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Chapter 203: Busy days started again in Chapter 196.
Shen Yunfang sat at home, fuming because of her mother-in-law’s bandit-like behavior, and even more so because she was now in a situation where she had grievances with no place to voice them, reason with no one to listen, and anger with nowhere to vent it.
When she first found out that things had been stolen from her house, Shen Yunfang impulsively wanted to go to Taoshu Village and have a serious talk with Qiu Shuping. She had taken care of them, providing food and shelter, receiving neither gratitude nor acknowledgment for her hard work. Instead of thanking her, Qiu Shuping, as her mother-in-law, had the audacity to steal from her house while she was away — such acts were beyond inhuman.
However, after calming down and thinking it over, she realized that even if she did go and openly criticized these matters, it wouldn’t do her any good. The reputation of the elders at home had already gone south, and as a family member, her reputation wouldn’t be any better. As a daughter-in-law accusing her mother-in-law, even if she was justified, she would still be judged by others and even be branded as unfilial behind her back. It wouldn’t matter if it were only her, but Li Hongjun was still in the army; she couldn’t drag him down. Besides, she was now pregnant and had to think long-term for her child.
So, she had no choice but to swallow this humiliation.
But she wouldn’t let the other culprit off easily either. If it weren’t for marrying Li Hongjun, would she have to suffer such indignity? So she took out a pen and paper and quickly wrote down every single thing his mother did, sparing no detail. This letter she wrote was the thickest yet, a full eight pages. Shen Yunfang didn’t spare Li Hongjun’s feelings either. She wrote about how his mother and sister shamelessly overstayed their welcome, claiming they were there to help her, a pregnant woman, with the autumn harvest, but instead did nothing and expected her to wait on them. She also mentioned, in passing, the behavior of Qiu Shuping and her accomplice during their last few days, but these were not the focus. The crux of the letter was how they let her lower her guard and then cunningly stole things from the house when they left.
In this way, this thick letter, laden with Shen Yunfang’s dissatisfaction with the Li Family and her disdain for her mother-in-law’s behavior, made its way across the sea to the far north of the motherland.
Life for Shen Yunfang returned to its peaceful routine. The collective farm had harvested all the millet, so she no longer had to tend the fields. After informing Old Shen that she had been upset by her in-laws and needed some time to recover her strength, she decided to "cat winter" early.
Old Shen, seeing her condition, decided that a good man like her certainly didn’t need to worry about these small public duty points and waved his hand, telling her to do whatever she needed to.
So, starting in September, Shen Yunfang no longer had to work with the team, and she threw herself into the mountains. Each morning, after tidying up the house, she would plunge into the mountains and stay there all day.
Shen Yunfang rubbed her forehead, wiping away the sweat with one hand while supporting her back with the other. She looked at the bunches of purple grapes hanging from the vines. Although she was physically strong, pregnancy inevitably brought some inconveniences. Having spent most of the day with her arms raised pruning grapes, her arms now struggled to lift.
In previous years, she had discovered a few wild grapevines, and to increase her yield, she propagated more cuttings. Finally, over the past two years, the effort paid off, and the area was now full of grapevines, and correspondingly, the grapes were plentiful as well.
Since entering September, the wild grapes had ripened, tasting a mix of sour and sweet. More sour than sweet, she normally didn’t enjoy them, but her current condition was unique, and her taste had changed. Now, just looking at these grapes made her mouth water, and she had acquired a taste for them.
So, for the sake of her unborn baby having some tasty fruit to eat, she had to make sure to store more in her space. Not to mention, even if she couldn’t eat them all, she could still use the grapes to make wine and grape juice, so she had to ensure none went to waste.
Shaking her arms, she picked up the shears and resumed pruning grapes.
Snipping intermittently, Shen Yunfang labored for over an hour, but finally decided to give the grapes a break, as well as her own arms.
She checked the time and saw that noon was approaching, so she began climbing up to the hillside where the pigs needed to be fed. However, she was tripped up by a patch of mushrooms along the way and by the time she finished picking them, the pigs in the pen were already squealing with hunger.
She hurried to the edge of the pigpen and took out buckets of warm pig feed from her special space, pouring it into the pen to pacify the group of pigs.
Beginning this month, she had stopped gathering pigweed because she had decided to slaughter the pigs on the mountain after a couple more months of feeding. By now, the pigs weighed roughly over a hundred pounds each, and with some fattening up over the month, they should reach around one hundred fifty pounds.
She still had plenty of wild vegetables and pigweed stored in her space, enough to last for the month. Moreover, she had decided to temporarily stop raising livestock on the mountain, mainly because her belly was slowly growing larger. It was manageable now, but it would be difficult to climb the hills when she was eight or nine months pregnant. After the child was born, she wouldn’t be able to come out when it was very small, unable to feed the animals daily, so it was not feasible to keep the livestock for the time being.
Besides, ever since Li Hongjun left, and now with a child on the way, she was always considering that they couldn’t keep living apart. Even if the adults could bear it, she couldn’t let her child live a life without a father. Therefore, she decided to shelve her breeding plans for the time being. Once the current batch of pigs was dealt with and her belly had grown bigger, she would stay at home to nurture her pregnancy, waiting until the child was born and the flowers bloomed in spring before she would consider following the army.
Of course, these matters weren’t solely up to her wishes; they would depend on Li Hongjun’s situation as well and the home front couldn’t be easily abandoned. She needed to handle things properly before making any decisions.
Taking advantage of the pigs scrambling for food, Shen Yunfang put on her boots and mask, took a shovel, and entered the pigpen to start cleaning it, followed by the sheep pen.
Only when the sun was high overhead did she begin to feel hungry. She changed her boots and clothes, then washed her hands and face by the creek before finding a flat spot under a large tree on the hillside. She took a piece of plastic and spread it out, laying a blanket on top of it.
She sat on the blanket and began taking out her lunch from her space. There were plenty of ready-made foods in there; she took out a cornmeal pancake, a small bowl of beef stew with radish, a plate of fried mushrooms, a plate of persimmons and scrambled eggs, a plate of homemade cold dishes, and after some thought, she took out a bowl of kelp soup, completing her lunch.
After finishing her meal leisurely, she collected all the empty plates and bowls into her space, planning to wash them at home that evening. Then she lay down on the blanket for a short rest with her eyes half-closed. She didn’t dare truly fall asleep, knowing that this place had seen wild boars and packs of wolves in the past. Although she hadn’t seen any in a year, she still couldn’t afford to be careless.
In the afternoon, she packed up the blanket and plastic and resumed her busy work.
After the wheat harvest, she had planted autumn vegetables like cabbage and radishes in this field, and in two months’ time, they had grown quite a bit. That afternoon, she watered and fertilized these cabbages and radishes.
Before finishing work in the late afternoon, she fed the pigs and sheep once more and then leisurely made her way down the mountain to head home.
