Three Kingdoms: A Million Soldiers Grown from the Fields

Chapter 53 Homeland (Please continue reading)

Zhang Xian hadn't slept all night, but he still felt wide awake during the day.

Perhaps after discussing philosophy with Zhang Jiao, his emotions were still churning and unsettled.

After confirming that the warhorses would arrive in a month, he handed over all matters concerning Peach Blossom Spring to Xiahou Lan and hid away in a corner of Peach Blossom Spring.

That was his place of peace, his home, his farmland, and his livestock.

Only here could he let go of everything and immerse himself in the plants and animals, as if playing a game.

The 18-square-meter farmland is not a large area; there are several separate plots of land where fruit trees with lush branches are growing.

Those were two peach trees.

These peach branches were obtained from Zhengding County. The vendor selling the branches said that they were taken from his over 60-year-old peach tree and that he guaranteed the peaches would be big and sweet.

So Zhang Xian bought two trees. Peach Blossom Spring, how can it be called Peach Blossom Spring without peach trees?

Incidentally, he also learned the branching technique from the vendor. Once the peach tree bears fruit, after picking the peaches, use a knife to make a ring cut on the branch that has borne peaches, peel off half a finger's length of bark, then remove the white inner bark from the peeled area, and then wrap it with soil to secure it. After ten days to half a month, the branch will grow aerial roots.

When the time comes, you can cut it off and plant it in the ground, and it will grow into a low-growing peach tree. It will also bear fruit faster than a peach tree grown from a peach pit.

Zhang Xian was quite intrigued when he first learned of this method. Later, after bringing it back to Taoyuan and planting it, he suddenly realized that this was the air layering method!

I've seen this technology before when browsing plant bloggers, but I never imagined it was already widespread in the Han Dynasty.

Walking to the peach tree, I saw that the branches that had been growing in the farmland for more than a month had already grown into trees.

Based on the calculation that 240 hours on farmland is roughly equivalent to one year, these two peach trees are about three years old.

However, the peach tree was not tall, but rather wide like an umbrella, and only slightly taller than the two of them.

[Peach tree: Growth is complete, fruiting time remaining in 23 minutes, condition is good.]

"You'll be bearing fruit soon. Once you've borne fruit, we'll use the method the vendor mentioned to cut some branches and move you away. Then Peach Blossom Village will have a peach orchard."

He patted the peach tree branches, anticipating the taste of the peaches.

Two square meters of the 18-square-meter farmland were used to plant peach trees, and the remaining 16 square meters were also fully allocated.

Six square meters of the planted area contained six different kinds of herbs, nine plants of each kind, which were harvested every ten days. These were the materials used to prepare the [Miracle Medicine] prescription, and he had already stockpiled a lot of them. He planned to prepare them all at once when he had some free time.

Of the remaining ten square meters, six square meters were planted with pumpkins. Fifty-four pumpkin plants provide Taoyuan with fruit pulp and seeds every ten days.

There are enough pumpkin seeds now, but unfortunately, it's already half a month past Grain Rain. Planting them now will surely damage them from the scorching summer sun. We can only wait until July to plant them, when the sun is no longer so intense and there is enough sunlight to harvest them before November.

In his four-square-meter farmland, he planted nine sorghum plants, nine soybean plants, nine wheat plants, eight millet plants, and the ginseng he hadn't yet harvested. The main reason for planting these was to improve the genetic quality.

His agricultural skill has already been upgraded to "Superior Seeds". Combined with the high growth rate of his homestead farmland, the probability of growing superior seeds will increase significantly. Once superior seeds are grown, planting them in Peach Blossom Land will undoubtedly increase yield or reduce disease, which is a good thing that can improve his tolerance for mistakes.

As for the ginseng, Zhang Xian was increasing its age. With each cycle lasting 240 hours, the wild ginseng he found on the hill was already almost 12 years old. If he continued cultivating it, by next year it would be at least 40 or 50 years old, at which point it would be a rare and valuable commodity, or even a life-saving medicine.

After carefully tending to his 18-square-meter plot of farmland, Zhang Xian felt a sense of comfort upon hearing the sound of experience points being gained.

[Agriculture Level 2: 2371/5000]

He has nearly half of his experience points at level two. During this time, he has spent most of his energy on [Medicine], which has caused his progress in [Medicine] level to far exceed that of other skills. Now, he only needs a few hundred more points to fill the level three experience pool and enter level four in [Medicine].

After finishing his work in the farmland, he headed towards the farmland and pasture area near the stream.

Chicken coops enclosed by fences, duck sheds connected to the stream, and pigsties and cattle pens enclosed by earth and stones.

The level 2 taming skill provides six breeding slots. Currently, chickens and ducks occupy four slots, with a total of 36 chickens and ducks providing eggs for Peach Blossom Spring every day. Occasionally, when they want to eat meat, they will wait until the chicks and ducklings hatch before slaughtering the adult chickens and ducks.

Carrying an empty bucket from beside the chicken coop, he mixed in some bran and radish greens, chopped them up, stirred them well, and then sprinkled them into the chicken coop.

A flapping of wings accompanied the crowing of a rooster.

While the chickens were feeding, he reached into the nearby henhouse and found 34 eggs out of 17 of the 18 chickens.

These eggs used to be boiled whole to provide daily nutrition for the people of Peach Blossom Spring, but that's no longer possible. The people of Peach Blossom Spring have expanded to sixty, so these eggs have to be broken up and steamed together to be enough to share.

There's not much to worry about at the duck shed. The ducks will find food in the stream, and all he has to do is add some feed to their regular feeding troughs to supplement their diet.

Like the chicken coop, the duck shed also houses seventeen female ducks and one male duck. However, the free-range ducks lay one more egg than the free-range chickens, producing fifty-one eggs per day.

These duck eggs will be used to make salted eggs, one of which will be distributed to the people of Taoyuan every three days to replenish their salt intake and provide them with some extra oil.

Compared to chicken coops and duck sheds, which are mainly for egg production, the nine pigs in the pigsty are purely for meat.

In the Home Farm, one breeding pen can be filled with nine of the same animals: four are chickens and ducks, and the remaining two are pigs and cows.

However, pigs and cows take much longer to grow than chickens and ducks.

The chickens and ducks in the farmland follow the same 240-hour cycle as the plants in the farmland, which is a ten-day cycle.

From laying an egg to hatching and growing into a chicken or duck, it only takes ten days.

For pigs and cattle, this timeframe is extended to 480 hours, or twenty days, before they are ready for slaughter.

But that's fast enough. Just think, if you can slaughter nine pigs in twenty days, that's a lot of meat.

Moreover, pigs often have many offspring in one litter. Currently, the free-range pigs in pig pens are basically from the same litter.

The cattle are not so good; they only give birth to one or two at a time, so raising them is not very satisfactory. Zhang Xian has already decided to stop raising them after this batch of cattle is sold and use the cattle pens to raise pigs.

With 18 pigs slaughtered in 20 days, meat and oil will no longer be scarce in Taoyuan.

(End of this chapter)