60s: I have a store

Chapter 198 Threshing Efficiency
The teacher waited with the children at the edge of the wheat field. She was not in a hurry to pick up wheat ears. Instead, she told the children some stories and principles about harvesting grain.

The adults gradually moved away and some villagers used carts to transport the harvested wheat to the threshing ground.

The cart is made of solid wood, with two wheels on both sides, two long, straight handlebars, and a strong climbing rope in the middle.

When pulling the cart, stand in the middle of the handlebars, hold the handlebars with both hands, put the climbing rope on your shoulders, bend your waist and legs and pull forward. If the load on the cart is light, you can also push it backwards.

Even to later generations, handcarts continued to play an important role.

In the era when there were no motor vehicles in rural areas, people relied on it for all transportation. It was used to transport fertilizer to the fields, to bring wheat, corn, cotton, etc. home, and to transport soil and bricks for building houses.

"Okay, follow me down to pick up wheat ears. Don't make a mess and follow my instructions." Teacher Zhou said to the students.

Teachers and students brought bamboo baskets, baskets and other utensils.

After the students arrived at the wheat field, under the teacher's arrangement, dozens of elementary school students lined up in a row, starting from the edge of the field, and slowly moved forward together like soldiers clearing "landmines", picking up the wheat ears that fell to the ground after the villagers harvested the wheat, trying to not let a single one "escape".

While picking wheat ears, some naughty boys would catch snakes, grasshoppers, frogs, earthworms, etc. and throw them at the girls on purpose, scaring them to scream.

"What's going on? Don't be naughty." Teacher Xiaolan shouted seriously.

The little ones were afraid of the serious teacher Xiaolan and dared not act naughty.

However, that was only temporary. Soon some boys started to play around instead of picking up wheat ears and fighting with their classmates. When they saw that some female students were picking up more wheat ears, they would secretly grab a handful and put them in their own baskets.

Teacher Xiaolan would naturally not turn a blind eye to such behavior. She would catch one or two of them and give them a good scolding.

Some boys picked too few wheat ears and were afraid of being criticized by the teacher, so they put some weeds and twigs at the bottom of the basket and covered them with a layer of wheat ears to "cheat" the teacher.

Can that little trick be hidden from the teacher?

Soon, he was caught red-handed.

They only have one brigade in Zhoujiazhuang, which is better.

Unlike some places, where people need to take turns picking wheat ears for the production teams in the village, picking wheat ears for production team one today, picking wheat ears for production team two tomorrow, picking wheat ears for production team three the day after tomorrow, and so on, to avoid "objections" from individual production teams.

When picking wheat ears, I found some wheat grains scattered on the ground in some fields.

The teacher felt sorry for the loss, so he used a sieve or a fine basket to separate the wheat grains from the tiny dust and collected the wheat grains one by one. It was truly a case of "returning every grain to the granary" and not letting a single grain go.

At this time, Zhou Yimin was testing the thresher.

In addition to Director Ding, some villagers, and people from the commune.

The people in the commune were quite polite to Zhou Yimin.

The visitor also knew Zhou Yimin.

After all, this was the man who invented the pressurized well and the solar cooker, how could he not know him? At least he had heard of him, right?

This time when he came to Zhoujiazhuang, he never expected that Comrade Zhou Yimin had invented something else. It seemed to be a wheat threshing machine.

Or items related to the countryside and farmers.

It seems that this comrade really cares about them, the farmers.

"Comrade, have a cigarette." Zhou Yimin handed over a cigarette.

"Okay, thank you Comrade Zhou Yimin, you are so polite."

But he dared not look down on Zhou Yimin in front of him. Not only was he a folk inventor, he had also received awards from the country. More importantly, he was the big brother of the workers, a man from the steel plant, and there was no need to pass him a cigarette.

Now that others have taken the initiative to show goodwill, he certainly cannot be ungrateful.

Besides, the leaders of the steel plant are still here! "Yimin, let's get started!" Director Ding was getting a little impatient waiting.

He didn't take Chen Hua from the commune seriously at all and felt that Zhou Yimin didn't need to be polite to him at all.

We are all from the steel plant. We need to behave like the steel plant and not give cigarettes to just anyone.

"Director, don't worry!"

Zhou Yimin turned around and shouted to the villagers who were preparing to operate: "Are you ready? Start."

It's impossible to let him do it.

Although the thresher can thresh wheat ears into grains directly by simply pushing the wheat stalks into the threshing bin, thus eliminating the tedious work of threshing, there are about four or five links in the threshing process, and each position requires at least one or two people to operate normally.

"Okay!"

The villagers on standby were already familiar with what they were going to do.

Just now, Zhou Yimin taught them one by one.

In fact, it is not difficult at all, it just requires some effort.

Following Zhou Yimin's order, the villagers responsible for turning the thresher began to work hard. The thresher roared and a bundle of wheat straw was pushed into the threshing bin.

The wheat straw and wheat grains are separated, and as the machine runs, the wheat grains keep falling and piling up.

The onlookers were stunned.

Of course, Director Ding of the steel plant was an exception. He had seen the world and was satisfied with the effect of the thresher. When he reported this back, it was another great achievement for their steel plant.

"Good, that's great." Director Ding applauded.

Seeing that the leaders of the steel plant were applauding, everyone followed suit.

Director Ding looked at it and asked Zhou Yimin questions at the same time.

He thought about crops like rice and wondered if this thresher could be used.

As expected of a leader, he thinks further ahead.

Zhou Yimin told everyone that there are different types of threshers, depending on the type of crop, and they can be used with just a slight modification, after all, their operating principles are the same.

"Rice thresher" is suitable for threshing rice, and the one used for threshing corn is called "corn thresher", and so on.

Rice thresher is commonly known as "thresher" and is the most common rice threshing machine. After the rice is harvested, the rice grains are separated from the stalks by this machine.

What Zhou Yimin is most familiar with is the thresher, after all, he was a southerner in his previous life.

In his previous life, rice threshers were divided into two categories. One category relied on human power, called a "human-powered rice thresher", which was a semi-mechanized tool; if the rice thresher was converted to power-driven, it was called a "powered rice thresher".

It can be said that the emergence of threshers has greatly reduced the labor intensity of harvesting wheat, rice, etc., and also improved agricultural productivity.

In the absence of threshers, wheat, for example, is beaten continuously with a device called a "flail" to separate the grain from the husk.

Next comes the “winnowing” of the grain, which entails throwing it into the air so that the wind will blow away the light, unwanted grains and the “husks,” leaving only the grains that remain behind.

It is hard, back-breaking work that takes a long time. It takes about five days to thresh 4000 square meters of wheat by hand.

Even though Director Ding is a leader, he listened very carefully.

(End of this chapter)