novelraw Chapter 76: Wouldn't it be better to just go find your own father? You wouldn't even need
Chapter 76: Wouldn't it be better to just go find your own father? You wouldn't even need
Tong Yuheng contributed the produce from the space several more times, but she didn't use the contributed resources to increase her land area significantly. Now the space covers over twenty acres, which is enough for her to cultivate. If she could acquire various types of mechanized farming, she could save some effort; there's too much to manage on her own.
Using her strong will, she made a vow within the space to open up more medicinal herb seeds and cultivation methods. The space seemed to sense her will and provided her with what she wanted within a certain range.
It's extremely difficult to buy Chinese medicinal herbs outside of China these days. There's widespread suppression of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), with claims that it's pseudoscience, and many well-known TCM practitioners and their clinics have been vandalized! If this trend continues, the losses to our TCM traditions, passed down from several years ago, will be enormous!
She had her younger sisters study traditional Chinese medicine, perhaps hoping one of them would have the talent to inherit this tradition. However, judging from their current progress and demeanor, none of them seem capable of carrying on their grandfather's legacy. Her youngest cousin, on the other hand, is much more diligent and quicker to learn than the rest of them.
To learn traditional Chinese medicine, one must learn to identify herbs, process and prepare medicinal materials, and memorize medical principles—that's the most basic requirement. Without practice, it's all for naught, so she tries to provide herbs for everyone to practice with.
When it gets a little warmer, she plans to take out some medicinal herb seeds or seedlings and plant them in the backyard, so that her grandfather can teach his grandchildren how to plant and care for them.
The variety of crops planted in the space has increased considerably, including some fruit varieties. She also selected fruit trees that take several years to bear fruit from the space and planted them there. However, they are still young and not yet ripe.
However, the grapes inside were ripe, along with some dragon fruit, cherries, and so on. The fish and shrimp in the pond had also multiplied considerably; there were too many to grow, and they would die even in the space due to lack of oxygen. She often took some out to improve everyone's meals, saying that she had traded them with people from the seaside.
Vegetables are grown in the front yard; the vegetables for our family always need a place to go. The space between the side rooms and the central passageway, about 180 square meters, is enough to grow vegetables for the family, so we plant a few of each kind. When we need to eat, we take some from the space and exchange them; we can't possibly finish all the vegetables.
Since the village abolished the communal canteen, villagers have started cooking for themselves, mostly growing vegetables in their front yards and grain in their backyards. With just over one mu (approximately 0.16 acres) of land per person, after deducting the grain handed over to the government and reserves, the distributed grain is still insufficient for families with many children. Growing some grain in their backyards is a way to supplement their diet.
The vegetables in the front yard are also very important. The green vegetables that can be picked in spring and summer play a big role!
In the summer, leftover gourds, green beans, and bok choy can be dried and stored. When you want to eat them in the winter, soak them in water and use them to make steamed dumplings or stewed vermicelli.
If you also store some radishes, cabbages, potatoes, winter melons, pumpkins, and the like, even if there isn't enough grain, you won't go hungry if you have these vegetables.
It must be said that the Northeast has a large area but a small population, and its fertile land has nurtured people with cheerful, sincere, and courageous personalities. Everyone helps each other, and even in the most difficult years, no one starved to death.
Tong Jiahui and her daughters went to work together, each doing five or six work points a day. Linglong, being only fourteen or fifteen years old, was still exhausted even without heavy work.
"Big sister, look at our hands, they're all blistered!" Yuling stretched her hands out to her eldest sister. They had never done this kind of work before! They could only do a little housework at most, and most of it was done by their two older sisters and their mother.
"My hands are blistered too, big sister. You said we could do part-time work and study, when can we go?" Yu Long had had enough of the work and now felt that going to school was much easier than working.
"Hehehe, you guys wanted to go yourselves, didn't I force you?" Tong Yuheng said with a laugh. He thought they could hold out until the summer, but they couldn't take it after only two months.
"Have you two thought this through? You're educated youth, and if you want to go off-the-job to study, you'll have to ask your Uncle Zhang to find someone. Don't go for a few days and then decide you don't want to go anymore. People aren't so easy to ask for." Tong Jiahui was also worried that Linglong would be playful and change her mind every now and then.
"I've thought it through, I've thought it through. We'll definitely strive for a top ten ranking, and we absolutely won't be lazy and neglect our studies!" Linglong hurriedly promised.
Yu Han secretly rolled her eyes, thinking to herself: "Just for the top ten, do you two really need to go to such lengths? Are you two just sharing the same IQ? Looks like I really need to be in the same class as them, otherwise, will these two even graduate high school?"
Tong Jiahui also felt sorry for them. Even the two older ones, if they didn't have to work in the fields, she would like to keep them at home, but the current situation doesn't allow it!
My own sixty-year-old father is still working hard in the fields! Sigh, I wonder when we'll hear anything about the removal of his hat.
"Okay, then I'll ask the brigade leader for leave tomorrow and go to the commune to find your Uncle Zhang and ask him to think of a solution." For her daughters' sake, she had to ask for help even though she didn't like asking for favors.
However, Tong Yuheng had her own plans. Why bother looking for Uncle Zhang? Wouldn't it be better to ask her own father? She wouldn't have to curry favor with him, and he would be happy to help her out!
Since they arrived, the Zhang family no longer needed to help deliver things to the cowshed. To thank Miao Sanfeng's sister for bringing them medicine, she specially sent two meters of cloth to Erfeng's family before the Lunar New Year.
Currently, only the brigade leader, the party secretary, and Erfeng know about their relationship with the Tong family in the cowshed, so she naturally has to maintain good relations with these families.
Liu Shuixian, the daughter-in-law of Chen Sanyuan, a neighbor, was a very outgoing person who would occasionally visit their home. Tong Jiahui got along quite well with her. From her, she also learned a lot of gossip about the various households in the village.
That loudmouth Lin was always gossiping about their family behind their backs, but everyone just ignored her, like a cicada chirping. Lin had three sons, and her youngest son worked in a neighboring city; she was incredibly arrogant in the village! But what was she really like? Only her own family knew.
Lin Dalaba's eldest son has two daughters, and the youngest is a son, the chubby six or seven-year-old boy on the train named Jinbao. His second son has only one daughter, the little girl whose father named her Caiyun, but her grandmother calls her Sannizi.
Her youngest son got married late, and his wife had just given birth to a daughter before the Lunar New Year. She was asked to come and help take care of her during her postpartum period. Lin Dalaba looked down on her daughter-in-law, saying she was spoiled and didn't do any housework, making her son do all the housework and wait on her, and she hadn't even given her a grandson.
She didn't want to be bothered serving her younger daughter-in-law, so she wanted to bring her second daughter-in-law along, and also take her eldest grandson to the city to cook all the good food for her younger son's family, otherwise her younger daughter-in-law's nephew would get all the benefits! But the second daughter-in-law couldn't bear to part with her own daughter, so she simply brought Caiyun along as well.