The road to wealth of a peasant widow

Last time, Chen Cui spent four days using a mule cart to irrigate five acres of land. When the three children found out about this, they blamed themselves.

This time, they would not let Chen Cui work alone no matter what. They insisted that she wait until the ten-day holiday to water the fields, and then they would go to the fields together.

In fact, Chen Cui didn’t want them to be together at all!

Although there were many people working on the field originally, everyone was busy doing their own work. No one would pay attention to how many times she had transported water or how much land she had irrigated, so she could cheat with confidence.

Now that several children are going together, and there are several more pairs of eyes, how can she sneak water out of the space?

But the children were very determined, and Chen Cui had no choice but to agree.

On the day of the ten-day holiday, at dawn, the family came to the river in a mule cart.

Each of the three sons carried a bucket and drew water from the river and loaded it onto the cart.

Those walking in the fields in twos and threes are all people who have come to water the fields early in the morning. In order to catch up with the farming season, they must water the fields sufficiently in these few days so that there will be a good harvest of wheat.

Chen Cui's family worked all day and only watered less than two acres of land. Everyone was exhausted.

The three sons worked hard all day, covered in mud. When they came back, they sighed: "Farming is really not easy!"

Now that they have learned basic arithmetic from Mr. Chu, they can solve simple problems and figure out the final yield of an acre of land.

Although they worked hard to make charcoal last winter, the final harvest was good, so it was worth it.

The farming process is so arduous that it takes several months from planting to harvesting, but the harvest from one acre of land is not even worth the price of half a truckload of charcoal.

Changping couldn't help but ask: "Mom, you said that the return on farming is so low, why don't we do more profitable work?"

Chang'an and Changfu also looked at her intently, waiting for her answer.

Chen Cui: "Because agriculture is the foundation of the country, if farmers do not farm but do other things to earn money, and use money to replace taxes, the government will not be able to collect enough food. In years of disaster, there will be no surplus food for relief, and the price of food will rise. At that time, food can be exchanged for money, but money may not be able to buy food. In the end, it is still us ordinary people who suffer."

She smiled and looked at her three sons: "Besides, not all farmers who are used to farming dare to leave the land. If your father hadn't passed away and our family lost its pillar, I wouldn't have had the courage. I was really forced to do it at that time. I didn't expect that I would succeed."

After hearing what Chen Cui said, the children seemed to be thinking about something.

After the three children went to school, Chen Cui took Suisui to work for another three days to water the five acres of land again.

Then, she was also busy, and started to pick corn in the space.

Now Sui Sui can utter words intermittently, and can call "mother" and "brother" very clearly. Chen Cui doesn't dare to disappear in front of her anymore, and can only enter the space to work when she is sleeping.

Fortunately, there was only this one acre of land, and she found time to break the corn and chop the corn stalks, and it was completed in two days.

Corn stalks were piled on the open space on one side of the space, and only the ripe peppers were left on the black soil.

It's a bit of an exaggeration to say that it's full of fruits, but there are indeed quite a few peppers on it. However, the fruits are not very big overall, only slightly larger than chili peppers.

The peppers are still green now, and Chen Cui hasn’t picked them to taste, so she doesn’t know how spicy they are.

Chen Cui doesn't have time to take care of these peppers now. Her top priority now is to peel the corn, dry it in the sun and thresh it, and wait until the wheat is harvested so that she can plant the seeds.

Peeling the corns and drying them in the sun are easy. The space is dry and there is not much moisture. Use bamboo poles to build a rack at the door of the wooden house, tie two peeled corns together and hang them up. They will become crispy in a few days.

Chen Cui found the troublesome part to be how to thresh the grains.

There are more than 300 corns planted on this acre of land. If she had to rub the kernels manually, her hands would probably be worn out.

But after much thought, she couldn't think of any tools that could simplify the process. Besides, she planned to save this batch of corn for seeds, and if the corn kernels were damaged, she was afraid that the seedlings would not emerge as expected.

Therefore, we can only use the original method and rub the corn kernels off each corn cob row by row.

During this period, as long as the children went to school, Chen Cui would always hold a corn cob in her hand and rub it when she was at home. She would put the corn kernels she rubbed into the space at any time. She focused on breaking the whole into parts and was doing this job all the time.

Sui Sui was very curious when she saw it, so Chen Cui gave her a corn cob and asked her to play with it. She also imitated her mother and picked out the corn grains one by one.

Fortunately, she didn't stuff the corn kernels into her mouth, otherwise it would have gotten stuck in her throat and been terrible.

Ever since Sui Sui learned to walk, everything in the house that might trip her has been placed against the wall to avoid blocking her way as much as possible.

Because she was afraid that she would put something in her mouth, Chen Cui kept small things very carefully so they would never be found.

Even with such strict protection, Sui Sui was still bitten by a big ant on the tree when he was playing in the yard.'

There was a big bite on her calf, which was red and swollen, and it must have been a little itchy. She cried and kept scratching it.

Chen Cui felt very distressed, so she applied some garlic juice on her to disinfect her and then coaxed her for a long time before she stopped crying.

From then on, Chen Cui became more careful. Even when she was playing in the yard, she would watch her closely, for fear that she would get bumped into something again.

Even the two puppies at home were washed with medicine, for fear that they had fleas and would pass them on to humans.

These two puppies have mostly black fur. The one with white spots on its ears is Dahei, and the one with two white spots above its eyes is Xiaohei. These are the names given to them by the three brothers.

Because Chen Cui's family had good food, even the leftovers contained a lot of oil and moisture, and the two dogs could drink some goat's milk every day. After a few months of raising them, they had grown plump.

When Dahei and Xiaohei have nothing to do, they just walk around the house wagging their tails, sniffing here and there, and peeing in the corner from time to time.

When her brothers are not around during the day, Suisui’s best playmates are these two dogs. Grabbing their tails and pulling their fur are her regular activities.

Fortunately, Dahei and Xiaohei have been raised since childhood and have a gentle temper towards family members. If they are hurt, they will just cry out "wool" and run away, and have never bared their teeth at Sui Sui.

After ten days or so, Chen Cui finally collected all the corn. The harvested corn kernels filled two sacks, estimated to weigh about 150 kilograms.

According to conventional planting methods, one acre of land requires about five kilograms of corn seeds. These two bags can plant at least thirty acres of land.

At this time, the ears of wheat in the wheat fields have turned golden, and it is almost time to harvest.