Reborn in 1984, fishing and hunting in Jiangnan

Chapter 67

After finishing his meal, Chen Zheng sat under the kerosene lamp, organizing his notes for the day.

He wrote down each of the key points about Poria cocos cultivation that Zhou Jimin had mentioned.

The temperature for inoculating the fungus should be controlled at 22-25℃, and Masson pine is the best choice for the logs.

After inoculation, the cells should be stored in a cool, well-ventilated place. During the sclerotium culture stage, the cells should be buried in the soil to maintain a constant temperature and humidity.

After finishing this page, he turned to the next and began listing plans for the renovation of the promotion station's backyard.

Inoculation room.

A room of about 20 square meters, with a brick and wood structure, was built on the vacant land next to the training room.

The windows should face north to avoid direct sunlight.

We need to add a constant temperature incubator.

You can apply for used equipment from the county agricultural research institute.

Sclerotium culture trench.

Dig four ditches along the base of the backyard wall, each one and a half feet deep and three feet wide. Line the bottom of the ditches with pine sawdust and humus.

A simple sunshade was erected above the ditch.

Log stacking area.

Set aside an open space next to the warehouse to store pine logs, ensuring ventilation and protection from rain.

The personnel, Wang Laoliu and his son Wang Jianshe, were paid wages at the promotion station according to the standards for temporary workers.

He was responsible for the technical training himself.

Zhou Jimin agreed to come and guide the first round of vaccinations.

He wrote all of these down clearly and did the math.

Building a vaccination room requires bricks, tiles, cement, and wood.

Bricks and tiles can be bought cheaply from the idle materials at the town's agricultural machinery station, and cement can be bought from the county agricultural supplies company.

The timber was cut from Masson pine trees on the hill behind our house.

If you can't get a used incubator, a new one will cost around 200 yuan.

Including labor costs and the cost of logging, the start-up capital is approximately five to eight hundred yuan.

The promotion station's working capital is sufficient to cover this expense.

He put down his pen, blew out the kerosene lamp, and lay down on the hard bed.

Moonlight filtered through the window paper, casting a faint silvery-gray hue on the ground.

A few barks came from outside the courtyard gate, probably from someone passing by on the village road.

The black cat darted over from the kitchen, jumped onto the windowsill, and curled up into a ball.

Just as he was about to fall asleep, a series of hurried footsteps suddenly came from outside the courtyard gate.

Then came the sound of knocking on the door.

"Brother Zhengzi! My dad sent me to call you!"

It was Wang Jianshe's voice: "Something's happened at my fishpond!"

Chen Zheng jumped up, put on his cotton-padded coat, slipped on his liberation shoes, and rushed out of the house.

At the entrance of the courtyard, Wang Jianshe leaned on his knees, panting heavily. His face was covered in sweat, and the buttons of his cotton-padded jacket were all buttoned up wrong.

He saw Chen Zheng come out and grabbed his arm:

"My dad stayed by the fishpond for most of the night, and suddenly a layer of dead fish floated on the surface of the water!"

These are all crucian carp that were perfectly fine this afternoon!

Chen Zheng grabbed a flashlight from the wall and followed Wang Jianshe to Wang Laoliu's house.

Wang Laoliu's fishpond is located at the east end of the village, near the inlet canal.

It was dug out by the father and son, one hoe at a time, over the course of more than half a month.

The water surface is less than one acre, and more than one hundred crucian carp fry were released into it.

All of them were fish fry selected by Chen Zheng from his own No. 2 pond.

When we reached the pond, the beam of the flashlight swept across the water.

There were more than a dozen crucian carp floating on the surface, some as small as a palm, others weighing almost half a pound.

Wang Laoliu squatted on the bank of the pond, his hands covering his head. He looked up when he heard footsteps.

The flashlight shone on his face, making his dark face appear much paler than usual, and his lips trembled.

It took him a long time to finally utter a single sentence.

"Zheng...Zheng, I...I really didn't slack off."

The water quality was tested as you said: transparency 38%, alkalinity 7.2%. The feed was also prepared according to your instructions.

She was fine in the afternoon, so why did she change so much by evening...?

Chen Zheng squatted down and shone a flashlight on the water to examine it carefully.

The dead fish had its gill covers turned up, and the gill filaments were dark in color, but there were no white spots.

It's not gill rot.

The fish had no external injuries and its scales were intact, so it didn't look like it had been poisoned or stabbed with a harpoon.

He reached out and scooped up a dead fish, pressed its belly with his finger, and found it to be soft and without any water accumulation.

He turned the dead fish over to check the vent; there was no redness or swelling.

There is no inflammation in the intestines.

It's not an illness. It's not a poison.

It wasn't an external injury.

He stood up and walked around the pond embankment.

He stopped when he reached the water inlet.

The sluice gate at the inlet was half open, and fresh water slowly flowed in from the inlet channel.

He shone a flashlight on the surface of the water in the irrigation ditch.

A thin layer of oily sheen floated on the water's surface, multicolored and gleaming dazzlingly under the flashlight beam.

"Someone is discharging sewage upstream." Chen Zheng straightened up and swept the beam of his flashlight upstream along the inlet channel.

About two hundred meters away, at the bend in the canal, the outline of a house can be vaguely seen.

Whose house is that?

Wang Laoliu leaned over and took a look:

"That's Qian Da Nao's oil mill. He opened a small oil press there, specializing in pressing rapeseed oil."

"When did it open?"

"It's about this month."

I heard that he bought a second-hand oil press and set up a shed in his yard to start pressing oil.

The wastewater and oil residue from pressing the oil were discharged directly into the drainage ditch.

As Wang Laoliu finished speaking, he suddenly realized what he had said and slapped his thigh.

"Did this damn grease trap poison my fish?!"

Chen Zheng turned off the flashlight.

The matter is now clear.

The wastewater left over from oil pressing contains a large amount of oil and organic matter. When discharged into the water ditch, it will form an oil film on the water surface, preventing oxygen from the air from dissolving into the water.

During the day it's alright, but at night, the dissolved oxygen level in the water is already low, and with the oil film blocking the way, fish are most likely to suffocate due to lack of oxygen in the early morning.

"They suffocated," Chen Zheng said.

"The oil film blocked the water surface, and there wasn't enough oxygen in the water, so the fish couldn't breathe and died."

Wang Laoliu was stunned for several seconds, then suddenly grabbed a shovel from the ground and rushed onto the village road.

His son, Wang Jianshe, quickly grabbed him around the waist, crying, "Dad! Dad, don't be impulsive!"

"Why are you stopping me! I'm going to settle accounts with Big Head Qian! My whole pond of fish!"

"I've been raising them for almost two months now, and they're almost ready to be harvested!" Wang Laoliu struggled.

"You rush over there now, start a fight, and then what?"

Upon hearing this, Wang Laoliu stopped. "You injured him, you'll face legal trouble."

He moves the oil press, and your fish won't survive. Both sides lose out.

"Then... then what do you suggest we do?" Old Wang slammed the shovel into the ground.

Chen Zheng looked at the dead fish still floating on the water: "Close the inlet gate first."

Use a net to skim off the oil film on the water's surface, then turn on the aerator.

If you don't have an aerator at home, use a basin to scoop water and pour it into the pond to artificially aerate it.

Save as many as you can. I'll go talk to Qian Da Nao tomorrow morning.

Wang Laoliu squatted down and scooped up the remaining dead fish one by one, placing them in a plastic bucket.

The flashlight shone on the crucian carp floating belly-up in the bucket, and his lips were still trembling.

The next morning, Chen Zheng went to Qian Da Nao's oil press.

Qian Da Nao's real name is Qian Degui, and he is a self-employed individual in Baiyang Town.

This person's head was indeed quite large, a square head paired with a pair of protruding ears.

From a distance, it looks like an upside-down gourd.

He worked as a fitter at the county agricultural machinery factory in his early years.

Later, dissatisfied with the low wages, he quit his job and returned to his hometown to open a small hardware store, but after several years of struggling, he still hadn't made any money.

Last month, I don't know where I got a second-hand oil press, so I set up a tarpaulin shed in my yard and started pressing rapeseed oil.

When Chen Zheng arrived, Qian Da Nao was squatting in the yard dismantling the filter screen of the oil press.

The filter screen was covered with black, oily residue. He used a screwdriver to pry it off piece by piece, getting his hands covered in oil.

"Master Qian."

Qian Da Nao looked up, saw it was Chen Zheng, and immediately a smile spread across his face.

He recognized Chen Zheng.

He was the only farmer in the town to sign several large contracts at the provincial trade fair, the head of the town's promotion station, and someone personally praised by Deputy County Head Xu.

In Baiyang Town, you may not know the town mayor, but you cannot be unaware of Chen Zheng.

"Station Chief Chen! What brings you here?"

Qian Da Nao stood up, wiped the oil off his hands on his pants, and extended his hand to shake hands.

He pulled back to look at his hands, which were covered in grease, and smiled sheepishly.

"Your hands are too dirty, don't get your clothes dirty."

Chen Zheng didn't beat around the bush.

"Master Qian, the wastewater from your oil press is being discharged into the ditch. Two hundred meters upstream is Wang Laoliu's fishpond."

Last night, more than twenty crucian carp died in his pond. They were all good quality, the biggest ones weighing almost half a pound.

Qian Da Nao's smile froze on his face.

"After scooping out the dead fish, Wang Laoliu squatted on the bank of the pond and shed tears."

"Those fish fry were selected from a strain I chose from my own pond number two."

After raising them for almost two months, they are ready to be harvested.

At current market prices, these dead crucian carp are worth at least forty yuan.

Qian Da's Adam's apple bobbed. "I...I didn't know that discharging wastewater could suffocate fish."

"I really don't know." He wiped the sweat from his face.

"Okay, I'll compensate for the dead fish. Just name your price."

"Forty dollars."

Qian Da Nao pulled out a few crumpled banknotes from his pocket and counted out four ten-yuan notes.

He counted out a few more small bills to make up forty yuan, and handed them over with both hands.

Chen Zheng took it.

"Master Qian, it's understandable that you have to pay compensation. But that's not a fundamental solution."

Chen Zheng pointed to the tin bucket containing wastewater behind Qian Da Nao.

"You lost money today, but you still have to keep discharging wastewater."

This time it was Wang Laoliu's fishpond that suffered; next time it might be Zhang Jian's rice paddy downstream.

The lotus pond at Liu the Bald's house.

If you keep discharging like this, sooner or later you'll pollute the entire drainage canal.

"Then... then what do you suggest? I can't press oil without water."

"The wastewater from pressing one pot of oil will fill several buckets; I can't possibly drink it, can I?"

Qian Da Nao stretched out his hands, looking troubled.