Traveling back to 1977

Chapter 216 Adjusting the Plan
While everyone in the brigade was busy with spring plowing, Chen Fan had some free time.

Due to the busy farming season, Director Zhou of the veterinary station held an early graduation exam for them and awarded them "Rural Veterinarian Certificates." Chen Fan, Yang Zhijun, and Li Zhengqun officially became veterinary coordinators in the brigade headquarters.

Chen Fan was quite pleased with himself, receiving two work points: one as a broadcaster and the other as a veterinarian.

Yang Zhijun and Li Zhengqun divided the work, with one stationed at the brigade headquarters and the other traveling, jointly managing the brigade's veterinary shed. Each team also had its own qualified veterinarians, though they were not certified. They only needed to ask the brigade headquarters for some commonly used medicines and equipment to treat ordinary injured or sick livestock, without having to send them to the brigade headquarters.

Therefore, Chen Fan doesn't need to worry about veterinary work at all. He can get veterinary work points for free, which is a good way to make his efforts in training so many people worthwhile.

Of course, the brigade headquarters also benefited. With so many more veterinarians, they could negotiate with other brigades to see how to exchange benefits. As for the veterinary station, the commune gained three more qualified veterinarians, which not only made their work easier but also earned them a prominent mention in this year's work report.

Having benefited in almost every aspect, Chen Fan naturally felt at ease taking this work point, and no one would be envious.

The training course was temporarily disbanded, and even Zhang Cuie didn't have time to look for him.

Only when they return to the educated youth settlement in the evenings can they give Jiang Lili a little guidance on her studies. As for Huang Ying and the other two, they are still learning junior high school knowledge from Jiang Lili. By the time they start learning high school courses, Jiang Lili should have also achieved some success, making it a seamless transition.

However, Chen Fan mainly teaches science subjects, so they can only learn science subjects and have no choice but to study humanities subjects.

This gave Chen Fan a lot of free time, so he decided to write some articles to practice his writing skills.

In terms of writing, at first he thought he would imitate the formula of "scar literature" and write something sentimental, which would suit the tastes of educated youth and should sell well.

But after much deliberation, and even trying to write a passage during the Lunar New Year, I decisively threw the manuscript into the charcoal stove and abandoned the idea.

There's nothing I can do; personality is innate. Asking him to write this kind of thing is simply impossible.

If he's in it for the money, he might as well write martial arts novels. Martial arts novels can be incredibly popular, and the plot is simple.

Basically, the story begins with the protagonist being the sole survivor of a massacre of their entire family. They are rescued by a master (usually the number one, two, or three most skilled martial artist in the land), undergo ten years of rigorous training, and then venture into the martial world to seek revenge. The process of revenge is naturally not smooth, but that's okay, there are always fortuitous encounters ahead. They might fall off a cliff and find a martial arts manual, or encounter a dying master who imparts their skills before passing on their power, or be delivered along with a treasure by a beautiful woman. After obtaining all the benefits, they finally avenge their family and retire from the martial world with countless beauties and gold and silver treasures.

If you follow this formula, it will definitely sell even better than the "scar literature" genre.

Moreover, the "scar literature" only enjoyed popularity for a few years. After a few years, even those who had truly been hurt got tired of it and turned to "Zhiyin" magazine instead, let alone those who hadn't been hurt.

In terms of longevity, it's far inferior to martial arts novels.

Therefore, Chen Fan adjusted his plans and immediately abandoned the "scar literature." However, the best time to write martial arts novels had not yet arrived, so he decided to write some "rural literature" first to see if he could cultivate a pen name.

That way, once the Federation of Literary and Art Circles and the Writers Association are reinstated in a few years, it will be a natural progression for me to infiltrate them.

It's important to know that not only writers can join the Writers' Association; anyone who has published their work can, so there are quite a few big names in it.

No matter which level of the writers' association it is, it can leverage countless resources. As long as he joins it and builds good relationships with those people, he can use these resources to his advantage. Then, he can change his identity and move on to the "popular literature" market to make money, and everything will go smoothly for him.

The plan goes through!
Now we shouldn't need to make any more adjustments, right?

Once a plan is made, it must be executed. He was still thinking of materials when, coincidentally, the scene of distributing rice seeds a few days ago gave Chen Fan a lot of inspiration. Isn't this a typical "rural article"?!
When the state promoted new technologies, the members of the grassroots production brigades didn't understand or trust them. However, after heart-to-heart talks and persuasion from the brigade leaders, they resolutely carried out the tasks assigned by the higher-level commune. In the end, the new rice seeds yielded a bumper harvest, and the members' faces beamed with joy. They praised the wise leadership of the commune and higher authorities, perfectly demonstrating the spirit of "Learning from Dazhai."

Look at this, what great set of... material!
Although there hasn't been a harvest yet, that doesn't stop Chen Fan from being certain of a good one and writing articles first.

With a seedling period of one month and a growth period of two to three months, the harvest can be seen by the end of May in the lunar calendar at the latest.

Three or four months is just the right amount of time to write a novella of tens of thousands of words.

That afternoon, after the morning broadcast ended, and with no teaching or trips to the commune's veterinary station, Chen Fan packed up his novel outline and rode his horse home.

Even though I was wearing a cotton vest under my coat, the gentle spring breeze felt wonderful on my face, just like the poem says, "Riding a horse on a spring breeze."

During the busy farming season, there are hardly any people in the village, except for a group of little children playing and laughing, while the slightly older children are helping with chores at home.

It wasn't limited to household chores like washing clothes and cooking. Gathering pig feed, cooking pig food, preparing lunch for adults, feeding pigs, digging for wild vegetables, chopping firewood, herding chickens and ducks, and so on were all common tasks for rural "big kids" in this era.

Chen Fan rode his horse slowly past the children of all ages, and exited the grove of trees next to Team 5.

Upon reaching the "village road," he did not gallop on his horse, but instead gazed at the distant fields.

Irregularly shaped paddy fields are scattered across the land. In winter, the dry paddy fields are magically filled with a thick layer of water.

In the distant rice paddies, villagers were holding plows, wielding bamboo whips, and driving oxen to plough the land. Large clumps of black soil were turned up and then plowed into mud again and again.

"Deep plowing adds an inch, which is equivalent to adding a layer of manure." The silt deep in these paddy fields is richer in nutrients than the surface layer, which is beneficial to the growth of rice. Therefore, the commune members will work tirelessly to plow the fields again and again.

In the plowed-out paddy fields, the female commune members carefully carried baskets full of rice seeds and scattered them into the prepared seedbeds.

Seedling beds differ from ordinary paddy fields. They are made in high-quality paddy fields, where the mud is piled up and leveled through fertilization and leveling to form small squares or straight rows. There is only a thin layer of shallow water on the surface of the mud to provide moisture for the rice seeds. These small squares are called "seedbeds".

After sowing the seeds in the seedbed, spread a thick layer of rice husks on top. This is to keep the seeds warm in case the night temperature drops or there is a cold snap in spring, and at the same time, it can slowly provide a little bit of nutrients.

I heard that plastic film insulation has become widespread on the black soil plains of Northeast China. After sowing the seeds, you only need to cover them with a piece of film and wait for them to germinate, without having to go through the trouble of spreading rice husks.

However, plastic film is still a scarce product and not cheap, so the frugal production team did not buy it and continued to use the traditional seedling raising method.

The farmers saw Chen Fan riding by on horseback from afar and waved to him with smiles.

"Teacher Chen is off work."

Chen Fan replied with a smile, "Off work. How many episodes did you broadcast today?"

"It's already more than halfway through, and it will be finished in two more days."

"We have already prepared the seedbeds and are just waiting for the seeds to arrive. Once the seeds arrive, we can start sowing."

"The paddy fields can be prepared slowly, but the seedling beds cannot be delayed."

"After a month of seedling cultivation, the paddy fields are slowly tilled. Once the seedlings have grown to a certain size after Grain Rain, they can be transplanted."

There are several ways to sow rice, including direct seeding, transplanting, and throwing. The Nanhu Commune generally uses the transplanting method. First, seedlings are cultivated in seedbeds. When the seedlings grow to about one foot, they are pulled out and transplanted into paddy fields at certain intervals. This transplanting process is what is commonly referred to as rice transplanting.

The "direct seeding method" involves scattering rice seeds directly into the paddy field and harvesting them once the rice matures. "Throwing seedlings" is similar to transplanting, but instead of planting each seedling individually, it involves throwing the seedlings into the paddy field. This method is more suitable for areas with few people and plenty of land, and the paddy field cannot be too large.

Chattering amongst themselves, it was unclear who was speaking or who they were talking to. Chen Fan rode his horse slowly through the rice paddies with a smile on his face, occasionally responding to the conversation. Soon they arrived at the educated youth settlement.

(End of this chapter)