1994: Vegetable farmers strike back

Chapter 2 Planning
In the Flower City at the end of March, even on a rainy day, the temperature was not low, and Chen Jiazhi's forehead was slightly sweaty.

"If you're tired, take a break."

Chen Jiazhi looked up at Li Xiu and said, "You underestimated me, don't you? I'll clear the rest in one go. You go back first. I won't be lazy."

There are two side ditches in total. When he came, Li Xiu had already cleaned the short ditch. The long ditch was about 50 meters long, which was not much for him.

Li Xiu shook her head. "It's not raining anymore. I'm going to thin out the vegetable seedlings in the vegetable patch."

"I'll go later." Chen Jiazhi frowned: "The ground is wet, so don't go."

"By the time you get there, the daylilies will have gone cold." Li Xiu was already walking towards the vegetable patch.

"The road is slippery, be careful."

"understood."

Chen Jiazhi looked at Li Xiu's back. She was tall and had long legs. He felt inexplicably moved. She was so fair and beautiful when she was young.

It's a pity that he was chosen as a vegetable farmer.

What was so good about him when he was young? He didn't finish his studies and was lazy. He was far inferior to the people his father-in-law introduced to Li Xiu. I heard that one of them later became a professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University.

Maybe his only advantage is that he is handsome.

After seeing Li Xiu arrive at the vegetable field, Chen Jiazhi buried his head in his work again, while also planning for the future.

Li Xiu is already six months pregnant. In her previous life, she had a very hard time during her confinement period. They only bought her a box of biscuits.
Due to insufficient nutrition, the milk supply was also insufficient, and the eldest son could only eat noodles and porridge.

My eldest son was also dark and thin when he was born, like a monkey. It took him some time to raise him before he became well-behaved. It was obvious that he was malnourished during pregnancy.

Therefore, the most important thing is to grow vegetables quickly. In this season, it takes 20 to 30 days from sowing to harvesting a crop of leafy vegetables.

The cabbages in this field have passed the seedling stage and can normally be harvested in about ten days. The same is true for other leafy vegetables.

But plum rain will rot the roots!

There was no way he could remember this wrongly. Before the cowpea season when his eldest son was born, he had never cooked much.

At this time, light rain began to fall from the sky again, and the wetlands in the vegetable fields were also very large.

Chen Jiazhi had just finished clearing the ditch. Seeing Li Xiu still busy thinning out the seedlings and ignoring the rain, Chen Jiazhi walked over.

"Come back, Xiu, it's raining. I'll take you back."

Li Xiu looked up and said, "Why are you going back? Have you finished cleaning the ditch?"

"It's cleaned up. You'll know next time you go." Chen Jiazhi said, "Let's go. It's not good to get caught in the rain for too long. Leave everything to me from now on."

"Leave it all to you. My child and I will starve to death." Li Xiu finally stood up. "The ditches in other areas haven't been cleared yet."

Chen Jiazhi: "I know what's going on. Let's go now. If you don't come back, my second sister will beat me again."

Li Xiu: "Did my second sister hit you?"

Chen Jiazhi turned his head to reveal the marks on the back of his neck. "It was caused by a yellow rubber shoe. It was really bad."

"Deserve it!"

Li Xiu cursed, but she was actually a little angry. No matter how harshly her second sister cursed, she had never hit Jiazhi.

What was even more surprising was that Jiazhi could still talk to her calmly about this matter. In the past, they would have started arguing.

The two walked back.

When passing by a vegetable patch, a fellow villager who was busy working noticed: "Mr. Chen, are you going back now?"

"..."

Chen Jiazhi was speechless. Chen Xiucai, what an ancient name.

He looked at the servant and found him familiar, so he replied, "I'll take Li Xiu back first and come back later."

Afterwards, people asked them questions from time to time, and Li Xiu also took the initiative to greet people.

"Sister Bai Yan, are you harvesting the vegetables?" "Yeah, you're finishing work so early?"

"It's raining, Jiazhi will take me back."

"It's time to go back. Li Xiu, you need to get more rest and eat more good food. Look, you're six months pregnant, but your belly doesn't look pregnant at all."

"Jiazhi, you have to work hard! Farmers don't support idlers!"

He spoke softly to Li Xiu and looked disappointed in him. It was really a dark history.

He recalled them one by one. They were all fellow villagers, most of them were only in their twenties or thirties. None of them was much better off than the others, and none of them had money.

After a while, we arrived at the glazed tile house in the center of the vegetable market. It was a one-story house with six rooms in a row, and was home to more than a dozen people from Xichuan.

One room usually houses at least two families of four people, and sometimes three families of six people. The conditions are very poor.

Now he, Li Xiu, his second sister and his second brother-in-law live in one house. The rent is paid by his brother-in-law, and he shares the cost when he has money. They also eat together.

With my second sister and brother-in-law around, I don’t have to worry about food and accommodation for the time being, but it’s impossible to eat well.

The house was also built at the time of Dongxiang Vegetable Market. It has complete water and electricity, and a separate toilet and bathroom. The monthly rent is about 70 or 80 yuan.

In my previous life, I planted crops in the Dongxiang vegetable market until May or June of the next year, and then moved away due to land acquisition. Later, Country Garden was built here.

The house has a raised foundation, with a cement-paved flat ground in front of it, a vegetable field behind it, and each family's wood stove is also built behind it.

The cement floor was filled with various farm tools: hoes, pry bars, vegetable baskets, buckets, bamboo...

Full of memories!

Guo Yang picked up a vegetable basket, which was made of welded iron and covered with a planting bag. He hung one on each side of the back seat of the bicycle and placed one or two more on top.

It can carry two to three hundred kilograms of vegetables at a time.

There was also his bicycle, a stolen item he bought for just a few dozen dollars, but it had no brakes for a long time.

One time, my brother-in-law's car broke down, so I borrowed his to sell vegetables. As a result, I fell badly on the slope under the Luoxi Bridge. It has been less than two months since then.

"We're home now. Why don't you put on your raincoat and go work for a while? Everyone's not home yet."

Li Xiu took out a few 'raincoats' cut from fertilizer bags from behind the door and handed them to Chen Jiazhi, who took them.

"Okay, then don't come out. I can handle two or three acres of land by myself."

"If you don't brag, you'll die!"

Li Xiu rolled her eyes at him, but was also a little surprised that he was willing to go out to work on a rainy day. In the past, he always used the excuse of hanging out with his second brother-in-law.

"Just wait and see."

Chen Jiazhi put on a raincoat and walked away with his head held high.

At that time, vegetable farming relied on manual labor. Two or three acres of land was not a small amount, but for Chen Jiazhi now, it was not enough.

It was also his fault that he was too lazy when he was young. In his previous life, Li Xiu was still picking cowpeas in the field until an hour before his eldest son was born.

This old girl is really capable!
But now that she's reborn, I can't let her suffer like this again.

On the way to the field, Chen Jiazhi met his fellow villager Li Mingkun, who was also going home to put on a "raincoat". The two were from the same village, and Li Mingkun was related to both the Li and Chen families.

"Hey, scholar, are you going out to work too?"

"Yeah." Chen Jiazhi was almost immune to the word "scholar" and asked instead, "Old man, how many days has it been raining?"

Li Mingkun thought for a moment and said, "It's been four or five days, right? When the weather clears up, Jiazhi, you have to apply the pesticides quickly. Don't say I didn't remind you!"

"I see."

Chen Jiazhi felt that spraying pesticides might not be effective. After thinking about it, he found only one solution: harvest the vegetables early.

In other words, harvesting the vegetables before they have grown into finished products is a bit of a waste, and there may be criticism from fellow villagers later, but it should be the best solution at present.

(End of this chapter)