NOVPUB
Chapter 182: Chapter 175: Pregnant
"How are you doing, now that Li Hongjun has left? Feeling upset?" She was actually there to offer comfort, but Dashuan’s wife secretly scolded herself for bringing up such a sore subject.
"Not upset, what’s there to be upset about? I’m so busy every day, I don’t have time to think about him." Shen Yunfang’s words were strong-willed, yet she stabbed the awl into the sole of a large shoe with more force than necessary.
She was making these shoes for Li Hongjun, but before she could finish the soles, he had already left.
"You’re just being stubborn. It’s okay to be that way with me, but you can’t do that with your Li Hongjun," Dashuan’s wife imparted her wisdom.
Shen Yunfang pursed her lips. With him gone, what difference did it make if she was being stubborn or not?
"Hey, I’m telling you, don’t just stay home all the time. Get out more when you have nothing to do, chat with everyone, talk a bit. It’ll make you feel better," Dashuan’s wife advised while stitching a shoe sole.
"I feel just fine," Shen Yunfang still wouldn’t admit it.
"Hey, it would be great if you had a child. You’d have someone by your side, and it wouldn’t be so lonely." Dashuan’s wife leaned in closer and whispered, "So, are you pregnant?"
The newlyweds had been married for over two months now, and if they were lucky, she might be expecting already.
Shen Yunfang was taken aback upon hearing this and instinctively touched her lower abdomen, frowning as she counted her days.
"Really? You’re pregnant?" Dashuan’s wife got excited seeing her reaction, quickly put down what she was holding on the kang, and pulled Yunfang aside to inquire further.
"I don’t know, but my period didn’t come this month." Her menstrual cycle was usually very regular, and if it didn’t come this month, it was indeed possible that she was pregnant.
"Oh, that must be it, my silly sister." Dashuan’s wife laughed joyously, almost as if she were the one pregnant. "Let’s go to the county hospital and have it checked when you’re off."
Shen Yunfang nodded in agreement.
On the fifteenth, Dashuan’s wife accompanied Shen Yunfang to the county hospital, where it was confirmed that she was more than a month pregnant.
Dashuan’s wife was very happy, and so was Shen Yunfang.
She hadn’t expected to have her own child so soon, but it was also quite nice. Li Hongjun was a soldier, and she had always wanted several children in her lifetime, so it was better to start early before family planning became an issue.
After returning home, the first thing Shen Yunfang did was take out pen and paper to write a letter to Li Hongjun. She wanted him to be the first to know about it.
After mailing the letter, Shen Yunfang felt a sense of novelty for a few days. She was cautious while cutting grass, fearing she’d bend too far and squash the child, and worried about tiring the child while climbing hills. Turned out, her child was quite well-behaved inside her, showing no symptoms of pregnancy, probably because of her good health.
The older livestock at home were waiting to be fed, and she could only pretend for a few days before everything had to go back to business as usual.
There was a lot of work to be done inside and outside the house, task by task.
The first was the weaned piglets at home. Shen Yunfang checked each one and found them all healthy. Fearing discovery if they stayed home too long, she took the opportunity of the darkness to send nine of them to the mountain. Only an old sow and a piglet remained at home—the sow for sustained development and the piglet as the obligatory contribution to the state. Instantly, the number of piglets on the hillside increased to twenty.
The second task involved the goats. Originally, the family had five ewes, which, as if by unspoken agreement, had all given birth successively from the New Year to the present. This was advantageous since the ewes were all nursing, providing an overflow of goat’s milk for feeding the pigs and the family. Unwilling to increase the number of goats at home, Shen Yunfang sent the five kids to the mountain once they were able to live independently. The flock on the slope then grew to thirteen.
The third task was managing the chickens, ducks, geese, and quails at home. At the end of last year, Shen Yunfang had culled some, but during the few months that Li Hongjun had stayed there, he hatched seventy-three quails, fifty chicks, twenty ducklings, and twenty goslings. Now, the backyard housed a total of one hundred and eighteen chickens, with sixty-eight hens and thirty-two roosters, forty-eight ducks with twenty-three females and twenty-five males, and forty-four geese with eleven females and thirty-three males.
Of course, these were just the totals; there were still chicks and ducklings. The quail population had nearly reached five hundred, but she didn’t let them roam free—instead, she kept them in wooden boxes made by Li Hongjun. Each layer housed a hundred, fitting perfectly into five layers.
There were too many animals at home, especially the ducks and geese that had grown but weren’t yet laying eggs. Thus, she picked a day to sort them out, keeping thirty-one ducks and twenty-three geese.
As for the chickens, apart from the young ones, the rest were in prime laying condition, so she couldn’t bear to cull them.
The fourth task dealt with earthworms. Due to the increased number of pigs and chickens, the original boxes of earthworms were insufficient. So she set up additional racks on the kang bed in the west room, stacking them up taller when there wasn’t enough room to spread out laterally.
Even so, she still couldn’t meet the demand for earthworms, so she moved the vegetables growing in the west room outside, making more space for the earthworms.
Additionally, she would daily pick out the mature earthworms to make room for the younger ones, conserving space while providing them with more room to grow.
Looking at the situation now, it was just barely sufficient.
The fifth task involved cultivating mushrooms; Yunfang hadn’t stopped in the past two years. Last autumn, she even tried to grow king oyster mushrooms and hazel mushrooms; perhaps due to lack of professional knowledge, she failed. Initially, she was quite disheartened—everything since her transmigration seemed to go smoothly, and there hadn’t been anything she wanted to do but couldn’t accomplish. This failure brought her spirits down for several days, but later she came to terms with it. She had plenty of other things she wanted to do; not everything could go her way. She was satisfied to have successfully cultivated button mushrooms, and as for king oysters and hazel mushrooms, she had collected enough yearly from her trips to the mountains. They weren’t staple foods, so the stock she had gathered could last her for a decade without running out.
Then there was the work outside. She didn’t need to mention the tasks on the hillside, as she climbed the mountain at least once daily. When the wheat fields on the slope needed weeding or watering, she would stay in the mountains all day after the climb, feeding the pigs and goats; otherwise, she’d have to ascend twice a day to feed them.
After June started, the production team finally had suitable work for Shen Yunfang. Of course, it was Uncle Shen looking out for her; considering her physical condition, he assigned her to bird watching.
It wasn’t that she was to watch over people—her small frame wasn’t capable of that—but rather to keep an eye out for the birds that occasionally flew overhead.
Now, as the weather warmed and the crops neared ripeness, flocks of sparrows would come daily to steal the produce. Scarecrows had little effect against these nimble thieves; the only deterrent was having someone on the ridges who could make noise or chase them away upon spotting any birds approaching. 𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑝𝘶𝘣.𝑐𝘰𝘮
Currently, Yunfang was fulfilling that role of scaring away birds.
