Chapter 216 Summer Harvest and Summer Sowing

After Qingming Festival, the fields and farms are busier than ever, and even the courtyards of the Zhou and Tao families are brimming with life.

Led by the experienced Cuihong, Xiaoqi and Xiaoba worked at their own home one day and at the Tao family's home the next. Climbing beans, snake beans, pumpkins, winter melons, bitter melons, loofahs, and tofu vegetables were planted in the front and back yards, and even on the outside of the walls.

These rare vegetable seeds mostly came from Xiaojiu, especially varieties like string beans, snake beans, and tofu vegetables, and even ginseng. Fresh ones were available in the space, which could be propagated by cuttings, or the older ones could be picked out, dried, and saved for seeds. Over the years, the two families could accumulate a lot of dried vegetables every summer.

Outside the yard, we plant climbing vegetables. Inside the yard, we grow green beans, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, and other summer essentials. We also grow potatoes and sweet potatoes in the backyard. Potatoes can be planted twice a year. Although they are small, they can be eaten as a staple food when needed.

Fresh vegetable seeds have just been planted, and the only fresh vegetables available to eat right now are leafy greens such as chives, spinach, bok choy, cilantro, and scallions. Leafy greens don't produce much, so cooking a large meal requires a lot of them. As a result, the people in the canteen are very frugal, and in the end, each person only gets a few pieces of vegetables in their bowl.

The villagers are working themselves to the bone every day and still can't get enough to eat. Not only are they not full, but they also have to count the vegetables they eat. Who would be happy about that?

At this point, the production team would make grand promises, saying that in two more months the wheat harvest would be over, and once the wheat was harvested, everyone would be guaranteed a meal of white flour steamed buns with a big pot of stew containing meat, tofu, and vermicelli—a truly satisfying meal.

Only a few experienced people like Xiaojiu know that such a pie is impossible to achieve for at least three years, because they are making too big a fuss about the current yield. They can exaggerate the yield from 400 jin per mu to 1,150 jin per mu. Where will the rest come from?

It will definitely be subsidized from the pockets of ordinary people. The famine has been getting worse since this summer.

It's pathetic that they're still dreaming of eating rice and white noodles.

Xiao Jiu doesn't care about these things. She only cares about her own little plot of land. After Da Hei's only daughter turned one month old, Xiao Jiu took her home to raise.

After spending these days together, Dahei has become docile and often runs around with Sister Cuihong. The two little puppies at home are also well taken care of by Xiaoqi and Xiaoba, and are especially protective of their owners. Whenever someone with ill intentions looks around their house, the dogs will bark very loudly.

Xiao Jiu often fed these little guys the shrimp heads, shrimp shells, fish bones, and other things she had stolen from her space. She didn't even waste sweet potato peels or potato peels. Kitchen waste? There's none of that in this era. She made sure to get the best value for her money.

I thought the wheat harvest wouldn't be until early June, but due to the severe drought this year, the wheat turned yellow and ripened around early May.

Moreover, the wheat ears are not as long as in previous years. If the yield was four or five hundred catties per mu in the past, this year it may be only two or three hundred catties, which means that they are even further away from their target.

In such hot weather, all the commune members raced against time to harvest the wheat. Even the canteen was unusually helpful. Although the food was still dry and lacked nutrition, at least the quantity was sufficient so that the commune members could eat their fill and work.

Xiao Jiu was also sweating profusely in the wheat field with a sickle. Let me tell you, this work was really damn tiring. It was hot and tiring. Her arms ached from swinging the sickle, and her back felt like it wasn't her own anymore. And she was just helping out. Not to mention her parents and grandparents, they were even more tired.

To provide nutrition for her family, Xiao Jiu sneaked home in the afternoon to cook fish soup and make flatbread for them.

She cooked at home, but she didn't forget her neighbor's house. Knowing they had fish, she sent them chicken instead.

With the intention of sharing the good fortune, both families were able to eat meat during the wheat harvest season. Moreover, because they had oil in their stomachs, they recovered faster than others.

After working continuously for half a month, the wheat in the field was first harvested, then threshed, and then dried in the sun. The wheat straw was also bundled up and piled up in a designated place.

When the news of a yield of 280 jin per mu reached the commune, Xiao Jiu sighed, "It's over!"

From planting to harvest, not a single drop of rain fell on the wheat. It all depended on the hard work of the commune members in watering it, but now the average yield is only 300 jin (150 kg).

Who wouldn't feel happy in that situation?

However, that's not the worst part. The worst part is that after harvesting the wheat, you have to plant the next season's corn. But corn needs water to grow in the ground, right? If the soil doesn't have water, the seeds won't germinate.

That also means that a new round of watering tasks will have to be started, and fertilizer will also have to be applied to the ground.

Many commune members were discouraged as a result. They worked from morning till night, but in the end, the yield per mu was only two or three hundred jin. Who could accept this fact?

The women in the village who got married before the New Year are all pregnant now, but they still have to work and eat the same unhealthy vegetable buns, sweet potato flour and sorghum flour buns, which are dry, tasteless, and have no oil at all.

With summer planting just around the corner, many people are getting impatient and even want to quit. Even after the summer harvest, their food has not improved at all, and in fact, it feels worse than before the harvest. Ultimately, this is because the commune has handed over almost all of its grain in a competition.

The poor ordinary people are still counting down the days until they can eat white flour buns!

To put it bluntly, some families eat worse than Dahei's family!

Or should Xiao Jiu remind her sister to be careful when taking Da Hei out?

I'm afraid someone might get so hungry they'll kidnap and kill the big black dog.

After understanding Xiao Jiu's meaning, Cui Hong stopped taking Da Hei with her when she went out, because she didn't want her little ones to lose their mother.

Nowhere is safer than home.

Before the summer harvest, only in rural areas can one truly feel the shortage of food and vegetables. Most urban residents eat commercially available grain, so apart from industries with significant impact such as wineries, most people's lives are not greatly affected.

However, after the summer harvest ended, when the yield per mu was reported in various places, even though each production team had contributed most of its savings, it still couldn't match the boasts they had made. As a result, they began to be harsh on the ordinary people below, and even the summer planting work could not continue.

After days of drought, the summer harvest of grain and the sideline businesses of various production teams were all affected, and the supply of agricultural and sideline products in the city finally fell short of demand.

Previously, with grain coupons, one could buy 30 or 36 jin of grain per month. Now, one might only be able to buy 10 or 20 jin. Various places have introduced policies to limit the quantity and purchase of grain. Xiao Jiu and the others heard about these policies on the radio.

The older siblings were also trying their best to collect food and meat coupons to give to them, hoping to supplement the nutrition of the family, especially the elderly and children.

The main issue was that some production teams had seen women fainting and being hospitalized due to malnutrition. Those living in big cities were aware of this information earlier, so these dutiful children wrote letters home while trying to buy nutritious goods to send back.

Later, after Tao Changyi received the letter, they all sent telegrams to them.

"Don't send it home, it will get lost."

The greater the disaster, the more precious food becomes. If someone finds out what's in your package, they might loot it before it even reaches its destination.

But the brothers weren't stupid; they had hidden hard peanut cakes and bean cakes in the pockets of a large bag of clothes.

I don't know where they got them from, but they sent about ten pounds of them. These ten-pound cakes are too heavy to bite, so you have to use a hammer to break them open. After breaking them open, you put them in a pot to cook. They don't taste very good, but if you eat them in a critical moment, you won't starve.

Grandpa and Grandma cherished these ten pounds of cakes and gave them to Xiaojiu to hide.

Because they discovered that they couldn't find the things that Xiao Jiu had stored all these years, and she was very mysterious when they asked her.

"If I tell you the method, what's left for me? I won't tell you; just trust me."

After the wheat harvest, my parents took some wine and went to the city. They rented a courtyard house there, and my parents would come to check on it every few days, afraid that the grain hidden inside would be stolen.

Xiao Jiu was actually quite worried, especially since she had to pay ten yuan in rent every month for the house, which was really a huge loss.

So she went to Cuihua and told her about her worries. Cuihua thought for a moment and then asked her with a serious expression.

"Are you sure you can preserve this grain well and prevent it from being discovered?"

Xiao Jiu nodded, "Yes, sis, do you have a way?"

Cuihua thought for a moment, nodded to her, and then took Xiaojiu to find Tao Changyi and his wife, and made her promise to them.

"Godfather, Godmother, I have a way to transport this grain away without anyone noticing. If you trust me, don't ask any questions. Just hand over the grain to me, and I'll give it to you when you want it back."

These days, Cuihua and the others have been giving the Tao family plenty of good food. In fact, the couple had their doubts, especially Cuimei, who was skilled in medicine, and Cuixiang, who was skilled in cooking. This made them feel that these sisters were not ordinary, so they trusted them quite a lot.

Seeing Cuihua's confident demeanor, and considering that they hadn't slept soundly for days and had been living in constant fear, the couple gritted their teeth and agreed.

"Since Cuihua says so, then we'll trust you. We'll have to trouble you with these three thousand catties of grain."

As he spoke, he handed the key to Cuihua.

Cuihua took the keys and assured them, "You can ask the landlord to cancel your lease before the end of the month, including the house in town. Wouldn't it be better to use the remaining money to buy some nutritional supplements for Grandpa and Grandma?"

There was also grain hidden in the houses in town, but because it was close by, the old man would go there from time to time, so the couple hadn't bothered with it. Now that they heard Cuihua say this, they simply said...

"You should also try to transport the grain from the town. We'll return the keys to the landlord before the end of the month, and we won't be renting anymore."