Old Zhou sat on the threshold and looked up at the sky. Man Bao had just finished his notes. He listened to Keke's suggestion and came out to look up and raise his eyes. Seeing her father sitting on the threshold, she also sat on the threshold and looked up with him. look at the sky.
Sitting on the threshold, one big and one small, they were silent, and a passing villager couldn't help laughing when they saw it, "What are you two looking at?"
Old Zhou sighed, "Oh my God."
Man Bao nodded with a serious face, "Look at the clouds."
The villagers also looked up at the sky, and saw the sky was full of sunset clouds, so they leaned against the wall and looked together, "Uncle Jin, do you think it will be sunny this day?"
It rained two more times today, one after another. Although the sun came out in the afternoon, it is not easy for everyone to use scythes to harvest rice on such days.
Old Zhou touched his bong, and said, "It doesn't matter whether tomorrow will be sunny or not, you can't wait, the rice in the field has to be cut when it turns yellow."
"Your house will be sick tomorrow?"
"Well, after cutting it, pick it back and dry it at home instead of leaving it in the field."
The villagers were a little envious, "Uncle Jin, it's okay for your family to have a large population. My family is not good. There are only six people and two children. You can cut a piece of land in a day. It is impossible to pick it back."
Old Zhou was a little proud, but he still laughed and said, "I have a lot of family members, but I also have a lot of land. They are all the same, the same."
The same is strange, the speed of cutting a piece of land by one person is different from that of two people cutting two pieces of land together.
Although he didn't know why, it was just different.
They can't calculate, but they can see with their eyes and compare directly.
Man Bao pouted and said, "Sir, there is no holiday for the autumn harvest."
Old Zhou Tou laughed and said, "If you don't let it go, don't let it go. Anyway, there is not much rice this year, so there is no need for you little ones to go to the field."
"That's right. My family has planted a total of twelve acres of rice, and half of it has been destroyed." The villagers said with some joy: "Thanks to the imperial court's tax exemption, otherwise we would not be able to survive this year."
In fact, although the imperial court is exempt from taxes, everyone's life is tight.
In the past, one mu of rice could harvest about two and a half dan, but now there may not be even a dan.
A lot of rice has not yet been filled with grout, and when you touch it, it is all empty shells, and you can only use straw when you cut it off.
The luck of the old Zhoutou's family was not a little better in rice, and it was the same situation. Several fields were directly washed away, and now there are more grass in the fields than rice.
But now the pressure on their family is not so great, because the wheat harvest is good, and Zhou Zhou has a fixed income every day recently, plus Fu Ling's windfall, so now the old Zhou Tou is quite calm and steady.
The old Zhou's family decided to harvest rice. As soon as the news came out, many people also went to the fields to look at the rice. It has already entered August. Even after the flood, most of the rice has turned yellow and is ready to be harvested.
They looked at the sky and decided to start harvesting tomorrow.
The decision of the country people is so quick and unreasonable. The day before, everyone was too idle to sit under the tree with twine and split the thread. The next day, before dawn, everyone took the sickle and picked out the bamboo basket to go out.
From slack to busy in an instant.
Rice harvest is better than wheat, but not many villagers in Qili Village are happy, because this year's rice harvest is really poor, so that everyone has little motivation.
The old Zhou family didn't let He's and Fang's go to the field at all, and the rest of them worked for six or seven days to cut back all the rice in the field, and then began to slowly threshing.
Because there is no rice in a lot of rice husks, when they are shoveled up with a dustpan and blown against the wind, a large pile is blown out in an instant, and there are not many good rice that fall down.
But everyone had already expected that, although they sighed, they were not very sad.
Everyone will also collect the rice husks that have been blown out. If there is not enough food in the family in the coming spring, these rice husks can be ground to eat.
Lao Zhou's family also kept it, but Lao Zhou calculated the food at home and thought it was enough, so he decided to feed it to the chickens.
Looking at the ten or so bags of empty rice husks she had put away, she sighed and said, "Go to the market and buy ten more chickens. It just so happens that the few hens raised last year are old and can be killed during the Chinese New Year." eat."
"The chicken shed is not big enough." Man Bao glanced at the hen shed in distaste and said, "Mom, they don't like to lay eggs when they are too crowded."
Little Qian took a look at Man Bao, and took the opportunity to suggest, "Mother, why don't we tidy up the wasteland behind the house and build a chicken shed there, which is spacious and the house is not messy."
Qian hesitated, "After all, it is outside the house, in case someone steals it..."
"Who is so bold, and we have a lot of chickens at home. If someone really steals them, we will know as soon as the chickens crow."
Xiaoqian disliked the chicken shed in the yard more than once. Although the children cleaned the yard every day, she was the first to get up early and the last to go to bed late, and some dirt inevitably entered her eyes.
Man Bao obviously mentioned this after hearing her nagging.
Sure enough, Man Bao agreed with his sister-in-law's suggestion with both hands and feet.
"What if there are weasels?" There are not only people who steal chickens in the village, but also mice and weasels.
Among them, the harm of mice and weasels is the greatest.
Qili Village is still relatively simple, although there are lazy people and annoying gangsters, but because there are few people and everyone is related, there is no one who particularly harms the neighbors.
The gangsters that the village dislikes are just lazy people who like to wander around in the mountains and rivers.
For example, Zhou Lang was once classified as a gangster.
Zhou Dalang thought for a while and said, "Didn't there be some stones left over when we built our house last year? Let's just use stones for the bottom, use yellow mud for the top, and surround the outside with a fence, so the weasels shouldn't be able to get in."
Tuesday Lang continued: "The broken tiles from June are still piled up in the corner. We used them to build chicken coops, so the mice couldn't get in."
Only then did Qian agree.
The area extending from the right side of Zhou's house to the back of the house is all their vegetable garden.
The vegetable garden on the right was opened when Lao Zhoutou's parents were there, and later Qian took over. Because the family's population grew, she expanded it little by little. Anyway, it is not someone's land. , so she planted it and planted it behind the house.
There is a mountain about 300 meters away from the land behind the house, which is the mouthful of land allocated to Zhou Dalang by the village.
There are five or six clumps of bamboo growing a little bit up from the foot of the mountain, while hemp was planted at the foot of the mountain before, but now they have all been cut back.
The mountain is not very far from their home, and the open space of more than 300 meters in the middle is unowned, and few people usually go there.
Mrs. Qian automatically assigned that piece of land to her own area, and without telling the village chief, the family started to muddy the next day to build a chicken coop.
When the construction really started, Man Bao went there to look back and forth, and then found that the chicken coop in the back is also good, "In the future, we can drive the chickens to the mountains to find bugs to eat."
Qian smiled, "How many insects can there be on the mountain? It's better to go to the field."
Qian was taken aback when she said this, "Yes, we can drive the chickens to the fields to eat the worms."