Chapter 161: Farmland Construction

Behind the main levee was the first phase of the 1,500-mu high-yield fields. After consulting with Wu Nan Hai, Fa Shilu, and others, Yan Quezhi decided that the construction and renovation of the drought- and flood-resistant, high-yield, stable-yield farmland must meet the following standards: drought resistance to ensure a good harvest after 90 days without rain; flood control to withstand a 1-in-10-year flood (by 20th-century standards) and five days of heavy rain without disaster; riverbank flood control levees to withstand a 1-in-20-year flood and level 8 winds without collapsing or overflowing; and soil improvement to achieve a topsoil depth of 5 inches in paddy fields and 1 foot in dry fields, greatly improving water and fertilizer retention.

The fields were to be laid out in a grid pattern with large squares to facilitate the operation of agricultural machinery. Drainage and irrigation would have separate channels, and the system would be complete with ditches, canals, roads, and forests. In particular, a planned construction of windbreak forests would be gradually implemented to reduce the impact of typhoons in late summer and early autumn. The field roads would be built to a standard that could accommodate mechanized farming vehicles.

With the plans settled, Yan Quezhi began the surveying and design work. Wu Nan Hai and Fa Shilu started mobilizing the farm workers on a large scale to prepare, emptying the biogas and compost pits to gather sufficient base fertilizer. Materials for the water conservancy construction were continuously transported to the site: plant ash and lime for soil amendment; bricks, stones, cement, and wood for building the levees and channels; and bamboo reinforcement for pouring concrete. The machinery factory was responsible for manufacturing various valves and pipes for the water conservancy facilities, while also starting the production of water pumps and their matching boilers and steam engines.

The project began with a large number of laborers dispatched by Wu De. They came with axes, saws, sickles, and other tools to clear the vegetation in the entire development area, which consisted mainly of small shrubs and weeds. The shrubs were used as firewood, and the weeds, along with withered grass and fallen leaves, were piled up in several temporary compost pits set up by Wu Nan Hai. The sludge from the biogas pits was used as a starter and mixed in. The pile was then covered with soil and watered regularly. Under the summer sun, the plant matter would quickly decompose into organic fertilizer.

If they were simply buried in the soil, some of the more fibrous branches and leaves would not decompose even after many years and would not serve to fertilize the fields.

After clearing the vegetation, a team of four bulldozers, led by the armored corps commander Bai Yu, arrived. They were all Dongfanghong tractors fitted with bulldozer blades. Bai Yu stuck his head out of the driver’s cabin. Yan Quezhi and the others were already waiting for him at the command post, the construction route marked on the map.

The first step was to use the bulldozers to level the entire development area, removing the remaining surface vegetation and large rocks. The latter had to be done with particular care to avoid damaging the bulldozer blades and tracks. A squad of army soldiers was assigned to each bulldozer, fanning out in front to scout for obstacles.

“This is a bit like infantry-tank coordination,” Yan Quezhi said to Bai Yu, climbing onto the driver’s cabin.

“If I had an unlimited supply of fuel and spare parts for the bulldozers, I’d be driving to Beijing right now. Why would I be wasting my time reclaiming land and building roads here?” Bai Yu said, his eyes fixed on the front, his hands constantly pushing and pulling the control levers. He would occasionally shout into the walkie-talkie, telling the other tractors to “watch your distance and maintain coordination.”

“Tractor armored division?” An image immediately flashed through Yan Quezhi’s mind: a dirt road filled with rolling dust, an endless line of Dongfanghong tractors crushing the earth, with riflemen, calling themselves “tractor grenadiers,” standing on the tractors, wearing bearskin hats and holding Minie rifles…

What a strange feeling! Yan Quezhi shook his head.

“It’s not impossible,” Bai Yu said with full confidence. “It wouldn’t work on mountain roads or in water-logged areas, but on the North China Plain, it would be a powerful weapon. Look at this—” He pointed to a few protruding metal parts on the outside of the driver’s cabin. These seemed to have been added later and were not original to the tractor.

“What’s this?” Yan Quezhi asked loudly.

“Mounting points for armor plates,” Bai Yu said proudly. It was his own design and creation. “When needed, the critical parts of this tractor can be fully armed in half an hour, making it impervious to swords and spears. The armor is rated to withstand a direct hit from a 6-pounder cannonball at 400 meters. Strong enough, right?”

“If a big iron ball hits it directly, wouldn’t the person in the driver’s cabin be shaken to the point of bleeding from the nose and mouth?”

“The enemy has to hit it first,” Bai Yu seemed unconcerned. “Besides, we’re not just going to sit there and take it. Look up.”

On the roof of the tractor, there was a new opening similar to a car sunroof, with something like a sliding rail around it. The sunroof was open, bringing some cool breeze into the hot driver’s cabin.

“I’ve made a modification kit. You can directly add a rotating turret to the roof above the sunroof. Even without a machine gun, a Type 56 semi-automatic rifle would be enough to make the enemy cry for their mothers. If necessary, we can use grenades and grenade launchers—we’d be invincible.”

“Truly creative—”

“That’s nothing. I studied weapon design and engineering,” the former armored corps officer said proudly. “I also have a flamethrower tractor modification kit. It’s a pity we don’t have enough fuel; the Executive Committee won’t approve a test.”

He then talked about several other weapons he had designed, mostly based on tractors, cars, motorcycles, and even bicycles. His latest design was to mount four “handheld shotguns”—two in the front and two in the back—on a heavy-duty “28-bar” farm bicycle, using the bicycle’s speed for close-range attacks to disrupt the enemy’s formation. Another modification was to install a fixed rifle rest on the bicycle, allowing the rider to fire while riding. This rest also supported a pulley crossbow.

In general, Bai Yu’s designs were all rather “modern.” He was scornful of the “retro” weapon designs of people like Lin Shenhe.

After the clearing, waste soil from various construction sites was transported over. Yan Quezhi planned to raise the level of Meitaiyang as much as possible, even if only by a few dozen centimeters. This would also take care of the large amount of waste soil generated from the various construction projects.

The land leveling work was completed quickly. Then, the tractors were fitted with heavy-duty plows for deep plowing. A large amount of quicklime, transported from Bopu, was applied for soil improvement. The amount of lime used was so large that the supply for all construction sites was cut in half. Besides the quarry working overtime, all off-duty personnel from the army and navy were mobilized to the coast to collect oyster shells to supplement the raw materials for lime burning.

The construction of Yan Quezhi’s dam also began. Due to cost constraints, the dam was a simple gravity earth dam, reinforced with multiple rows of wooden piles. The entire exterior of the dam was clad in stone. A distance of over one hundred meters was left between the dam and the highest water level of the Wenlan River during the rainy season to serve as a flood channel. During the dry season, when the water level was low, the sandy soil on the riverbank would be used to grow watermelons and peanuts.

Irrigation and drainage sluice gates were installed on the dam to accommodate the separate channel layout. The gates were all mechanically operated, powered by the steam pumping station on the dam.

Connected to these two sluice gates were two main canals, both built with bamboo-reinforced concrete and designed with ample flow capacity to meet the irrigation and drainage needs in extreme conditions. Other irrigation and drainage branch canals in the fields were connected to these two main canals, with manually operated sluice gates at their mouths.

For the large amount of spring water flowing from the hilly areas, the simplest solution was to intercept it with drainage channels and discharge it into the Wenlan River. But Yan Quezhi believed this was a waste of water resources. From a drought prevention perspective, he decided to build ponds and dams in the hilly areas, using the natural terrain to store water. The engineering work for such ponds and dams was small. The ponds would collect the spring water and use it to irrigate the fields during the dry season of the Wenlan River, reducing the amount of water taken from the river. After all, this river was now the lifeline of the entire transmigrator group, and the demand for industrial and domestic water was also considerable.

The ponds and reservoirs built using the natural terrain of the hills could not only regulate the water volume and beautify the environment, but they could also be used for fish farming and power generation, a multi-purpose solution. Wang Luobin had a lot of experience in building such small-scale water conservancy projects, so he took charge of this part of the construction.

In addition to building the ponds and dams, Wang Luobin also selected a number of economic tree species adapted to the local climate from the farm’s nursery to green the hills around the ponds. He also experimentally built a small hydroelectric power station on a larger pond. However, the power generation was too small and could only be done intermittently, so it was not very useful and was purely for research purposes.

The basic construction of the farmland water conservancy was in full swing. Wu Nan Hai went to the Executive Committee to find Ma Qianzhu and ask him to help solve the fertilizer problem.

Due to the long-term internal waterlogging of Meitaiyang, the soil fertility was very poor. Applying lime could only neutralize the acidity, not increase the soil’s fertility or trace element content.

Fa Shilu said, “Meitaiyang needs a large amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizers, especially phosphorus. It’s severely deficient in phosphorus. You can’t even grow leguminous green manure. After adjusting the trace elements, we can then add farmyard manure as a base fertilizer.”

Simply applying farmyard manure and green manure, although seemingly abundant, was far less effective in improving fertility than the chemical fertilizers that modern yuppies dreaded. However, the ammonium nitrate they had brought with them had all been turned into explosives for the Military Affairs Committee under the “military-first politics.”

“Nitrogen fertilizer is easy. We can have the Executive Committee get us some lignite or peat. But where am I supposed to find phosphorus and potassium fertilizers?” Wu Nan Hai muttered. “And we don’t have that much bone meal.”

“Lignite and peat are both good,” Fa Shilu said. “They are natural compound fertilizers with nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, and they are much more efficient. But for soil improvement, the quantity is not enough. It’s best to have specialized phosphorus and potassium fertilizers.”

They could meet the demand for potassium fertilizer with the potassium chloride by-product from the refined salt factory’s bittern industry. Combined with the potassium content in the peat and lignite, it would be roughly enough.