Volume 1: Farming Chapter 36 Manpower Planning
In modern society, some people are crazy about so-called "organic food". Merchants can simply increase the price of vegetables by more than ten times by simply labeling them as "organic", and the profit margin is infinite. As far as Xiao Yun knows, there are a group of colleagues in the company who always complain that the egg-filled pancakes they buy are two yuan more expensive than the ones sold at the school gate when they go downstairs to buy them. They have paid a lot of IQ tax on this.
This group of people are superstitious about health and organics. Those with mild symptoms can still go to the market to buy vegetables, but those with severe symptoms simply don't like the vegetables in the market. They have to drive to the outskirts of the city to buy those so-called pesticide-free vegetables full of worm holes grown by farmers before they feel at ease...
Looking at the cabbage in his hand, whose three outermost layers were rotten and whose inner leaves were gnawed into pits, and whose heart immediately fell out with a fat worm, Xiao Yun sighed - it would be great if he could take this vegetable to modern times and sell it, and he could name any price without bargaining.
Rubbing his forehead, Xiao Yun looked around at the large pieces of cabbage fields that had either been eaten by bugs or pecked to pieces by birds, eating the bugs along with them. He had only countless MMPs to say in his heart.
Snow werewolves have built-in beast deterrence BUFF. A group of snow werewolves dig canals and shout slogans around every day. No wild boars or rabbits dare to approach the vast farmland, but insects and birds, these two little thieves, are inevitable... The things in other directions are not so bad, but the large field closest to the swamp has been damaged by more than - this is more than three acres of vegetable field!
Xiao Yun was squatting on one side, feeling sorry for his own vegetable garden, while on the other side there was a group of chirping birds jumping around and destroying the cabbages as if they were having a dinner party... Mosquitoes breed in the swamp after summer, which is the best time to attract birds. Now there is a "natural salad field" next to the swamp. It would be strange if these birds were still polite to you.
"Not good... I forgot that there are birds... er, birds are the mortal enemy of farming people." Xiao Yun glared at her with dead eyes. "It's ok if they peck at the cabbage, but if they peck at the wheat, that's really bad!"
He suddenly stood up with a fierce look on his face, but the birds that were having a salad party were not afraid of him at all and continued pecking him.
Isn’t it? Why would someone who can fly be afraid of a guy like you with two legs?
Veins popped up on Xiao Yun's forehead.
Half an hour later.
“Meow——!!”
A fluffy-haired, sturdy-bodied caracal suddenly jumped out from behind a crouching field ridge, slapped the neck of an unknown bird with a wave of its claws, and bit another ; the flock of birds that happily discriminated against bipeds suddenly made a noise, flapped their wings and flew up, but before these birds could fly to a safe height, another caracal jumped out, and then another, and then another...
"Not bad, not bad." Xiao Yun waited until the caracals finished hunting and the remaining birds flew away in panic before he stood up and applauded. "As many as you catch will be given as extra food. We won't harvest this vegetable patch anymore. Come over and wait for us when you're free."
In modern society, it would be illegal to kill these birds of different colors, some of which are quite beautiful. But in this world... forget it! If you want to talk about protecting wild animals, wait until you are at the top of the food chain!
Qiu spat out the bird feathers and walked back like a caracal: "These birds don't have much meat."
"It's enough if it's meat." Xiao Yun pointed in the direction of the wheat field. "Catching the birds here is just training. It will be a real battle when the wheat ears are hanging. If we don't teach the birds around us a lesson, then the sweat we shed in the wheat field will be fed to these birds."
Qiu thought about it and agreed. He turned around and told his tribesmen to transform back into human form and put on clothes. The adult caracals continued to harvest vegetables, and the caracal cubs took the bird meat back.
The cabbage fields were planted in three large plots, about 30 mu. Although they were damaged by birds and insects, the yield was still amazing. With such fertile black soil, carefully tilled land, and fertilized land, the yield per mu must be at least 3,000 to 4,000 kilograms. Even if only the cabbages with rotten leaves and ripe cabbages were harvested, it would be tens of thousands of kilograms. With so many cabbages piled up in the tribe, the scale was indeed a bit amazing...
They worked until dark to harvest the cabbages. The villagers looked up at the vegetables they had grown themselves and felt it was so unreal.
"There are more dishes to eat!" Niu Jiao kept swallowing his saliva.
The period between spring and summer harvest is called the lean period in Chinese. The tribe ran out of wild vegetables half a month ago and can only eat meat and enoki mushrooms every day. Even Niu Jiao, who is not a picky eater, is a little tired of them.
"... Farming is great!" This was the tribe leader's subconscious sigh. Just by turning over the land that was usually of little use and working hard, he could get so much food. And it was not just a one-time thing. There was still a lot of food in the land. This meant that the tribe would never be short of food. Why hadn't he thought of letting the tribe learn farming from the Tauren before? In this way, he wouldn't have to be greedy for the cattle and sheep given by the king's tent, and he wouldn't have to let the warriors risk their lives...
"I suddenly feel that tilling the soil and sowing seeds wasn't that tiring." Da He said excitedly, "We have planted so many fields, and we can always get food from the fields. This is really great ."
"Yeah!" Qingcao nodded wildly beside him. Although harvesting vegetables from the fields was tiring, it made people very happy and satisfied. The vegetables they harvested were much more than those they collected aimlessly in the wild.
"Okay, everyone is tired after a day's work and hungry. Let's eat first, and then we can work in the cellar to store vegetables." Xiao Yun clapped his hands to bring everyone back to their senses.
A large amount of vegetables can reduce the consumption of meat, balance the absorbed nutrients, and prevent the tribe members from having difficulty in excretion due to lack of vegetarian fiber. It is actually unhealthy for an adult snow wolf to excrete only once every five days. Xiao Yun realized this problem only when the rhythm of excretion increased to once every four days after everyone ate enoki mushrooms for a whole winter.
The dinner was still the meat of discarded rams...Among the original 1,800 sheep in the tribe, rams accounted for the majority. They have been eaten for a whole winter until now, and the dwarves gave 200 more sheep. Now the tribe still has more than 600 rams and more than 500 ewes, enough to eat until the wheat harvest - the ewes cannot be moved, so keeping 100 or 200 rams is enough.
As for straight-horned cattle, we try not to slaughter them except for sick ones. The female cows are kept for giving birth, and the bulls are used for breeding, for plowing, and for emergency use in case pottery cannot be exchanged for salt.
While eating the crispy and tender cabbage stewed with mutton bones in the clay pot, Xiao Yun went through the supplies that the tribe most urgently needed. The first thing that came to his mind, and the one that gave him the most headaches, was salt.
Originally, the snow werewolves had enough salt to last until autumn when they could look for human caravans, but with the addition of a group of caracals, and the need to support the gray dwarves who had been looking for minerals for almost two months, the salt supply was in short supply...
Besides, the tribe never has extra salt: cabbage is easy to store, and the temperature on the grassland is not that high in summer, so they can just dig a deep enough cellar to store it and eat it slowly; but it is not the same for vegetables and radishes. If they want to store them for a long time, they either have to dry the radishes and vegetables like the Tauren, or pickle them with a lot of salt.
If there is not enough salt to eat, then there is no way to pickle vegetables. If we dry the radishes and vegetables like the Tauren... well... the Tauren are often too lazy to dry them and take the radishes and vegetables with them to see off the tribes! Qiu and his tribe had eaten the Tauren's free food a lot!
"It would be great if there was a salt well closer... or closer to the sea." Xiao Yun sighed inwardly.
The problem of salt shortage is not without a solution. The tribe has now moved to the southwestern border of the grassland. Two hours’ walk from the tribe, you can see the outskirts of the jungle. If you walk south along the outskirts of the jungle, you can theoretically reach the seaside. The inland sea between the northern continent and the southern human kingdom has a land border. Otherwise, that relatively safe sea area compared to the ocean cannot be called an inland sea. The border is the area covered by the jungle.
Being able to go to the seashore, whether boiling or drying salt, is definitely more economical than trading with human caravans, but... manpower! There is no manpower to send out, this is the problem!
Letting the caracal go is equivalent to letting it die. The scorpion-tailed lion that Ashan could drive away independently would easily kill Qiu. Xiao Yun has already confirmed this with Ashan and Qiu respectively.
And letting the Snow Wolf Man go...at least now, at this moment, that's really not possible!
In the grassland, rainfall is plentiful only in spring and early summer. But from mid-summer to autumn, when it rains, it rains like crazy. It is common to have droughts for more than ten days or half a month without rain. This is what the Minotaur specifically told him: the water storage pond must be repaired before the end of summer!
This is equivalent to racing against time with God to repair farmland water conservancy. Sending out the Snow Wolf Man, the main labor force, is the same as racing against time with God to repair farmland water conservancy. Unless he doesn't expect the crops to be harvested this year.
"Population, population..." Xiao Yun raised his hand and pinched his brows, "If there were more Snow Werewolves, even if there were only ten or twenty, there would be no need to rush. Now they are completely treating the tribesmen as animals. If we continue to squeeze the labor force with such a small population, it will be like this... Well, it's time to implement the manpower plan."
A Shan, who was sitting next to Xiao Yun, suddenly felt a chill. He stopped eating and looked around in confusion, not knowing where the chill came from.
"Ashan, don't you like vegetables? Then give me your vegetables." Niu Jiao saw Ashan looking around and immediately handed the bowl to him without hesitation.
Ashan ignored him and used his chopsticks quickly to shovel food into his mouth.
Niu Jiao had no choice but to look at other people's bowls... After adopting the system of using public spoons and chopsticks to eat from the earthenware pots, the tribe no longer had the trouble of separate dining. Unfortunately, all the dishes in the six large earthenware pots had been snatched away, leaving only floating sheep bones and a small amount of meat - this was the saving when there were enough vegetables. The bone soup could be used to cook vegetables at least three times, and each dish was still oily and filling, so the meat consumption was directly reduced by half.
The grassland people who have been eating meat for many years have no concept that meat is more valuable than vegetables, especially the cabbage that absorbs a lot of oil tastes even better than meat when cooked in mutton bone soup... Niu Jiao grabbed five big bowls of vegetables in one go, and he still felt unsatisfied.
The caracal cub looked at Niujiao with eager eyes and offered his small bowl with a few vegetable leaves in it.
Niu Jiao's eyes lit up and he immediately reached out his chopsticks...
"Stop it!" Xiao Yun was almost amused by this guy, "There are so many vegetables piled over there, if it's not enough, go wash a few more and cook them!"
…Niu Jiao, who had absolutely no sense of shame while eating, quickly jumped up and went to wash the vegetables.
After dinner, Xiao Yun did not let the tribesmen rest. He asked everyone to take a break to digest the food before going back to dig the vegetable cellar. If it were in the past, these people would definitely wail in vain, but today, they personally harvested so many sweet, crispy, tender and refreshing cabbages, and they were all quite quiet.
When the weather was cold, everyone used the mobile home as a canteen. Now that the weather was warm, everyone sat outdoors, except for Sal. His skin couldn't stand the mosquitoes on the grassland, so he hid in the house after eating.
Xiao Yun sat down next to the clan leader and sighed deeply without saying anything .
The chieftain, who was rubbing his belly happily, was startled and looked over with a nervous look... Every time Ah Yun showed a special look and specifically talked to him about something, even if it did seem good at the time... but after figuring it out, the chieftain had an inexplicable premonition that he was being played by Ah Yun, but he couldn't tell the reason. The chieftain came and went, and he couldn't help but be wary of Ah Yun.
"Chief, our tribe is really short of people~~" Xiao Yun said in a heavy tone, "I know everyone has been very hard-working during this period, but there is nothing we can do. After all, we only have so few people in the tribe, and we are so busy that we can't handle all the work... I want everyone to relax a little, but I really can't do anything!"
"..." The clan leader's lips moved, but he forcibly controlled his desire to speak... As the saying goes, suffering a loss is the best teacher. The clan leader, who had been fooled by Xiao Yun's concentrated firepower so many times, at least understood one truth: when you don't understand A Yun's true intentions, it's useless to speak!
"Clan leader?" Xiao Yun raised his eyelids and looked over.
"Yeah, ah, yes." The clan leader shuddered, "That's exactly what happened."
Xiao Yun nodded, and then remained silent for a moment as if thinking: "Actually... I have always had an idea, but as you know, Chief, I am not yet an adult, I am not sensible, and I don't know how to interact with other tribes, so I have never said it."
"..." The patriarch slowly widened his eyes, "Heh, heh..." If the patriarch understood modern terms, he would only have one sentence to say now: "I believed your lies."
"Clan leader?" Xiao Yun raised his eyelids again, frowning slightly, with a puzzled look in his eyes.
"Ayun, tell me what you think. Maybe we can come up with a better idea if we discuss it together." The chief said solemnly. How could he show his weakness in front of the cubs?
Xiao Yun nodded, revealing a somewhat unconfident and shy expression: "I feel a little uneasy when I see that my tribesmen are so tired. It is true that I force everyone to work for the good of the tribesmen, but if we tire them out before we strive to pursue and create a beautiful and happy life for us Snow Wolf people, then who are we working so hard for?"
The clan leader couldn't help but twitch when he heard the first half of the sentence. Fortunately, Ah Yun said something reasonable in the second half, so he was able to control his emotions and not lose his dignity as a clan leader. However, the clan leader didn't believe that Ah Yun would really "have a change of heart" and let everyone go. He couldn't fall into this trap, so he tried to be as pleasant as possible: "Then Ah Yun, what good ideas do you have?"
Xiao Yun seemed to be encouraged by the chief and had the courage to speak: "I have been thinking that it would be better if we had more manpower, but our tribe is so small, it is not practical to ask other snow wolf tribes to merge with us. So, why don't we find other snow wolf tribes to borrow some people to help us out? Last year, we found the grassland here because the snow wolf tribe in the north pointed us to the way. I remember that tribe had more than 50 people. Chief, you can bring pottery, blankets and other things as gifts. With your face and friendship, it should be possible to borrow a dozen or twenty laborers from them. We will use them until autumn. When their tribe needs to store fodder, we will release them. If they don't have enough adults, cubs will also be fine!"
It has to be said that after the addition of Xiao Yun, an alien creature, to the tribe, the tribe leader's ability to understand increased dramatically. After understanding Xiao Yun's words, the tribe leader immediately looked at him as if he were an alien... Well, there seems to be nothing wrong with this description.
"Clan leader?" Xiao Yun asked expectantly.
Patriarch: “…”
Even a silly and cute werewolf like Snow still has to save face and shame. Although the clan leader was very careful not to fall into the trap, Xiao Yun flattered him and lifted him up. If he refused on the spot, the clan leader would really be unable to open his mouth...
Snow wolves can eat, and it's not easy for each tribe to survive, so naturally there's no infighting among them... but if you talk about helping each other, unity and friendship, that's very limited, because every Snow Wolf tribe is so poor, and there's no capital to help each other - things like borrowing people from other tribes because of a lack of manpower are very rare, because if you borrow others to help, you can't ask them to bring their own dry food, right?
Even the Snow Werewolves can understand this simple logic. The small population and insufficient manpower are because the tribe is not strong. A weak tribe will naturally struggle on the edge of food and clothing. They don’t even have enough food to eat and have to borrow people from other tribes. If you have fallen to this point, you might as well just surrender with your entire tribe... as long as there is someone who can afford it and is willing to take it in.
...In other words, asking other Snow Wolf tribes for help would require one to be extremely thick-skinned.
The clan leader's face was full of solemnity, and he was very worried. How could he make Ah Yun give up this bad idea? !
On the surface, Xiao Yun still had the look of respect and expectation that a young cub showed towards the clan leader, but in his heart he knew very well why the clan leader had a constipated face... Before he approached the clan leader to talk to him about this, he had of course spent a lot of time talking to other people and figured out the twists and turns involved; even the timing of speaking was chosen after the crops had yielded a harvest, after the clan members had seen the benefits of farming and greatly enhanced the correctness of their own farming strategy - smart people don't fight unprepared battles, this is true no matter what field they are in.
"Chief!" Xiao Yun stretched out his hands and held the chief's paws, with a face full of affection, "We really can't let the tribe members overwork like this anymore... Every day when I see you have back pain, my heart is very uncomfortable. And Qingcao, she was in heat last year, maybe she already has cubs in her belly - seeing you working so hard, I really feel bad! But no matter how hard I work, I can only do the cubs' work, I can't share more of the burden with you, at least let the tribe members take turns to rest... I really have no choice but to rely on you, Chief~~!"
...A true warrior is someone who can perform even the poor rocking tune of an exclamation with true emotion when necessary - when Xiao Yun was the sales manager, he could flatter even the most disgusting clients, and he could even go up to and flatter the regional director who was parachuted in from the head office and whose face was as black as the bottom of a pot. Such acting skills are nothing!
The clan leader really didn't dare to shake off his hand with any force, and his constipated expression turned into a struggle...
"We are not borrowing their people for nothing. The grass we grow can be harvested at least twice before autumn comes, and the snow wolves who come to help can take away the high-quality grass they can. By the way, the vegetables and radishes can also be harvested. Chief, please bring enough vegetables and radishes as gifts. I think this should be able to express our sincerity. We really need help from our fellow tribesmen." Xiao Yun's eyes sparkled.
The clan leader himself understood the meaning of throwing gifts at fellow clan members without having to explain. It wouldn't be embarrassing for the clan leader to borrow help, and he might even be slightly superior... If Xiao Yun said this directly, it would be a step too far. Was he trying to show off that this young cub was so smart that he even knew the clan leader was vain?
The struggle on the chief's face became more obvious, and he couldn't help but imagine what Ayun didn't say but was clearly evident on his face: when they migrated here last year, they passed by a tribe of the same people, and they looked so miserable; only one year later, his tribe had beautiful pottery that even the Tauren loved, and a large number of vegetables that only the Tauren could give away as gifts... He couldn't help but get a little excited just thinking about it!
"...Okay!" The answer Xiao Yun expected came out of the tribe leader's mouth without any surprise. Of course, the tribe leader still had to save face and be calm, steady and reserved. "I think it's feasible. But we still need to discuss it with the warriors."
…the plan worked.
The five warriors in the tribe, including the Qingyan Caracal, were called over to sit down for a meeting. This time, Xiao Yun didn't need to say anything, as the tribe leader calmly proposed to bring gifts to visit other Snow Wolf tribes and borrow manpower.
The cute and silly werewolf warriors were all shocked. Isn't this kind of thing very embarrassing? !
Qingyan and the caracal almost dropped their jaws. Some small cat tribes had small populations, which made reproduction difficult, and cat tribes would not borrow people from other tribes for "breeding" because the population of the tribe directly symbolized the tribe's hard power - there was no such concept of showing weakness to the enemy among grassland tribes. Did they think that their own grasslands were coveted by others or what?
If they think about it carefully, the only tribe that is relatively close to here is the Snow Wolf Man Tribe, so Qingyan and the Caracal can feel a little relieved, as it is rare for the Snow Wolf Man tribes to fight with each other for pasture.
Well... although these people have started to grow crops, they still haven’t changed their mindset from nomadic.
The chief began to convince the warriors that the tribe was indeed short of manpower, the tribesmen were working too hard, and that their fields had a harvest that could guarantee food. These words were not nonsense but facts. The snow wolf warriors nodded one after another. Even a strong man like Hongye was now too tired to sharpen bone arrows, and no one objected to being able to take a break from the heavy and complicated work.
Qingyan and Qiu exchanged glances, then looked at Ayun who was sitting obediently beside the clan leader... It was obvious that this idea was definitely his! !
Looking at the Snow Wolf Warriors who were persuaded by the tribe leader and the tribe leader Huoyan who was persuading them, Qingyan and Qiu showed a little sympathy in their eyes - would it be easier to borrow people with a thick face? Impossible, impossible! The more people there are, the more work Ayun will ask everyone to do!
You snow wolves are so naive!
