dtnovels Chapter 597: The fodder won’t last long
Chapter 597: The fodder won’t last long
Chapter 597: The fodder won't last long
After a while, the sound of the famous guqin piece "Three Variations on Plum Blossoms" could be faintly heard from the plum grove. The sound was free and easy, as if an elegant scholar was singing casually.
Hualei listened attentively. The rhythm of the piano sound was slightly different from the modern "Three Variations on Plum Blossoms", and it seemed more pure and noble.
The "three variations" in the song specifically refer to the high, middle and low pitches of the guqin. The main melody of the song appears once in each of these three positions, which constitutes the unique charm of this song.
It is like a musical "marathon", where each piece is a new start. The appearance of different sections in the song makes the whole song full of changes and layers, as if telling a touching story with the sound of the piano.
Hua Lei secretly praised him in her heart. She had studied for so many years, but she could not even begin to catch up with such a skill. Mrs. Chen Shao, who was sitting opposite her, was also listening with a look of fascination.
Hualei had read in a book in her previous life that the people most suitable for participating in plum blossom viewing include those who play the flute in the woods, those who play the harp on their knees, those who brew tea by sweeping snow, etc.
Most of these people are literati with high cultural literacy. It seems that I am just a dilettante, I am not good at playing the zither or tea, and I can't play the flute.
Fortunately, there are many people who truly understand elegance. After the "Three Variations on Plum Blossoms" ends, another "High Mountains and Flowing Water" is played.
Listening to the music, it's like seeing the natural and harmonious scene of mountains and flowing water. The praise of friendship and understanding is expressed vividly.
Hualei felt that just for these two pieces of music, today's trip was worthwhile. The sound of the piano sometimes stopped and sometimes started, and the subtle fragrance sometimes disappeared and sometimes appeared. Hualei couldn't help but sigh that the sun was warm and the years were quiet.
After having an exquisite lunch prepared by the host, I took a leisurely walk in the garden. The originally clear sky began to snow heavily again.
Seeing the ground soon covered with a layer of snow-white, everyone stood up and said goodbye. Hualei and Zhenzhu also got on their own carriages, met Rong Jin and Jiang Yunqi at the gate, and prepared to go home.
Sitting in the carriage, I opened the curtain and looked out. The crystal snowflakes were dancing in the sky. The flower buds, which rarely see snow, could not help but feel happy.
However, the heavy snow that made the flower buds happy continued to fall for five or six days without stopping, and the temperature was also dropping rapidly.
The snow that had not yet melted was covered by layers of heavy snow, and northwest wind blew from time to time.
Watching the continuous heavy snowfall, Hua Lei and Rong Jin no longer had the joy they felt when the snow first started falling and the elegance of reciting poems and composing couplets. All they were left with was anxiety. If the snow didn't stop, there would probably be a snowstorm.
In the past few days, Rong Jin would go to the county government office from time to time to listen to the news. On the eleventh day of the first lunar month, Rong Jin went to the county government office again, but he came back before noon and told Hua Lei that several officials from the Ministry of Agriculture had sent some bad news.
Because of the deep snow accumulation, the winter wheat that had just been planted this year suffered some damage under the cover of heavy snow, with some small patches of wheat dying.
If the snow cover lasts too long, the winter wheat will hibernate for a long time under the snow. When the weather warms up, the soil moisture under the snow layer will increase.
If the temperature continues to be too low, it will weaken the resistance of wheat and breed various bacteria, diseases and pests, which will cause large areas of wheat seedlings to die, leading to poor harvest or serious production reduction.
When Minister Zhang heard this, he was extremely anxious. So he sent some people to clear the ditches in places where the snow was particularly thick, and piled the snow into snow walls to comfort himself.
However, before the problem in the wheat field was solved, news came from Nanping Village under the county government that the herdsmen were short of fodder.
Some time ago, the occasional light snow did not have much impact on the lives of the herdsmen. If the snow was heavy, it would generally stop after two or three days.
The temperature is not cold, so the snow will melt. Therefore, the herders and cattle and sheep in Nanping Village under Mobei Town are all fine.
It’s just that the herders have a little harder work than usual. They need to get up in the morning, clear the snow in front of the cattle and sheep, and open a road for the cattle and sheep to go to places not covered by snow to graze.
But now that it is snowing heavily, it is becoming difficult for the herders and their cattle and sheep. The main reason for this is that the snow has covered the pasture and has exceeded a certain depth.
In some places, the snow is not deep, but it is dense. In other places, the snow is frozen into an ice crust, making it difficult for cattle and sheep to dig through the snow to graze, causing hunger.
If the sheep cannot eat grass, they will keep using their hooves to scrape the snow in search of grass to eat. However, if they continue to scrape the snow with their hooves, sometimes the ice shell will easily cut the sheep's hooves and wrists.
Bleeding will soon occur, causing blood loss or frostbite in the sheep. These sheep will not be able to survive until the snow melts, and they will slowly die one by one from blood loss and frostbite.
Especially those ewes standing in the snow, they are pregnant with babies. If they can't eat grass or their hooves bleed.
The first thing they are likely to do is miscarriage. Even if they can give birth to lambs, the survival rate is low, and the ewes die even faster.
What's worse is that sheep can survive in this way for a while, but cattle will not. If cattle cannot eat grass, they will change from standing to lying down, and then lie down, and finally they will be frozen and unable to move.
Long-term lack of fodder will cause cattle and sheep to become thin, resulting in miscarriages in cows and sheep, and the death rate of old and weak cattle and sheep will increase.
In addition, in the cold season, cattle and sheep have low resistance, and if there is not enough fodder, it will stimulate and aggravate the occurrence of various diseases.
Therefore, in the past few days, many old and weak cattle and sheep, as well as some young cattle and sheep, died in Nanping Village. The cattle and sheep that were still alive stood in the knee-deep snow during this period.
They are waiting for the grass sent by herdsmen from afar to sustain their lives. If there is enough grass and they are kept warm in time, perhaps they can survive until spring.
However, news from Nanping Village said that the snow was too thick and fodder was no longer available. The fodder prepared by the herders before winter would not last long.
If they lose the last bit of grass, these herds of cattle and sheep will slowly lose their warmth and be buried in the flying snow.
The Du Mu Cao of the Ministry of Revenue in Mobei had all the oxen for the next year's land reclamation fostered in Daniu Village. Moreover, because Minister Zhang thought there were too few oxen, he went to the nearby county government before the New Year and brought back a lot of young and strong oxen.
The news from Nanping Village made Minister Zhang very anxious. In an agricultural society like the Great Sheng Dynasty, the value of cattle was much more precious than that of humans.