Chapter 20 Chapter 20 Hard Struggle
The work location is in the fields, not in the village, so the educated youth do not need to go to the village, they can go directly to the work location.
Wangjiagou Brigade had more than 300 households and over 800 people, divided into four labor groups. The four educated youth were divided into two teams according to gender and served in different labor groups.
The first group consists of the largest number of young and middle-aged men, and they also accumulate the most annual work points. The age of group members is mostly between sixteen and fifty years old, but there are usually few who are over forty years old.
Because of continuous high-intensity labor, people's physical age is often older than their actual age. After the age of 40, their physical functions begin to decline, which manifests as more or less some physical problems, and also has a significant impact on their lifespan.
Of course, it's not without bugs.
A very small number of people actually get better and better health with high-intensity physical labor. This is a genetic bug. They often also have good bones, which are the favorite of martial arts masters.
The fourth group is composed of middle-aged and elderly people and women with weaker bodies. In addition, there are some young boys and girls under the age of sixteen, and children who can get 1 to 3 work points during the autumn harvest also belong to this group.
The second and third groups have similar personnel compositions, with both men and women, who can do all kinds of work. Their work points are not as good as those of the top groups, but better than those of the bottom groups.
Han Jing and Xu Fei, as young men, were assigned to the first group; Ye Yu and Hua Feifei were assigned to the third group. When the groups were being divided, the team leader took a closer look at Ye Yu.
Han Jing and Xu Fei felt that they were highly valued by this arrangement and gladly accepted it. Hua Feifei was also full of energy. Only Ye Yu's face rarely showed any emotion, and she seemed to be calm and composed in the face of everything.
Ye Yu had thought so too. What farm work was difficult for her? Was it harder than killing mutant beasts?
Then she burst! Open!
“…”
Rural construction was completely different from what the educated youth had imagined, which shocked them greatly.
This season has actually passed the double-harvest season, which is the most important, labor-intensive and arduous season in rural areas. For example, the village’s staple foods such as sweet potatoes, potatoes, beans, pumpkins, corn, etc. have basically been harvested, and there is no need to sow a lot of food like in spring.
There is a lot less farm work.
But it doesn't mean there is none at all.
First of all, fertilizer needs to be fermented after the autumn harvest.
In this era, there are fertilizer plants that specialize in producing carbon, ammonia and phosphate fertilizers, but the output of fertilizers is still low and cannot be supplied to all rural areas. The vast majority of rural areas still use relatively traditional farmyard manure, which is only slightly modified at most.
The same is true for Wangjiagou.
Farmyard manure is mainly composed of human and animal feces, including the pigpen and cattle pen in the team, as well as the toilets of every household. It is piled in three large pits in the field, about 10 meters wide, 20 meters long and 3 meters deep. Water, straw, rotten grass, certain leaves, etc. are added to make fertilizer. Once the farmyard manure is fermented, it can be used on a large scale in the spring.
"A good harvest depends on fertilizer", as this well-known slogan shows, the importance of fertilizer to farmers is self-evident.
Although composting is important, the process is dirty and tiring, and it is a double test of vision and smell.
There are also various small insects attracted by the farm manure. Some people start to feel itchy when they see them. Fortunately, it is late autumn and the weather is getting cooler, so the number and types of insects are relatively small.
Ye Yu's keen sense of smell and inhuman eyesight all became a burden at this moment.
It almost broke.jpg.
Even if you secretly use space isolation, you can't really lock yourself in the space. There must be a breathing passage. Here, there is ventilation on all sides, and there is more than one composting pit, so the smell cannot be blocked anywhere.
Or maybe it was because he was living too comfortably after his rebirth. In the past, he wouldn't even blink an eye. People tend to retreat in a comfortable environment. Ye Yu spitted at himself expressionlessly.
Two words:
"Weak! Chicken!"
The others who saw it for the first time were not much better off. Hua Feifei was the first one to vomit. The meal she had this morning was wasted. She might have vomited it all up yesterday. She definitely wouldn't be able to eat anything at noon today.
Han Jing and Xu Fei also vomited many times. Finally, Han Jing was the second to follow Hua Feifei's footsteps. Xu Fei was strong and did not vomit, but his stomach kept churning and clamoring for rejection.
The villagers who were working together burst into laughter and said that the kids from the city were just spoiled.
Han Jing once thought he was a man of integrity. When he was little, he even served as a Boy Scout in his grandfather's military camp. Wasn't that just going to the countryside? It was no big deal.
But at this moment he was slapped in the face.
Faced with the villagers' ridicule, the educated youth could not find any reason to explain it, because that was the fact, so they just had to hold their noses and try to adapt.
But it's still a bit difficult.
In fact, the work of composting is not particularly hard, except that it is a little difficult to pick up the manure, but this is done all the time. Stirring and adding water are not too difficult. It’s just that the mental pollution is too serious.
Fortunately, the team leader just wanted to let the educated youth understand farm work, not to torture them. After seeing the compost fermentation, he let them do the work they were actually responsible for today.
In addition to composting, the time after the autumn harvest is also the time to plant wheat every year. People who plant wheat may not be able to eat white flour, but wheat is also one of the important grains in the north.
Planting wheat requires land preparation, which mainly includes weeding and plowing.
Putting aside a very few exceptions, the innate physical strength difference between men and women is an objective reality. Women are mainly responsible for the former, while men are mainly responsible for the latter two.
There was a shortage of herbicides in that era, and the wheat fields were overgrown with weeds.
Weeding requires skills. Weeding without skills is not only slow but also easy to get injured.
However, mastering the weeding skills is not the most difficult part. The most difficult part is that you have to bend over all the time.
After two hours, Hua Feifei had not done much work, less than one-fifth of the work done by her teammates, and some of the work had not been cleaned up and needed to be redone.
“…”
Despite this, Hua Feifei was so tired that her back and waist ached, she felt dizzy and it became difficult for her to squat again. There were many red marks on her hands from the weeds, and there were several bleeding wounds, which she had to smear with some herbal remedies.
"You city people are too delicate." Several aunts in the same group stretched out their hands, and their palms were full of old scars and calluses.
Some people say: "When you work long enough and develop calluses, you won't feel the pain anymore."
Hua Feifei wanted to cry but had no tears. She didn't want to work, nor did she want to get calluses on her hands. At this moment, she suddenly missed home more than ever before, and her work slowed down.
Whether they were sincere or not, the villagers in the same group were all trying to comfort the person, but some people were lying in front of the person involved. The villagers rarely enjoyed entertainment and liked to gather together to gossip, so the newly arrived educated youth would undoubtedly become the new protagonists of their gossip.
Although Ye Yu was in the same group as Hua Feifei, he was not in the weeding group. Instead, he went to the plowing group where they could earn eight to ten work points. Ten work points represented food.
Her goal was simple, to spend the same amount of time and get as much food as possible. She took ten work points not because she could only take ten centimeters, but because the maximum she could get was ten work points.
The plowing group is mostly composed of young and strong men, with only a small number of women.
Because of her poor performance in composting, many people questioned Ye Yu at the beginning. They all thought she was overestimating her abilities. After all, from the outside, Ye Yu was quite different from them and didn't look like someone who could do this job at all.
"Comrade Ye, you have such thin arms and legs. You should go back and pull weeds. You're delaying the plowing."
"Yes, yes, plowing is too hard work, not suitable for you women."
"The little girl didn't listen to the old man's advice, and now she's suffering."
“…”
There were many people who offered good advice, many who tried to show off, and some who spoke and looked frivolously.
Ye Yu ignored their stares, but she had never been to the fields. She looked at the villagers next door who were plowing the fields.
The main tool for plowing the land is a plow. One person controls an ox to pull the plow, or two people work together to pull the plow if there are not enough oxen. The land is plowed back and forth twice, and then several people use wooden rakes to harrow the land over and over again to make it flat.
As long as the people who plow the land do not make mistakes and have to redo the work, they can get ten work points every day; a few people who harrow the land can also get ten centimeters, but more people get about eight work points, depending on the amount of work completed by each person.
Ye Yu immediately decided that plowing was more suitable for her, but she had limited tools. She looked around, refusing the help and guidance of several frivolous young men, and walked towards a woman with her back straight. She asked, "Excuse me, comrade, can I join you?"
This woman also wore patched clothes, had dark skin and a thin figure. The difference was that her spine was always straight when she stood up. There were only a few people with such a normal body posture in the village, much fewer than the number of people with hunchbacks.
A bit eye-catching.
Of course, Ye Yu noticed this person not because she had a straight back, but because she was the only woman present who was plowing the land with a plow, and she was using a more difficult double-share plow, the kind that usually required livestock or two people to pull the plow together.
From the woman's chapped and swollen hands before winter, her clenched teeth and the sweat all over her body, it can be seen that she is using this not because she is particularly strong, but more because of her amazing perseverance.
It's not that she couldn't choose to harrow the fields, but the wheat fields were limited after the autumn harvest, and she couldn't compete with other young and middle-aged people, so she couldn't get ten centimeters every time. Judging from the thinness of her clothes and the number of patches on them, her family conditions were also poor in the village, and ten work points were very important to her.
The woman was a little hesitant about Ye Yu's request. After all, Ye Yu didn't seem like the kind of person who would work, and she didn't know whether she was helping or hindering. She was able to get the plow thanks to the care of the newly appointed team leader and the women's director. Now she just wanted to do her job with all her heart and hold on.
"No……"
While she was hesitating, before she could finish her words, Ye Yu had already touched the plow, and the woman's eyes suddenly widened.
Unbelievable!
Ye Yu only had one hand, which made her work much easier. Not only did she have more strength, but the amount and quality of the plowed land increased significantly in just a short distance.
It turns out that this female educated youth was not bragging when she said she was strong!
The woman was embarrassed and couldn't express her apology out loud. Ye Yu blinked at her knowingly.
Initial cooperation reached√.
The villagers watching were surprised by this development. Even the experienced farmers couldn't find fault with their plowing. Then the village accountant arrived and called out, "What are you standing there for? Move faster! If you can't grow crops well, you won't want to eat, will you?"
He was a little surprised that Ye Yu chose to harrow the land, but seeing that she and Guihua's widowed sister-in-law raked the land better than any men, he didn't say anything. He was even quite proud that he had a female educated youth relative who was capable of working, and nodded to her with a smile.
The fields soon became busy again.
In addition to land preparation, planting wheat also involves plowing, tilling, and fertilizing, which are equally challenging procedures. The villagers' work is not limited to composting and planting wheat. Before the cold winter comes, there are still many big and small things to do.
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