My 1995 Small Farm.

This was a minor incident.

Chen Ling didn't take it seriously.

All we know is that this family paid for a room at the farm, but they haven't stayed there yet.

That's their freedom; he didn't think much of it.

I didn't have time to think about anything else.

Zhenzhen is back these past two days.

He no longer needs his brother-in-law and his wife to cook for him; he cooks for himself every day.

Prepare some food for the little girl.

The village children, as well as close relatives, also enjoyed the delicious food.

Dishes like braised pork noodles and stewed offal are local specialties of northern China. They have a strong flavor and are very characteristic of northern China. Most of the local mountain people love them after trying them.

There's also fried quail, stir-fried snails, and chicken with pork tripe. If we make too much, we'll take a big bowl to several families in the village to share.

In the countryside, exchanging gifts is the most direct and simple thing to do.

Chen Ling would deliver some food at noon, and in the evening each household would bring him baskets and crates of early corn, peanuts, and yam beans.

Extremely enthusiastic.

The village has been quite busy lately, with many tourists, many of whom are visiting for the first time. Moreover, almost all of these first-time visitors are city dwellers with no experience of rural life. They are very playful but know nothing about rural life and don't care about any dangers; they just want to have fun.

This requires constant care and reminders... However, the villagers, having earned this money, will certainly do their best and won't be impatient.

Just a little tired.

Besides that, at this time of year, the villagers are also busy planting winter vegetables and spraying pesticides.

For example, Wang Lixian's family is busy with various tasks in the greenhouse.

Vegetables grown in greenhouses also need fertilizer.

Back then, the manure he used was from Chen Ling's quail.

Now that the compost has been fermented, it's time to turn the soil over. After that, we'll have to work on the greenhouses, and we'll also need to repair the big hole that the badger dug last year.

Looks like there's not much work to do, right?

But once you start working on it, it might take half a month to finish.

After all, it's just a small matter at home, and there's no need to ask others for help.

In this way, I only need to tidy up when I have free time.

It's because they work slowly.

As Su Su's body grew increasingly heavy, Chen Ling would not only cook delicious meals for his sister-in-law, but also often spend half a day in the kitchen making Su Su's favorite dishes.

Like pig's trotters, duck necks, chicken feet, beef tendons...

She doesn't like eating regular meat, she just likes this kind of food.

Chen Ling would indulge her wishes and often cook a large pot of it.

That's right. Pig's trotters and beef tendons are easy to find and cheap.

These days, duck necks and chicken feet are hard to find in the countryside; there aren't many of them.

Chen Ling still asked Little Sheep to bring it back from the city slaughterhouse.

We packed ice packs along the way to keep it fresh.

As for the claim that pregnant women shouldn't eat greasy or heavily seasoned foods, Chen Ling and her family didn't care.

Gao Xiulan initially said a few words, but later, seeing her son-in-law feeding her daughter all sorts of goat milk and eggs to nourish her body, she felt there wouldn't be any problem.

Being happy emotionally is more important than anything else.

Many women are psychologically sensitive during pregnancy. Even trivial matters accumulated in daily life can cause them to remain depressed, which can be dangerous.

These days, the old turtle has not reappeared, and it seems that tourists from other places have gradually forgotten about it, and are gradually attracted by the beautiful mountains and rivers near Chenwangzhuang.

They traveled and enjoyed themselves, their lively figures appearing on the reservoir and their joyful laughter echoing from the mountains.

Fishing, swimming, chasing monkeys and small animals in the mountains and forests, climbing trees to catch birds—every day was a happy one.

There's nothing wrong with this.

Not only did the villagers' income increase, but even the wild animals and monkeys that used to roam the fields no longer dared to come down the mountain easily.

Moreover, they hardly stay in the village during the day except for mealtimes.

The village is relatively quiet.

With some free time and peace and quiet, Chen Ling tidied up the house, repaired the mud walls, built some thatched stacks, and sprayed pesticides on the vegetable garden.

The crops and vegetables he grows have strong disease resistance.

However, if left unattended, it will attract many insects to bite it.

This is a very frustrating situation.

When we talk about resisting pests and diseases, the pests and diseases we are referring to are aphids or microbial pests and diseases.

Once the rice seedlings grow, the crickets, snails, mole crickets, caterpillars, and other insects that they attract will no longer be able to survive.

They are adept at ruining vegetables.

Some bite the leaves, some eat the roots, and some burrow inside.

Spraying pesticides works.

Chen Ling's prescription could wipe out the entire supply of medicine.

But after a while, many more will run out from the cornfields and the grass by the river at the foot of the mountain.

Birds and small animals eat them, but it's no use; you can't eradicate them.

Of course, Chen Ling didn't expect to eliminate them all.

"Sigh, there are just too many bugs. I can't even control them for a week, and they've started robbing our nest again."

Chen Ling, wearing a straw hat, walked into the large vegetable garden in the farmland, where crickets and grasshoppers were jumping around in the grass.

It sounds like raindrops falling on roof tiles.

Big ones, small ones, densely packed together.

Behind him, a little girl, leading a baby, walked with him along the furrow, catching grasshoppers and crickets as they went.

In no time, they strung a large bunch of foxtail grass stems together.

In the large vegetable garden, the trellises were covered with green beans. When it was cool in the evening, they would bloom with small white and purple flowers and produce long, flat green beans.

Behind the green beans are cucumbers, with lush and dense vines climbing the trellis, their green leaves overlapping, and rows of bright green cucumbers hanging below.

It's growing too fast.

Many bean and cucumber vines have grown to the ground, twining around some weeds and growing wildly.

Green beans and cucumbers followed in that order, then eggplant and tomatoes.

It also grows extremely vigorously.

If it weren't for the supports, the tomatoes and eggplants would have already drooped to the ground.

These vegetables were sold after the recent floods, and they've grown back in just a few days.

'click'

Chen Ling plucked a bean pod that was over a meter long and almost touching the ground, covered with wormholes.

If you pinch along the wormhole, you'll see dark, sandy worm droppings inside the green bean, with a fat green worm wriggling inside.

Chen Ling flicked his hand, knocking the creature to the ground, and then stomped on it until it was dead.

The plump green caterpillar immediately burst with juice, showing how much it had eaten.

Chen Ling picked a few more string beans.

There are also wormholes on it.

When I broke it open, I smelled a fresh scent; the green worm inside was still small.

But with too many wormholes, the green beans are inedible.

At first glance, it looked good and produced a lot of fruit, but it turned out to be all show and no substance. When you picked it, it was full of worms. There were five or six worms of different sizes on one bean.

When green beans get too old, they don't leave any seeds, only the skin remains.

The cucumbers were bitten all over; how could we possibly eat them? Humans couldn't eat them, but we could feed them to the sheep.

Chen Ling sighed inwardly.

I tapped the shelf back and forth with a bamboo stick and shook it a few times, causing the caterpillars and green worms in the leaves and vines to fall and pop around.

Look closely, there are several different sizes and types.

Caterpillars can be black or yellow, and their bodies are covered with stiff hairs like needles. When they wriggle and crawl, their backs arch rapidly, and they can easily crawl onto your feet if you're not careful, which is quite annoying.

These are bugs on the green beans and cucumbers. The same goes for the tomatoes and eggplants.

Some of them, I don't know if they were eaten by insects or pecked by birds and beasts, have small holes on them, and the inside is completely rotten.

The tomatoes spoiled while they were still growing on it.

Spoiled tomatoes are almost like spoiled watermelons; you can hear the water sloshing around inside when you pick them, and they smell awful.

Eggplant is slightly better.

Overall, the tomatoes and eggplants are in better condition.

However, upon closer inspection, some of these plants, like cucumbers, develop large patches of withered yellow leaves, with more than half of the entire plant showing yellow leaves.

Chen Ling knew that grubs had already begun to appear on these roots.

Grubs eat vegetable roots, as well as potatoes and yams.

At first glance, it wasn't noticeable; the cucumbers and tomatoes looked perfectly fine, but the stems had already been chewed up.

Over time, the entire plant will wither.

Some cucumbers and eggplants are starting to wilt now.

Many of the newly formed fruits, still small and not yet fully grown, already show signs of withering and dying.

"Zhenzhen, go back and get the basket. Pick the good vegetables first, because I need to spray pesticides later."

"Okay, I'll take the basket. It's big and can hold a lot."

Wang Zhenzhen stuffed a string of grasshoppers into Rui Rui's hand. "Rui Rui, be good. Take this and stand here without moving. I've got a basket. We'll go feed the turtles later."

After saying that, he turned around and ran home.

A moment later, it came running over carrying a large bamboo basket.

"Brother-in-law, here you go."

Wang Zhenzhen wasn't afraid of hard work. She skipped around and said, "Many of these vegetables have been bitten by insects. Let me help you pick them so we can feed the sheep when we get back."

"No need, you take Rui Rui to play."

Chen Ling waved his hand, telling them to leave so as not to disturb his work.

He's actually faster at doing the work himself.

First, pick the green beans. In general, the green beans grown by ordinary people also have insects, but there are few insect holes. It is normal for one or two green beans to have insects in a large bunch.

Once soaked in water, the insects crawl out and are eaten without hesitation.

The impact is not significant.

The ones Chen Ling's family grows are no good. They're too well-grown, attracting too many insects. Each bean has multiple insect holes, and if one bean in a cluster has an insect, almost all the others will have insects too. They're inedible.

It's much more serious than what other people's families experience.

Chen Ling no longer cared about good or bad. As long as he found obvious signs, he would pick off the whole bunch of beans that were right next to each other. The heavy, dense beans were picked off by him in a flash.

Upon closer inspection, more than half the basket was filled with bad green beans.

Alright, let's just pour it into the sheepfold and let the sheep eat it.

The remaining good green beans, those not bitten by insects, were actually fewer than the bad ones.

Chen Ling didn't care about anything else and quickly picked them all off.

If you can't finish it, so be it. You can pickle it or make dried green beans to use as filling for dumplings in winter.

Cucumbers can be dried in the sun or pickled.

Eggplants can also be dried.

Tomatoes are fine; they can be stir-fried, eaten raw, or given away by other vendors. Even if there are too many, we can finish them all.

It's better than getting bitten by bugs in the field.

After a flurry of activity, basket after basket of various vegetables were picked, with yellowing plants pulled out and the rotten ones fed to the sheep.

Although our flock of goats is a bit wild, they are very good at dealing with all sorts of messy, spoiled fruit and vegetables, and they never waste anything.

This provides concrete proof that sheep eat all kinds of grass.

Chen Ling even wanted to select two lambs and feed them fruits and medicinal herbs, so that they could taste the meat during the New Year and see if there was any difference in its flavor.

Lost in thought, he went to carry the medicine bucket.

The medicinal solution made from a mixture of neem seeds and other ingredients had already filled two large vats.

This is his own unique formula, which he figured out himself. It's just as effective at killing insects as pesticides, and it degrades faster. It's taken from nature and returns to nature, and it's harmless to the human body.

Chen Ling carried a sprayer and sprayed the two-acre vegetable garden four or five times.

Only then did he go home to rest.

As the sun was about to set, he picked up a half-green tomato, munched on it, and went over to check the situation. He found crickets and grasshoppers lying dead, belly up, everywhere on the ground and on the grass.

Many green caterpillars and worms also became sluggish.

The person walked over without him running away. Chen Ling stepped on a patch of large, leafy grass without noticing that he had accidentally crushed four or five black caterpillars under the grass, exposing their dark brown intestines and yellow eggs.

"Ugh, disgusting."

Chen Ling kicked it away, but he was still very satisfied with the efficacy of the pesticides he had concocted.

I saw that the ground was covered with pests that had been killed by pesticides.

There were even snails that had fallen to the ground under the tangled vegetable trellis covered with vines.

He then called out, "Erhei, herd the chickens over here."

Erhei was quite far away at this time, but it certainly wouldn't miss Chen Ling's command, and immediately barked and rushed up the mountain.

A moment later, a great commotion erupted on the mountain.

From a great distance, you could hear the constant clucking of chickens and the flapping of their wings.

One by one, hundreds of free-range chickens of various colors flapped their wings and flew down from the mountain, clucking as they flew. Among them were many wild chickens, and for a moment, chicken feathers flew everywhere in the air.

Visitors who came here were stunned.

They all stared blankly as Erhei led several male puppies to drive the chickens westward.

The chickens are used to being driven by the dog; they run wherever the dog leads them, and they cooperate very well.

After flying down from the mountain, it strode with its thick, sturdy claws and ran wildly toward the vegetable garden.

"Hmph, hmph, hmph..." The dog was being chased away, and Chen Ling was also calling out in response, leading the dog towards the vegetable garden.

The flock of chickens instantly found a clear direction.

Chen Ling then gently stomped his foot on the ground to indicate that there were insects. Upon seeing the insects, the chickens immediately clucked and rushed over one after another, excitedly searching for and pecking at them.

In no time, the vegetable garden was filled with the heads of chickens moving about.

"Boss Chen, you're amazing! You've trained the chickens to be so orderly, they go wherever you tell them to go."

People came over to see what was going on and couldn't help but exclaim in amazement.

Everyone felt that the scene was like watching a circus act, which was particularly interesting.

"And these chickens of yours are too big. How did you raise them? One chicken is the size of three or four in your village. The roosters are bigger than ordinary geese, and the hens are almost as big as geese."

This person's description is quite accurate.

Most people, or those who have never raised chickens or lived in the countryside, might think that a chicken as big as a goose is an exaggeration.

This is a free-range chicken, not a broiler chicken from abroad, so how could it grow so big?

But it's not an exaggeration at all.

There are such examples in China.

Take, for example, the famous Nine-Jin Yellow.

The so-called "Nine-Jin Yellow" refers to a breed of chicken, the Yellow Chicken, which can grow to weigh up to nine jin (approximately 4.5 catties), hence the name.

A chicken, or rather a hen, can grow to over six pounds, and its head is so large that it's even bigger than a duck.

Let alone nine catties?

Most of the chickens in Chen Ling's family weigh eight or nine jin (approximately 4.5-6.5 catties), with many weighing over ten jin (approximately 5.5-6.5 kg), reaching eleven or twelve jin (approximately 5.5-6.5 kg).

The whole chicken is large and robust, with thick and strong feet, and it is big and meaty.

It looks just like a goose.

"Haha, that's compared to other people's geese. My chickens, ducks and geese are all bigger than other people's. My chickens are only about the same size as other people's geese. They can't compare to my geese."

No sooner had Chen Ling finished speaking than, as if to confirm his point, Wang Zhenzhen, supporting Rui Rui, rode on a large goose and wobbled over.

Rui Rui excitedly grabbed the goose's neck and shouted "Giddy up!" with great joy.

“Brother-in-law, look, we can ride this goose now. Why don’t we keep the baby red-crowned crane? We can raise it at home until it grows up, then we can ride it and let it carry us to the sky. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”