Riding the wind of rebirth

Another great advantage of this wall is that it encloses each family’s land to form a “private territory”. The key is that the sheep can no longer run around. Apart from grazing on the mountain, they can only grow forage grass and carry out silage or dry storage, which is also part of the transformation of animal husbandry.

It is also beneficial to Zhouzhi. When people are moving stones, if they find any southern red materials, they will give them to him. It can be considered a mutually beneficial thing.

The windbreak circle created in this way was still too large, so Zhou Zhi thought of a very simple and effective sand fixation measure that he had seen in a documentary - grass grid.

Use a shovel to push the hay deep into the sand to form a square cross grid of one meter by one meter. Then push the sand in the center of the grid to the surrounding of the hay to reinforce the straw grid. Sprinkle grass seeds near the hay, and when it rains, more sand-loving plants will slowly grow. This is the Chinese "magic cube" for sand control, and it is also the most convenient, environmentally friendly and low-cost sand fixation model in the world in later generations.

The problems in Lianhe Township are similar to those in the desert, except that in the north it is the moving sand dunes that need to be stabilized, while here it is soil erosion that needs to be stabilized.

After each family built a wind wall, they used grass grids to fix the soil within the wind wall. This would greatly alleviate the problem of surface soil and seeds being blown away by the wind, which made Lao Chi Ri praise Zhou Zhi's genius idea.

By now Zhou Zhi has basically understood that the folks in Lianhe Township were not lazy before, but even though they tried their best, they still saw no hope in life. Now that they are full of hope, their motivation is different.

Even Tu Ziri, who had always been lazy and gluttonous, diligently learned the fruit tree care and propagation techniques, and bought four piglets from Gillette Abi. Even Tu Liangzhi began to look at him with admiration.

The entire Lianhe Township is busy like this in the spring. The saying that a year's plan begins with spring is fully reflected in Lianhe Township this year.

The villagers are busy building walls, making grass grids, turning the soil, and planting crops. Zhouzhi also participates in the management of pig farms and chicken farms.

The sows raised by Gillette Abi are all ready for breeding.

Under normal circumstances, sows reach sexual maturity at four to five months of age and can be first mated at six to eight months of age. The average gestation period from pregnancy to farrowing is one hundred and fourteen days.

That is to say, a sow can usually give birth two to three times a year, and the number of piglets born in each litter generally varies, averaging about thirteen.

It is not feasible to rely on natural breeding, it must be artificially breeding, which requires going to the county agricultural technology station to pick up people and bring specially preserved "seeds", which is a technology that is not easy to achieve under current conditions.

Liang Guangping and Liu Hongtao came up with a brilliant idea. They could use a truck to pull two boars over, use local resources on them, and then give the sows the same treatment. Wouldn't that be enough?

After the work is done, the owners of the boars just have to pay some "boar hard work fee".

Zhou Zhi couldn't help but exclaim that the two of them were so damn smart. They were truly heroic agricultural technicians who could handle any difficulty. The glorious task of making all the sows in the pig farm pregnant with piglets is now left to you two!

But jokes aside, the pre- and post-natal care of sows and the raising and castration of piglets are both big issues. It gets so busy that even Gillette Azi, who is studying at a medical school, has to come back to help.

Compared to the busy pig farm, the chicken farm is on the right track. Advanced hatching equipment has been introduced and the breeding technology is relatively simple. All you have to do is pay attention to the feed ratio and the hygiene and disinfection of the chicken farm.

Moreover, the venue here is large enough, and after the seedlings are trained, they can be raised in free-range mode. With the excellent disease resistance of the Rock Eagle Chicken, everyone has less to worry about.

Spring is also the best season for propagating fruit trees by cuttings. At this time, the cuttings do not need to be too thick, just the thickness of chopsticks and ten to fifteen centimeters in length.

Therefore, many branches suitable for cuttings can be taken from the mother trees of the two bases, and thousands of plants can be easily expanded. Moreover, the survival rate of cuttings in this season will also be very high. Under the careful care of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, it can reach about 98%.

Before cutting, the seedbed should be prepared. The soil of the seedbed should be clean soil without humus, plain sand or a mixture of vermiculite and perlite. After leveling, spray water once, and use a bamboo pole to poke some holes in the seedbed, about 8cm deep and about 10cm apart.

Cut the lower end of the cuttings into an oblique horseshoe shape. This will increase the contact area between the cut and the soil, which is beneficial to wound healing and root germination.

Soak the rooting end of the branch with rooting agent, then insert the branch into the hole poked before, and spray the diluted rooting agent solution again after the cutting is completed. Then set up a small arch frame on the seedbed and cover it with a layer of transparent plastic film for heat preservation and moisture retention.

In this way, as long as the cuttings are kept sufficiently moist, the wounds will generally heal in a month, roots will sprout, and they will begin to grow. After another year, they can be moved into the orchard for planting in the spring of the following year.

The number of seedlings expanded this time is far more than that in the autumn planting. At least by next spring, it is expected that the orchard will be able to meet the needs of the activists of the "United Township Fruit Tree Propagation Technology Group".

With this group of seed players opening up a development path, everyone will follow suit in the future. With the support of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, it is foreseeable that a large cherry and pomegranate base will be developed in the entire mountain village.

In March, just when the busy spring season was coming to an end, another major event happened - the National Science and Technology Leading Group was established and held its first meeting.

The main responsibilities of this national science and technology leading group are to study and formulate national science and technology policies, discuss and decide on important science and technology tasks and projects, and coordinate the relationship between science and technology work of various departments across the country.

The level is quite high, and the team members include several famous scientists, Ding Henggao, Zhu Guangya, Zhou Guangzhao, He Chunlin, and Zhu Lilan.

Several development directions currently formulated have also yielded fruitful results in later generations, such as aerospace, communications, supercomputing, large aircraft, and some military projects.

What is relevant to Zhouzhi here is communication and supercomputing, but communication only includes network communication. The computing power of the neural system is far from the level of "supercomputing", and the cost advantage has not yet been reflected. However, the concept of its technical route has still attracted attention.

But it is just attention. At least Zhou Zhi and Mai Xiaomiao have not been called to the capital to report on their work. And according to Li Guangnan's feedback, they are more interested in smart terminals.

March is also the season for wild vegetables to grow. In addition to the fern sprouts that have re-emerged from the ground all over the mountains, Zhou Zhi also discovered that a kind of wild vegetable that should have been popular has appeared on the plowed land - shepherd's purse.

But the strange thing is that people here don’t eat them. They call them “rabbit grass”, meaning they are only suitable for feeding rabbits.

Moreover, according to Gillie Abi, this grass only grows on newly plowed soil before the New Year, so it is relatively rare locally. After the village plowed the land on a large scale this year, this vegetable began to sprout everywhere.

Zhou Zhi didn't believe that the taste of shepherd's purse here would be different from that in the north. When he was on secondment in the north, his favorite thing to eat was shepherd's purse dumplings. So he took Mai Xiaomiao and a vegetable basket to the fields and dug up a lot of it.

After trying to make fried eggs with shepherd's purse, Zhou Zhi was completely relieved. The shepherd's purse here is as delicious as the shepherd's purse in the north, and even more tender. (End of this chapter)