Chapter 024 Chapter 24 Time Dafa

Time flies, grass grows and birds sing, and it is spring of 1963 in the blink of an eye.

This year, Lin Yue's production team was still assigned to Xishan.

Looking around from the edge of the field, everyone looks pale and thin, and their spirits are not as good as in previous years.

Last year, there was a whole year of drought, and the reservoir at the west end of the village was completely depleted. Not only were the plants dying, but people also had no water to drink.

Lin Yue secretly bought some sorghum and wheat seeds in the past few years and planted them in the space. He repeated the same trick several times and released some grain when everyone was about to give up. Because of this, the land in Xishan became valuable, and everyone rushed to work here.

Some time ago, Lin Yue planted another five acres of sorghum in the mountain. This time she didn't even try to hide it. The five acres of land were filled with densely packed sorghum, without even a weed.

Everyone had been hungry for a long time, and people would come to check on the area every day. As soon as the sorghum field appeared, it was discovered quickly. Everyone was so excited that they shed tears, and several elderly people knelt on the spot, shouting "Thank you, Snake Goddess, for your protection."

In this era, sorghum was called life-saving food, and its yield was relatively high. Because of the space, the yield of these five acres of sorghum was much better than that of ordinary sorghum, and they were densely packed without gaps. In the end, everyone harvested 30,000 kilograms of grain, enough for them to survive for three months.

In recent years, people have died of starvation in other villages. After hearing about this, more people in Xiaotian Village secretly worshipped the "Snake Goddess" at home. This also led to the village being able to survive relatively smoothly during the subsequent major movements. After all, almost every household in their village was a participant in feudal superstitious activities, and their solidarity was particularly strong.

There was no shortage of water in Lin Yue's space, but it did not solve the problem of water shortage. She once tried to pour water into the well, but the water quickly seeped down, and she was so scared that she quickly stopped. Later, the team leader reported the situation to the commune, and several deep wells were dug, which solved the problem of drinking water.

Seeing that the weather this year is relatively good and policies have changed, people have become particularly active in growing crops and almost no one is slacking off.

Xiao Wanli and Lingling are almost two and a half years old. Lin Yue can no longer carry them on his back when he works. Lin Yue can only let them follow him and play with them while he works.

Lin Yue also built a triangular cabin with wooden planks on the field. The children were so curious that they rushed to get in. Although they usually didn't want to take the little ones to play, but with the temptation of this cabin, many children were willing to come and play with them for a while.

Children like to play with older children, which is understandable. Moreover, the age gap between Xiao Wanli and Xiao Lingling and these children is too big, so it is normal that they can't play together. After having the cabin, the two little guys are not so lonely. Lin Yue thinks this is a good thing and doesn't interfere.

Life was difficult in the past few years, with no one getting married and no new babies being born in the village. Everyone loved these two little guys, and since Lin Yue was kind, everyone was willing to help look after them when they had time, and they even gave them a nickname, "little workers."

A spring rain fell a few days ago, and now is the time to plant sorghum.

The two little ones grew up very fast. They were as tall as Lin Yue's legs. Their skin was like Lin Yue's. They were white, plump and cute. They were neat and tidy, just like the dolls in the New Year pictures. At this moment, the two of them were following her happily. When Lin Yue scattered seeds, they imitated the adults and kicked their two little feet to cover the seeds with soil. It was a pity that the little guys had short legs and small feet, so they could only kick up dust, which made the people around them very happy.

The leader of their team was Zhang Shoucang, who was plowing the field with his oxen. When he heard the laughter, he looked back and shouted from a distance: "Wang Baodong, why are you standing there looking at something if you don't have anything to do!"

Lin Yue looked in response and saw a short young man leaning on a hoe, standing with his legs crossed and looking at her. When he heard Zhang Shoucang's shout, he was startled, his arm tilted, and he lost his grip on the hoe and almost fell down.

Lin Yue has recovered in the past few years and has gradually gained some weight. She is no longer as skinny as she was when she first came here. Although she is now dressed in rustic clothes and has waxed yellow on her face, her good figure cannot be overshadowed. Moreover, she is a young wife living alone and has no man at home. Some of the indecent people in the village always like to look at her and take advantage of her.

Wang Baodong is one of them. His father, Wang Tiejun, fled here with his brothers in his early years to escape famine, and then married a wife in the village and settled down there.

Wang Baodong's mother was Liu Aihua, a well-known troublemaker in the village. Most people would avoid her when they saw her from a distance, for fear of being pestered. Moreover, Liu Aihua and Sun Hongmei were like-minded and walked very close to each other, so Lin Yue would avoid her whenever he could.

The situation in the old Wang family is somewhat similar to that of Lin Yue's adoptive parents. The two brothers have only one son, Wang Baodong, and they don't even have a concubine, so the whole family is very accustomed to Wang Baodong.

Wang Baodong is idle all day long, stealing things and flirting with the shy young wife. He never went to work before, but has been coming here more often recently. However, he is always lazy and is the focus of the scorer and the team leader.

He stood up straight now and explained hurriedly: "I'm watching two little kids working. It's quite interesting. Haha..."

Auntie Wang San smiled and said, "It's quite interesting. I like to watch it, too. If it were me, I should give them some work points. Look at what they did!"

Everyone laughed when they heard this.

Wang Baodong has always been a smooth talker. Some women in their forties and fifties love to argue with such people. Aunt Wang San usually gets along well with him.

Liu Jianhua was right next to her mother-in-law, and seeing that she still wanted to talk to Wang Baodong, he secretly pulled her mother-in-law's sleeve, signaling her not to pay any more attention to Wang Baodong.

Zhang Shoucang scolded, "Alright, get to work, Wang Baodong, come over here! Don't slack off again when I don't see you!"

Wang Baodong touched his nose, lowered his head and secretly glanced at Lin Yue, then walked over carrying the hoe.

Lin Yue was afraid of tiring the two little guys, so she led them back to the field. She took out a water bottle, fed them some water, and caught a few grasshoppers, strung them together with dogtail grass, and used them to play with them, answering their "hundred thousand whys".

The scorekeeper knew that Lin Yue never slacked off at work and that it was not easy to take care of her, so he would turn a blind eye and pretend not to see it. However, in order to avoid being criticized, Lin Yue never got full work points.

When no one was paying attention, she secretly took out two small strawberries from the space, stuffed one into each child's mouth, winked at them, and made a "huh" gesture with her hand.

The strawberries were obtained from Xu's father. Last year, his good friend sent him a package with a strawberry seedling inside. However, the mailing system was not well developed at that time. When Xu's father received it, the strawberry seedling had already died. Fortunately, Lin Yue came across it, took it from him, and planted it in the space.

Father Xu called strawberries "Korean fruit" and said that they were grown here in the past, but unfortunately they are rare now and can only be seen in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing.

The child didn’t react in time. After eating the delicious strawberries, little Lingling didn’t have time to care about her mother’s actions. Her eyes widened instantly and she shouted, “It’s the eyebrow!”

Little Wanli also nodded vigorously and said, "Eat eyebrow!" After he said that, he remembered that his mother didn't allow them to say it, so he covered his own mouth with one hand and reached out to cover his sister's mouth as well.

It was too late for Lin Yue to stop them. Fortunately, the two kids didn't speak fluently and kept calling "strawberry" "eyebrow", so no one else could understand what they were saying.

The scorer even teased the two children with a smile: "Little worker, you keep saying eyebrows. You like eyebrows so much. Come on, show me where your eyebrows are."

Little Wanli shook his head vigorously, while Little Lingling pointed at his mouth and wanted to open it for others to see, but unfortunately his mouth was covered by his brother. The scorer laughed when he saw that neither of them answered the question correctly. Lin Yue could only touch the non-existent sweat on his forehead.

At noon, she prepared vegetable pancakes for her two children, which were no different from those prepared by other people.

The child should actually eat more meat at this time, but it's a pity that her mother doesn't even dare to kill a chicken, so she raises so many chickens, ducks and rabbits in the space, but unfortunately they can only look at them and not eat them.

Without meat, she could only cook eggs and fish for her children. But now they were outside and couldn't show off, so vegetable pancakes were already a good meal.

After dinner, she coaxed the two little guys to sleep in the small tent. She made a cover out of an old quilt cover, and wrapped it up underneath, leaving an opening in the front for the children to get in and out. The opening was usually tied with a rope to prevent insects from getting in. Lin Yue also placed a lot of small bags of snake repellent powder at the four corners of the tent. She bought them at the pharmacy in town, and she made a joke at the time.

Because of the brainwashing of movies and TV dramas, she always believed that the most effective snake repellent powder was realgar, so as soon as she entered the pharmacy, she asked to buy realgar powder to repel snakes. After being told off by the old Chinese doctor inside, she realized that snakes were only afraid of pungent smells, not realgar, and that realgar powder was actually poisonous and could not be placed near children. Lin Yue had only one thought in her mind at the time: The Legend of the New White Snake misled me! ②

Fortunately, the old Chinese doctor prescribed her the right snake repellent powder, but the smell was a bit strong. She sprinkled the snake repellent powder around the tent and placed a few small bags in a circle inside the small tent. The two little ones were still quite safe sleeping inside. Unless there were mice that could bite through the fabric, ordinary snakes and insects could not get in.