The more important thing is to cultivate the land in preparation for planting yams.

The village has a bumper potato harvest. This batch of potatoes can feed everyone in the village for at least two or three years with some left over. Of course, fresh potatoes can't be stored for that long, but they can be made into various derivative products for preservation. And kudzu roots can be added in the winter. There's no need to worry about food for the next two years.

After that, we only need to plant a few acres of potatoes here and there to ensure the food supply for the whole family. We don't need to plant on a large scale like last year.

With food no longer a worry, the land belonging to each family in the village became idle and could be put to good use!

The herbs were used to grow yams and Polygonum multiflorum, providing a continuous supply to the herbal medicine workshop and transforming Shanshui Village into a herbal medicine village.

Each household in the village has only one donkey. After harvesting potatoes, both the people and the donkey are exhausted and need to rest for a few days. Since they don't need to harvest potatoes themselves, they can take advantage of the free time to plow all the land and then use the cattle, donkeys, and horses as payment for their labor, just like last year.

It's a mutually beneficial arrangement.

When Wang Guifen was harvesting potatoes, she picked out a large basket of fresh and tender shepherd's purse, washed it clean, and brought it to Shui Qing.

She remembered that Shuiqing liked to use this wild vegetable to make dumplings with meat, saying it had a fragrant aroma and tasted especially delicious.

With so much meat, how could it not taste good? But Shuiqing's family already has plenty of meat, with chicken, duck, goose, rabbit, lamb, and pork almost always available, and eggs are plentiful. Shuiqing didn't praise anything else, but only praised the wild vegetable dumplings, so she must really like them.

Seeing that the shepherd's purse in the field was big and fresh today, I thought I'd bring it over to her.

Just then, Li Dani brought over a bucket of lively fish, and Wang Guifen was immediately embarrassed to show the vegetables in her bamboo basket.

Shuiqing saw her from afar and came over to greet her, "Sister-in-law Guifen, come in and sit down!"

Li Dani said with a smile, "Madam, these are fish that Feng Da caught during his downtime while farming. I picked out a few fresh ones to bring to you."

The lady loves to eat fish and knows how to eat it well.

She taught them how to make pickled fish, boiled fish, spicy fish fillets, and fish head stew with tofu... They were incredibly delicious. In the past, the men in the family disliked fish because of its many bones and muddy taste, and she also disliked the waste of oil when cooking fish, so she wasn't enthusiastic about it. But since learning a few tricks from the lady, she now goes fishing whenever she has free time.

The best and freshest catches should be sent to the lady first.

Wang Guifen peered into the bucket at the several large fish splashing around—grass carp and silver carp—and exclaimed, "They're really fresh, and quite plump too!"

Then, noticing the farmland Li Dani mentioned, she asked Shuiqing curiously, "Farmland? Why are you farming so early?"

Shui Qing didn't intend to hide anything and told him her whole plan. Finally, she sighed and said, "Polygonum multiflorum is expensive, much more expensive than yam, and yam can only be harvested after at least two years."

"If we plant them this year, we won't harvest them until next autumn. I don't know if the villagers are willing to grow yams."

But we can't plant only Polygonum multiflorum. A single medicinal herb is too risky. Also, Polygonum multiflorum is easy to dig up and can be grown on the mountain, while yam is more difficult to dig up and is more suitable for planting in the ground.

However, regardless of the time or price, the returns from Polygonum multiflorum are higher than those from yam, so getting the villagers to willingly grow yam is a problem.

To Shui Qing's surprise, Wang Guifen replied confidently, "Yes! Everyone in the village is willing, so you can rest assured."

Shui Qing raised an eyebrow in surprise, her curiosity barely concealed in her eyes.

Wang Guifen blushed, secretly glanced around, and seeing that there were only the three of them, who had been married for many years, she said in a loud voice, "Hey! Isn't this the time when Aunt Bai Ziqian came before the New Year? Do you remember?"

She sent over a particularly expensive medicinal dessert, made from yam, which is said to cure certain deficiencies and enhance strength. Do you think the women in our village wouldn't be tempted?