of cows and horses appeared on the mountain road.

After the grand butler James accepted it, he confirmed that it was a tea sapling brought from another parish with the help of Stull.

Tea is expensive, tea seedlings will not be cheap, Stuart this time shipped back 40,000 tea seedlings, all of which are more than two years old, different varieties, prices are also different, the cheapest is adjacent to Emster, the parish of Yeshidan "snow tea". The diocese of Yasdan has a land bordering the Emster Mountains, and the winter temperatures are also very low, and this "snow tea" is often tested by frost, and the greenish-brown leaves are covered with hoarfrost at the edges, and the frost does not fade when making tea, and the tea leaves seem to be inlaid with a snow edge, hence the name.

In comparison, snow tea is not the most expensive variety Stull found, but looking at the environment in which it was originally grown, Liu Ci is most sure that it will survive.

A snow tea seedling worth 4 silver coins.

40,000 tea seedlings, Liu Ci had to pay a total of nearly 30,000 gold coins for this. Buying tea seedlings is only the most basic input, and it will take at least two or three years to see the output of 30,000 gold coins.

There were bumps along the way, and the tea seedlings had varying degrees of frostbite, and after Liu Ci examined them, he asked them to move them into the glass greenhouse first.

According to the agricultural book, tea is a typical subtropical plant, which likes temperature, humidity and acidic soil, and grows fastest at a temperature of 20-25 °, and when the temperature exceeds 35 °, the new shoots of the tea tree will stop growing.

There are many soils suitable for growing tea: brick red soil, red soil, yellow soil, yellow-brown soil, brown soil, brown soil, and purple soil. However, the topsoil of the Emst Mountains is typified by meadow soil, coupled with the long frost and ice and snow time every year, the tea is profitable, and the Amster land is cheap.

Liu Ci is sure to grow tea, in addition to her mastery of the art of talismans, another reason is the complex landform, which has formed a variety of soil qualities. In the West Mountain and the South Mountain, from the mountainside to the foot of the two high mountains, Liu Ci found several soil groups such as brick red soil, yellow-brown soil, and gray-brown soil.

They are the basis for Liu Ci to have the confidence to grow live tea trees, and no matter how she has the technology to defy the sky, she will never be able to grow tea on sandy soil.

"James, the weather is warming up, and the permafrost is warming, so let's organize people to dig a pit in the mountains today. You see what tools are missing, so that people can go to the city and buy them back. ”

"Yes, miss." James checked the supplies, from Liu Ci buying the valley to the infrastructure, the hired workers were busy quarrying and burning bricks, the women were tidying up the valley wasteland, hoes and shovels and other tools were available, and there was no need to buy them for the time being.

The tea seedlings were transferred to the greenhouse, and there was no worry about freezing to death for a short time, and Liu Ci breathed a sigh of relief.

The plan of the year lies in the spring, and for the manor under construction, she has to be busy not only planting tea. Grapevine seedlings were still waiting to be transplanted, the snow was half-covered, large valley wastelands were still waiting to be cultivated, and in a different world where mechanized cultivation was impossible, Steward James proposed to hire another group of day laborers.

"Even if you work for a short time, in the future, if you hire workers on the estate, you will have to sign a contract for at least ten years." Liu Ci shook his head and vetoed James's proposal, and he did not insist. The chief housekeeper knows that the greenhouses built one after another in the valley have the secret of out-of-season vegetables, which brings a lot of benefits to Liu Ci, and it is indeed easy to expose the casual recruitment of short-term workers.

40,000 tea seedlings to be planted, not simply digging 40,000 soil pits can be solved. The depth of reclamation of the new tea plantation required a minimum of 50 centimeters of soil to be turned down, and it was obviously difficult to rely on hoes and shovels, so the only way to reclaim the land was to drive cattle and horses to the hillside and use iron plows to reclaim the land.

Not to mention the low level of agriculture in the Magic Continent, it is a fool's dream to buy a satisfactory iron plow in the Emster region, which is dominated by animal husbandry. Liu Ci looked at the bulky iron plough purchased from the city, and felt that it was very stressful to operate in breaking the enemy, so he had to turn over the "Qi Min Yao Shu" by himself, and found a plough tool that was very famous in the history of ancient Chinese farming: Quyuan plow.

"Quyuan plow" first appeared in the late Tang Dynasty in the Jiangdong region, by the ploughshare, plough wall, plough bottom, press the iron, the forehead, the plow arrow, the plough wheel, the plow tip, the plough evaluation, the plough building and the plow plate and other eleven parts, as long as there is a prototype drawing, it is not complicated to make.

Compared with the iron plough of the other world, the plough body can swing when the curved plough is operated, full of mobility, easy to plough deeply, and light and flexible, conducive to maneuvering, the land area that can open the pit on the hillside is small and small, and the advantages of the curved plow can be seen at a glance.

Driving cattle and horses, carrying shovels and hoes, and a few newly-made curved ploughs, half male to female, a total of forty hired laborers, went up the hillside with Liu Ci.

There are still ice slags on the surface of the soil, and grass that has just bloomed new shoots.

According to Liu Ci's teachings, they put the quyuan plough on the livestock and began to cultivate. At first, the movements were rusty, and the operation was crooked, but slowly mastered the skills, and the hired workers discovered the advantages of this plow.

Pushing the "plough evaluation", the plough arrow is downward, the ploughshare is very deep into the soil, and the cattle and horses are moving forward, and the hard soil that is very difficult to rely on manpower alone is turned over. The reddish-brown clods of soil were never cultivated, and the ploughed hard soil was crushed by the plough walls and pushed to one side, reducing the resistance of the plough forward.

"Miss, this plow is so good!"

The hired man who first used the curved plough was full of joy and cracked his mouth and giggled. The lightweight plough moved freely in his hands, and it was many times easier than digging with a hoe.

Liu Ci nodded: "If the soil is not fine enough, the others will knock it down with shovels and hoes, and pick out all the stones in the field and put them aside." Women be careful, all the grass roots that have been turned up must be spared, and they must be carefully sifted. ”

Chop the grass without removing the roots, the spring breeze blows and grows! Liu Ci still dislikes that the soil in the mountains is not fertile enough, and if these grasses are not removed, they will only compete with the tea trees for fattening.

The hired men began to act, and the man who operated the zigzag plough was in charge of plowing the land, and the other men followed suit and smashed the clods of earth completely. The women carried baskets and squatted to pick the roots, and when the baskets were full, they piled them up in the open space. Liu Ci said that the grass roots are simply rinsed, and they are also fodder for sheep and cattle, and when the land is finished, someone will pick up the grass roots down the mountain.

The stones dug up in the ground, according to Liu Ci's instructions, were also piled up at the edge of the field to make a dam. Tea should be planted on the hillside, and after farming, it is best to make it into a terraced shape. The terraced fields with low inside and high outside can prevent soil erosion.

Moreover, the main road of the sloping tea garden is required to be "S" shaped, and it cannot be convenient. The ditches in the park can store water during light rain and drain flood water during heavy rain - the destructive power of snow floods in the plateau area should not be underestimated.

The employees are cultivating the land, and Liu Ci is also calculating the area needed to plant tea trees.

The tea garden is divided into "single-row strip planting" and "double-row strip planting", the former can plant about 3,000 tea seedlings per acre, and the latter can be as many as eight or nine thousand. However, this is the data of mechanized planting, based on the fertility of the hillside in front of Liu Ci, she is afraid that she will not have enough fertilizer to plant 3,000 plants per mu.

Failure to achieve mechanized and precise management, it is obviously unwise to increase the planting density.

Liu Ci plans to try to plant 2,000 plants and 40,000 tea seedlings on one acre of land, and needs 20 acres of sloping land. The slightly fertile land on the hillside is not contiguous, and it is quite complicated to pick and choose where to plant tea.

Nana was panting, with a few sturdy women, carrying a basket to climb up, the early spring weather sun is not very powerful, the mountain wind even carries dry and cold, but Nana who climbed up with a light sweat on her forehead, it can be seen that she climbed urgently.

"Miss, it's past lunchtime!"

Nana gasped in anger.

Liu Ci looked at the sky, but it was not already noon, a group of people were in full swing, and they had a full stomach for breakfast, but no one noticed. However, Liu Ci himself did not farm, and it was normal not to notice hunger, and even if the employees who worked were hungry, they could not shout in front of Liu Ci.

"Everyone rested and got ready for lunch. You too, I didn't remember it at noon, and someone should have reminded me. ”

The hired hands put down their tools, grabbed the unmelted snow and rubbed it in their hands, even if they had washed their hands. Hearing Liu Ci's "blame", most people smirked.

The women who are familiar with Nana came forward to check the food in the basket, the food is not picked up the mountain, today the canteen has prepared a big meat bun, beef, sheep, pork three kinds of fillings, the noodles are soft and gluten, the meat filling is enough, a bun is enough to be the size of an adult's fist, as long as the appetite is good and the stomach is big, the mountain village does not quantify the diet of the employees.

"What else is there besides buns?"

Nana magically took out a plate of steamed dumplings with hot air from the bamboo basket she straddled, and when Liu Ci tasted it, it turned out to be dried ham and bamboo shoots filling. After a while, the aura vegetables she planted will be harvested, and then she will be able to get rid of the status quo of eating stock all day.

With the cold spring breeze blowing on his face, Liu Ci ate a single dumpling, thinking that after a while he could practice many recipes that had not yet been tried, Liu Ci was very yearning.