We went home for lunch at noon, and in the afternoon the family of three went to help Gu’s family harvest the sunflower seeds—Gu Boyuan’s family only had four acres of land, half of which was corn and half of sunflower seeds. Gu Boyuan and four other members of the Li family finished the work in less than two hours.
"The old man is right, there is really strength in numbers." Gu Boyuan sighed, "If I did it by myself, it would only take two days."
"That's right, it's good to have more people. It’s hard to work, but it’s easy to eat steamed buns when there are few people.” Jianguo smiled and said, "Each has its own advantages."
Li Long thought to himself, now you will never imagine that in another forty years, let alone the number of people and easy work, a cooperative will have thousands of acres at that time. It can be done by just a few people. Of course, even if I tell you now, you won’t believe it.
There was a cool breeze in the evening, and the family was eating watermelon under the shed. Li Qiang's clay pistol was accidentally broken by him. Li Long asked him to find the homework book that Li Juan had used before. Remove the paper to break the shell gun.
Because the children at this time had read the villain's books on mine warfare and tunnel warfare, they felt that the twenty-round long magazine was more powerful, so they folded five small bags first, and then used chopsticks to thread them. Each of the five packets uses two pieces of paper, and two more pieces of paper are used when combining them, but when folded, they still look a bit like each other.
After folding it, Li Qiang happily played with it - Li Long said that this was a reward for his good academic performance.
Li Juan just looked at it and was not too envious. The girl was older and not interested in guns or anything like that, so Li Long made a simple "east, west, north, south" for her. After teaching her how to play, let her play with her classmates during breaks at school.
The principle of this thing is very simple, but in this era of lack of entertainment, it is really attractive.
After breakfast the next day, Li Juan took Li Qiang to school. Li Qiang was very excited and ran out happily with a paper phone. Li Long hurriedly shouted:
"Don't play during class, and don't let the teacher catch you and discipline you."
At this time, the teachers here basically don't spank the children anymore, but they definitely reprimand and scold them. Often. Parents usually don't care, and their children's psychology is not that fragile. Sometimes they don't dare to tell their parents after being scolded by teachers, because they are afraid of being "secondary hurt."
In the eyes of parents, only naughty children will be disciplined by teachers.
"Uncle, I know!" Li Qiang said loudly, and then ran away shouting "Ah--" at the top of his voice, with his schoolbag dangling behind him.
"Qiangqiang, slow down! If you run again, I'll beat you!" Li Juan called to Li Qiang from behind, and quickly caught up with her. Turning onto the main road, Li Long was at the gate. Li Qiang's voice can also be heard.
If you have a good toy, you should eagerly show it off to your friends. This is normal. As a child, not many can compare.
Li Jianguo hitched up the carriage, Liang Yuemei cooked and fed the pigs, and Li Long took a few sticks and went to the wheat field.
At this time, the oil sunflower can only be threshed manually, and it cannot even be threshed like wheat because the quantity is too small. And this matter cannot wait, because the team's sunflower and other crops will soon be harvested. This work counts as work points. Li Long has no intention of participating, but the wheat field must be vacated as soon as possible.
It is relatively easy to do this job. You can sit directly on or next to the oil sunflower pile with a stick, and just knock it with the oil sunflower disk. Through vibration and reaction force, the oil sunflower seeds will be knocked down. After knocking it clean, throw the flower plate aside and move on to the next one.
It’s considered repetitive work.
After the sunflower seeds are knocked, they have to be winnowed to lift out the sunflower tails - the sunflower tails mainly include shriveled seeds and impurities falling from the flower disks, which are usually fed to cattle and sheep. It's okay to feed pigs, but pigs don't like eating it very much.
As for the sunflower disks, they are purely for feeding cattle and sheep. Of course, animals such as roe deer, horses, and donkeys are also eaten, so they must not be wasted.
Li Long knocked on three flower trays here, and Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei came over. It's relatively comfortable to knock in the morning, as the sun isn't as intense. People came one after another to start working on the wheat field, because it was not far away, and they chatted while knocking melon seeds, usually picking the tender ones.
Li Long looked at this flower plate and thought that forty years later in his last life, such a large flower plate would appear in the supermarket for ten yuan. At that time, when he went to the supermarket, he thought it was really dreamy. This thing was so dreamy. Can it still be sold so expensively?
However, in that era, except for agricultural products, the prices of everything really increased.
For example, wheat costs three yuan per kilogram, and bran can be sold for two and eight yuan. If you raise pigs at home, you have to buy bran, and one kilogram equals one kilogram of wheat!
When corn is harvested, the price is 2 yuan to 2.5 yuan per kilogram, depending on the water content. But when raising pigs, the feed for piglets is only three yuan per kilogram. Do you want to buy it or not!
Of course, having said that, the sunflower trays sold in supermarkets for ten yuan are very expensive if they are collected from farmers for fifty cents or one yuan.
After all, there are thousands of trees per acre, and even if they are sold for 50 cents, the farmer can still make a lot of money and be very happy.
He remembered that he had been a farmer for so many years in his previous life, and he had only really made money three times. One time, the price of cotton suddenly rose from 6 yuan to 11 yuan in previous years. At that time, most cotton growers in the village got rich, and some of them bought cars directly.
At that time, Li Long's family planted 20 acres of cotton, and he really didn't make any money.
The second time was when a group engaged in agricultural products came to the village to sign contracts with farmers to grow millet. At that time, it was agreed that the contract fee for one acre of land would be four thousand five thousand. By this time, the team had already implemented drip irrigation, and the cost of cultivating one acre of land was almost 2,000. Four thousand and five thousand is definitely profitable, and most people in the village have signed the contract.
Of course, the contract also stipulates that the rice must reach 800 kilograms of millet per mu. If it cannot be reached, it will be downgraded. If it exceeds the limit, we will continue to charge four yuan per kilogram.
Li Long and the others on the team didn’t know how these people calculated the output, so they felt that 800 kilograms was appropriate. They are actually underestimating the yields of drip irrigation fields. And the old farmers who have grown millet in their hometown before know this well.
So, at the end of the year, the group almost went bankrupt because of the payment - the yield per mu was more than 1,200 kilograms!
I started growing millet, and by this time I was already using WeChat and watching Moments. If I like to play in winter, I go skiing and travel to see ice sculptures. From the end of autumn to the beginning of spring, I roast a sheep or something like that from time to time.
Of course, another batch of cars have been added to the village.
Originally, the group planned to sign a three-year contract with the farmers in the village, but in the second year it began to increase the output standards in the contract. In the end, the agreement failed, and the matter fell through.
The third time was still cotton. Once again, the base price of cotton suddenly increased from five or six yuan to ten yuan. At this time, every household's cotton supply was basically fifty or sixty acres, and some contracted more. , there are hundreds of acres and even thousands of acres, which are so solid that the villagers made a fortune.
But when Qiuhou got the money, someone specially set up the trap came. Some people can't resist the temptation, and all the money they have worked hard to earn in a year will be lost in one night.
At that time, Li Qiang had already passed the college entrance examination and left. Many people in the village who were about the same age or older than him and did not pass the examination went out to farm. Many of them had their fingers cut off or abandoned their families and disappeared, leaving behind a lot of bad debts.
Later, the authorities took action and allowed 40% of the farmland to be planted with cotton, leaving the remaining 60% uncultivated, which was called rotational planting.
In the second year of the rotation policy, 60% of the land was planted with wheat. This was to ensure that the rice bowl was in their hands.
Before this, almost all the land was planted with cotton. Even if the price of cotton in the first year was as low as 2.8 yuan, and the second crop of manual picking cost 3 yuan, it was a huge loss, but the second time Two years later, every household was still growing cotton—a gamble.
Li Long recalled, looking at his neighbor who was smiling and knocking on the flower tray, he felt that the poorer he was, the easier it was to be satisfied. At this time, I have my own two acres of land and can decide most of the things I receive, so I feel really satisfied.
A popsicle seller came over on a bicycle in the distance. Li Long shouted to the man, and the popsicle seller hurried over. "Three creams." Li Long paid.
With his wealth, it would be okay to buy popsicles for everyone else in Quanmai Chang, but there is no need to overcharge at this time. I have made a lot of money this year with the team members, so don’t stand out anymore at this time.
Sure enough, after buying here, several other stores spent money to buy popsicles, but basically they bought ordinary popsicles.
Others didn't have any objections because Li Long didn't buy them popsicles. At this time, most people were quite simple and very concerned about face.
When it was almost noon, Liang Yuemei went back to cook first. The sun was shining directly on her head. Li Long felt that sweat was pouring out from the cracks in his hair, but he saw that there was still a lot of hair, so he thought to hold on.
"Xiaolong, take the bag, put the sunflower heads in the bag, put them on the carriage, and then lead the carriage back after loading."
Li Jianguo knew that Li Long didn't like it. Farm work was assigned to him, so he was assigned new tasks.
Li Long didn't show any pretense. He stood up, patted the sunflower residue on his body, and went to install the flower plate.
When she got home, Liang Yuemei had already cooked the vegetables and was about to pull the note, and Li Long helped light the fire.
Continue in the afternoon.
In two days, I have finished knocking out the oil sunflowers, and the next step is to collect the ones in the team.
Li Long withdrew from the battle at this time and went fishing with Tao Daqiang.
There is no shortage of these work points, let others earn them.
After catching fish for a week, the team's oil sunflowers were collected and bagged, and the flower trays were divided among the families. Next, Li Long followed Li Jianguo to collect corn.
Breaking off corn cobs is a bit like harvesting sunflower seeds. You can cut off the poles after breaking them off, or you can cut off the poles while breaking them off. The corn that was broken off this time was not placed in the wheat field, but piled in his own home.
Bags of corn are piled under the shed in the yard, and the next step is a bigger job.
At this time, there was no machine for threshing corn kernels, so it was all done manually. Basically, I do it day and night. Use a screwdriver, that is, a screwdriver, to remove two rows of corn kernels from the cob, exposing long rows of gaps, and then rub the corn kernels off with your hands.
Usually at the end of the day, the thick part of the palm, which is the thenar, will become red or even bruised from rubbing.
But seeing the corn kernels piled up in such a pile, most of which were regarded as their own food, the farmers felt only joy at this time.
No matter how tired I am, I am still happy.
Five or six years later, there was the small hand-turned threshing machine, and even later, there was the tractor-driven threshing machine - and the combine harvester could only harvest wheat at this time. It took several generations of improvement before corn and sunflower harvesting could be harvested. Later, cotton picking machines became popular, and the army of flower pickers that lasted for twenty years began to decline.
Li Long worked solidly at home for three days, and then took Daqiang to Gu Boyuan's house for two days. He had finished processing the corn from both families. Next, he no longer planned to Participated in other farm work.
The spare house at home is no longer a spare house. It is filled with corn, sunflower oil and wheat. The wheat is distributed to each family by the team. Each family needs to grind it into flour by themselves. Of course, some People grind out many bags directly to save trouble, but most people just grind one or two bags directly and grind again after eating. So does the oil sunflower. Because wheat is easy to store, but flour is not.
That night, there were several common things cooked in the pot.
If you want to put it on the table of the previous life, it will be called a bumper harvest for the farmers.
Here are the tender corns that grow when you break the corns. Every time you break corns, there will be a few. Some of them may look tender, but they will feel a bit old after being cooked. The verification method is also simple. You can't just look at it and pinch it with your hands. If you can gently squeeze out the juice, it means it is really tender.
There are also freshly dug potatoes from the vegetable patch. The big ones are left for cooking. The smaller ones are not easy to cut, so they are simply boiled.
In fact, children prefer to burn potato eggs under the stove. It is also good to put a few under the stove in winter.
In addition to corn and potatoes, there are also edamame - which is actually soybeans. Mainly because there is a layer of hair on the pods, so they are called edamame.
Finally, there are soybeans - actually broad beans, but in Li Long's village, soybeans are called soybeans, and broad beans are called soybeans. It was not until much later, when students came back from learning, that they began to differentiate. Then someone in the village suddenly realized that they had called it wrong for so many years; some felt that it shouldn't be like this, because broad beans are obviously bigger than soybeans!
A confusing lawsuit.
When these things are boiled together, it is inevitable that there will be odor transfer. Fortunately, everyone basically has the skin and doesn’t care much about it.
The space in the room is small and a bit stuffy. It is in the yard. I take out a big plate and eat it by myself while chatting.
Li Long thinks this is good. In the last few years of my previous life, it was difficult to find anyone to chat with. After sitting together and chatting for a few words, we turned on our mobile phones and watched our own short videos. The voices were very loud, very noisy, and very boring.
"Xiaolong, the work at home is finished, will you still catch fish tomorrow?" Li Jianguo asked.
"Wait for two more days. The Mid-Autumn Festival will be in two days. Wait until the Mid-Autumn Festival to start fishing again. Then, sell the fish and buy some mooncakes."
There is no Mid-Autumn Festival here. There are so many things to pay attention to, such as worshiping the moon and eating moon cakes together as a family. Li Long doesn't like eating that thing very much. It's too sweet and too hard. It's okay to eat jujube paste occasionally.
I don’t know if there are only Wuren now.
"That's fine." Li Jianguo nodded, "rest for two days before going. I heard someone in the team saying, if you don't catch fish these days, our dad is not here, and those who catch fish and sell them will have a day I can earn a few more dollars.”
"Hey, let them be happy for a few more days." (End of Chapter)