"What name should we give her?" Chen Yu asked.
“Let’s call her Little Lucky Treasure as her nickname. As for her formal name, I haven’t decided yet! After we found her, our fourth daughter stopped burning incense, which shows that she brought us good fortune,” Niu Dadao said.
Chen Yu thought about it and felt it made a lot of sense.
When Xiao Fubao got home, he opened his eyes and looked around.
poverty!
This family is too poor!
Few households in Niushan Village were wealthy, but the Niu family was the poorest of the poor, with three thatched-roof houses, two bedrooms, and a kitchen that also served as the main room.
The house was made of ordinary mud bricks, with thatched roofs on both sides and no courtyard walls. There were only two old and worn wooden beds inside.
There was a thin cotton quilt on the bed that had been used for who knows how many years. To make the bed warmer, a thick layer of straw was laid under the quilt.
The only valuable things in the house were probably an old-fashioned coarse cloth loom in the main room and an old hen in the chicken coop in the vegetable garden.
There was also a large oxcart.
The stove in the kitchen was an earthen stove, with pots and pans on the stove and a few bundles of firewood underneath.
There wasn't even a decent chair in the house, because wood cost money to buy; the only thing they had was a small stool that Niu Da had nailed together from old wooden planks.
They eat standing up.
This family has a large number of members, but the space is not big; the seven family members are crammed into two bedrooms.
Niu Da's parents had passed away long ago, and he only had a younger brother who worked away from home.
The room was unusually cold. The firewood was for cooking and had to be bought, so it was rarely used for heating. But Xiao Fubao wasn't cold at all; on the contrary, she felt warm because Chen Yu had placed her where the hot water bottle had been.
The rice bucket was half full of yellowish rice, mixed with half broken rice and a third of rice husks and pebbles.
"Second Girl, take this basket of vegetables to your Aunt Xia and see if you can exchange it for two ounces of lard!" Niu Da instructed Niu Meihua as he picked a garden full of vegetables in the snow and sifted rice.
"Okay, Dad!" Niu Meihua left.
After starting the fire and cooking the rice.
Looking at the two crying babies in the cradle, and thinking of the family's food supply and Chen Yu's milk, Niu Da frowned: "Her mother, tomorrow we'll sell that old hen and get two hundred coins to pay off the debt. Tonight I'll go to the river and see if there are any fish to catch."
"It's so cold, why are you going fishing?" Chen Yu asked.
In this cold weather, even the fish won't swim up, but Niu Da couldn't stay idle at night.
Vegetables are a rare commodity in winter. Although many families have them, there are not enough to eat. So Xia readily exchanged them for two ounces of lard.
"Mother, bring the two children over to warm themselves by the fire! Cuihua, Baozhu, the fire is lit, come and warm yourselves by the fire." Xiao Fubao was held in Chen Yu's arms, and the family gathered around the stove to warm themselves by the fire.
This is the warmest time of winter.
The little boy was wearing a worn-out cotton-padded jacket. In poor families, the older children would wear the jackets one after another. Each child only had one of these jackets, which they had originally obtained by asking a neighbor for a piece of old clothing.
A tattered padded jacket, a long, patched summer coat, two faded undershirts worn for both summer and winter, and two pairs of shoes—this was the clothing of many poor children.
After cooking rice, there were some crispy rice balls at the bottom of the pot.
Niu Da skillfully shaped a few cornbread buns. Niu Meihua had just returned with some lard. "Meihua, come and eat some cornbread buns! These are for you!"
The steamed corn bread smells so good...
Little Fu Bao smacked her lips; she really wanted to eat too…
After cooking, Niu Da cleaned the pot, filled it with water, and used most of it for bathing and a small portion for washing dishes.
Poor families couldn't afford soap pods for washing dishes, so they used boiling water to remove the grease.
There were seven people in the family eating, but only two bowls of dishes were served. Fortunately, the pork fat had some cracklings, and one of the dishes was a pork crackling and cabbage soup.
Three-year-old Niu Baozhu's eyes lit up when she saw the pork crackling and cabbage soup:
"Daddy, we haven't had meat in a long time! Meat is so delicious!"
It was traded for a whole garden of green vegetables.
"Pour the soup into the bowl and mix it with the rice," Niu Dadao said. He first poured half a bowl of pork crackling and cabbage soup for Chen Yu, then scooped half a spoonful for himself, and shared it with the other children.
Little Fu Bao watched them eat with great relish.
Niu Baolan is half a year older than her. Chen Yu and Niu Da discussed having Niu Baolan wean off breast milk and eat complementary foods, so that the breast milk could be saved for Xiao Fubao.
The whole village knew that Niu Da had picked up the little girl; some came to watch the spectacle, while others came to mock him.
"That Niu Da is really rich! The old man without descendants has picked up a young one without descendants, haha!"
Niu Dajia had no sons, so a few people in the village liked to mock him, and some even came to his door to ridicule him.
The good mood that Niu Da's family had just enjoyed eating meat was completely ruined.
Niu Cuihua put down her bowl, went outside, and replied:
"So what if I don't have a son? You have eight sons, and they can't even get enough to eat. What good are they!" The eldest daughter, Niu Cuihua, suddenly shouted fiercely towards the door.
"Hey, that silly girl's gone berserk! Don't get hurt again! Run for your life! Run for your life!" The speaker was Da Tan, who was in her forties. Her husband, Niu Fu, sold straw sandals in town.
“Niu Da Yatou speaks clearly now, is she not stupid anymore?” said Xiao Tanshi from the next room. Although Xiao Tanshi also had the surname Tan, she was not a close relative of Tanshi. Xiao Tanshi’s name was Tan Zhili.
Because there were only two people in the team with the surname Tan, they were divided into a senior and a junior Tan, and the senior and junior Tans never got along.
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