Transmigrated as a Peasant Baby Who is Pampered by All

Chapter 525: Chapter 323: Fish Pond

On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, a few hired workers returned early in the morning.

Jiang Hu gave each one a red envelope, not much, just twenty coins, but it was enough to make them happy for a long time.

Since the third day, Yang Shulin’s brother-in-law would drive a bullock cart every afternoon, bringing five or six buckets of small fish each time.

These fish he couldn’t sell on regular days and would basically throw back into the lake. Now, being able to sell them to Jiang Hu and earn an extra amount made him happy, even if the price was a bit low.

The water level in the fish pond was slowly rising. Every few days, Xiao Mi would go and add some Spiritual Spring water. She dared not add too much at once, for fear of being discovered, and also because it would make her uncomfortable.

However, the great advantage of this fish pond was that the water didn’t drain away too quickly; it would only seep slowly from below, losing very gradually.

This way, the Spiritual Spring water could exert its effects for a longer duration on the ducks, geese, fish, and even the lotus roots inside.

Even the wild grasses and trees around the fish pond might get nourished.

Previously, she added the Spiritual Spring water into the pond, then it flowed through the water channels to every place, irrigating all the crops.

But after all, the water kept flowing, and some crops just by chance did not get the nourishment from the Spiritual Spring water.

So last year’s crops benefitting from the Spiritual Spring water and yielding a better harvest than previous years was entirely a matter of luck.

But this year was different. Although most of the time, Xiao Mi still released water in the pond while everyone was busy with irrigation.

Yet, more often, people would carry a lot of manure back from Jiang’s pigsty.

To say it bluntly,

most families had only two pigs, and the latrines had much more water than pig manure, and the manure was far from sufficient.

At this point, everyone did not have any feed for pigs. At most, they had some rice bran and wheat bran. Some families were so frugal that they couldn’t even spare rice bran and wheat bran for the pigs; they kept it for themselves instead.

In this situation, they had no choice but to feed the pigs with pig grass. Only eating grass, not only grew slowly, but the manure was naturally not much either.

As for human waste? You can forget about it.

Conversely, Jiang Hu’s family raised a lot of pigs. Knowing they raised many pigs, not only did the Liu family keep their own grain, rice bran and wheat bran, but they also left the bran from the grain they bought and resold, sending it to them.

With the addition of chicken, duck, goose, cow dung, and rabbit droppings, all fermenting in the fields, or directly poured into the latrine.

So after obtaining Jiang’s family’s approval, the villagers would most commonly fetch dry manure from Jiang’s family and pour it into their own manure pit, thus irrigating all their crops as much as possible, greatly enhancing the fertility.

As a result, this year Xiao Mi didn’t have to work so hard to keep adding Spiritual Spring water to the pond and streams.

In fact, Xiao Mi believed that for growing crops, soil fertility was the most important.

Even without Spiritual Spring water, with the dozens of pigs their family raised, and possibly more in the future, as long as the fertility was enough, they could still yield a good harvest.

It is an excellent virtuous cycle.

Just like Little Grass’s mother raising sows, each year she keeps two fat pigs for herself, plus there are months-old piglets each year.

This way, their manure would be better, making their crops grow better too.

This was what Xiao Mi heard from Little Grass last year.

But raising pigs is not that simple, raising too many during busy farming seasons makes it impossible to take care of them, as you have to cut pig grass and more every day, so before, no one dared to raise dozens like the Jiang family.

Not to mention that pig grass was a problem. If something really went wrong, it could easily wipe them all out.

This kind of thing has happened before, especially when raising chickens.

So for raising so many livestock, while everyone admired the Jiang family’s luck, they couldn’t help but respect their fortune, for apart from occasionally having hatch failures, there were no reports of losses.

Back to the main story, on the eighth day, Uncle Liu returned with Liu Ze, bringing many New Year gifts, yet his first words upon returning were to ask his second wife to make a meal.

Using only Jiang’s family’s stuff, refusing anything sent by his son and daughter-in-law!

”Grandpa Liu, aren’t you afraid Uncle Liu and Aunt Qian will be upset with such disdain for what they sent?”

Xiao Mi, chin in hand, watched Uncle Liu enjoying stir-fried peanuts with a satisfied look, occasionally sipping a little wine, appearing quite content.