I can upgrade the shelter-Chapter 154 - 152 Happy Harvest

The small harvester looks like a hand-held weed eater. Though in terms of structure and principle, the two are almost identical, and a weed eater can be slightly modified into a harvester, there are still some differences between them.

Especially since this one by Chen Xin is a micro combine harvester with a threshing function, there are significant differences in appearance.

The principle of both is to use an engine to drive blades to cut plant stalks. However, a weed eater needs to adjust the blade height as needed to prevent scalping the lawn, while a harvester requires the blades to be a bit bigger and equipped with guide vanes to better cut crop stalks.

To operate, you just need to start the machine, align it with the crops to be harvested, and push it forward at a steady pace.

This small harvester has wheels and tracks at the bottom, so as long as you hold the handles steady, you can smoothly harvest crops without veering off course.

Compared to manual harvesting, mechanical harvesting has significant advantages in efficiency and cost, as humans tire, but machines do not.

This unit of Chen Xin’s is so small it requires manual operation, but slightly larger ones even have seats, allowing one to operate it while seated quite comfortably.

So when the dry rice in the field matured, Chen Xin had already refueled the small harvester and was ready to begin harvesting once it started up.

"Zzz! Zzz!" With the engine running, all Chen Xin needed to do was push the machine forward, and the sharp blades would swiftly sever the rice stalks.

And since Chen Xin’s machine is an integrated combine harvester, the cut rice is crushed and threshed directly by the mechanisms, turning into bagged husked grains with only threshed stalks left on the ground.

Compared to traditional manual harvesting, where one has to grab stalks by hand and use a sickle to cut them, this is much simpler.

After all, manually harvested rice comes down with stalks attached, requiring another round of threshing. Even with a threshing machine, it’s still a labor-intensive task.

But using a combine harvester, there are no such worries; harvested rice can be processed directly into husked grains.

So when a row of rice was harvested, and the grains were in the bag hanging beside the harvester, Chen Xin couldn’t help but whistle cheerfully.

Initially, before acquiring small farm machinery, he thought harvesting rice would be exhausting work, but he didn’t expect it to be this easy with machinery.

This naturally boosted his enthusiasm greatly, pushing the harvester to continue with a quick pace, aiming to finish his rice fields within an hour.

The part Chen Xin needed to harvest wasn’t much, totaling 200 square meters, with 50 square meters planted with carrots, so he just needed to harvest 150 square meters of rice fields.

However, even with a small harvester making the work easy, Chen Xin still had to bow his head, almost crouching over the harvester’s handlebars since the overhead hydroponic trays were rather low, preventing him from straightening up.

Of course, this was still much more comfortable than bending over to harvest rice.

So it didn’t take long for Chen Xin to finish harvesting the 150 square meters of dry rice.

The harvested rice was threshed by the combine harvester and placed in bags on the machine. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

The bags weren’t sealed but were stuffed full, and when Chen Xin tried to lift them, he found them so heavy he could barely manage.

After harvesting, the 150 square meters of rice filled three large burlap sacks, with each averaging about fifty to sixty kilos.

Of course, these are husked grains, which still need drying before long-term storage.

While directly dehusking them into new rice is possible, there’s still too much moisture, which could break the grains.

This process wouldn’t usually be troublesome—find a flat area and spread the grains to dry, and any smooth cement surface could dry rice.

Chen Xin even remembers seeing farmers dry rice on roads, making the task mostly reliant on weather rather than location.

But now, without the sun as a convenient direct heat source, and with the grains unable to be placed outdoors in the snow, drying can only be done inside the shelter.

Considering the lack of space inside the shelter, Chen Xin decided to use mechanical drying to remove the grains’ moisture instead of natural air drying.

Though mechanically dried grains have a slightly poorer texture, it’s better than letting them mold or sprout.

As for how to perform mechanical drying, with a continuous heat source from a ground-source heat pump, solving this problem isn’t difficult.

Either using trays to bake or blow hot air with a fan, both can remove moisture from the grains.

After lugging the three sacks out of the growing greenhouse, Chen Xin didn’t place them in the storage room but left them open in the communal area.

Without a dryer ready, storing these grains immediately isn’t possible, leaving them open is the correct approach.

As for making a dryer, Chen Xin felt a bit puzzled, having neither built nor seen one before.

Even the materials on his computer had no related images or texts, which worried him.

How should he build it? Should he really make a big tray to bake?

However, this idea was quickly dismissed as impractical in his mind, for if baking fails to dry due to low temperature, it’s fine. But if the temperature’s too high and ends up cooking the grains, that would be awkward.

Yet after pondering hard, Chen Xin recalled having used a clothes dryer and his mother using a household dryer before.

Both operate on the principle of drying wet items with warm air in relatively sealed spaces, removing moisture.

Could he make something similar to dehydrate the grains?

Chen Xin thought it over and found the idea feasible, but he decided to draft plans first before proceeding.

Since he hadn’t tried it hands-on, any failure would waste materials, though with his system, he could disassemble and recycle them, but damaging the grains meant losing at least a third of the year’s harvest.

Thus, for caution, Chen Xin decided to draw up equipment plans first and meticulously examine its feasibility.