Traveling Through Farmhouses: Taking the Baby on a Famine Escape

After seeing Manager Qian off, Zhang Xixi went to talk to Zhang Wenhong and Zhou Yuping about the matter.

"We only have twenty days left to produce at least eight thousand jin, but we don't have enough manpower!" Zhou Yuping said.

Zhang Wenhong thought about it and realized that the previous slow speed was because he was just starting to learn. The most important things in making fans are the filtered fans and the tools for shaping them.

"With five more people to help with the filtering and two more large pots, we can finish within twenty days, since we still need to leave some time for drying."

"Then I'll go back and talk to my uncle about hiring people. As for the pot, I'll go buy it later."

Zhang Xixi reminded her, "There's also firewood. We'll definitely need more firewood in the future, so we can't keep using our own firewood. We should find someone in the village to supply you with firewood."

"Okay, I'll take care of that while I'm at it!"

Zhou Yuping agreed and then went out.

Zhou Yurong was still resentful about not being able to manage the factory. Fortunately, there was nothing to do that day, so Zhou Dashan rested with him in the yard.

"Boss, have you thought it through?"

"Dad, tell me about the factory!" Zhou Yurong looked up at Zhou Dashan.

"Ok!"

Zhou Dashan saw that Zhou Yurong was silent and knew that he hadn't figured it out. "How can you be so stupid? You're going to take over my job in the future. The village head has the most power in the village. If you also take charge of the factory, you'll have both money and power. What will the villagers think? There will definitely be a lot of people who are not satisfied and it will damage the unity of the village."

"Of course, if you don't want to be the village head anymore, I can talk to the elders and ask them to let you work in the factory."

After saying that, Zhou Dashan stood up.

Zhou Yurong quickly stopped him, saying, "Dad, Dad, I'm not going to the factory!"

"Understood!"

Zhou Yurong nodded emphatically, "Understood!"

When Zhou Yuping arrived, the conversation between the father and son had already ended. He then told Zhou Dashan about the recruitment of people and the firewood.

Zhou Dashan already knew who in the village was suitable, but he still needed to discuss it with the clan elders to avoid others saying that he, Zhou Dashan, was the one who made all the decisions in the village, which would have a bad influence.

Recently, all the chickens and ducks in Zhang Xixi's family have been laying eggs. Fortunately, there are many people in the family, so they can finish them all. Moreover, she is willing to eat them, giving each person an egg or duck egg every morning.

Sun Xiuxiu also makes different kinds of eggs every morning, sometimes boiled eggs, sometimes poached eggs, and she also pickles some salted duck eggs.

The rest was given to Cuihua and the others to cook. When there was no meat, they ate chicken and duck eggs.

The Chen family has many ducks, which lay a lot of eggs, dozens every day, and hundreds in a few days. There are few people in town who want to buy duck eggs.

She was worried because she had so many duck eggs at home, but not many had been sold. What if all these duck eggs went bad? Wouldn't that be a waste?

That day, Chen told Zhang Xixi about it, but Zhang Xixi didn't know what to do.

"Mother, why don't we pickle them all into salted duck eggs? When Manager Qian comes next time, we can ask him if he wants them. If that doesn't work, we can sell them in the county town."

"This is the only way!" Chen sighed.

It's a problem if we have too much of this and can't sell it!

The next day, Chen and Zhang Dacheng went to town to buy jars and salt.

Zhang Xixi was also tidying up her yard. The original vegetable garden was no longer needed, so she could plant some fruit trees instead.

She bought several pear and orange trees from the mall and planted them, so that she now has several kinds of fruit trees at home.

With plant growth nutrient solution, I should be able to eat the fruit I grew myself next year.

As time slowly passed, the rice paddies gradually turned golden.

During this period, the villagers have cleared a lot of wasteland and planted sweet potatoes. The sweet potato seedlings that Zhang Xixi's family had previously propagated by cuttings from sweet potato vines are also growing very well.

The pasture was now completely bare. Zhou Fu and his group had worked hard to cut a lot of grass to take home, but now the grass in the field had stopped growing.

In a few days, we'll clear the grass and plant the next season's crops.

The autumn air was crisp and clear that day!

Many people in the village went to help Zhang Xixi's family harvest rice.

Although their own harvest is about to begin, it's still good to know the yield in advance!

Moreover, the method for growing ratooning rice was provided by Zhang Xixi, so their help was simply a way of repaying her kindness!

As before, Chen led Zhou to dry the rice in the open space at the village entrance, while Zhang Xixi helped harvest it in the paddy field.

The two hundred mu of rice were harvested in two days, and since there was still time on the second day, they also harvested the Zhang family's rice.

However, the rice yield was not high this time, only about 400 jin per mu, which was the result of Zhang Xixi adding a lot of soil conditioner in the early stage.

The villagers' output is probably only two or three hundred catties, but that's not bad!

Given how frugal the villagers are, their ten-plus mu of rice should be enough to last until next year!

"Congratulations, host, you have gained 80,000 luck points!"

Zhang Xixi checked her luck value balance, which was 330,000. Not bad, she could still buy a lot of things.

She doesn't need it right now, so she'll just keep it for now!

The villagers have all harvested their rice, but no one has decided what to plant next.

Because in the Northwest, no crops were planted after the autumn harvest, as the weather was too cold and snow would kill them.

This is in the southwest; I wonder what the scenery is like in winter!

Of course, they didn't know what to plant either, and they were all just watching each other.

In the end, Zhang Xixi's family took the first step. After the rice was dried, Wang Daniu and his family plowed the paddy fields and pastures deeply, taking advantage of the good weather to thoroughly dry the soil.

Then we'll continue planting sweet potatoes, since the village still has a high demand for them.

Other villagers followed suit.

Some people say, "How can we plant sweet potatoes if we don't have sweet potato seedlings?"

Wang Daniu pointed to the sweet potatoes he had planted earlier, saying, "Those are the seedlings. We can just cut them down and propagate them by cuttings."

On the appointed day, Manager Qian arrived again with a long convoy of cars. When the villagers saw it, they went to inform Zhou Dashan, and everyone knew that he was there to pick up fans.

Of course, some people also went home, because Zhang Xixi had said not long ago that this time the grain would still be sold to Manager Qian.

Manager Qian asked them to leave some oxcarts behind, and took eight oxcarts to Zhang Xixi's house to load up the grain before heading to the factory.

Zhang Xixi's family sold 60,000 jin of rice this time, at the same price as last time.

At the factory, Zhang Wenhong and his team had already bundled the vermicelli in oilcloth, and they were just waiting to weigh it.

Because the oilcloth was not cheap, they planned to reuse it, so they would wait until the shopkeeper and his family returned to get the oilcloth and deduct its weight to settle the bill.

This method was proposed by Zhou Yuping because their factory was really too poor.

In the past month or so, only the wages have been paid; everything else is paid on IOUs.

The money spent on sweet potato residue just offset the cost of firewood.