Li Long drove the Jeep back from the mountains, rested briefly at the Big Courtyard, then went to the Fourth Team that afternoon.
He first parked the Jeep at Old Ma's Place, shut off the engine, and got out. Carrying some things, he went inside to visit Professor Luo and the others.
The university students were working on something in the fields. They saw the Jeep arrive but did not come over.
Uncle Lao Luo and the others were each busy in the yard. Some were feeding the livestock, some were clearing stalks out of the pens, some had already taken the sheep out, and others were preparing dinner.
After greeting them one by one, Li Long went to find Professor Luo.
Professor Luo was in the room they had cleared out for a laboratory, mixing something into a pile of soil with a shovel. The sight rather surprised Li Long.
"Did you think our experiments should be more delicate, with white coats, test tubes, beakers, and all that?" Professor Luo asked with a smile when he saw Li Long's expression.
"Yes, that's exactly what I thought."
"We study agriculture, particularly soil. We can't do that sort of delicate work," Professor Luo said as he mixed. "Improving saline-alkali land, especially Soil Testing and Fertilization, isn't something you can do with a tiny bit of soil. Although the salinity and alkalinity across this area are roughly the same, the soil samples we took from a dozen or more points in a single field still showed differences.
"When you fertilize this land, you can't apply a different fertilizer to every patch here and there, can you? So we need an average. Right now, we're measuring what that average should be..."
"That's fine. Follow your own approach." Li Long only half understood what