Chapter 128 A Mother-Daughter Relationship "Sister, Mom is dead, dead..."
After the start of spring, the weather warms up and everything comes back to life.
More and more people are busy on the farms, as farmers are planning their planting schedules for the new year.
The farm contracted by Li Hongmei has also been approved, located dozens of kilometers away from the Kapok Farm.
When Chen Mianmian contracted the farm, most of this area in the northern suburbs was still wasteland. This spring, there were even construction sites nearby holding groundbreaking ceremonies.
The workers said that the government plans to build an industrial park here and vigorously develop the manufacturing industry.
If development goes well, various important government agencies will gradually relocate to the northern suburbs in the future.
Chen Mian's farm now has a total of 700 mu of land, of which 500 mu are planted with flat peaches and 50 mu with jujubes.
It takes several years for a jujube tree to grow from seedling to flowering and fruiting. The remaining 150 acres of land are used to grow cash crops such as corn, soybeans, and sunflowers.
Rotating crops on the land is the best way to preserve soil fertility.
This year, Chen Mian plans to plant corn on half of her land and use the other half for agritourism.
She recently learned about a new way of growing corn at school, which she heard could increase yields by at least 50 percent.
The corn seedlings are covered with a thin film, which is spread evenly on the ground and weighed down with a small amount of soil on both sides.
Then, using a specially designed hole-making machine, holes are made on both sides of the plastic film. After the corn seeds are placed in the holes, a layer of soil is covered on top.
This ensures the corn seedlings receive the necessary temperature for growth, increasing their survival rate and yield.
As for agritainment, that was another idea in her mind. After going on a trip, she discovered that many people from other places actually come to Xinjiang for tourism.
People who are born and raised on the land forget that many people who grow up in cities have never actually been to farmland.
If she can attract these people to come and experience fruit picking at the farm while traveling.
Xinjiang is a vast and resource-rich region with beautiful scenery in all four seasons and a wide variety of crops ripening throughout the year.
As long as she arranges the planting time in advance, she can ensure that guests can enjoy the fun of picking whenever they come.
The vegetables grown and the chickens raised on the farm can all be eaten directly.
As long as guests come, they can have fun and enjoy delicious food. She can also build a few more small courtyards, which will solve the accommodation problem as well.
Chen Mian told Li Hongmei about her idea.
Li Hongmei said casually, "I understand you want to grow corn, and I'll go with you. But is this agritourism business really as good as you say?"
She only contracted 100 acres of land this year, which isn't enough to do this kind of thing. Besides, she has to take care of her children on weekdays, and she can't manage it all by herself.
Chen Mianmian understood her friend's concerns, "I'm just trying it out with a small portion. Even if it fails, I won't lose anything."
She picks the vegetables and fruits growing in the field and takes them to the city to sell for money, just like before, when no one comes.
She used the extra houses she built as warehouses since no one lived in them.
After the corn was planted, Chen Mian started building her agritainment business in a flurry of activity.
First, the location of the accommodation was planned, which should be a bit far from where their family lived, but not too far away, with a section in between designated as a restaurant.
This makes it easier to take care of the place, and each courtyard maintains a certain degree of privacy. There are three rooms inside: a living room, a bedroom, and a washroom.
The living room has a simple open kitchen, so guests who stay regularly can cook for themselves.
The picking area focuses on the experience, with each type of vegetable and fruit planted in a small area, and there is also a dedicated open space for guests to experience the fun of planting by hand.
The farm takes care of what they plant, and once it's ripe, it will be harvested and mailed to them.
The courtyard is beautifully designed, full of Xinjiang folk customs. Chen Mian found a local construction team and hopes to complete it as soon as possible.
…
"You're so clumsy, you can't even push a cart properly."
"I'm sorry, foreman, I didn't sleep well last night. I won't do it again next time."
The young man bowed and scraped, making repeated promises, before the foreman finally let him go.
"If there's a next time, you can just take your money and leave." The foreman spat. "What kind of young master is this? He can't even lift a finger, yet he wants to make a living on the construction site."
After Chen Mian's agritainment business started, Li Hongmei would check on the progress from time to time, as she was very curious about the scenes her friend had described.
That day, as soon as she arrived at the site, she saw a young man being scolded by the foreman, and he looked quite pitiful.
Li Hongmei approached and asked, "Are you alright? Are you feeling unwell?"
The young man was startled when he heard her voice. He quickly turned away from her and said in a gruff voice, "It's nothing."
"Are you really alright? You don't seem to be feeling well." Li Hongmei felt that he was probably not very old, and had probably just come out of his hometown to work.
"How about I go and talk to your foreman and let you take a break?" she continued.
"No need, I'm going to work." The young man hurriedly refused Li Hongmei's offer, covered his face with one hand, and tried to leave.
Li Hongmei felt increasingly uneasy and grabbed his arm. "Are you avoiding me? Do we know each other?"
Li Hongmei works in the fields year-round and is very strong. When she pulled the young man so suddenly, half of his body turned around.
"Yaozu?! What are you doing here?"
Li Hongmei's eyelashes trembled, and she looked around in a panic. She never expected to see her younger brother in Xinjiang.
"You...you, did that woman send you to Xinjiang to find me?"
Li Hongmei disregarded everything else and pulled her younger brother to a secluded place to question him in a low voice.
Li Yaozu remained silent, carefully sketching his sister's appearance in his mind. She had gained weight, her face was finally fuller, and she had even gotten a perm with big waves that resembled her mother's.
He had actually seen Li Hongmei a few days ago, but he hadn't dared to recognize her.
Back in her hometown, she always dressed very simply and cut her hair very short, like a tomboy.
The Li Hongmei I saw from afar that day had long, beautiful black waves, wore exquisite lipstick, carried a handbag, and was holding a lovely little girl in her arms.
“Speak up! Does she want to drag me back to marry someone else, or does she want money?” Seeing her brother remain silent, Li Hongmei angrily hit him a few times.
Li Yaozu let out a muffled groan, as if he had finally come back to his senses. His eyes reddened, his throat bobbed, and after a long while, he squeezed out a sentence through gritted teeth.
"Mom is gone..."
Li Hongmei was furious: "What do you mean 'gone'? Explain yourself clearly."
"What's gone? Are you injured somewhere?" Although that woman treated her badly, she was still her mother who had given birth to her, and Li Hongmei couldn't bring herself to be cruel to her.
"Sister, Mom is dead, dead..."
"Dead...?" Li Hongmei let go of his hand, stunned on the spot. "How could he just die like that?"
She hadn't even gone back in triumph to show off how well she was doing now, hadn't even received her apology, and yet she was dead...
Li Yaozu stepped forward, gently embraced his sister, and awkwardly comforted her, "It's a relief that she's gone."
The incident involving Li Huandi occurred in December, when it was snowing heavily. She had gone drinking with a group of people.
She was completely drunk and stumbled and fell several times on her way back. When Li Yaozu found her, she had been sleeping by the roadside for who knows how long, her hair covered in snow and her lips frozen purple.
Li Yaozu checked her breathing with trembling hands; she was still breathing. He rushed her to the hospital for emergency treatment.
The next day, when Li Huandi woke up, she found herself numb all over, unable to move, and her speech was distorted.
After suffering a stroke, Li Huandi didn't want to live a single day anymore. Li Yaozu knelt down and begged her, insisting on taking her home and caring for her day and night.
One wanted to die, the other desperately tried to stop him, and the two remained deadlocked until New Year's Eve.
The wind and snow outside the window were heavy that day, making the windows rattle. Li Yaozu was worried about his mother, so he moved her to lie down on the kang (a heated brick bed) in the main room while he clumsily cooked vegetables in front of the stove.
"Yaozu... Yaozu, stop busying yourself, come here, come here and let Mom talk to you."
Li Huandi, breaking her usual silence, stammered and called her son over, exhausting all her strength in just a few words.
Li Yaozu put the half-cooked dish aside, moved a stool and sat down next to his mother.
Li Huandi, holding her son's hand and breathing heavily, began to give her final instructions.
"After I leave, sell all the things in the house, get the money, and go to Xinjiang to find your sister."
“She’s a good child, she won’t abandon you.” A few tears slid down Li Huandi’s cheeks as she looked up at the roof, her sharp gaze seeming to pierce through the room.
"I'm sorry for her. I brought her back to life and gave her a new lease on life, but I failed to treat her well."
"Mom, what are you saying?" Li Yaozu was confused by his mother's words. First, she was making arrangements for her death, and now she was talking nonsense.
Perhaps because she had rested for several days, Li Huandi looked very well that evening and spoke much more fluently.
She recounted her past with her daughter, revealing that she had been unable to conceive after getting married.
Her family was urging her to get married, and as the year drew to a close, she suddenly found a swaddled baby girl on a small path at the edge of the village.
She softened her heart and took the child back, telling everyone with her husband that it was her own.
There's a saying among rural people: if you can't have children, you can adopt one first. If that child is destined to have siblings, it will bring you a child.
Li Huandi raised the child with some skepticism, until a year later, she actually became pregnant and gave birth to a son.
"Yaozu, after you find your sister, tell her everything I just said, word for word, understand?" Li Huandi glared fiercely at her son.
She wasn't a good woman, nor a good mother. Let her daughter continue to hate her; it's better than forgetting her.
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