The girl's voice alerted her mother. The woman was packing her things in the bridge hole and ran out immediately when she heard the voice.
Then I saw the girl shouting towards the north.
"Lan'er, what are you doing?"
"Mom, that uncle stuffed me with two pieces of meat..." Lan'er knew she couldn't catch up with the uncle, so she ran towards him in fear. Mother, showing two pieces of meat in her hand.
Her expression was not joy, but fear, and she kept explaining:
"I didn't want it, it was the uncle who forced it on me, saying that it was exchanged with me...for my three fish..."
As he spoke, there was already a cry in his voice.
"Lan'er, it's okay, it's okay." The woman knew why her daughter was like this - she had been too strict with her before and couldn't just ask for other people's things.
"That uncle... is so nice." Seeing that her mother didn't blame her, Lan'er felt relieved and raised the meat to show her mother, "There's a lot of meat on these bones!"
"Yes." The woman looked to the north. At this moment, Li Long only had a black spot left. She knew that he was a good man, and she felt quite complicated.
This favor, when can I pay it back?
Li Long hurried to his home and saw that the wheat stacks on the wheat field were getting higher.
The Li family's carriage is also there, the sound of the rollers is very loud, and the game has already begun.
Entering the yard, Li Juan was packing the newly picked wheat ears in the yard.
Li Qingxia was peeling fish in the yard, and Du Chunfang was lighting a fire on the stove, cooking pig food.
When they heard Li Long's bicycle, the three people turned around to look.
"Xiaolong is back?" Du Chunfang's voice sounded first, "Did you bring something good again? Look at your clothes... Hey, there's so much blood! Isn't this hurt?" "
"No, I'm hunting a wolf and a goat," Li Long got out of the car. , while supporting himself, he explained, "This is the blood that was stained when I came back carrying these two things."
I have been busy and haven't bothered to wash my clothes, so the smell of blood on my body is quite strong. It was heavy. I hadn't felt it before, but as soon as the old lady said it, Li Long felt uncomfortable.
"Go and change clothes." Du Chunfang urged, "Dad, what else are you doing with your fish? Go and find clothes for Xiaolong!"
"Do you need me?" Li Qingxia looked up, "Xiaolong, can you find it?"
"Yes, yes, yes." Li Long said with a smile, "You are busy with your work. I brought back some dried meat. , just hang on the wire. "This wire is used to dry clothes. When Li Long was drying meat, he used thin wire. At this time, it just needs to be tied up.
"Dried meat?" This was the first time Li Qingxia heard about it and looked at it curiously.
"It's just sun-salted and dried meat." Li Long explained, taking out strips of meat from the sack and hanging them on the wire. These semi-dried meats exuded a faint and strange smell in the air. The fragrance.
"Isn't it a bit too much to show off your meat like this?" Du Chunfang was a little worried, "I heard that someone from above came over today, isn't it good to let others see it?"
"What's wrong? What are you afraid of now?" Li Qingxia took a very open-minded view, "Everyone is allowed to let go. The land has been allocated to each family, and you still control whether you are allowed to eat meat?"
< br>"I'm not afraid that others will be jealous." Du Chunfang gave a rare explanation, "There are many people with pink eye in my hometown, so some people don't want others to live well."
< br>Li Long smiled and said: "Mom, it's okay. The meat will be almost dry overnight. When you get up early tomorrow morning, it will be brought to the house. The meat will go bad if it is not dried. By the way, there is also this pot. Yes, these are the heart, liver, lungs, stomach and intestines, all cooked."
Li Long opened the basin and took out a few pieces of chopped meat for Li Qingxia, Du Chunfang and the others. Li Juan got the biggest one. piece. Li Long also asked:
“Where is Qiangqiang?”
"Went to play on the wheat field. He said there were a lot of grasshoppers there and he wanted to catch them to feed the chickens."
"This kid is so sensible," Li Long said. " Dad, are there many noodle fish? ”
Noodle fish are fish with the same parasites as noodles in their stomachs, usually crucian carp.
"Not many, there are only two of them." Li Qingxia said, "Noodle worms are also worms, and chickens are cute to eat."
Everyone is not surprised by parasites such as noodle worms. Those little girls in the 1900s would not even dare to touch grasshoppers, but now children like Li Juan dare to catch noodle worms with their hands.
Girls also do a lot of things like squeezing pockmarks to death and catching horses, snakes, and rats.
"Mom and dad, you are busy first, I will send some meat to Xiaoxia and her father."
"Yes, yes, go quickly." Du Chunfang said hurriedly , "Take some of the fish your father caught, and take away the peeled ones. This will save you the trouble."
Li Long carried some fish, some dried meat and cooked offal to deliver to Gu Boyuan. Gu Boyuan was not at home, so Li Long put the things on the table in the yard and filled a basin.
No one is home at this time, unless relatives or neighbors, generally no one will come in. The folk customs are still very simple in these aspects.
Li Long brought some of the remaining items to Uncle Luo before returning to the Li family.
By this time, Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei had returned, and Li Qiang was feeding the chickens with a can of grasshoppers. Those grasshoppers had obviously been treated, their heads had been crushed, and although they could still jump occasionally, they couldn't jump high.
"Uncle!" Li Qiang shouted happily when he saw Li Long, "Look at how many grasshoppers I caught!"
"Okay, okay, if you eat this chicken, it will lay more eggs. Then you can eat more!"
"I don't eat boiled eggs!" Li Qiang protested.
“Instead of eating boiled food, how about we eat spicy eggs stuffed with cowpeas?” Li Long teased Li Qiang.
"Okay, okay!" Li Qiang became happy after hearing this. This dish is often made by Liang Yuemei during this season. Cowpeas and chili peppers are cut into finger-sized pieces. When they are almost cooked in the pot, pour the beaten egg liquid in and stir-fry a few times before serving. This one is spicy and has the smell of scrambled eggs, which goes very well with rice.
"Xiaolong, you can do this." Li Jianguo said with a smile, "You can catch something every now and then, so you are a good hunter!"
"This time it was purely an accident." Li Long explained, "I ran several ditches yesterday to pick up mushrooms. I was really tired, so I thought of going to the hot spring for a dip. I didn't expect three wolves to hunt wild goats in the hot spring. , I actually hunted two wolves and two goats, but I couldn’t get back one wolf. Come on, it’s too far. I thought I’d pick it up after finishing it today, but I was so tired that I just didn’t want it. I guess the wolf would have been eaten by something else by the time I got back.”
Li Long was actually quite proud when he said this. After all, this was the most he had ever hunted.
"Awesome!" Li Jianguo couldn't help but praise, "Four - this harvest can be said to be that of an experienced hunter!"
"That's right, my uncle is awesome!" Li Qiang He said loudly, and then whispered: "Uncle, what is the hot spring like? Is it comfortable to soak in? Can you take me to take a bath?"
"When we are not busy at home, we will go as a family." Li Long said with a smile, "It just takes a longer way."
"I am not afraid of walking a long way!" Li Qiang promised loudly.
"I'll take you there then."
Li Qiang turned to look at Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei.
"Watch what I'm going to do? Just go when you're done. Didn't your brother-in-law say so." Li Jianguo thought the same thing. After the wheat harvest is over, it will take some time for sunflowers and corn to be harvested. There is a gap in the middle, and it is indeed possible to go into the mountains to play.
"Brother, I said someone came from above?" Li Long asked curiously.
"Well, it's not the summer harvest. The county has sent people to come to each village to supervise the summer harvest and ensure that the grains are returned to the warehouse."
Of course, this grain return is actually just Tell me, it's really impossible. After all, the land is so big that after the wheat is harvested, it is necessary to organize a clearing field and then hand over the grain.
At this time, the main labor force is on the wheat field, and the women in the family have to work on the wheat field to earn work points. In other words, the elderly and children can pick up wheat ears, but they may not be able to pick them up.
After all, the land area of our team is too large. So in autumn, when the field stalks are dug, a lot of wheat grains, rice and corn can be found in the mouse holes dug.
Li Long vaguely remembered that at this time, he usually only paid 20 to 30% of the public rations, and the rest belonged to the team and had to be distributed to each family. After the wheat in the wheat field is threshed and harvested, the next step is to hand over the public grain and the communal grain (left by those in the team), and then distribute the wheat to each family.
At this time, there were still small processing factories in the countryside. Each family usually kept some of the wheat they distributed as wheat seeds, and then processed the rest into flour. The Li family's habit is to uniformly process it into 85 powder. Although it is darker, it is easy to eat.
In the words of later generations, this is healthy.
Compared with the mainland, Northern Xinjiang has a very big advantage. After the production is distributed to each household, what is usually paid to the superior is agricultural taxes (public grain) and land management fees for the team (ration fields) , and land contract fees (the cost of contracting land), the rest of the so-called three mentions and five unifications, Li Long has never heard of.
There are not so many miscellaneous expenses. If farmers have more land and are more interested in farming, they will gradually become rich.
This is why within a few years of land contracting in the 1980s, many people in the village could afford televisions and tractors.
But later on, the cost of farming became higher and higher, agricultural supplies became more and more expensive, and the prices of primary agricultural products became unaffordable, so the living standards of the people in the team remained at that stage and could not improve.
What we eat in the evening is the cooked offal that Li Long brought back. He also makes a dipping bowl, burns it into a paste, and eats it.
After breakfast the next day, Li Long picked some more vegetables from the yard and took them to the county. Li Juan is already on vacation and does not need to go to school. She has to do her homework at home. Li Qiang ran away after breakfast and said he still wanted to catch grasshoppers.
Children are full of energy and never feel tired, which is quite rare.
When Li Long reached the little girl's bridge on his bicycle, he shouted, put some vegetables on the ground, and then rode away when the girl showed up.
People who know how to be grateful are more likely to gain favor and goodwill from others. This girl is about the same age as Li Juan. Li Juan can go to school, but she can only wander. It is quite pitiful.
Li Long went to the big yard and Gu Xiaoxia had already gone to work. The things Li Long brought back yesterday had been packed up, so Li Long put down some vegetables and left for the mountains again.
When he returned to the wooden house, the sun was not high yet, Li Long hung out the meat in the house again, and took the sack with him to go to the hot spring again.
Wolf or not, there are still a lot of fungi there.
Today Li Long went around another ditch, picking up fungi as he went over there. I didn’t encounter any fungi at all in the first half of the trip and I picked them all up. When I was about a kilometer away from the hot spring ditch, I slowly saw the black tiger palm fungus.
When Li Long picked it up in the hot spring ditch, more than half of the fungi were already in the sack. Today's harvest was not bad.
He walked to the ditch with the sack on his back, walking carefully, worried that there might be wild animals, but he didn't expect to see anything until he walked to the pond.
As expected, the wolf has disappeared. Except for the occasional faint blood stains that can be seen on the moss on the shore, everything else has disappeared.
Li Long was a little disappointed. He didn’t expect the hidden person in the forest to be so fast!
He went back to find the mushroom he had fallen over. The mushroom was still there. It had been scratched by something, but it was not broken.
Li Long picked up all the fungi and put them in a sack, then returned in another direction.
After leaving the hot spring ditch, the sun was very dazzling, so Li Long gave up the idea of picking up fungi in other ditches and quickly walked towards the wooden house.
Arrived at the wooden house, Li Long poured the fungi on the wooden floor to dry in the sun. The original fungi were almost dry in the sun. He moved the fungi to the grass and planned to put them away in the afternoon. After collecting a sack, he will go to Chen Hongjun to sell it.
Li Long himself already had an idea. Picking mushrooms is definitely not as easy as selling fish, but it is better than getting an unexpected harvest. Such as this wolf and goat. After all, just eating fish for a week will make you tired, but if you eat meat in different ways every day, you won’t get tired easily.
At noon, Li Long still ate half a watermelon with some dried offal. His stomach felt a little uncomfortable, so he just went to squat in the latrine behind the wooden house and it would be fine.
When I got up in the afternoon and picked up the sacks to pick up the fungi, the dried meat on the pole looked almost done.
In the afternoon, Li Long came back with half a sack of fungi. He planned to ride his bicycle to Baiyanggou to have a look tomorrow. After all, it’s no longer easy to find around here.
The fungi on the grass slope were completely dry, and the dried meat on the pole was almost gone. Li Long collected them all and dried all the fungi collected today.
Two days later, Li Long arrived at the county purchase station with a large bag of black tiger palm fungus on his bicycle.
He estimated that the fungi weighed more than forty kilograms, which was quite a lot of money according to the price Chen Hongjun had mentioned before.
Chen Hongjun took out a black tiger palm fungus from the sack and looked at it, nodded and said:
“Not bad, the quality looks very good.”
“That’s right. Come out and see, it's all like this." Li Long was very confident, "There is absolutely no impurity."
"I believe you," but he still wanted to pour it out. (End of chapter)