"Li Yao, come take a look at what I've just made."
What was placed in the empty yard of the blacksmith's workshop was a two-meter-square lump of iron, composed of various shaped parts, looking very industrial.
This was made by Xia Xian, and could be considered the sixth generation of steam engine, having made huge progress compared to the beginning.
It's just still a little too big.
With this big lump, over a dozen lads simply couldn't lift it without leverage.
"Let's try firing it up."
"Okay."
At Xia Xian's direction, two apprentices quickly brought some lit coal and placed it into the furnace of the steam engine, then closed the iron door.
"It's about to start, pay attention everyone!"
With Xia Xian's command, the first to open was the air valve of the blower, blowing large amounts of air through the pipes into the furnace, making the fire inside roar.
After the coal in the furnace was burning strongly, another valve opened.
This was specially for sending fuel into the furnace. Under Li Yao's guidance, Xia Xian had already got people to grind the coal into powder and mix it with water into a paste, so that the coal powder wouldn't be directly blown into the flue, and the amount going in could be better controlled.
Now it seemed this method had already been quite successful, the two valves made by Xia Xian had initially achieved the effect of regulation.
As the fire in the furnace grew stronger and stronger, the water in the container boiled, and the high temperature steam through the pipes blew the blades inside the machine into rapid spins, which also spun the protruding shaft at high speeds.
"Not bad, it's already got some shape."
Having obtained Li Yao's approval, Xia Xian's heart finally relaxed a little. For this machine, he had racked his brains until he didn't know why it had to be so small.
"You'll know why later, but today I came to make something else."
Li Yao took out some blueprints. After looking through them, Xia Xian found them to be much simpler than he imagined.
"What's this one for?"
"Grain threshing machine."
Xia Xian: ???
"For threshing rice."
...
"Attention everyone, the rice is ripe, hurry to start harvesting!"
Early in the morning, Wang Jiafu's voice resounded through the entire He Wan village. As the village chief, he had the duty to remind and supervise the villagers to actively work the fields.
In fact there was no need for him to remind them, everyone had been waiting for this day.
Wang Jiafu also gathered his whole family, taking their sickles, carrying square wooden buckets, and headed towards the fields.
But when they arrived, they discovered that not a single person was harvesting the rice, but were all gathered together.
"Not working, what are you looking at?"
Wang Jiafu made his way through the crowd, and found everyone was looking at a machine with a strange appearance placed at the edge of the sky.
Needless to say, he also knew this belonged to the Li family.
But like everyone else, he was puzzled about what this thing was used for.
Soon Li Yao also brought her whole family over.
"Li Yao, what are you doing?"
Li Yao didn't like people calling her Miss, so the senior villagers still directly called her by name.
Li Yao explained the use of the threshing machine, as she had wanted everyone to use it, so she didn't keep it a secret.
"You're saying this thing can thresh rice four to five times faster than before?"
"Yes."
The crowd looked at each other, but were not very convinced in their hearts.
Harvesting rice was not so simple. They had to first cut and gather them bundle by bundle, then beat them on a wooden tub until all the grains were threshed clean.
At least twenty-some strikes were needed per bundle.
For one acre of paddy field, just cutting and beating would take at least a whole day for four to five people.
If it could really be four to five times faster, wouldn't that mean five to six acres could be finished in one day?
Impossible, absolutely impossible.
"No need to hurry your harvesting," said Li Yao, "get more people to come help cut my family's field, then you can see the effect. If you find it useful, Xia the Blacksmith can make three more machines today, which can be distributed for everyone to use tomorrow."
"Alright, then let's wait and see first."
Thus over ten nimble fellows came, and worked with the Zhuang brothers to start harvesting Li Yao's fields. In less than half a hour, they harvested about one acre.
Seeing it was about enough, Li Yao had Da Zhuang and Wang Yuanbang start pedaling the machine.
"Pay attention when pedaling, don't use force when it hits the bottom, follow the pedal and lift your feet, so the threshing machine can keep turning continuously."
After practicing for a while, Da Zhuang completely mastered the technique.
Some women started bringing over the piled rice from the field, while Da Zhuang and Wang Yuanbang pedaled the machine, placing the rice panicles on top of the thresher at the same time.
With a swish swish sound, the grains on the panicles were threshed clean in the blink of an eye.
"It's really that fast?"
Seeing the two continuously taking rice without stopping, finishing them clean in a few strokes, Wang Jiafu was truly shocked.
At this speed, as long as there were enough people harvesting, five to six acres a day was truly easy!
Most importantly, it wasn't as tiring!
If every family had one of these machines, the rice of the whole village could be finished harvesting in three days max!
No longer needing to worry that untimely rain would make the unharvested rice lay soaked on the ground like before.
"Li Yao, can this machine thresh wheat too?"
"Of course," said Li Yao, "wheat, barley, oats, it can thresh them all."
"How much does one cost?"
"Not expensive," said Li Yao, "for villagers buying it'd just be one or two taels of silver."
One or two taels of silver, able to save huge amounts of manpower, allow the whole family to relax for a season, or even two seasons. Most importantly, it was made of iron, buy it once and it can be used for a lifetime!
"I want to buy one for my family!"
"I want one too!"
...
Hearing the villagers eagerly wanting to buy the threshing machines, Li Yao said that actually one machine per family was unnecessary, it was enough for a few families to share one if they didn't have many people.
Hearing this reasoning, everyone thus looked for people to purchase together with.
In the end, just by this field, five threshing machines were sold.
With the threshing machines, no one hurried to harvest their own rice today either, each family sent out one person, and in one day completely finished harvesting Li Yao's dozen-some acres, even bringing it back home for her.
However, the yield of rice wasn't high. Even though Li Yao had used very scientific methods when planting, without fertilizer and improved seeds, after all it was lacking.
After calculating, each acre could harvest about 600 catties of unhusked rice.
Converted to milled rice, it was a bit over 400 catties.
Their family had 16 acres of paddy fields total, nearly 7000 catties of rice.
Although this yield was only one third compared to modern times, it was still enough to astonish the villagers.
For other families' fields, 300 catties of milled rice per acre was considered burning incense to the gods.
It was a pity that when Li Yao's family was transplanting seedlings, no one believed planting that way would have high yields, so no one learned from them. Now everyone's guts were green with regret.
But next year, they must plant like her family did.
