NOVPUB
Chapter 120: Chapter 114 Another Spring Has Come
On the 24th day of the first lunar month, Shen Yunfang stayed in the warm shed in the backyard all day. When the quail chicks hatched, she immediately rescued them from under the broody hen’s buttocks and put them in a wooden box, watching over them closely for the next few days, knowing that newborn life is very fragile.
In total, more than ten quail eggs were incubated, and in the end, nine hatched—four females and five males.
Once the new month began, the entire Gaijiatun village was bustling, and Shen Yunfang was no exception; she became busy, handling one thing after another.
The quails were now able to run around, and seeing no issues, she put them together with the chickens and ducks in the warm shed to raise them.
Right at this time, the hen’s thirty eggs also started to hatch one after another.
The hatching results were somewhat disappointing; of the thirty eggs, only twenty-three chicks were born, and there were more males than females, with only eight hens and fifteen cockerels, a clear case of excess yang over yin.
Because she originally intended to hatch quail eggs, the two broody hens ended up hatching only this many chicks. However, this was a blessing in disguise as the chicks and quail chicks were mixed together and looked after by the broody hens, saving her a lot of trouble.
Wang Dashuan’s wife saw that her household didn’t have many chicks either and didn’t insist on taking any. With her big belly, she had nowhere to go, so she decided to quietly stay home and incubate some eggs herself. This time, she was determined to incubate more at once.
When Shen Yunfang heard her plan, she was delighted and hurriedly brought over a hundred chicken eggs, generously saying that she would cover the cost of the eggs while the Dashuan family only needed to put in the effort. Of course, she expected a share of the chicks when they hatched.
The second task was to catch piglets.
Originally, she thought about going to Uncle Shen’s place to catch some, since it’s best not to let resources go to waste. However, she miscalculated; possibly due to Gaijiatun’s bountiful harvest the previous year, several villagers were raising two pigs each. By the time Shen Yunfang mentioned this to Aunt Shen, Aunt Shen proudly said, "You’re too late; all this year’s piglets have already been booked, and not a single one is left."
Since raising pigs was still necessary, she had to find another solution. She had looked around the market while buying ducklings but wasn’t satisfied with any and therefore didn’t make a purchase. Later, Wang Dashuan helped find a household in the neighboring village with piglets for sale. The pigs were well-raised, each just over a month old and weighing around thirty pounds, but they were priced a bit high. So even at this late point in the season, only two had been sold.
When Shen Yunfang and Dashuan went to see them, they saw six plump and healthy piglets circling around their mother in a clean pigpen.
Shen Yunfang took a liking to them immediately. Despite the price being a little higher, they were truly worth it, so she didn’t hesitate and decided to take two right away.
Seeing her so straightforward, Wang Dashuan was also tempted and bought two piglets himself. He thought, if Yunfang, just a young lass, could manage both farming and raising chickens and was now buying several piglets, what was he lacking as a grown man? He decided to purchase. Besides, raising an extra pig this year meant more meat for his family at year’s end, and his family wouldn’t just have one child anymore.
The piglets were priced at fifteen yuan each, and in the end, they each spent thirty yuan on piglets.
The lambs bought the previous year had grown into adult sheep, both females, and thanks to her matchmaking and pulling strings last year, they finally mated with the two rams from the production team. By October, it was clear they were pregnant with lambs, predicted to give birth in another month or so.
Additionally, she took advantage of her free time to attend a market, where she bought twenty ducklings and twenty goslings, all males.
Originally, she didn’t want to raise too many ducks and geese, as the few at home would start laying eggs this year, which would suffice for her personal consumption. Nonetheless, last winter, she cooked goose and braised duck at home, and the deliciousness was simply indescribable. She ate several meals and still couldn’t get enough. Thus, she thought of raising more ducks and geese this year, not for the eggs, but for the meat when they grew up.
In mid-March, as the ground thawed, the villagers began to prepare for spring cultivation.
Shen Yunfang also started getting busy. For the family’s own land and courtyard, she continued to hire others to work it while she took charge of developing the land on the hillside behind her house.
This year, her body was very healthy, thanks to the "Essence of Life." Her strength had increased significantly, so she planned to roll up her sleeves and put in some hard work.
When the production team officially started work, she would lead the sheep out every morning. After securing them in her backyard, she would follow the path behind the hills into the mountains.
Having observed for a year, she believed that the hillside she chose was indeed a geomantic treasure. Apart from a family of wild boars, she didn’t see any large wild animals that year. The place was bathed in abundant sunlight and rarely visited by people—an excellent site for covert activities.
She had initially planned by herself to combine breeding and planting, determined to grasp both tightly.
So, a few days earlier, she sneaked off to the county and brought back some bricks. She built a pigpen and a sheep pen right in the middle of the small hillside.
Then she herself made two trips to the markets around the county town, incognito, and bought back ten piglets and ten lambs. She directly took advantage of the dark to settle them on the hillside.
It wasn’t until mid-April that she managed to clear the remaining land on the hillside.
During this time, Brother Dashuan’s wife hatched the chicks before labor, successfully completing the task. 𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒑𝒖𝒃.𝙘𝙤𝒎
Yunfang requested ten hen chicks and twenty rooster chicks.
With that, her family’s chickens had grown to a total of one hundred and four.
The chicks had not been hatched for two days when Brother Dashuan’s wife started her own labor at home.
At that time, few women went to the hospital to give birth, most did it at home on their own kang, and those who were a bit more fastidious would have a skilled midwife present.
By the time Yunfang found out, Brother Dashuan’s wife had already given birth, to a large baby boy weighing six jin and six liang, making Wang’s mother and Wang Dashuan as happy as could be.
Yunfang dug out some clothes she had prepared earlier along with a basket of eggs and hastily went to Wang’s mother’s house. Brother Dashuan’s wife had already woken up, and when Yunfang entered, she saw her lying on the kang, holding the child in her arms.
"Sister-in-law, congratulations," Yunfang said with a beaming smile as soon as they met. "Oh, this child is really well-formed, look at this little red skin, he’s bound to be fair-skinned when he grows up."
They say a baby’s skin is red when they’re born, and they’ll grow up to be fair; whether it’s true or not, praising a child in front of their mother is definitely the right thing to do.
Brother Dashuan’s wife smiled affectionately, "You’re just flattering. How can you tell if such a little child is good looking or not?"
"Haha, no need to see to know. You and my Brother Dashuan are good stock, so the child can’t be bad. Here, this is the little outfit I made for the child. My craftsmanship isn’t that great, but the material is genuinely top-notch," Shen Yunfang presented her handiwork.
It was her practice work after she had learned how to make clothes, made from fine cotton purchased in the county town. Not to mention the handwork, but the cloth was definitely soft.
"Ah, it’s really nice," Brother Dashuan, seeing this kind of sky-blue little outfit for the first time, couldn’t be more pleased. Such fine fabric would definitely not chafe a child’s skin.
"If you’re happy with it, Mother, I reckon my nephew will like it too. Come on, let auntie give you a kiss," Shen Yunfang gently pecked the child’s face. The baby was so young, not having opened its eyes yet, she wanted to hold him but didn’t dare, only admiring him from a distance.
"What’s that you’ve brought?" Brother Dashuan’s wife saw, in addition to the chicken eggs in the basket, there were smaller eggs with patterns on them, resembling bird eggs.
At the time, quails were not widespread, so Gaijiatun hadn’t really seen quail eggs.
"Oh, these are quail eggs, very nutritious. When I was coming back from Li Hongjun’s place, I got some from an army wife. I heard that quails are pretty easy to raise, and they start laying eggs just over a month after hatching. When I got back, I tried having the old hens incubate them and it really worked. I’ve been raising them for over a month now, and they’ve started laying eggs, though the eggs are so small, you can eat several in one bite," Yunfang made up a casual excuse.
"That quick, huh? Even if the eggs are small, it’s good," Brother Dashuan’s wife showed interest.
"Haha, I’ll save up these quail eggs this month. After you finish your confinement, you can help me with incubating the eggs, and then we can split them between our two families. It’s just that these quail eggs are too small to sell, we can only eat them ourselves," Yunfang offered generously.
"That works, perfect for nourishing my little Xiaojuan," Brother Dashuan’s wife didn’t mind at all. As long as the child benefits from it, it’s worth raising for nothing.
"All right, then it’s settled," Shen Yunfang clapped her hands decisively.
Brother Dashuan’s wife had just given birth and needed to rest, so Yunfang didn’t stay too long. After chatting idly for a while, she left a piece of money and walked away.
At that time, a piece of money was considered quite a generous gift. When Shen Yunfeng had a child, Yunfang had given the same amount. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford more, but she was worried that giving too much would burden Brother Dashuan and his wife, so she decided to go with the flow.
