Daily life of farming and supporting a family on the ancient Loess Plateau

After saying that, she turned to Ji Yongbai and said, "Yongbai, if Yonghua isn't going, then you go!"

Ji Yongbai chewed his food a couple of times, then shook his head and said, "If Yonghua isn't going, I certainly won't go either! I'm a year older than Yonghua, what would it look like if I went!"

Zhao Yunxia glared at her displeasedly and said, "I'm telling you to go eat meat, not to kill and set fires! You're all just pumpkins growing in earthenware pots, utterly useless!"

Ji Yongfei pouted and said, "Mom, actually our family could have bought meat to eat before."

Zhao Yunxia's face suddenly flushed with annoyance and embarrassment.

After a moment, her voice was a little hoarse as she said, "I told you to go eat meat for your own good. What, even you sisters can't stand seeing your mother like this?"

Don't you think about it? Everything you eat and wear, wasn't it all made by me? Who am I working so hard for? If even you sisters can't tolerate me, then tell your father to divorce me!

Ji Yongfei quickly begged for forgiveness, "Mother, I didn't say anything. I was wrong, okay? Don't worry, we will absolutely not let Father divorce you. Right, Father?"

Ji Mantun wiped his mouth, tilted his head back and poured the little bit of cornbread crumb from his palm into his mouth, and said, "Alright, what are you all yelling about? If you have this energy, you might as well go and harvest a few more rows of wheat. I've told you so many times, we're separate families, so we each eat our own food."

Although Yongbai and Yonghua would certainly be given plenty of meat by their parents in the future, Manchuan and Manqing are still living with their parents. Would we look good doing this?

Seeing Ji Mantun say this, Zhao Yunxia's eyes reddened, and she said, "I feel like I'm completely superfluous in this family. Now everything I do or say is wrong. The old folks despise me, and the young ones despise me too. I'm the sinner in this family!"

Ji Yongbai said, "Mother, we don't want to eat meat, so please don't argue with Father!"

Zhao Yunxia grabbed a sickle, wiped away her tears, and walked into the field.

Ji Mantun sighed and said to Ji Yongfei, "Yongfei, go and comfort your mother. Your brother and I didn't mean anything by it."

Ji Yongfei pouted, shook her head helplessly, grabbed the straw hat from the ground, picked up the basket, and prepared to go to the field to find Zhao Yunxia.

Ji Mantun sighed deeply again and picked up the sickle at his feet, preparing to get up.

"Second Uncle, Second Aunt, my grandparents asked me to bring you some meat sauce—" Ji Yongning held a small bowl of meat sauce in both hands, staring at the bowl, and walked over cautiously with small steps.

Upon seeing this, Ji Mantun quickly got up, ran a few steps, took the bowl, and said, "Oh, you can keep it for yourselves, why are you bringing it to us?"

Seeing the bowl taken from him, Ji Yongning smiled with relief and said, "My grandparents said it was for his child and grandson—" After saying that, he ran back to his own field in a flash.

Ji Mantun held the bowl, watched Ji Yongning run away, frowned and sighed, then turned to the children and said, "Your grandpa and grandma feel sorry for you, so they specially brought this over for you. Quickly dip it in and eat it."

When Ji Yonghua and Ji Yongbo saw that there was meat to eat, they immediately beamed with joy.

"You must remember the kindness of your grandparents; a person cannot be without a conscience!"

……

After a quick meal in the field, Lao Ji's family went back to work, wielding their sickles and working against the clock to harvest the crops.

At noon, the high-hanging sun scorched the earth, and waves of heat from the ground, mixed with the glistening smell of sweat, wafted towards us.

Although the wheat harvesters in the fields wore straw hats, the hats could only protect them from the glaring sunlight and could not stop the scorching heat brought by the rising temperature.

Sweat streamed down Ji Yongling's forehead, past her eyebrows, and into the corners of her eyes. She blinked her sore eyes, picked up the cloth hanging around her neck, and wiped them. She didn't even have the energy to curse or complain; all she wanted to do was finish collecting the items as quickly as possible.

Everyone worked tirelessly in the wheat field, sweating profusely, until nearly dusk when they had finished harvesting more than half of their wheat.

Grandpa Ji told everyone to rest for a while and catch their breath before loading the harvested wheat onto the truck and taking it back to the field. He himself went to Ji Mancang's field, still worried about the situation.

With Ji Mancang away, the wheat in his family's fields was mainly being harvested by Ji Yongsong and two hired laborers. Fortunately, private schools and academies had holidays during the wheat harvest season, so the students could go home and help with the harvest.

Children from poor families mature early. Although Ji Yongsong is only thirteen years old, he is already being used as a strong adult laborer in the wheat field.

An old man harvesting wheat in the field said to his grandson beside him, while his hands moved quickly and without stopping, "Son, don't look up when you're harvesting wheat. If you look up, you'll be slow. Hurry up and harvest, and we'll be home when we get back from Qingzhou."

The wheat harvester's grandson wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand, looked up at the endless wheat fields ahead, gritted his teeth, and continued to bend over and swing his sickle.

When Grandpa Ji arrived, he saw the two migrant workers, one old and one young, squatting in the field, vigorously swinging their sickles. Their faces and heads were covered with salt frost like grains of sand, and their bare upper bodies were sunburned to a dark red, as if they had been soaked in a soy sauce vat, with some areas already peeling off a layer of rotten skin.

The two harvesters cut the wheat very quickly, leaving the field clean with almost no spillage or fallen ears of wheat. The remaining stubble was also very low, almost level with the ground.

Grandpa Ji sighed, thinking to himself, "They're all hardworking laborers, they're putting in their utmost effort to harvest wheat."

Last night, when Ji Mancang said that the people he had invited were a grandfather and grandson, the old man Ji strongly disagreed.

As a farmer, he knew all too well how physically demanding harvesting wheat was; a busy farming season was truly exhausting. Wealthy families only hired able-bodied young men as harvesters; they wouldn't even consider hiring men of the old or young.

For a farming family like theirs, hiring harvesters is one thing, but hiring an old man and a young boy is another. They've likely spent a fortune without even finishing the harvest. A waste of money and a ruined crop!

However, Ji Mancang said that the old man and his grandson were too pitiful. Since he was going to hire people anyway, he might as well hire them and give them a way to make a living.

This old man was from Longchang County in Qinzhou Prefecture, which is northwest of Qingzhou Prefecture. Last year, there was a drought there, and many people fled. However, he had an old woman who couldn't get out of bed, a daughter-in-law who had broken her leg, and a son who went blind after being whipped in the eye by a sheep whip while herding sheep for a rich man. So his family couldn't escape.

In order to make a living, the old man had to leave the only food he had to his wife, son and daughter-in-law to feed themselves. He himself wore a tattered cotton-padded coat, carried a tattered straw hat, and took a sickle. He led his grandson eastward for hundreds of miles, from cold weather to hot weather, begging for food all the way.

Finally, the wheat ripened, and they could work as harvesters, collecting wheat all the way back home. This would save them some grain at home and also earn them some money to buy more grain.

Wheat usually ripens earlier in the southern areas, so they arrived in Yongzhou last month, but after only a few days of harvesting, they encountered continuous rain.