Chapter 4

The four major necessities of life: clothing, food, housing, and transportation.

Jin Kela was not in a good mood. The reason was the committee's "extreme lack of emphasis on agricultural work." People need food to survive, and without first addressing the food issue, they were busy with bricks and cement, depleting their resources. In his view, this was all because the committee was filled with "foremen and bureaucrats" who "did not understand science." In just a month, it would be the soybean planting season in South America. The 200 bags of Northeast soybeans in the cargo hold were well-preserved and could be used as seeds. The land here was so fertile, completely untouched, and the harvest next year would surely be good.

Until noon yesterday, he was still full of ambition, ready to work hard. Clearing the land, cultivating the soil, digging ditches, explaining the characteristics of soybeans, and training his subordinates in agricultural knowledge, he was busy and happy.

Unfortunately, everything came to a sudden stop at noon on October 7th. Ma Qianzu, this "idle person" and "bureaucrat," under the pretext of mining limestone, forcibly took away most of his workforce. The lime kiln and cement kiln were not even in sight, yet they started mining limestone first. This almost made him furious.

"All bullshit!" Jin Kela spat on the ground and continued to awkwardly plow the field with a pickaxe, "They can't even make a farming tool, they don't understand a bit of science."

"Captain, the few acres of land have been watered. Can we start planting now?" Zheng Bin, a high school student with acne, ran over and asked, looking up.

Zheng Bin was a down-to-earth young man who did whatever he was asked to do, and Jin Kela quite liked him.

"Sure, you can. Plant garlic on the left plot, the one with the black seeds, don't get it wrong. Plant amaranth on the right plot where the lime has been spread; amaranth likes alkaline soil. Damn, at least the lime is useful," Jin Kela muttered, "Sprinkle wood ash on both plots, remember that. Water the garlic every two days, and don't water the amaranth. Once I finish this plot, bring the green vegetable seeds, and we'll plant them too."

"Hey, Old Jin, you're pretty good at farming," a young man with black-rimmed glasses joked, pushing his bicycle, "Your agricultural university education wasn't wasted."

"Get lost!" Jin Kela said irritably, "What are you, Lan Guo, doing here from so far away? Are you here to build a biogas digester for me?"

"How could that be?" Lan Guo smiled bitterly, "I'm here to build a fence for you. The logging team has many trees that are not suitable for processing into boards. Commissioner Liu asked me to bring them over to enclose the seedbed. These vegetable seeds are very important to us, non-renewable resources in the short term. To put it bluntly, they are more important than people, and we need to take good care of them. So, I brought people to build the fence for you. Your place is too far from the cargo ship, and Wang Qian will bring people to stay here tonight. He will be responsible for security from now on."

"Commissioner Liu understands science," Jin Kela flattered, then asked, "When will the biogas digester be built? We need manure for farming in the future."

"No materials," Lan Guo shrugged, "The committee has a little cement and bricks, but Shao Shude is still complaining about not having enough bricks for the chimney. How can they allocate more? So, you just wait. Wait until the brick kiln produces the first batch of bricks."

"Even after a few more batches, it won't be my turn," Jin Kela was a bit discouraged, "Housing, toilets, canteens, bathrooms, office buildings, water channels, reservoirs, cement kilns, lime kilns, and even walls, all need bricks and cement. Who knows when it will be my turn."

Lan Guo smiled awkwardly. He didn't tell Jin Kela that the committee didn't give all the bricks and cement to Shao Shude to build the kiln. Deng Ken, who had worked in a waterworks for many years, was under the committee's "special attention" and was in charge of building a simple water purification facility.

Currently, the main source of water for the穿越者们 (穿越者们 means "the穿越者s," but it's better to use "the settlers" for clarity) was a few streams on the north bank of the river. These streams converged in a low-lying area, forming a large wetland. The wetland was about 500 meters from the riverbank, with good water quality and a considerable volume, but it was far away, making water collection inconvenient and unhygienic. Therefore, Deng Ken proposed a plan to dig a water channel and build a water purification facility, which was quickly approved by the committee.

The committee not only assigned most of the construction team to him but also allocated a batch of precious cement and building materials. After a day of hard work, a sedimentation tank 25 meters long, 5 meters wide, and 4 meters deep had been dug. Today, they started digging the filtration tank and the reservoir.

The water source was naturally the wetland stream. The stream water was channeled into the sedimentation tank through a 100-meter-long water channel. Since the groundwater level here was generally high, the channel was temporarily made of mud, to be replaced with bricks later when conditions improved. The inlet and outlet of the sedimentation tank were blocked by wooden boards, and the slow-flowing stream water entered the sedimentation tank, where the sediment and other substances settled due to gravity and then flowed into the filtration tank through the outlet.

The filtration tank had two layers. The bottom of the first layer was covered with coarse sand to filter out larger suspended particles, and the bottom of the second layer was covered with fine sand to filter out smaller particles. The filtered water was stored in the reservoir, which was an open structure with a wooden board cover to prevent dust from falling in and to reduce evaporation.

This purification method was extremely primitive and rudimentary. There was no coagulation process for the water source, and no disinfection process at the end, but given the lack of alum and chlorine, this was the best they could do.

All three tanks were made of reinforced concrete, consuming a large amount of rebar and cement from the committee. However, since it concerned the health of the settlers, no one complained.

Compared to the "luxurious" use of materials for the water purification facility, the construction of the public toilet was far from satisfactory. The simple toilet on the north bank of the river was extremely "simple," just a pit in the ground covered with a few wooden boards and topped with reeds and thatch, with wooden boards separating the men's and women's sections. There were no anti-seepage measures, but it was far from the drinking water source, so it wasn't a big problem. The health department regularly disinfected it with lime. Once the formal toilet was built, this temporary toilet would be buried.

*****************************************

Shao Shude was now a bit worried. He had tried to save bricks while building the kiln, but he found that there were still not enough bricks left for the chimney. There was no choice but to use a brick and stone mixed structure, saving bricks wherever possible, and if necessary, lowering the height of the chimney.

In his original plan, the chimney of the small brick kiln was to be 20 meters high, which would ensure a sufficient pressure difference between the top and bottom to facilitate the emission of exhaust gases. Now, it seemed unrealistic, and it looked like a chimney of about 10 meters would be the maximum.

His workforce had now grown to 30 people. Besides the 10 people building the chimney, the rest were making brick molds. In the morning, the construction team sent a few people to help him build some sheds to dry the brick molds and brought some rainproof cloth and thatch. The brick molds could not be exposed to rain or direct sunlight, so they had to be dried naturally in the sheds, with thatch and rainproof cloth covering them to prevent any accidents.

The specifications of the brick molds were 240×115×53mm (length×width×height). After retrieving the clay, they carefully removed the impurities and kneaded it into mature soil. The mature soil was mixed with water and molded in wooden forms, then stacked in the sheds to dry naturally. Each brick mold was spaced apart to allow for better ventilation and to balance the moisture content.

After about half a month of natural drying, the brick molds could be fired in the kiln. With the small kiln Shao Shude had built, about 12,000 bricks could be fired at a time, and with a firing cycle of three days, the annual production would be about 1.4 million bricks. In reality, the production capacity would not be that high, and if the kiln could produce 1 million bricks a year, Shao Shude would be overjoyed.

To build a house for the settlers, a three-room bungalow required about 20,000 bricks, and the annual production would be enough for only 50 houses. Moreover, there were many other uses for bricks, and it was impossible to allocate all of them to building houses for the settlers. Of course, a three-room house was indeed a bit luxurious, and the committee was unlikely to approve it.

"It seems that building more kilns and expanding production is the only way forward," Shao Shude sighed, "I hope the good weather continues for a few more days so I can quickly fire the first batch of bricks."

The logging team's work progress was indeed extremely slow today. Many people had blisters on their hands and winced in pain when swinging their axes. The faint sounds in the forest and the heart-wrenching barks of the wolf dogs made everyone highly nervous. Peng Zhicheng suspected that the Indians were spying on them but did not dare to search deeper, only observing carefully and strengthening the vigilance. Fortunately, the forest was relatively sparse, and as long as they kept their eyes open, there was no need to worry.

A floating bridge was built between the two banks of the river using large logs, which were tightly bound together with oil-soaked sturdy vines. Walking across with a dozen or twenty people was no problem. Xiao Mingli and Liu Dafa carried a log and wobbled to the opposite bank. In the wood processing area, a few amateur carpenters led a group of "apprentices" who were enthusiastically processing boards. As soon as the boards were processed, they were immediately taken away by the workers building the simple wooden houses.

By midday, the number of simple wooden houses in the residential area had increased to 15. The wooden houses were arranged in a tight row to save wood for the walls. A tall lookout tower was erected behind the wooden houses, and a young man in a neat blue "Beiyang New Army" uniform was holding a telescope, observing the surroundings from the tower. Another similar lookout tower was being built on the south bank of the river, between the brick kiln and the logging area.

Smoke rose from the nearby canteen, and upstream, Xiao Bailang and a group of part-time fishermen were returning with a large catch, laughing and talking loudly. Seeing this scene, Xiao Mingli felt a sense of peace, and the fatigue in his body seemed to melt away instantly.

Page break AD starts

Page break AD ends