"Okay, I'll wait until the ground is ready.
That afternoon, the village head convened a general meeting in the village, requiring all villagers to attend. The topic, naturally, was the expansion of the village. While everyone agreed, they were all busy working in the fields, so manpower was a problem. Ultimately, they decided that each family would provide one person to work, and if they didn't, they could provide money, which would be used to hire odd jobs in neighboring villages.
Chunxiao, Yan Bingfa, and Dahe's families naturally contributed money. Yan Dashan wanted to contribute, but Zhou stopped him. "Our family has some money, but it's really unreasonable for one person not to contribute. How about letting Shuwen go? We don't need Shuwen's help in the fields."
Shuwen didn't care. "Okay, grandma is right. With such a large family like us, one person has to go. I'll go."
"If you go, help Haitang from your uncle Fusheng's family. Her brother has to take care of his own land, and her mother is sick. She's been washing quilts with us these past few days. The little girl is quite pitiful, and now she has to work with the villagers. We should help her as much as we can."
"Which crabapple?" Shuwen was completely unaware.
"There's only one Haitang in our village. You'll know when you get there. Anyway, you should help her out more. Her mother has a good relationship with your mother."
Shuwen nodded and said, "I see." But he was still wondering, which aunt who had a good relationship with his mother had a girl named Haitang? She probably only played with boys in the past and paid little attention to girls, so he didn't have much impression of her.
Chunxiao looked at Zhou and Tian, and thought that the older they were, the wiser they were.
After the meeting, the village land was officially leveled. The village head took money and hired some people from the neighboring village. As a result, the back half of Yanjia Village became even more lively. The excavated soil had nowhere to go, so the village head used it to fill the village road. He said that once the land was leveled, the village road would be built.
Everyone became more motivated, and people from other villages were envious.
People from other villages saw truckloads of stuff being pulled into the guardhouse every day, and asked the villagers what they were doing over there, whether they were building a road. Most of the villagers would just say a few words and not say much. They knew that Chunxiao was building a house, but it would be bad if they told others and let people from other villages see the fun.
March passed quickly in a blink of an eye. At the beginning of April, a new teacher came to the village. He was also an old scholar. He was originally a teacher in the village school, but later something happened at home and he stayed at home. Now that his children have returned, he wants to go back to the school, but there is no place for him in the previous school. This time when he met Yan Dashan looking for a teacher, he followed him to Yanjia Village. His wife was no longer at home, and the children had their own homes. It was a good place for him to teach here.
The two teachers met and talked about their youth. It turned out that they were old acquaintances. It was a coincidence. So the village school had two teachers. The head of the village recruited a maid from the village to cook two meals a day for them, clean the house and do the laundry. He paid her 300 copper coins a month. Unexpectedly, there were quite a few maids who responded. Anyway, it didn't take much time. Unlike young people, they couldn't work in the fields from time to time. It would be a waste not to earn these 300 copper coins. Finally, the head of the village picked an older one who was relatively clean.
Shuwen went to work on the slopes of the village every day. No one mentioned it in the first few days, but later he started talking about people from other villages, people from the village, and then Haitang.
"Mom, you don't know. Haitang is not very tall, but she works very hard. I told her that she was stupid, but she refused to accept it. She said if everyone didn't work hard, how could the work be finished? Do you think she is stupid?" He said this, but his face showed some admiration.
Tian was secretly happy but didn't show it. "I asked you to help her, did you? That girl does all the housework when she comes home."
"Why does she need my help?" Shuwen curled her lips. "Her brother has a group of people at home who don't work. Why let her do it all by herself?"
"They now have four mu of land, and they are all busy working in the fields."
"The work in this village is no easier than working in the fields." Shuwen said indignantly, "In my opinion, her mother should have spared some money. Working with a group of adults, if she doesn't work hard, she might even be held back."
Tian chuckled, then straightened her face, "Do you think every family has spare money? They're all saving it to buy land with the village when the time comes?"
"By the way, how's Daddy doing with his search? He goes out early and comes back late every day. It's been so long, why hasn't he found him yet?"
"I heard someone has taken a fancy to it and is currently negotiating with it. Buying land is no small matter, so we must be cautious."
"I saw how decisive my aunt was when buying land. She bought it right away. If it had taken me so long, I'm afraid she would have bought up half the county's land."
"What can you say about me? Don't talk behind people's backs." Chunxiao and the others just came back. "You finished work early today."
"Aunt, I'm praising you. I see the foundation of the outer wall of your house has been laid. Do you still need to hire someone?"
"Yes, this time the entire wall needs to be built twice as high as our current yard, and it's so big that we have to find people. You guys have done so much work, so I think we should give priority to people from our village."
"Built so high?" Shuwen was surprised.
"Since I'm not short of money now, I might as well do something more secure so I don't have to worry about anything later."
"Aunt, how much money do you plan to spend on this house?"
Chun Xiao estimated in her mind, "It'll cost a few thousand taels of silver. The house itself is secondary; the structures inside are the main thing. I guarantee you'll like it when it's finished."
Shu Wen was amazed. "Huai Tian and his family's house was already good enough, but I didn't expect that yours is the most amazing. Sigh," he sighed. "I'm afraid it's impossible for me to become like you, aunt. You're too amazing. I'd be lucky if I could become like my father."
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