After school this afternoon, Mrs. Wen said that there was no need to go to school in the afternoon, so Yingbao took her two younger brothers and her mother to the south slope to pick cotton.
The cotton planted on the south slope has all bloomed and is ready to be harvested.
The Jiang family, young and old, and some villagers are helping to pick cotton in the field, and they have almost finished picking.
When Yingbao and A'niang arrived, the snow-white cotton they had picked was piled up on the bluestone slabs in the yard, three big piles in total.
"Oh, this is cotton." Chen Cunzheng and the clan leader were bored, so they strolled to the new house of the Jiang family on the south slope. Seeing a yard full of white cotton wool, they couldn't help but grab a handful in their hands to examine it.
"It's really soft." Clan leader Chen couldn't let go of this fine and soft cotton wool and asked Jiang Sanlang, "Sanlang, do you want to sell this cotton wool?"
Jiang Sanlang nodded: "We can sell the rest we keep for ourselves, but we can't sell all of it."
His daughter said that the cotton could be spun into thread and woven into cloth, so he decided to spin some thread at home and try to weave some cotton cloth.
It is much easier to spin cotton thread than to spin ramie and kudzu thread.
As long as you harvest it carefully, avoid getting it contaminated by leaves or grass, and remove the cotton seeds, you can put it directly on the spinning wheel. Unlike ramie and kudzu vines, you have to soak and peel them, then pound and spin them, which is very tiring.
This year, Jiang Sanlang's family did not plant much ramie, and they didn't even harvest the kudzu vines on the north mountain.
Chen Sanyou asked: "Sanlang, where did you find these seeds?"
"My Baoer bought them from a peddler, who said they were seeds from foreign countries." Jiang Sanlang did not hide anything.
The girl did buy a lot of seeds from the peddler, but he didn't know which peddler she bought them from later.
The clan leader looked at Yingbao and said with a smile: "Your Yingbao is indeed very lucky. I have lived to be sixty years old, and I have never seen a child more clever than her." No one else can have such luck.
People can easily buy cotton seeds that he has never seen in his life from the peddler. Alas, those terrible things at home should really be thrown into the manure pit to become fertilizer.
Jiang Sanlang smiled and didn't respond.
It is estimated that we can harvest more than 2,000 kilograms of seed cotton from the four acres of cotton field. If the cotton seeds are removed, there will be about 1,000 kilograms of lint cotton.
After a thousand kilograms of lint cotton is dried and softened, it can be used to make two sets of soft new cotton-padded clothes for everyone in the family, and it is more than enough to make more than a dozen quilts.
His daughter also told him about the objects needed for beating cotton. She also drew a longbow for beating cotton, saying that it could be used to bead the lint into soft cotton batting.
It is said that the peddler told the girl all this.
"Sanlang, do you sell these cotton seeds?" Chen Sanyou asked, "Can you sell some to me so I can plant some?"
Jiang Sanlang scratched his head, a little hesitant.
He's not ready to sell all his cotton seeds yet.
Because my eldest brother, second brother and my parents all have to plant crops on the dry land on the south slope, and I will definitely have to plant more than ten acres next year, this amount of seeds may not be enough.
Seeing that Jiang Sanlang was in trouble, Chen Sanyou said, "Sanlang, I don't want much either. Just enough to plant two acres of land."
When Chief Chen heard this, he immediately stretched his neck and said, "Sanlang, my family only needs two acres of land. Alas, my old legs are cold and I can't stand the cold."
A villager nearby laughed and said, "Mr. Chen, you have had cold legs for many years. Even when there was no cotton, your legs were not affected by the cold."
Patriarch Chen glared at the man, his beard standing up in anger: "You little bastard, you're the only one who talks too much."
Several people laughed and said, "We also agreed with Brother Jiang San to buy cotton seeds. If you want them, you have to queue up according to the rules."
Jiang Sanlang smiled helplessly.
These five people came to his house to help, and he had promised to sell them 20 kilograms of cotton seeds each, which is 100 kilograms in total.
Now the clan leader and the village chief also wanted to buy, and he couldn't refuse, so he sold another forty kilograms.
I plan to plant another ten acres of cotton next year. If we calculate based on ten kilograms of seeds per acre, that would be one hundred kilograms.
My eldest brother, second brother, parents also want to plant ten acres of crops, which means 300 kilograms of seeds.
I estimate that I still have four to five hundred kilograms of cotton seeds left.
These seeds are rare. If he sells them to people from other villages, he won't sell them for less than one or two taels of silver per pound.
Of course, it’s not a good idea to tell this to the clan leaders.
After picking cotton, the most tiring part is pulling out the cotton stalks.
Those cotton stalks, like small trees, must be pulled out by the roots before the next step of tilling the field can be carried out.
Fortunately, Jiang Sanlang is popular now and many people come to help him.
Just by shouting in the village, twenty or thirty young men would come and pull out all the cotton stalks in the four acres of cotton field in just one day.
Yingbao and her two younger brothers stayed with their parents at Nanpo for one night and were sent back to the village the next day.
As soon as she got home, Erni ran over and told Yingbao a shocking news, which was from Chen Zhao's family.
"You may not know, but Chen Zhao's eldest sister jumped into the river yesterday." Erni said with interest.
Yingbao was stunned.
Chen Wan jumped into the river
"What happened next?" she asked. "Is anything alright?"
How should she describe her feeling towards Chen Wan? Just like a familiar stranger.
In fact, Han's children have little affection for each other, nor do they have the kind of sisterly love that ordinary families have. Their way of getting along is indifference.
They will not sympathize with or help others.
This includes myself.
Of course, I only have no family affection or sisterly feelings towards them, but I love my twin brothers to the core.
Thinking back to the hardships I had endured in the Chen family in my previous life, sometimes I almost died of illness, but they wouldn't even look at me.
At that time, Chen Wan was already a teenager, and Chen Zhao was only two years younger than her older sister.
However, ever since Han gave birth to their son Chen Xu, the two sisters liked him very much, especially in front of Han, the two sisters almost tried to please their brother.
In my previous life, when I first arrived at the Chen family, I tried to treat them as my own sisters. When the eldest sister was beaten and scolded by Han, I felt sorry for her and felt sorry for her. I stood in front of her and pushed her to run away.
As a result, he was beaten by Han and locked in a chicken coop at night without any food.
Ying Baoshi thought that her elder sister would also take care of her and at least bring her some food.
Because the Chen family was not poor, they had hundreds of acres of farmland, most of which were rented out to other families for farming, so there was no shortage of food at home, and sometimes they ate better than the Jiang family did now.
Even though Chen Wan was often beaten, she was never deprived of clothing and food.
The result was no such thing. The next day, Chen Wan didn't even ask her a question, let alone let her out secretly.
"I heard he was rescued." Erni blinked and said, "He was rescued by a fisherman passing by."
"Fisherman?" Could it be the fisherman that Chen Wan finally married
Chen Wan later married a fisherman who was six or seven years older than her, and was said to be living a good life.
"When she was rescued, she had no clothes on and was lying naked on the ground. The fisherman even controlled the water and patted her belly."
Erni was beaming with joy as she spoke, "Now Sister Chen Zhao has been seen naked by the whole village. How can she talk about her in-laws in the future?"
Yingbao: "... Sister Erni, you are not even nine years old yet, how come you know so much?"
Erni snorted, "Who doesn't understand this?"
Children in the countryside mature early, and some of them have already decided on their in-laws and started going through the gift-giving process when they are eight or nine years old.
During the Chinese New Year and other festivals, when people from the husband's family come to give gifts, they will definitely give the girl a piece of red cloth to make clothes.
Then all the girls in the village would come to see the girl's son-in-law, and they would stare at him until his head drooped to his chest.