"What are you doing!" a roar sounded in the distance.
The owner of the paddy field had already rushed over angrily.
"Run!" Dani picked up her shoes with one hand, pulled Yingbao with the other and ran away.
Yuanbao followed closely behind, and in an instant the three children ran far away.
"If you come over here again, I'll break your legs, you little bastard!"
The owner of the field didn't really chase them, he just wanted to chase these naughty kids away.
There are monkeys in and outside the village. How can we beat them every time we catch them
They are all children from the same village, and every family has some troublemakers.
Yingbao ran all the way home with her cousins and was given a small handful of water chestnuts.
She was so happy that her eyes curved with joy. She secretly sent a few into the space to be used as seeds, and gave the rest to her mother.
Chunniang took it reluctantly and scolded him, "Why did you go to the paddy field? What if you trample on other people's rice seedlings?"
Yingbao was proud: "It wasn't damaged."
Chunniang sighed, washed the water chestnuts, picked out the black, rotten and shriveled ones, and only a dozen or so were left that were fresh and edible.
At this moment, Dani and Yuanbao had returned home with their spoils. Yingbao divided a dozen water chestnuts into three portions, one for father, one for mother, and one for herself.
It was impossible for Chunniang to take her daughter's snacks. She just said that she didn't like them and asked her daughter to keep them for herself.
Yingbao didn't force it. After eating a sweet bite, she brought the rest into the house and placed it on the kang.
He kicked off his shoes and climbed onto the kang, closed his eyes, and let his consciousness enter the cave.
I saw a pile of soil next to the pool, and a lot of earthworms were crawling outside the pile, all heading towards the pool. It looked scary.
What's going on
Why would the earthworms in the mud pile run into the pond? It would be terrible if the water was polluted.
Yingbao quickly picked up two sticks to pick up the earthworms and put them all into a half-broken pottery jar.
She picked up this thing from outside. Although it was torn, it was still usable, so she put it in the cave.
I originally hoped to use it to scoop water, and now it comes in handy.
Soon all the earthworms were picked up, and Yingbao shoveled some soil into the pottery jar to prevent them from running out.
After thinking about it, he pulled out another earthworm, picked up some Wudingzhi from the stone wall, crushed it and smeared it on the earthworm.
For a long time, the earthworm showed no reaction and did not struggle.
It can be seen that this thing is not poisonous, but I don’t know whether it is edible by humans.
Maybe take some out to try with the hens tomorrow.
A while ago, she only gave the hens pond water to drink and did not feed them Wudingzhi, but she threw them some shepherd's purse grown in the cave.
She picked some shepherd's purse seeds from outside and scattered a handful on the black soil. Unexpectedly, a large patch of them grew in a few days, and they were green and tender. Each plant was bigger than her head.
Seeing that the shepherd's purse was about to take up all the black soil by the pond, she had to shovel some out and secretly feed the chickens.
Judging from the recent egg-laying frequency of hens, the vegetables produced from the black soil should be good stuff.
So she always liked to sneak out alone when she had nothing to do, and when she came back she would bring half a basket of shepherd's purse to give to her mother.
Chunniang was very surprised at first, wondering why her daughter could always find such fresh and plump wild vegetables.
You know, it's summer now, most shepherd's purse are in bloom and bear seeds, and the stems and leaves are too old to bite and cannot be eaten at all.
And every time my daughter would bring back half a basket of plump and tender shepherd's purse, it was really impressive.
Fortunately, Chunniang didn't think too deeply about it, and she had no idea that there was such a thing as a golden finger in the secret cave in the world. She just thought that her daughter was smart and clever and had better luck than other children.
Inspired by shepherd's purse, Yingbao turned her attention to the rocky space beside the pond.
She wants to cover this place with soil and plant various vegetables.
Although perennial fruit trees cannot grow large, these annual or semi-annual leafy vegetables can grow normally and grow very quickly.
When the vegetables grow, if people can’t finish eating them, they can feed them to chickens, sheep and pigs.
In the spring of next year, she will let the hens at home hatch some chicks and feed them with the crops from the cave.
In this way, when my younger brother grows up, he will have plenty of eggs to eat, and if he can’t finish them, he can take them to the market to exchange for money or other things.
So these days she collects all kinds of things.
He accepted all the seeds, such as shepherd's purse seeds, horsefly grass seeds, dandelion seeds, mustard seeds, etc. He picked some of them and placed them on the broken pottery shards he had picked up for later use.
Unfortunately, the variety of vegetables in the small mountain village is pitifully small. There is nothing else in the villagers' vegetable fields except amaranth, green vegetables, winter melon, kohlrabi, etc.
Unlike in the capital city, there are a wide variety of vegetables on the tables of wealthy families, and some aristocratic farms even have varieties from foreign countries.
Those foreign crops were rare and precious, and ordinary people had no access to them at all, so Yingbao could only think about them in her heart.
Yingbao squatted down and scooped up a few shepherd's purse. When she estimated that it was enough for the family's lunch tomorrow, she stopped.
Then I scattered the freshly harvested water chestnuts on a piece of black soil and watered them thoroughly.
Feeling a little tired at this moment, Yingbao quickly left the cave and fell asleep.
When she woke up, her father had already returned and her mother had just prepared dinner and was about to call her.
"Baoer, get up and eat."
Yingbao turned over and sat up, rubbed her eyes, turned over and slid down the earthen kang on her stomach.
He put on his shoes, reached out and held A Niang's hand, and walked out of the house with her.
The sun was setting at the moment, and there was a gentle breeze outside, which was much cooler than inside the house.
The dining table was placed in the middle of the yard. On the table was a large bowl of amaranth and corn porridge, a pile of black-flour cakes, and a plate of pickled turnip shreds.
After washing his hands and face, Jiang Sanlang hung the towel on the clothesline, then walked to the table and sat down.
The family of three sat around and started eating.
"Sanlang, are you going to hoe the fields tomorrow?" Chunniang asked.
Jiang Sanlang shook his head. "We have finished hoeing the bean field. My eldest brother still has two acres of land, but he doesn't need my help."
The three brothers of the Jiang family divided the family but not the households, and they each cultivated their own land. But because their parents were still alive, their parents' permanent land and the land allocated to them were under Jiang Dalang's name. So during the busy farming season, the brothers would go to help.
Jiang Sanlang drank vegetable porridge from a ceramic bowl that was bigger than his head. He slurped a few mouthfuls and stuffed a few pickles into his mouth, chewing them slowly. "I'm going to Beishan tomorrow. I think the ramie can be harvested there."
Ramie is harvested three times a year, and the end of July is the second harvest time, so we can't delay.
"There are a lot of hemp planted in Beishan. Can you do it alone? How about asking your elder and second brothers for help?" Chunniang felt sorry for her husband's hard work while she couldn't help at all, and was a little worried.
Jiang Sanlang shook his head. "No need to hire them. I can do it by myself and it will be done in a few days."
Yingbao blinked and looked at her father, and suddenly said, "Dad, I'll go tomorrow too."
There are many wild fruit trees in Beishan. Even if those trees cannot bear good fruits, she has black soil. She can cultivate them first and then move them out to try.
Jiang Sanlang stretched out his hand and pinched her little nose, and said with a smile: "What are you going to do? Dad has to be busy with work, and can't take you with him."
Yingbao wrinkled her nose and mumbled, "Baoer wants to go. Baoer doesn't need daddy to take him."
"Wow! You've become really capable." The father rubbed his daughter's head, "Be good and listen, I'll bring you some wild apricots when I get back."
After dinner, Jiang Sanlang cleaned up the dishes and boiled water for the family to wash up. By the time he finished everything, it was already dark.
Jiang Sanlang used a palm-leaf fan to drive away the mosquitoes in the linen tent, lowered the tent door, and the family of three went to the kang to rest.
Yingbao was sleeping in the innermost room, close to her mother, dozing with her eyes closed but her ears perked up, listening to her parents' whispers.
There’s no way. I slept too long in the afternoon and felt a little excited at night and couldn’t fall asleep.
"Is Baoer asleep?" asked Father Jiang.
Yingbao didn't make a sound and pretended to be asleep.
She knew that whenever her father asked this question, it was because he wanted to tell her mother something he didn't want her to hear.
In the darkness, A Niang touched her eyes with her hands.
"She fell asleep." Chunniang said, "She must have been tired today. She went to the paddy field with Dani to pick water chestnuts in the middle of the day and said she would leave them for you. After dinner, she fiddled with her two apple seedlings, watering and fertilizing them. She was afraid that the chickens would peck at them, so she looked everywhere for a basket to cover them."
Jiang Sanlang chuckled twice and asked, "Where did you get the apple seedlings?"
"It's the apple you brought back last time. Bao'er left the seeds. Tsk, I don't know how she planted it, but it actually sprouted two seedlings."
Chunniang sighed: "How old is she? She actually knew to save the kernel for seed and actually planted it."
Jiang Sanlang was silent for a long time before he said, "Chun Niang, don't tell these words to others in the future."
Chunniang heard that her husband's tone was not right, and asked hurriedly: "What's wrong? Did anyone say anything?"
"Yeah." Jiang Sanlang said, "I met Aunt Wang today. She said that everyone in the village said Yingbao was a fertility boy. I was afraid that someone had bad intentions."
How could a child this young bear such a reputation? If the rumors got more and more outrageous, they and their husbands, who were peasants, would not be able to protect their daughter.
Chunniang also fell silent.