Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

Chapter 1187 Cotton is so delicate!

The cotton farmers in the fourth team—Li Jia, Xie Yundong, Tao Daqiang, Liang Dacheng, Jia Weiguo, Xu Chengjun, and Xu Haijun—all bought pesticide spraying machines.

They planted at least twenty acres of cotton. It was too much trouble for them to carry the sprayer themselves to spray the pesticides. Although they could borrow a sprayer, they couldn't bear the embarrassment, so they bought one.

Most of the other people didn't buy it; they just borrowed it when they needed it.

Borrowing farm machinery is nothing unusual. As long as it's not something you borrow frequently, it's quite normal in the fourth team. No one can possibly have everything—except for the Li family, I suppose.

When Li Long arrived home, Du Chunfang was helping Liang Yuemei prepare lunch. With more people around, cooking had to be done earlier. Liang Yuemei wasn't very happy; she'd much rather work in the fields—

However, upon seeing Li Long, Liang Yuemei smiled:
"Xiaolong is here? Perfect timing, dinner will be ready soon. Your older brother and the others are spreading fertilizer in the fields, they should be back soon... We'll eat in a bit."

"That's right, that's right! The small crucian carp stewed today was brought over by Daqiang's dad this morning. Your sister-in-law stewed a big pot of it, it'll be ready in no time!" Du Chunfang was also very happy.

"Mom, sister-in-law, I'm not going to eat for now." Li Long explained the situation to his mother and sister-in-law as he walked towards the sprayer. "I'll turn on the sprayer and apply the medicine first. This stuff is very contagious."

"You cowardly brat!" Du Chunfang was furious upon hearing this. She stood up, holding a fire poker, and said, "Whose is it? Juan's mother, you tell me whose it is and where it is. I'm going to their doorstep to yell at them!"

Liang Yuemei's face also darkened, and she said:
“Li Xincheng’s family lives in the east village behind here, the fifth…sixth house on the west side. Mother, don’t worry about this, I’ll talk to them after we finish eating…”

"No need, no need," Li Long hurriedly waved his hand. "There's no need. I don't know how many times she went, and we don't need to make a big deal out of this. Our family is prominent enough in the team. We'll have Junfeng and the others come to the fields more often to check and inspect. I'll go spray the pesticide now..."

"Doesn't the medicine pot need to be filled with water? Now I'll press it down and pour it in," Liang Yuemei said, picking up the lid of the pot and putting it on the stewing fish.

"No need, no need. I'll just take a pipe. The well at the team's water tower is pumping water." Li Long went over and cranked the small four-wheeled tractor to the sprayer, aligned the connector, and plugged it in. Then he said to Liang Yuemei:
"Sister-in-law, are those pesticides in the vacant house?"

"Yes, yes, the door is open. You know exactly what to do and how to do it, right? Do you want to wait until after lunch to go?"

"No need, no need, now is the perfect time. The sprayer is fast, it only takes two or three passes to spray once, I'll just spray twice." After Li Long finished speaking, he went to get two bottles of Furadan—this is not actually the best medicine for killing red spiders, but it's the one commonly used at this time.

This stuff is too toxic. After putting the medicine away, Li Long habitually went to his GAZ truck to get a mask, and then drove the tractor out.

Furadan is extremely poisonous; a single pill can kill a small animal. Li Long felt it was better to be a little more careful—although nowadays, people in rural areas don't really care when spraying pesticides, using things like 3911, and they don't even wear masks when they're spraying with their own sprayers.

Having experienced many things in later generations, Li Long knew that one's physical condition was not always apparent. Some seemingly insignificant things could accumulate and cause hidden injuries.

Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, unless there's an accident like a car crash, health problems don't develop overnight or from a single event; they require long-term attention.

When the tractor reached the water tower, Li Long stopped, opened the sprayer's nozzle, took a long water pipe from the back of the small four-wheeled tractor, inserted one end into the sprayer's nozzle, and used the other end to find the well outlet—where well water was gushing out.

The steel pipe at the water outlet was 20 centimeters in diameter and about 1.5 meters above the ground. Li Long forced the other end of the pipe into the outlet, and the water gushed out rapidly, splashing a lot of water on him. Fortunately, he managed to push it in more than half a meter before it was not flushed out.

He tested it and found the water pipe to be stable, so he went to the nozzle of the sprayer and watched as the water flowed in rapidly.

When the water was halfway filled, Liang Dacheng drove up in his tractor, parked it on the other side of the well's outlet, took out a water hose, and while operating it, said to Li Long:
"I bet you're here. By the way, my mom went to see that woman; she won't be happy until she gives her a good scolding!"

Okay, they're all pretty impressive.

The women in that team are really not to be trifled with.

After saying that, Liang Dacheng asked again:
"Little Dragon, do you think this red spider is really that powerful?"

“If we don’t spray pesticides, within five days, a large area of ​​the field will be damaged, resulting in a loss of at least ten kilograms of cotton per acre. If we leave it unattended for a week or ten days, the area around the spot where that woman walked will be completely barren…”

Li Long wasn't exaggerating. The earlier you prevent these pests from spreading, the better. While drugs like Furadan are toxic, their effects are long-lasting. Once applied, spider mites won't come back for the next several dozen days… so it has both insecticidal and preventative effects.

This stuff not only targets mites (red spider mites are a type of mite), but it can also control aphids and bollworms.

Cotton aphids are actually what are commonly known as honey bugs, the kind that ants use to herd nectar. These things are particularly annoying.

Bollworms are not easy to kill. When they grow up, they burrow into cotton buds and cotton bolls, making it difficult for pesticides to penetrate. So sometimes they have to be caught by hand.

After all, this is the largest individual among pests. It appears just when cotton is setting fruit and forming buds (bolls). It can destroy all the bolls of a cotton plant in a single day... It's so annoying!
After filling the pipe with water, Li Long pulled it out and put the lid on. Although the water wasn't for drinking, it flowed down to irrigate the vegetable garden, so Li Long didn't pour pesticides there; that wouldn't be good.

"Xiaolong, what kind of medicine did you get?" Liang Dacheng asked.

"Furadan, and you?"

“Same here,” Liang Dacheng said. “Let’s fight first and then talk about it.”

Two people drove their tractor one after the other to the edge of the cotton field, found the right spot, and prepared to spray pesticides.

Li Long planned to start by attacking from the east, cutting off the area between Xu Haijun's land and his own.

Although Liang Dacheng had bought a pesticide sprayer, he had never used it. So after stopping the tractor, he didn't operate it immediately, but instead came over to watch Li Long do it.

"Check the ratio first, then mix the medicine." Li Long said to him while operating the machine, "This stuff is very poisonous. It's okay today, there's not much wind, but we still have to be careful when spraying. Our sprayer has many nozzles at once, and the sprayed mist covers a wide area. If there's a tailwind, it's easy to get poisoned."

Li Long prepared the medicine, screwed the bottle shut, and put it into the water bucket hanging behind the tractor, intending to take it back and dispose of it.

Next, open the folding frame behind the medicine tank, secure it, and drive the tractor into the field.

The cotton plants were a bit tall at this point, and when the tractor drove into the field, the cotton heads would bend, but these things are very resilient, and they would straighten up again after the tractor passed.

At most, a few leaves will be lost; that's a loss we can afford.

When spraying pesticides, the speed should not be too fast, and the speed should be controlled at seven or eight kilometers per hour. The main thing is to keep an eye on the machine head, making sure it is right between the two cotton plants, and not pressing down on them.

Only then did Li Long begin adjusting the height of the spray nozzle—the spraying process is essentially a process of continuously raising the nozzle. Right now, the nozzle is at its lowest setting, and the cotton is only this tall. In another half a month or a month, when the cotton grows to about a meter tall, the nozzle will have to be adjusted upwards.

Li Long did one thing and Liang Dacheng followed suit, except he wasn't wearing a mask. Although he usually didn't care, when Li Long mentioned it, he took off his jacket and tied it to his face to cover his mouth and nose.

A living person can't be killed by holding in their pee.

After adjusting the nozzle position, Li Long adjusted the air tank switch, then got on the tractor and slowly drove forward while observing the spraying of the pesticide.

Not bad.

Spider mites usually crawl on the back of leaves, so some people turn off the spray nozzle that sprays downwards and only spray upwards when applying pesticides.

Li Long was worried that there were other pests in the field, so he turned on all the sprayers. He didn't care about the small amount of pesticide; pest control was the priority!
Liang Dacheng also joined in the fight. His tractor was two positions behind Li Long's, but the speed was about the same.

As I worked, I kept looking back and saw the cotton leaves were all wet, which gave me a great sense of accomplishment.

They were spraying pesticides here, while over at Li Xincheng's house, Liang Dacheng's mother was glaring at that woman with a rather frightening look in her eyes.

The three Liang brothers lost their father, and their mother had been ill for a long time. In order to pay for their mother's treatment and medicine, the three brothers did all kinds of work, even catching fish in the small lake to sell when the temperature was below minus thirty degrees Celsius in the dead of winter, just like Li Long.

Now that life is better, her illness has improved a lot, but her personality hasn't changed; she still says what she thinks.

For farmers, farming is arguably one of the most important things, if not the most important. If you have malicious intentions and try to damage someone else's crops, you'll be met with insults, which is the least of your worries.

"I...I just want to get home quickly..." The woman, facing Liang Dacheng's mother, who looked rather thin, didn't dare to retaliate with any insults, and only dared to explain.

After all, if you do something wrong and get caught red-handed, it's hard to explain.

Liang Dacheng's mother felt like she'd punched a pillow; after a few curses, she realized it was pointless and turned to leave. But she still felt things weren't so simple and was trying to figure out how to get to the bottom of things. Li Xincheng had a six-year-old son who wasn't in school yet; he was playing by the canal when Liang Dacheng's mother approached him.

Spraying machines are incredibly fast. A person carrying a sprayer can only operate it at two speed settings at most, and that's slow. But a tractor-mounted sprayer is more than twice as fast, capable of operating at six to eight speed settings at once.

The Li family owns twenty acres of land here. The sprayer can finish spraying the pesticide in less than half an hour, and they can make another trip.

If a person carries the sprayer and sprays the product, it would take at least half a day to do it once.

So when Liang Dacheng returned to the field after the two rounds of fighting, he sighed:

"I used to think spraying pesticides on corn was a really tough job. But now it looks so easy!"

Just then, Xu Haijun drove up in his tractor.

He saw Li Long and Liang Dacheng there, got out of the car cursing, and said:

"I was just thinking of taking some men into the mountains to cut down some trees, and now... damn it, that bitch!"

Li Long wasn't sure if the large swarm of red spiders in Xu Haijun's cotton field was native or brought there by that woman, but he wouldn't say anything at this moment.

Xu Haijun walked around to the edge of the field, all the way to the plot where the red spider was located, and looked at it. He asked Li Long from a distance:

Is this the place?

“Exactly, look at those leaves, their color has changed,” Li Long said. “If we hadn’t used pesticides to control it, that whole area would have suffered a reduced yield or even a total crop failure.”

"Damn it!" Xu Haijun cursed again, walked back to the tractor, and asked Li Long about the ratio of medicine to be mixed.

Li Long was guiding him from the side, mainly focusing on adjusting the height of the nozzle.

When Xu Haijun started working in the field, Li Long watched him drive for several dozen meters without any problems before he and Liang Dacheng went back.

Halfway back, Li Jianguo drove up in his GAZ truck. After looking at Li Long, he stopped and asked:
"Finished?"

"The fight is over."

"Then let's go back and have dinner."

During the meal, Liang Yuemei told Li Long something else:
"That woman deliberately walked through the cotton field."

"Intentionally? Did you intentionally put the bugs in the ground?" Li Long asked, somewhat surprised. There was no grudge between them, so this was a bit hard to understand.

“No,” Liang Yuemei shook her head and said, “Dacheng’s mother asked Li Xincheng’s son and found out with two pieces of candy. The child said that his mother went to the field to find the places where our families could replant watermelons so that she could steal them when they ripened.”

I don't know where this woman heard that only those who replant melons in our cotton fields would do something like this..."

That reason sounds a bit far-fetched.

But Li Long thought it was quite possible that it was true.

The family discussed this issue while eating.

After finishing their meal, Li Long told his older brother that he was going to visit the other cotton fields to check on their conditions.

“Let’s go together,” Li Jianguo said. “I thought that insects wouldn’t usually appear at this time of year, at least not until June. Who would have thought… I was careless.”

The two drove their GAZ truck to check out the other cotton fields, and then they ran into Xie Yundong and his group.

"We heard there were bugs in the cotton field, so we came to take a look." Xie Yundong and his wife Deng Guilan were looking at the cotton field.

This was their first time planting, and Li Long had made it sound quite serious before, so they were taking it very seriously.

“Go further in along the ridges, it will be better. Don’t cross the ridges like that woman, that will make the spread faster.” Li Long said as he went into the field to check, and told them, “If you find large patches of leaves that have changed color, then you have to spray pesticides.”

The cotton plants in this plot are sparser and in relatively better condition. Occasionally, cotton aphids can be seen, but no spider mites have been found.

"From now on, I just need to come and check on things from time to time. I also need to come and check on things when we're cultivating and watering, and I need to keep an eye on that woman's situation."

Actually, when the team was growing cotton, nobody paid much attention to this. Many people would wander around the fields, and if they weren't satisfied chatting across the plots, they would cross over the cotton groves to chat together.

Later, the agricultural extension station explained that this would allow pests to attach to the body and spread to other plots, especially spider mites, so Li Long had to be careful. Only then did he write it down.

It's always better to establish rules from the beginning than to learn from mistakes and then draw conclusions.

When this incident came to light, some people thought that Li Long and his colleagues were making a mountain out of a molehill. After all, everyone's land was adjacent, and it was normal for them to go to other fields to work. It happened frequently, and no one would think much of it.

Some people are used to Li Long being right, after all, he has done so many successful things and has a halo, so they think what he says is correct.

"At least he consulted the professors at the agricultural college, so listening to him is the right thing to do." At this time, authority still had its place, and the words of experts and professors still carried weight with ordinary people.

So for a while after that, Li Xincheng's wife appeared less often in front of people, and she was constantly being pointed at and talked about, which made her feel bad.

When Li Long returned to the courtyard, he told Gu Xiaoxia about it that evening, which surprised Gu Xiaoxia.

"There's so much to know about growing cotton!" She used to work with Gu Boyuan, mainly growing corn, sunflowers, and wheat. She had never actually worked with cotton before, as it requires such meticulous care.

"There's nothing we can do about it; cotton attracts too many insects," Li Long said. "To achieve high yields, the plants need to be planted more densely. If they're planted too close together, the insects will just grow in swarms."

"That's quite troublesome." Gu Xiaoxia had been away from rural work for many years, and those things were now just memories.

"It's much better now. We have help with spraying pesticides, cultivating, and topping. We have people at home to help with that too," Li Long said.

The current yield of cotton per acre is not high, but it is better than other crops and is guaranteed.

Li Long planted the cotton a few years in advance so that his older brothers could get used to it. This would speed up cotton planting and improve the technology. It's always better to plan ahead than to fall behind and catch up.

By the end of May, the purchase of fritillaria bulbs was nearing its end, the fritillaria bulbs in the mountains were beginning to bloom, and the number of fritillaria bulbs purchased daily at the purchasing station was decreasing.

However, the purchase of fritillaria bulbs will be half a month to a month later than when the fritillaria bulbs have fully flowered and cannot be harvested, mainly because they need to be transported from the mountains and dried, which takes time.

Li Long went to the forestry team twice more. This year, Aili and Abulaiti, along with the forest rangers from the forestry team, went crazy. Every time they went, they could bring back at least the equivalent of about one ton of dried fritillaria bulbs.

Li Long always brought them cash, and he also learned that the reorganization of forestry was gradually being implemented. In other words, by the second half of the year, the forestry team would officially become a forestry work station, and although the forest rangers would still be there, they would no longer have law enforcement power.

At that time, a forest police station or duty point will be set up at the entrance of each valley, and those people will be the backbone of protecting forest resources.

Of course, it had nothing to do with Li Long anymore. He mainly went into the forest to build roads and make friends. He no longer hunted or mined resources.

In addition, Lao Gu's proactive efforts were quite effective. Before the end of the month, he had Liu Gaolou bring over two tons of dried scallops and a large quantity of deer antlers, which can be considered a fruitful harvest.

Not bad, they've successfully established the reputation of the recycling station.

(End of this chapter)