Chapter 618: Planting Garlic
After the garlic seeds are ready, it is less than a week before frost.
If it were just Zhang An’s family, one week would definitely not be enough.
Garlic planting is a delicate job, which is different from the physical work of harvesting rice. Zhang An has no place to use his strength.
Even though he is so big, the aunts and sisters in the village have to be good at growing garlic.
"Mom, you'd better find a few people and finish the planting in three or two days."
During dinner in the evening, Zhang An discussed with his mother about hiring someone to grow garlic. matter.
In the past two years, I was used to paying people to do the work. During the rice harvest this fall, everyone was busy with their own affairs, and there was really no one to hire. The family had harvested so much rice themselves, but they couldn’t afford it. Zhang An was exhausted.
Nowadays, people in the village are not so busy. He is not willing to act like a cow anymore. Why not spend a little money to make his family more relaxed.
"Then I'll go look for it after dinner. There should be four or five."
Wang Fang is not opposed to paying people to do work. After all, if there is one thing, there are two, and if there are two, there are three.
Early the next morning, Zhang An and his father Zhang Jianguo led the Dahei couple to the field.
After harvesting the rice, several acres of the field are still flat fields, which must be plowed before planting.
Wang Fang had already found the garlic growers last night. They had to plow the fields quickly this morning so that everyone could enter the fields.
But there is no need to worry. There are two horses at home, and the father and son plow the fields together, so there is no need to worry.
Dahei was still as aggressive as before, dragging the plow and running wildly, so Zhang came to drive it away personally.
On the other hand, my wife is much more steady when pulling a plow.
"Go, go, let's play. If you like to drag plows, I will prepare a pair for you another day, and let you try it next year."
At this moment, Zhang An regretted it very much. When they brought Dahei and his wife out, they also let out their son Xiaohei.
Because this guy is curious about everything, when he saw his parents pulling plows, he followed behind him out of curiosity and scared him away, which was quite a delay.
Speaking of which, Siqi is a month older, and is now over a year old. He looks about the same height as other horses, even taller than some of the pack horses in the village. He is already considered a big horse.
That is, in Zhang An's house, if it had been placed in other people's homes, it would have been put on a rein and started to learn how to pull a plow and a rake.
After being chased away by Zhang An, it indeed stopped running around Dahei.
But don’t expect it to be obedient, because this guy went to his mother.
I was plowing the ground and plowing the snow, but I stopped several times because of this rebellious guy.
“Come on, Dad, you plow first, I’ll take it home and lock it up first, it will delay things too much.”
Zhang An is not going to let it go now, Let Dahei stop, and then drag it into the circle.
I have to say that without its troubles, the two horses plowed very quickly. Because this field was used to dry rice some time ago, the rice piles left in the field have been dug out by everyone. , and soon half of the field was plowed.
Then Zhang An led Dahei to take charge of the plowboard field, while Zhang Jianguo led Ta Xue back to pull out the soil trench from the area just plowed to make it easier to plant garlic.
When Zhang Jianguo had just pulled out a few ditches, several people who were found by Wang Fang last night also came to the field with their own hoes, and soon went down to the field to start planting garlic.
Wang Fang didn't come because Su Ying went to class again and there was a little ancestor at home to watch.
But after Zhang Jianguo pulled out the ditch in the largest field, he also joined the garlic planting army.
Zhang An took Dahei and continued to plow the other fields, but there was no need to be busy pulling the ditches, because we couldn’t plant here today. We would do it later when it was time to plant. It wouldn’t take much time anyway. .
After all, the big field just now is more than two acres, and it is considered fast to be able to plant it all today.
"Zhang An, you have so many fields, are they all used to grow garlic? Don't you grow any rapeseed?"
Zhang An's fields are in full swing, and there are people watching from the fields. Quite a few people.
In the village, growing garlic is not a rare thing at all, but here in Zhang An’s house, all six acres of the field are used to grow garlic, which is a first for the entire village.
Nowadays, no matter what Zhang An does, he will attract the attention of the people in the village, because he eats too many crabs, and everyone thinks that he will not do something for no reason.
“It’s no longer necessary to plant it. It’s very troublesome to grow rapeseed. You have to sow the seeds and transplant it. Once it grows, it’s difficult to weed. Garlic is easier to take care of.”
Zhang An buried his head in planting garlic seeds while talking to everyone, without delaying anything.
"Garlic is easier to take care of than rapeseed, but can you make money with this thing?"
This is the main reason why everyone comes to watch. It's not that they don't want to plant crops that are easy to take care of, but mainly because they are worried about selling. If you don't drop it, it will be smashed into your hands, and a season's worth of crops will be wasted.
Although rapeseed is a bit more difficult to maintain, the advantage is that many people will go to the countryside to harvest it and will not drop it in their hands.
“I can’t guarantee whether you can make money, but growing garlic will definitely not be worse than growing rapeseed. What do you think? If you grow rapeseed, you can only sell rapeseed, but if you grow garlic, you can sell garlic seedlings and garlic sprouts. , and finally sell garlic, no matter how bad it is, how bad can it be?”
Zhang An doesn’t hide anything from everyone, he just tells everyone what he thinks.
“Hey, it seems like this is the case. In two months, these garlic sprouts will be on the market. This thing is much more expensive than garlic.”
“There are also garlic sprouts. It’s cheap, don’t you remember, during the Qingming festival this year, the garlic sprouts sold for just over a piece?”
After Zhang An noticed it, everyone immediately understood the reason.
However, Zhang An just smiled after hearing this. More than one garlic sprout is nothing at all. It will only become more and more expensive in the future. At the most expensive time, it cost more than ten yuan per pound.
"That being said, it's a bit of a gamble to plant so many. If you can't buy them, all your hard work will be in vain."
Although many people are attracted by garlic sprouts and garlic sprouts, there are still sober people.
No matter what you grow, marketing is always the biggest problem. If you can't sell it, everything will be in vain.
"Hahaha, I'm not worried about this. Ding Yi has opened so many supermarkets. Just let him collect them when the time comes. I only have so much garlic in these acres of land."
< br>Even if the garlic sprouts and garlic sprouts cannot be sold, Zhang An is not worried. In the worst case, he will just sell the garlic.
Anyway, this thing is easy to store. Let Ding Yi collect it and sell it slowly.
“Yes, with Boss Ding here, Zhang An really doesn’t have to worry about selling the garlic.”
When Ding Yi was mentioned, everyone suddenly realized that after all, who didn’t know that Zhang An The relationship with Boss Ding is like two brothers.
The question was answered and everyone quickly dispersed.
Work will naturally go faster if there are more people, and the few people Wang Fang hired are all very hard-working and never cheat. Including Zhang An and his son, there are seven people in total, and it took three days Within days, all six acres of the field were planted with garlic.
However, Zhang An estimated that the garlic seeds were a little off, but the difference was not big, only about a dozen kilograms.
This little garlic was not worth buying again, so Zhang An found more than ten kilograms of garlic heads from other houses in the village and planted them in the remaining space.
Pork heads are a good thing. Although they grow up to be similar to green onions, they taste very refreshing and crunchy after being pickled. They are one of Zhang An's favorite side dishes.
The garlic at Zhang An’s house has just been planted, and the next day happens to be the day when Zhang Ping is going to deliver the horoscopes to the woman’s family.
Originally, he thought that if he couldn't make it in time, he would stop for a day and wait for Zhang Ping's incident to be over before continuing. Unexpectedly, he happened to catch up.
Although Zhang Jianwen and Bai Xue's family have already discussed it, it will just be a formality and there is no need to make it too grand.
But Zhang Jianwen’s lifelong popularity in the village did not allow it, so everyone took the initiative to help. When we finally set off, there were three cars in total, including two from Zhang An's family, and Chen Ze also followed.
If Li Hongbin hadn’t gone to the construction site, there would have been one more car.
A few days later, the last solar term of this autumn, frost, arrived.
Speaking of this frost, it is a hurdle. Every year after the 16th day of the ninth month of the lunar calendar, the weather immediately drops.
Not only have there been fewer sunny days, frost has started to fall every morning, and it can even rain.
Although it doesn’t rain too much every time, it’s basically drizzle, but it makes everyone feel cold.
After all, autumn rain and cold are not just words.
It was during this time that people began to give up cool short-sleeved shorts and began to wear long-sleeved trousers.
Because it will be winter soon.
God is very generous. As soon as I mentioned the autumn rain, it started to drizzle and become hazy the next day.
When Wang Fang woke up early in the morning, she was worried that her grandson would be frozen, so she put on thick clothes for little Siqi.
The little guy is usually pretty nimble, but as a result, the clothes are thicker and he looks a lot clumsy. Even a simple climb on a chair looks naive.
When we walked into the courtyard, there were only a few dead leaves scattered on the ground a few days ago, but they suddenly fell all over the ground.
Looking up again, I saw that the leaves on the tall and straight Davidia trees in the courtyard had almost fallen. This must be the work of the autumn wind that blew loudly last night.
But this is already remarkable. On the mountains outside, the deciduous trees had begun to lose their leaves some time ago.
Of course, not all trees lose their leaves. For example, the honeysuckle that was planted just a few months ago is still green now.
In this dry late autumn, a touch of green life is added to the entire yard.
After all, honeysuckle is also called honeysuckle. Even if it reaches minus 20 or 30 degrees, they will not be affected.
The same is true in the backyard. On such a large grape trellis, all the leaves have fallen off and turned into a bunch of bare vines.
Wang Fang came out of the house with a big broom, ready to clean up the fallen leaves.
"Mom, give it to me, I'll clean it."
Anyway, I have nothing to do, so naturally I can't watch my mother clean the yard.
But when he was sweeping the leaves together, God was very shameless and blew the autumn wind.
So the dead leaves that had just been gathered together were blown everywhere again.
As soon as the little guy saw the leaves being blown all over the sky, he immediately started chasing them in the yard.
But now he is no longer as strong as he used to be, and the thick clothes have made him a lot bloated.
I just jumped around in the yard a few times, my feet slipped and I fell to the ground.
As personal bodyguards, Xiaohu and the big dogs immediately came to protect him.
Suddenly, the yard was full of dog shadows running back and forth.
But Zhang An ignored them and continued to clean the leaves. Even if the little guy fell down, he didn't feel anything because of his thick clothes. Instead, he became one with Xiaohu and the others.
Then Zhang An learned his lesson and took the bamboo basket over and continued to clean. Every time he swept a pile, he put it into the bamboo basket first so that it would not be blown everywhere by the wind.
“Qiqi, we are playing.”
While the little guy was having a lively play with Xiaohu and the others, Zhang Jianwen came over.
"Grandpa~~"
The little guy ran over and called "Grandpa" and then returned to the pile of dogs.
"Uncle is here."
Zhang An stopped the broom and greeted Zhang Jianwen.
"Didn't you want eggs a few days ago? I happened to have saved some these days. I'll bring them to you."
After Zhang Jianwen said this, he handed over the basket in his hand. .
"Actually, uncle, there is no need to be in such a hurry. I am not in a hurry to get it."
Zhang An looked at the basket and saw that there were about twenty eggs in it.
But it may be because the female chicken is smaller, so the egg is not too big.
"Your aunt and I don't usually eat much. Yesterday, your mother said that you happened to have a chicken nest at home, so I brought it to you."
The Zhang Jianwen family did indeed I don’t eat eggs very much because I save them all and sell them to Ding Yi.
"Uncle, take these eggs back and let my aunt make them into preserved eggs for the New Year."
Zhang An didn't give Zhang Jianwen any money because he knew Zhang Jianwen wouldn't want them at all, so he simply built a basket of his own egg.
Everyone in the village knows that their eggs are not only delicious fried, but also delicious when made into preserved eggs.
"You kid, I just brought you a few eggs, why did you come to your house to buy some?"
Looking at the basket full of eggs, Zhang Jianwen immediately refused. .
"Uncle, if you refuse, I won't let you go."
Zhang An didn't care and directly thrust the basket into Zhang Jianwen's hand.
Seeing what Zhang An said, Zhang Jianwen could only accept it.
"Zhang An, are you okay with something this afternoon?"
Then Zhang Jianwen asked again.
"There's nothing to do. I'm done with what I should be busy with."
Now that the garlic has been planted in the fields, Zhang An is just waiting for the weather to clear up in a few days, and then picks the tiles for the enclosure to prepare for the winter. Snowfall in the future.
"We are going to see a field with Chen Ze in the afternoon. If you have nothing to do, come with us."
Seeing that Zhang An was fine, Zhang Jianwen said again.
"Oh? Has this matter been negotiated?"
Although Zhang An took the lead here, one side is his friend and the other side is his village, so how can the two sides negotiate? He did not intervene.
"We have already negotiated a few days ago. If we sell ten acres of land, we can get 15% of the share. We just have to wait for the land to be selected and we can sign the contract."
said Thinking of this, Zhang Jianwen couldn't hide the smile on his face.
(End of this chapter)