allonlinenovel Chapter 110 Is this brain too smart?
Chapter 110 Is this brain too smart?
The next morning, Shen Youyou opened her eyes. It was already bright outside. She sat on the bamboo bed and rubbed her eyes. There was no one else in the cave except Shen Nannan and the other three little kids who were still sleeping.
But the various sounds outside the cave proved that everyone had started to get busy.
As soon as they walked out of the cave, Li Jingshu asked Shen Youyou to wash up and eat, muttering, "Your father and his family left early in the morning, saying that you were all exhausted yesterday and asked me not to call you."
It turned out that her father had gone with her uncles, aunts, and brothers to dig Pueraria root, and this time he did not let the girls follow him.
After Shen Youyou finished washing up, she ate breakfast while watching the grandfathers making palm fluff and twisting palm ropes, and the grandmothers making mattresses with the processed and dried palm fluff.
The dark brown mattress has a rustic charm. Although it cannot catch up with the exquisite workmanship of later generations, the grandmothers would try to lay out the palm flannel as flatly as possible and then sew it with palm rope.
Fortunately, every household brought thick iron needles for making raincoats, otherwise it would have been more difficult to make them with bamboo needles.
The denser the seams, the more durable it is, and you can roll it up and take it with you when you go.
Roughly speaking, including the ones used on the bamboo beds in the house, more than a hundred mattresses have been made.
Even so, they always felt that time was not enough and wanted to finish the work quickly so that they could make raincoats for the strong laborers who went out to work so that they would be warmer.
There were also a lot of old men with gray hair. They didn’t bring the iron rakes they used to rake grass at home. They didn’t even bring farm tools with them when they fled from famine. But you have to know that they really know how to live. Iron was valuable in ancient times!
The operations of the old men will make your jaw drop. They took the heads of their iron rakes off and took them with them to escape the famine. They were ready to install the handles and start clearing the wasteland at the beginning when they arrived at the new place!
As the old saying goes, ginger is more spicy. I haven't even waited to open up the land in the place, but I'm using it now.
They sat on the ground with their feet on the wood on both sides of the iron spike rake. Although it was called an iron spike rake, it was not made entirely of iron. It was more like a row of sparse iron nails nailed on the wood.
With the iron nail facing upwards, holding the washed and dried palm bark in the hand, he rubbed the palm fluff on it.
But don't underestimate these simple tools. They are very useful and can clean a piece of palm skin in just a few strokes.
The older men are responsible for twisting the palm ropes, but in the era when people twisted the palm ropes by hand, if you imagine the speed, you will know that it definitely could not be fast.
My uncle-in-law Wang Fuxi and two other men were using a large wooden mortar to make wooden mortars and hammers. Our stone mortars and small millstones were not enough.
The most important thing is to use it to crush kudzu root and palm fruit, and the small grinding wheel is not easy to use.
The wooden mortar is easy to make, although the ancients had limited tools and no machines!
However, they used charcoal to burn a large pit in the stone pier, and then used tools to clean off the burnt black area and smooth the inside of the pit.
The wooden hammer is even simpler. It is just a rough wooden box with a hole in the middle horizontally. Then, take a processed wooden stick and nail it into the hole. If you are really worried that it is not strong enough, you can nail a few more bamboo strips in the gap.
It may be simple, but Wang Fuxi has been really exhausted recently. He has to lead many things. Except for him, the only carpenter in the group, all the others are mediocre.
He picks up his tools at dawn and works until dark, except for meal times. He even has to jog to pee.
Just think of how busy he is! He has no free time at all.
The women were not having an easy time either, although they stopped digging bamboo shoots, but they kept some of the palm fruits they had picked for the children as sweet treats, and planned to squeeze them into oil.
So a dozen aunts and uncles cut the palm fruits from the hanging strings, each one was very plump.
Afterwards, the sisters were responsible for picking up the palm fruits scattered on the ground and washing them with clean water.
Li Jingshu and his team were responsible for steaming the palm fruits using the bamboo steamer that Wang Fuxi had just made a few days ago.
After about half an hour, it can be served.
The few people she brought with her were also very efficient. They set up large pots, steaming hot, at the entrance of the cave, making it look like a steamed bun shop.
In order to save time, five steamers are placed on each pot, which saves time and firewood.
Although they are not short of firewood, thrift is a virtue, haha. In fact, the main reason is that they can ship in large quantities.
When the fruits in the steamer are cooked, they are poured onto a bamboo mat woven with bamboo. There are several bamboo mats on the ground, which were used to drain the bamboo shoots after they were dried and rinsed.
After Shen Youyou finished eating, she said to her uncle who was burning wood piles with fire: "Uncle, I want to make some tools to make palm ropes. My grandfather and his family rubbed them by hand, which is too slow and easily causes blisters on their hands."
Without waiting for Wang Fuxi to answer, Father Shen spoke up: "My dear grandson, there are no blisters on Grandpa's hands. They are all calloused. They haven't blistered for a long time. Even if there are blisters, it's okay. Just prick them with a needle."
Shen Youyou was defeated by her grandfather's honesty and could only explain aloud: "But the tool I thought of, one person can twist the rope as much as all 20 of you combined."
When these words came out, the old men were excited when they thought of Shen Youyou's corn-rubbing tool.
If they can go that fast, and there is plenty of palm bark here, they can probably make some more palm ropes to take away. You know, palm ropes are much stronger than straw ropes.
Mr. Shen asked excitedly: "Yo Yo, what tool are you talking about?"
Shen Youyou picked up a small branch and drew a fork similar to the word "Ping" on the ground. The principle is actually similar to the handle of modern kite flying.
Shen Youyou pointed at the fork and explained: Spray some water on the palm fibers, use two small bamboo poles to loosen and break up the fibers so that they can be woven more evenly, then smooth out the broken fibers and roll them up into rolls, similar to spinning cotton and silk.
When making a rope, use this fork, wrap one end around it, turn the fork with your right hand, and pull the palm fibers with your left hand. Soon, the palm fibers can be spun into small thin ropes.
When the brown rope reaches a certain length, turn your thumb and use inertia to wrap the brown rope around the fork.
The explanation was a bit unclear, but the fork was very easy to make. Wang Fuxi got some thin bamboo boards on the spot and made two, and Shen Youyou taught him directly.
The operation is quite simple. First, apply some palm oil on the fork to make it turn more smoothly.
Then put one end of the palm wool on the fork. As Shen Youyou turned the fork with her right hand and pulled the palm fiber with her left hand, she quickly made a palm rope ball. It actually only took about ten minutes.
It was about 30 meters long, and the speed was definitely much faster than before.
But Father Shen reminded him: "Yoyo, this rope will come apart as soon as you let go, and you have to twist it into two ropes."
Shen Youyou nodded: "Grandpa, I know. I'll wrap two brown balls first."
She said that the first brown rope ball should be temporarily fixed on the fork to prevent it from falling apart, and then continued to wrap around the second one. After making two brown balls, the grandfathers also understood how to use this tool.
The next step is to connect the brown ropes on the two forks into one.
Then, hang the connected brown rope on the hook, and the fork rotates with the left and right hands at the same time, and the two thin ropes are twisted into a thicker brown rope.
When the coir rope reaches the required length, tie a knot cleverly. At this time, it becomes a thin coir rope that can be used to sew mattresses or raincoats.
Shen Youyou's actions really stunned the old men. They really couldn't understand:
How come the little granddaughter was able to come up with such a useful tool just by watching them twist a rope? Is her brain even better than that of the third child?