Starting from Robinson Crusoe-Chapter 113 - 42: Slash-and-Burn Cultivation (Part 2)

It turned out that the stones deliberately left while clearing the sandy soil were only enough to build the outer wall of the cave dwelling, leaving a huge gap in the materials for the walls separating the three rooms inside.

Chen Zhou originally planned to spend half a month transporting and accumulating stones.

After carefully comparing the priorities, he still felt that farming was more important and decided to postpone building the walls and prioritize opening up the land.

In his hometown, all farmland had been used for years, and children had no idea of the process of opening up large fields. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

Speaking of land development, Chen Zhou had only expanded Grandma's vegetable garden.

But that was also land that had been planted with crops before, not strictly wasteland.

Apart from his daily experiences, he learned about a very primitive farming method at school—slash-and-burn agriculture.

This farming method is mainly used in large areas of primitive forest land.

The first step of slash-and-burn agriculture is to cut down the trees in the target area, remove the herbaceous plants, and then burn them after they are dried.

After burning, the soil becomes loose, and harmful insect eggs on the soil surface are also killed.

With the fertility of the ash, crops can be planted directly without tilling.

This planting method is convenient and fast but highly destructive; it also exhausts the soil's fertility quickly and is not sustainable.

Even the best land can be planted for only three years, after which the fertility is exhausted, and the old method is used—moving to a new location and burning a new field.

After the Huaxia Race emerged from the Stone Age, slash-and-burn was gradually phased out, and new methods like crop rotation, composting, and weeding were developed to increase yield.

This was partly because there were more hills and fewer plains in the country, making arable land scarce and necessitating reuse.

On the other hand, slash-and-burn agriculture had a low grain yield, with a saying describing a slope yielding just one basket—with only around a hundred pounds per mu, it's not cost-effective.

Yet, some primitive tribes or economically backward areas in Southeast Asia and South America still used this method in the 21st century.

To earn money, they deforest vast Amazon Rainforest areas, burning precious plants and destroying the habitats of endangered animals, planting rubber trees or tobacco.

In the early days, there were also tree felling activities for expanding farmland domestically.

Later on, recognizing the importance of environmental protection, rural areas undertook decades of reforestation and returning farmland to forests, giving the mountains back to wildlife.

Concerning the backward and unscientific farming method of slash-and-burn, the textbooks discourage it, and exam questions often bring up its environmental drawbacks.

The pictures of burned rainforests and trees billowing black smoke are truly shocking, which is why Chen Zhou was so deeply impressed by slash-and-burn agriculture.

The wheel of fortune spins.

Back when he criticized this behavior in class and explained the drawbacks in exams, Chen Zhou never imagined he would one day adopt the same method to open up land.

But unlike the primitive tribes, his main purpose for planting the first crop was for seed preservation, not food consumption.

The reclaimed land would not be continuously depleted of fertility.

Without beans suitable for crop rotation, he could choose composting or plant one season and let it lay fallow for two seasons, allowing the land to recover on its own.

On January 1st afternoon, Chen Zhou selected a suitable piece of land.

This land was below the platform at the cave entrance, covered with short grasses and shrubs, along with the tree roots left from earlier wood chopping, perfect for slash-and-burn.

Moreover, this land was on a shady slope, not far from the cave and mountain stream source.

The sunlight here wasn't harsh, preventing delicate seedlings from dying under harsh rays.

Carrying water for irrigation or weeding and observing crop conditions would also be quite convenient.

On January 2nd, the great undertaking of farming officially started.

He spent an entire day clearing the land of weeds and shrubs and dug out small tree roots for burning.

From January 3rd to January 5th, he began digging firebreaks around the target farmland.

The northern climate is dry, and the forest is prone to fires in spring and autumn or during solar terms like Qingming and Mid-autumn.

Especially, the Great Xing'an Mountains fire of '87 burned for 28 days, requiring tens of thousands of people for firefighting, shocking the nation.

Due to this event, fire prevention education began in primary schools in Chen Zhou's hometown, with half-semester sessions, including fire drills, fire extinguisher usage, and firebreak digging teaching.

Deeply aware of how terrifying a forest fire can become once it spreads, Chen Zhou dug his firebreaks very carefully, not daring to be careless.

The entire plot designated for farming is 30 meters long and about 50 meters wide, roughly more than two acres, more than enough to plant the seeds from the bags.

Before lighting the fire, Chen Zhou first made two wooden shovels and two wooden rakes using ironwood, to be used later—ever since obtaining the two Sharp Axes, he rarely used any other wood for making tools.

Even the fishing rod used that day was made of ironwood, emphasizing abundance.

Were it not for the small scale of the ironwood forest, he even considered building a wooden house entirely of ironwood.

On January 9th, the firebreak was completed, the weeds and thin shrub branches were sufficiently dried, and there was almost no wind; Chen Zhou lit the fire.

The tiny flame birthed by the fire strike looked exceptionally fragile, it started growing from one corner of the farmland, gnawing at the fuel, quickly growing larger.

Once the fire spread to a certain extent, its speed exceeded human comprehension.

It seemed like it raced across a great distance in mere breaths, rushing from one end of the land to the other in an instant.

For the first time setting such a large fire, Chen Zhou inevitably felt nervous, worried that the surrounding firebreak could not control the fire.

Standing at the foot of the mountain, holding a wooden shovel, he ran occasionally, observing the direction of the flames to cover with soil and extinguish the fire promptly.

Fortunately, the weather was fine, without any inexplicable wind gusts, and everything went smoothly during the burning of weeds.

Once the fuel was exhausted, the fire quickly diminished and gradually went out.

The originally slightly green meadow became pitch black.

Hot, dry, and filled with a scent of destruction.

Residual fire still lingered in the burnt ashes, and Chen Zhou patiently watched until dark.

In the late evening, a slight breeze kicked up, blowing some charred thin branches across the firebreak, making him startled, anxiously intercepting, covering with soil to prevent a forest fire.

Afraid for a whole afternoon, watching until sunset and the wind settled, after dinner, Chen Zhou continued guarding from the platform for a while.

Perhaps he was overreacting; perhaps it was the island's high humidity; until bedtime, the extinguished land didn't reignite, not even a small flame appeared.

Of course, for Chen Zhou, no news from the wasteland is the best news.

On January 10th, he woke up early, found the bags containing rice and wheat, and selected all the plump seeds, ready for planting.

Walking down the platform to the nearby wasteland, he carefully tested the temperature of the ashes, ensuring they had cooled completely.

Chen Zhou brought along water buckets and picked up a wooden shovel and rake, starting to tidy up the land.

The burned soil was only soft at the surface; digging deeper didn't compare to plow deep-tillage. Digging occasionally unearthed small stones or dead tree roots.

These hard objects could hinder the growth of crops and had to be cleared from the field.

The shady slope land was less weathered by wind and rain; the soil was relatively firm, much softer than the hillside land in Chen Zhou's hometown, and even without metal-embedded shovels, the progress wasn't slow.

After all, as a child raised in a rural area, although he hadn't touched farm work for quite some time, once he picked up the shovel, he quickly regained the skill.

While turning the soil, he also picked out stones and tree roots, specifically digging out ridges and furrows to mix ash with soil.

The pitch-black land gradually turned into well-defined ridges and furrows with some semblance of farmland.

Estimating that all the seeds combined wouldn't be enough to cover more than these two acres, Chen Zhou only prepared four ridges before putting down the shovel.

Taking out a small wooden box containing the selected seeds and a nearby water bucket, he began planting them one by one.

The main crops of Chen Zhou's hometown were usually corn, millet, glutinous millet, and sunflowers, rarely planting rice and wheat.

Regarding these two unfamiliar crops' spacing and characteristics, he didn't know, only relying on intuition to plant them as far apart as possible before covering with soil and watering.

If Robinson could casually sow them and they'd germinate, such meticulous nurturing surely wouldn't fail unless it was a case of bad luck.

Lacking confidence in his farming skills, Chen Zhou didn't want to put all eggs in one basket.

After planting two ridges of rice and two ridges of wheat, he stored the remaining seeds, intending to plant them on better land after the first batch of fertilizer was prepared, avoiding putting everything at risk and losing it all.