The swallow seemed to have done something wrong, standing in front of the door with its head drooping. Little Fu Bao watched as the little bird ate all of her family's ginseng powder, and her face turned red with anger.

They pounced and caught the little bird.

It's really strange how that bird was standing right in front of the door, letting this little girl catch it. "Mommy, put it away!"

Shen Yu took the small cage she usually used to raise chicks and put the little bird inside. Shen Yu looked at the ginseng powder that had been eaten clean with a disappointed expression. "Sigh, how can a person's luck always be so good! Oh well! I'll just plant watermelons on those two plots of land!"

Little Fu Bao said angrily, "You bad bird, I'll stew you and eat you tonight!" The little bird seemed frightened and fluttered wildly in the cage.

"Madam, everyone's here!" Xiang Jinlan said to Shen Yu. It was the people Xiang Jinlan had invited who had arrived. Of the three people who came, four were people Shen Yu knew.

One of them was Xiao Tan.

Originally, Madam Tan was also going to come, but Xiang Jinlan thought that Madam Tan's reputation in the village was not very good, and she also had a grudge against Madam Shen, so she didn't invite her.

The other three were women from other families in the village.

There were four more, all young women. Some were relatives of Xiang Jinlan, while others were from other villages.

While Shen Yu was busy entertaining the female workers, she also mentioned that the ginseng powder she had cultivated at noon had been eaten by birds.

Although Shen Yu came from a peasant background, she had done business with her sister-in-law Cai before getting married, and in the past few months she had been running a restaurant with Niu Da, so she was quite good at allocating and managing people.

Two experienced women were in charge of picking, selecting, and chopping vegetables, while four young women were responsible for learning how to make pickled vegetables and salted vegetables.

Four strong and healthy women were employed; two of them fed the pigs, chickens, ducks, and geese, while the other two were responsible for odd jobs, moving things wherever needed.

Perhaps the little bird heard that Little Lucky was going to eat it, so it was so frightened that it pooped a cage full of droppings.

That evening, when Xiao Fubao was catching birds, she saw it, but she felt that the droppings were a little different; they were round and looked like vegetable seeds.

She quickly exclaimed, "Mommy, Mommy, look, isn't this a seed?"

Shen Yu put down the sauce in her hand, wiped her hands, and rushed over. Upon looking, she exclaimed, "Oh my, it really is! Is this its droppings?"

The little bird, proud and arrogant, seemed to be saying: Yes! It's me, it's me! I'm the hero, praise me!

Chen Yu used a thin twig to rake through the pile of bird droppings and laughed:

"This is truly a blessing in disguise! It turns out we only needed this final step. No wonder people say swallows bring good fortune! These swallows are truly honored guests in our home! Little Fu Bao, quickly release the swallow! Swallows ultimately love the sky."

Shen Yu found more than twenty ginseng seeds in the bird droppings. "Your uncle said that ginseng is not heat-resistant, so I have to plant it quickly!"

They've stopped making pickled fish.

That very evening, Shen Yu planted the ginseng seeds in a pot, and after they sprouted, she planted them again on the tenth day of the fifth lunar month.

Although cultivated ginseng is not as expensive as wild ginseng and is different from it, a cultivated ginseng that has been cultivated for more than six years can still sell for at least fifty wen per gram, ten grams for five hundred wen. One hundred grams is ten taels of silver, so an adult ginseng can generally sell for at least fifty taels of silver.

Twenty pieces would amount to one thousand taels.

Even if it takes five or six years to see results, it's worth it.

Niu Da and Niu Cuihua would carry hoes and dig until late at night before resting. The Niu family's entire courtyard covered an area of ​​two square kilometers, which was large, but the number of houses was relatively small.

Besides the hundred or so trees planted in the backyard, and the pigs, chickens, ducks and geese raised there, there is also a kilometer of open space, which is larger than the two plots of land on the hill behind the house.

“Mom, all the rice seedlings have been planted today. It will be much more comfortable for us to water them from now on! Uncle Dumb asked for leave from us. It’s time to plant the rice in the fields this spring!” Niu Cuihua said.

Those 100 acres of fertile land were rented out.

Niu the Dumb originally had no fertile land, but later bought twelve mu and rented ten mu of fertile land from Niu the Elder, so he had twenty-two mu of land to cultivate.

His two sons took the exam. The younger son passed and became a student, while the older son, Niu Da, failed because he started school too late and was less gifted. He stayed at home to help with farming.

During the busy farming season, even the half-grown oxen from the Niu Da family get busy, earning over ten coins a day just from renting them out.

“Now that everyone’s made a fortune, their living conditions are getting better and better. Why would you pay money to rent their cattle? Are you stupid? Do you have too much money?” Madam Tan glared at her eldest daughter-in-law, Madam Lao, with a reproachful look.

Because Mr. Lau rented the cattle from the family to plow the land, he was paid for two days' work.

"That Niu Da is the same. In our Niushan Village, apart from the Zhao family, his family is the richest. He doesn't even have a son. I really don't know who he's going to spend all that money on! He doesn't even share it with us villagers. We have to pay him for using his ox for two days! It's no wonder he's childless!"

The more Da Tan thought about it, the angrier she became.

She simply moved a small stool to the doorway and sat there, cursing at the Niu family. Her house was quite a distance from the Niu family's, so no one inside could hear her cursing.

Zhang Min, the blind man across the hall, couldn't stand it anymore. "Aunt Tan, this is unreasonable! If you don't want to pay, you can simply not rent their cow!" "Anyway, you still have seven sons. Even if the whole family uses hoes and shovels, it won't take half a month to dig it out!"

The Da Niu Li family originally had eight sons, and their ancestors had passed down more than ten acres of land. With the birth of these eight sons, they gained another ten acres of land, so their life should have been quite good.

However, perhaps because of the immoral things their ancestors did, for generations they have been fond of petty theft, seizing other people's homesteads, and bullying others by claiming they have sons, even if those other people also have sons.

Starting with Niu Li's father's generation, they had a string of bad luck. The family was later allocated more than ten acres of land, but they didn't cultivate a single acre of it.

In addition, Da Niu Li and Da Tan Shi were not diligent people, so although they could cultivate the dozen or so acres of land, the fields were overgrown with weeds and barnyard grass. Most people could only produce four or five hundred catties of rice per acre.

His family's one mu of land yielded less than two hundred jin, and they didn't raise any chickens or ducks. The rice they produced was threshed and wasted.

Therefore, Niu Li's family is now the poorest in Niushan Village. Of the several sons they have raised, only the eldest is hardworking, but he has the temperament of a thief.

Da Tan thought that Niu Yaba's family was even better off than hers. Last year, they not only bought land, but the yield of their twelve mu of land was also higher than hers. She resented that Niu Yaba's poor family must have taken away her family's good fortune.

“Zhang Min, let me tell you, don’t think you’re so great just because you have two sons. You only have two sons, but my family has seven! In the future, your land and your fields will all belong to my family!” “Don’t think that just because your youngest son passed the preliminary examination, he can be so arrogant. Who knows, he might not even pass the county-level examination by the time he dies! Bah, what’s the use of passing the preliminary examination? My fifth son doesn’t care about that stuff!”

Her fifth son was Niu Dashan, who had been called out of the classroom and made to stand as punishment by Niu Daxiu.