NOVPUB
Chapter 88: Chapter 86 Aunt (4th update)
The corn in the team’s fields was harvested during work hours, while the crops in everyone’s private plots were gathered by the villagers during their rest time in the mornings and evenings.
At this time, nobody complained about the hard work. Seeing sacks and sacks of corn cobs, even the most exhausted felt it was worth it.
Shen Yunfang was the same. She woke up early, geared herself up despite the hot weather, wearing long clothes and pants, and wrapped her head with a headscarf, dressed just like a typical farmer’s wife.
The cornfield was not an easy place to navigate; the leaves of the corn were very sharp. If you didn’t wear long sleeves, you’d end up covered in cuts and scrapes by the end of the day.
Shen Yunfang had a total of nine fen of private land, and she practiced intercropping, so the actual area of corn planted was around five fen.
She always considered herself quick and efficient at work, and with Brother Dashuan coming to help for parts of the day, she was able to harvest all the corn in her private land within one day.
The next day, she went on to harvest the rows of corn in her backyard. For the following days, she spent time at the Drying Yard dehusking corn during work hours and continued dehusking at home after work.
The dehusked corn cobs had to be left out in the sun to dry thoroughly before the kernels could be rubbed off.
Shen Yunfang borrowed a scale to weigh her harvest. Her two plots yielded over seven hundred and ninety jin of corn cobs, with the yield per mu close to eight hundred jin, which was a considerable amount more than what the production team’s land produced. She was very pleased, but she kept this good news to herself and didn’t breathe a word of it to anyone else.
Many hands make light work; with the entire village, young and old, pitching in, the team’s hundred mu of corn was harvested in just two days.
After drying on the Drying Yard for three days, Shen Yeqing called everyone to the Drying Yard on the morning of the fourth day to weigh the heaps of corn and distribute the grains!
At that time, there were no electronic scales; weighing the grains meant using a large beam scale that required two people to lift—a task that demanded considerable physical strength.
As per the old rules, after fulfilling the state’s quota, each person received their annual allotment of four hundred eighty jin of rationed grain, two hundred jin of which was corn. The remainder had to be handed over to the state.
With so many people, the work went quickly. The hundreds in the village finished the distribution in just one morning, and then everyone watched as the villagers pushed their carts, trip by trip, transporting their corn home, unable to hide the joy on their faces.
Shen Yunfang didn’t have a cart, so it was Shen Zhiwen who Shen Yeqing ordered to help her push hers home.
At the same time as the village distributed the corn, all the corn from the private plots had been completely harvested as well.
Entering September, Shen Yunfang resumed her routine of leading the sheep herd up the mountain.
This time, she wasn’t as focused on wild vegetables, because there was something more enticing in the mountains—mushrooms.
While she had occasionally found some mushrooms when digging for wild vegetables, they were scattered and not in clusters. From September, after a fall of autumn rain, the mushrooms sprouted en masse, popping up all over the hills like bamboo shoots after the rain.
Mushrooms are highly seasonal fungi, and they would only be around for this one month. After the National Day holiday, they would disappear just as they had appeared. So, in order to stock up on this delicacy for herself, Shen Yunfang would delve into the woods while working. If she found one mushroom, she wouldn’t have to stand up to guarantee that there would be a patch nearby.
That day, Shen Yunfang guessed it was about time to finish work, so she carried a pole of green grass on her back and a basket of mushrooms on her arm, as she herded the sheep down the mountain.
As she took a detour around her home, she noticed a child at her doorway, looking around.
Upon closer inspection, she recognized the child—it was Ergouzi.
"Ergouzi, are you looking for me?" Shen Yunfang flicked her whip and started driving the sheep towards the production team, stopping to ask the child at the door.
"Someone came looking for you this morning, and my mom told me to call you," Ergouzi said, then ran off toward the village as if someone were chasing him.
"Hey, wait, do you know who was looking for me?" Shen Yunfang quickly stopped him, confused by his vague message.
Ergouzi wiped his nose with his sleeve and said in a nasal voice, "It seemed like it was your aunt. She came this morning and waited at your doorstep because no one was home. My mom saw her when she went up the mountain at noon, and your aunt asked my mom to tell you she’d come again tomorrow. She said for you not to leave and to wait for her."
