On New Year's Eve, Jiang Zhen wanted to keep a vigil, but was driven back to sleep by Zhao Liu's.
Hexi Village doesn't care much about the vigil. The villagers don't even know when it's time. They usually have a New Year's Eve dinner, and the big guys talk about this year's affairs and go to bed.
On the first day of junior high, everyone gets up early.
Jiang Zhen took Zhao Jinge back to the room, and then opened the red envelope in his hand and looked at it. After looking at it, he realized that it was not silver but gold.
All the money he spent on Zhao Fugui and his wife was silver. This gold was probably given to him by Zhao Fugui who took the silver to the county seat.
Jiang Zhen put it away, and once again felt that it was not bad to travel back to ancient times.
Although it is inconvenient to take a bath here, he has a home anyway.
That night, Jiang Zhen didn't do anything to Brother Zhao Jin, but touched his stomach and talked to him a lot. After talking, the two fell asleep in a daze.
The next day, they were awakened by the sound of firecrackers.
There are already firecrackers these days, but most of the people in Hexi Village can't afford firecrackers and are unwilling to spend the money.
What woke them up was the firecrackers they set off at home.
Jiang Zhen thought it was already very late, but when he heard the noise and looked outside, he realized that the sky was still dark, and he was speechless for a while.
"The earlier the firecrackers are set off, the more prosperous the family will be this year... Dad may not have slept." Brother Zhao Jin also woke up and opened his eyes in a daze.
"I'll take a look." Jiang Zhen put on the cotton pants and jacket made by Zhao Liu's, opened the door and went out, and then saw Zhao Fugui lit a mulberry bar, and was about to ignite it far away from the firecrackers. The second firecracker.
Now that it was cold and the wind was strong, the mulberry strip was quickly blown out, so he put it into the fire next to it, lit it, and continued to light firecrackers.
"Father, let me come." Jiang Zhendao, firecrackers these days are not as good as later generations, Zhao Fugui does this, and I don't know how long it will take to ignite the second one...
Zhao Fugui was very at ease with Jiang Zhen, and he was about to give Jiang Zhen the mulberry bar in his hand, but Jiang Zhen took the mulberry bar, but did not use the mulberry bar to ignite the firecracker, but walked over and put the mulberry bar on the open space. The firecrackers were picked up and thrown into the fire.
Zhao Fugui: "..." Why didn't he think that he could still do this
Zhao Fugui was feeling a little stupid when he saw that firecracker exploded in the fire, sparks flying everywhere. If they weren't too close, they might have exploded.
Zhao Fugui: "..." Fortunately, he didn't expect to do this!
No matter what, they finally ordered all the firecrackers that Jiang Zhen bought, and not long after the sound of firecrackers sounded from their side, the sound of firecrackers also sounded on the other side of Zhao Dahu's house.
A new year has arrived.
It snowed twice a year ago in Hexi Village, but none of the snow accumulated on the ground. The snow melted the next day, and the impact on the people of Hexi Village was not as great as rain.
As for the new year, the weather has been very sunny.
On the third day of the new year, Jiang Zhen called all his subordinates back and continued to train. Such behavior would be considered inhumane in modern times, but at this time, no one thought there was anything wrong with it, and even thought that Jiang Zhen was a Great employer - he doesn't have much work to do and is willing to pay!
In particular, a few years ago, Jiang Zhen gave each of his subordinates a set of new clothes and some New Year's goods.
Jiang Zhen asked them to put on the new clothes when they came over in the future, so from the third day of the new year, there would often be a group of people wearing the exact same dark blue clothes in the village shouting "one two three four" in the village. ran on the road.
Most of these people are not from He Xicun, and the vast majority of those who work on the land that Jiang Zhen bought are those whom Jiang Zhen rescued from the water bandits. In the past, it was a lot more lively, and it was full of people watching.
When Dayu was in control of the flood, he passed the house three times but did not enter, but Jiang Zhen was different. He passed by the Zhao house with his subordinates. Even if he didn't do anything, he would enter the house to have a look. Look at Brother Zhao Jin. When he was inside the house, he went outside with a hoe and turned over the land near Zhao's house.
Jiang Zhen was a little worried at first and didn't want to let him do it. Later, when he saw a woman in the village with a belly that was eight or nine months old, and she was still turning over the ground, she stopped stopping Zhao Jinge from doing things.
However, when Brother Zhao Jin turned over the land near his house, he wanted to transfer to the other fields that Jiang Zhen bought to work, but Jiang Zhen stopped him: "Brother Jin, if you think you have nothing to do, Why don't you help me manage the brick kiln?"
The two craftsmen Jiang Zhen brought back had already built the first brick kiln, and burned out a batch of very brittle defective products, and most of those defective products were finally picked up by the children in the village.
These children usually can play for a long time with a single stone. Now that they have some bricks, it is very rare, and they want to use those bricks to grind wheels to play.
It's just that those well-crafted blue bricks can be polished to make smooth wheels, and even drill holes in the middle without breaking. These unevenly heated semi-red and non-green bricks can't do this, they In the end only got some broken bricks.
As a result, these broken bricks were finally picked up by the villagers of Hexi Village and planned to be mixed with soil to build chicken coops and pigsties.
"Okay, I'll watch it for you." Brother Zhao Jin nodded and said immediately.
Zhao Jinge went to the brick kiln, while Jiang Zhen continued to watch his subordinates for training, and found some people to dig a lot of soil by the canal, digging out a sunken port where many boats could dock.
This is a huge project, but it is not slow to do, and the cost is far less than Jiang Zhen thought.
The reason why the progress can be accelerated is because Jiang Zhen spent money to hire He Xicun and people from the surrounding villages to help.
Twenty wen per person per day, plus a meal, the conditions given by Jiang Zhen attracted people from Hexi Village and many surrounding villages, and everyone was scrambling to work for him.
Although twenty pennies can only buy a pound of pork, but in the countryside, ordinary people simply have nowhere to make money, and now it’s slack farming again, or when there is a shortage of food in spring…
Going to dredging can take care of you, and you still have 20 pennies to take, which is a good thing! The people in the nearby villages almost ran to tell each other, and everyone was scrambling to work for Jiang Zhen.
For 4 taels of silver a day, 200 people can be hired. These 200 people are still working very hard because they are afraid of being fired... It is difficult to slow down the progress of building the wharf.
Jiang Zhenhua hired nearby villagers, and Zhao Jinge did the same.
A few more brick kilns were built, more experiments could be done and more bricks fired, but then there would not be enough firewood and bricks…
Zhao Jinge asked the women and children in the village to help make bricks, and paid according to how much they made.
In this way, they will not be short of bricks and firewood immediately. Hexi Village and the surrounding villages can not get much firewood, and some people go to remote villages to buy firewood and sell them to Zhao Jinge to earn the difference.
Unconsciously, Jiang Zhen came to this place for a year.
He also inadvertently overheard someone talking about the Jiang family, and then he suddenly remembered it—that Jiang Chengxiang and Zhu Shufen had been married for a year.
Jiang Zhen recruits people to work, of course, it is impossible to recruit those who are annoying to look at, so he does not want the Jiang family, and this undoubtedly makes the Jiang family even more crowded out.
At the same time, something happened in the Jiang family.
The first time the Jiang family sold land was to repay the debt, and also to give Jiang Chengxiang twenty taels of silver to clear up the relationship so that he could have a stable job in the county.
It was precisely because Jiang Chengxiang asked his family for money that Jiang Chengcai insisted on asking for forty taels of silver to do business.
Later, Jiang Chengcai lost all his money, and Jiang Chengxiang said he had found a job in the county seat, but in fact... He didn't take a penny home.
Just at the beginning of the year, when the conflict between Jiang Chengcai and Jiang Chengxiang was getting worse and worse, Jiang Chengcai followed Jiang Chengxiang, and then... He found that Jiang Chengxiang didn't work at all, and after entering the city, he hid in a small house and couldn't get out!
It turned out that Jiang Chengxiang did not find a job he could do in the county seat at all.
At that time, Butcher Jiang and his wife were in a hurry, making him go to work in the field when he couldn't find a job. The villagers also looked at him with strange eyes, as if he was a waste of nothing, and he couldn't take it anymore.
He wanted to delay for a while to give himself more time to find errands that he could do. After thinking about it, he finally came up with a method - lied that he had found an errand and asked Jiang Butcher to ask for money, and then he could live in Go to the county seat and find an errand with peace of mind!
Jiang Chengxiang got the money as he wished, but later found that he seemed to have walked into a dead end.
He lied and said that he had already found an errand. In this case, he naturally couldn't run around all over the street to find an errand, otherwise... What if he was seen by people in Hexi Village or someone he knew
In the end, Jiang Chengxiang could only rent a house, and after going to the county town every day, he would hide in it, and he would only come out after hiding for a day, and then he went to find out what errands he could do.
Zhu Shufen didn't go out when she was pregnant, and the rest of the Jiang family didn't go to the county very much, so he was hiding it, but Jiang Chengcai's stalking led to the discovery of what he did.
Jiang Chengcai has been criticized by his family these days, but now he just turned over and started to accuse Jiang Chengxiang proudly, and felt that if Jiang Chengxiang was not lying, he would not ask for money to do business and still lose money...
After arguing, the two got into a fight.
The Jiang family was so riotous, the riot was too severe, Huang Min and Zhu Shufen were born prematurely together.
Although Huang Min was lazy, it was the second time she gave birth to a child. She soon gave birth to a boy, and she was able to eat as soon as she gave birth. She was not injured in any way, but Zhu Shufen was different.
Zhu Shufen is the first child, and it is difficult to give birth. She likes to move around. Even if she lives in the country, she can't leave the door.
She had run out of amniotic fluid, so she gave birth to a skinny girl with difficulty, and she lost half her life.
Jiang Chengxiang couldn't even take care of himself. Obviously, he was incapable of taking care of his wife and children. In desperation, he could only ask Mrs. Jiang for help.
Mrs. Jiang has been with Jiang Chengcai and Huang Min now, but when her younger son is in trouble, she can't help but help Jiang Chengxiang to take care of Zhu Shufen and Jiang Chengxiang's daughter.
Mrs. Jiang wanted to take care of Zhu Shufen, so she naturally neglected to take care of Huang Min. After Huang Min changed her son's diaper without washing again, she suddenly became angry and told Mrs. Jiang to stop taking care of Zhu Shufen, otherwise , she will not support Mrs. Jiang!
Jiang Chengcai and Jiang Chengxiang, the old lady Jiang prefers Jiang Chengcai, the second son, what's more, Jiang Chengcai's two children are grandsons who can inherit the lineage!
Madam Jiang loved Huang Min's two sons to the bottom of her heart, but it was the skinny girl born by Zhu Shufen. She hated it when she saw it, and even wished that she died early to save food waste.
Such a child who was sobbing and crying all day, but couldn't cry louder, the mother didn't have milk... In Mrs. Jiang's view, she couldn't survive.
Now that Huang Min is in trouble, Mrs. Jiang is afraid that she will really drive herself away from seeing her grandson, and she doesn't like Zhu Shufen and her daughter, so she no longer takes care of Zhu Shufen.
When she gave birth to a child for the first time, not only did she have no mother-in-law to help her, but Butcher Jiang was also a soldier. If she didn't live well, why couldn't Zhu Shufen succeed
That woman is hypocritical!
Mrs. Jiang was unwilling to take care of Zhu Shufen, and Jiang Chengxiang was also on fire. Originally, he turned a blind eye to butcher Jiang helping Jiang Chengcai to do farm work, but now, he also does not allow Butcher Jiang to give Jiang Chengcai Work done.
Butcher Jiang was utterly disappointed with the lazy and incompetent Jiang Chengcai. He liked Jiang Chengxiang more, and hoped that Jiang Chengxiang would give him old age.
After such a riot... Although they originally split up, butcher Jiang and Mrs. Jiang, who still slept in the same room, slept in separate rooms, and they split up again, and the house was clearly separated.
In the Jiang family's four south-facing rooms, two brothers have two rooms, and they also took some things to block the boundary at the same time. This is because they made up their minds not to communicate.
The farce of the Jiang family eventually became the talk of the villagers, and everyone became more and more unhappy with their family. When the old lady Jiang went to the river to wash diapers, she was chased away: "We are going to shop here. Rice washes vegetables, can't you wash your diapers far away?"
"That's right, you are too ignorant!"
"This river is not yours."
…
Mrs. Jiang froze, took the basin and went to the canal to wash, but she didn't go far before she met Zhao Liu.
Zhao Liu also came out to do the laundry, but she didn't even hold the wooden buckets and basins, all of which were held by Li for her.
After being raised by Jiang Zhen for more than half a year, Zhao Liu's face is now ruddy, and she doesn't look like an old lady anymore.
But what about actually? She is a few years older than Mrs. Jiang.
Madam Jiang looked at her increasingly thin arms, and she was a little stunned.
But she only froze for a while, and then went to work.
There is still a lot of work to do at home, and she also has to do the farm work in the field. She must wash the diaper quickly.
When Mrs. Jiang arrived at the edge of the canal, she suddenly saw Butcher Jiang carrying a basin of diapers, which he was washing too.
When she gave birth, Butcher Jiang didn't even want to help wash a diaper, so he just picked some water for her. After so many years, this man has not even washed his own clothes.
but now…
Clothes that stink a bit, butcher Jiang is washing diapers.
Madam Jiang and Butcher Jiang did not speak, but their moods were exactly the same.
Jiang Zhen heard about the Jiang family, but he didn't take it seriously.
At this moment, what he is most concerned about is the situation of Zhao Jinge.
Now that Zhao Jinge's belly has grown bigger, the child moves from time to time, and Jiang Zhen, he no longer does anything to Zhao Jinge, and now he has some ideas, so he only asks Zhao Jinge to help him.
Although Zhao Jinge can still run around with a belly up, Jiang Zhen has been holding a heart and is worried.
The only thing that made him happy was that he looked at Brother Zhao Jin's strictness. He kept telling Brother Zhao Jin to eat less and more meals and not allow him to overeat. Therefore, Brother Zhao did not gain weight, and the child should not be too big.
In a blink of an eye, it was Qingming.
The winter wheat that Butcher Jiang planted a few years ago had almost grown, so Zhao Liu and Li went to get a lot of wheat ears and soaked them so that they could grow malt, and then used the malt to make malt sugar and malt pancakes.
This is a bit of a waste of food, but the Zhao family is not short of such food to feed their stomachs, so she can make as much as she wants.
Zhao Jinge now likes sweets, but he doesn't like these two things. Unfortunately, Jiang Zhen doesn't allow him to eat more, and he is allowed to eat two malt pancakes every day.
Holding a malt pancake while walking and eating, Zhao Jinge came to the place where the bricks were burned, and heard cheers coming from there.
The father and son that Jiang Zhen bought back burned very good bricks, and they have mastered the whole process! And Jiang Zhen said at the beginning that if they could do it, they would be rewarded with two taels of silver each.
It was for that reward that they fought so hard.
"Jiang Zhen said, although you signed a contract with him, but you did a good job, he will reward you... From now on, for every ten bricks you give, he will give you a penny, a thousand yuan A brick is a hundred wen... If you are too busy, you can choose some people from the people we gave to help you as apprentices." Brother Zhao Jin said, this is what Jiang Zhen told him a long time ago.
When the father and son heard the words, their eyes lit up.
Originally, they didn't plan to accept apprentices, and they wanted to hide their skills a little so that the owner could value them, but now...
With more people, a thousand bricks would be burnt in no time!
They immediately planned to hire a few more apprentices to help them, and they were also very enthusiastic about burning bricks.
In the place where they stayed before, the old masters were slow to burn bricks, and they never wanted to burn more bricks for the owner, for fear that the owner would see them burn more bricks and let them burn more bricks in the future.
They had planned to do the same, but now...
They still burn more bricks and make more money! It won't be long before this, maybe you can set up a home in this village!
As Zhao Jinge's belly became bigger and bigger, Jiang Zhen's pier was finally built, and the mansion for him and Zhao Jinge had already begun to be built.
When building the wharf, Jiang Zhen couldn't make any suggestions. He just asked someone from the Zheng family to guide him, but when building his own house, he was very attentive. He ran there all day and asked for a suggestion. heap.
Jiang Zhen's aesthetics are really not very good. The biggest requirement for the house he wants to live in is still firmness. Next, it is convenience-a lot of designs these days are really too inconvenient for him!
Before I knew it, it was the end of March, and Zhao Jinge had been pregnant for more than nine months and could give birth at any time.
But even so, Zhao Jinge is still very energetic and can go to the brick kiln to watch every day. Jiang Zhen thought that it would be good to walk more, so he didn't stop him, just let Ruoer and Li follow him and keep an eye on him. Case.
This day, Jiang Zhen went to the place where he built his house early in the morning. After watching the workers work for a while, he suddenly saw Brother Zhao Jin coming.
"Brother Jin, why are you here?" Jiang Zhen quickly greeted him.
"My stomach hurts for a while," Zhao Jin said.
"What?!" Jiang Zhen was immediately stunned.