It's so common for children to die young in the village; Da Rui died in the Jiang family, for example.
Now that Village Chief Jiang has proposed putting the children together for care, no one is objecting anymore, and those who can't understand it for the time being have also fallen silent.
Thus, the nursery class at Qingquan Academy was established, probably the first nursery in Lihua Town.
The newly built office was furnished in one room before the Lunar New Year, but it was empty except for a row of baskets.
It was a large bamboo basket filled with straw, then pressed down to make a depression in the middle like a dog kennel. This was also the crib used by farm children when they were young.
Place a cotton pad underneath, and the child can lie down and sleep in the straw nest. If the child urinates, the urine will seep down the straw and only wet a small area about the size of a palm under the bottom, so the child won't be soaked in the puddle.
Moreover, the damp straw, after being dried and replaced, becomes a soft basket.
The only downside is that slightly older children might climb out and even overturn the basket.
The oldest of the first batch of children was Tian Xiaosi, who was just over two years old, and the youngest was Pi's son, who was only a few months old.
If the child is placed in a daycare, Ms. Pi can come over and breastfeed the child during her shift.
The person hired to look after the child was Xu Gensheng's second sister-in-law, who was also Li Ersao, who had previously been in charge of tending the fire at the pharmacy.
Later, because two people died in the Qingquan Bay murder case, she became too scared to go there.
Li Ersao was slow at working, which wasn't noticeable when she was in charge of the fire at the pharmacy, but it was a problem at the mosquito coil workshop.
Making mosquito coils at home is slow and only results in a loss for the individual household. But now, with assembly lines, anyone who is slow will be scolded.
She was replaced after only one month on the assembly line the previous year. Although she was still doing other things in the workshop, she was still seen as an obstacle by others.
When it comes to money, Wang Xiaoju is nothing but a bloodsucking bandit, caring only about survival and not about people.
With less work, the wages were naturally less. After working for a full year, Li Ersao no longer wanted to go to the workshop and planned to stay at home to farm and help her sister-in-law Pi take care of the children.
She was naturally overjoyed to be assigned to look after the child at the daycare.
Whether you're raising one child or several, it's all the same. As long as they don't get hurt, cold, or hungry, it's fine.
This clearly reflects Xu Gensheng's personal motives.
At first, he was determined to divide the family property, but his deceased grandfather left a message that the two brothers were not allowed to divide the family property. Since the family property could not be divided, Xu Gensheng openly used his own brother and sister-in-law.
Li Ersao takes care of several children. The workshop provides her with a monthly subsidy of fifty coins, which she uses to cook porridge for the children as a snack.
With each child's family contributing another thirty coins, she could earn one or two hundred coins a month.
And so, next to the school where the sound of reading aloud could be heard, there was another group of babbling infants.
The two houses are not on the same floor.
In order to preserve a space in the school where meetings could be held, two offices were built in the ground below the school, with a two-meter difference in height between them, so they would not interfere with each other.
When Da Xiang and Xiao Xiang enter the school, you can first send Nan Nan to the toddler class, then attend the class yourself, and pick her up after school.
In the future, other children who need to take care of their younger siblings can also be stored in this way without affecting their studies.
After completing a year of school, He Xiang could barely recognize four books, including the "Three Character Classic," and also knew some basic math, so she graduated smoothly.
She has been in Xujia Village for a year and a half, and now at the age of fourteen, she can learn to make medicine. So she goes to work at the pharmacy with Qiaoyun every day.
Although Hui-ge was being cared for by Tan-shi, Jiang-zhi did not leave the child at Sishuitang. She paid for the child to be sent to the toddler class and had Tan-shi stay with him to help Li Er-sao.
There are many children in the school, so it's better for Hui-ge to stay here than for him to be alone in the courtyard of Sishuitang after Caixia and Nini left.
When the children get tired from playing here and need to sleep, Ms. Tan will bring them back to Sishuitang.
Tan was a diligent person. She had developed a habit of never being idle. She was always either wiping the walls or sweeping the floor. Like a spinning top, she did all the housework for both families.
Now when she takes her child out to play, she can also chat with people outside and sit for a while.
Now that Li Laoshi is no longer in the village, Qian Niu has taken over the work of traveling back and forth between the village and the mountains, and he spends more time in the village now.
Dazhu's health gradually improved. Whenever Xiaoman and Qianniu were on the mountain, Chunfeng would come down the mountain to stay in the village for a few nights to keep the children company.
Because now seven-year-old Nini is hard to manage. She runs fast, has quick hands, gets into fights with people all the time, and even rides horses on the official road with the older kids.
Grandma Xiaoman was constantly worried, and Jiangzhi didn't overstep her bounds, insisting that Chunfeng discipline her daughter herself.
In the third month of the lunar calendar, it is the season for seedling cultivation again. The lilyturf is replanted, and the early corn seedlings are already more than a foot tall.
Rice seedling cultivation has begun again.
There are rice seedling nurseries in the village, and there are also rice seedling nurseries on the mountain.
Rice hybridization breeding in Jiangzhi has been ongoing, except for one year when it was interrupted due to drought.
Xu Dazhu leveled an area of one square meter on the terraced field, and evenly scattered the rice seeds, which had been soaked in warm water until they sprouted white spots (i.e., germinated embryos), onto the soil, then covered them with a thin layer of soil.
The previous two years of trial planting did not show much effect, only that the seedlings were strong. Xu Dazhu decided to try this hybrid variety again, since he still had to farm anyway.
Since Jiang Zhi entrusted the mosquito repellent formula to Huo Family Pharmacy for production, it naturally included the technology of distilling the essence.
Distillation technology is not particularly difficult; it's something that distilleries use for brewing spirits.
In Li Zhao's "Supplement to the National History" written in 806 AD, it says: "There is Jiannan's Shaochun wine" (in the Tang Dynasty, wine was commonly referred to as "chun"). At that time, Sichuan produced a fine wine called Jiannanchun, which was a type of distilled liquor.
It is said that the most expensive paper in the world is window paper, which can be broken through with a lot of money. This ordinary method also cost the Huo family a lot of money.
The better the Huo family's products sell, the more dividends Jiang Zhi will receive.
That year, the mountain no longer busied itself with distilling large quantities of essence or making Tibetan incense.
According to the agreement, Jiangzhi is required to deliver a new product every year.
That's why she went to the Huo family's pharmacy in the first month of the lunar calendar to collect the previous year's interest.
Jiang Zhi was originally entitled to a dividend of 200 taels of silver from her technical shares. In addition, she received 530 taels of silver from selling antipyretics made by Qingquanwan Pharmacy.
It's good to have a big tree to lean on; although it's because of the new drug, it's indeed more profitable than brewing medicine yourself.
After receiving the first year's interest, Jiang Zhi also handed over the new products for the second year to the Huo family pharmacy.
The second new product is the method and formula for making Tibetan incense.
The Tibetan Spring Fragrance is inherently integrated with the essence. Since we've already provided the mosquito repellent, making the Tibetan Spring Fragrance now is a natural progression.
But she didn't mention that you can add Ganoderma lucidum (a type of fungus) to it.
Because by simply adding a few ingredients, Ganoderma lucidum can be transformed into a new product.
Now, Qiaoyun and Tiantao manage the pharmacy, and the Tibetan incense is no longer made on the mountain.
The mosquito coil workshop had Wang Xiaoju and Xu Gensheng, and the school had Xia Xiucai, with older children leading younger children in their studies.
In terms of land, Tian Gui and his group led several households of displaced people to cultivate the land, while Er Rui and Xiao Man were responsible for social interactions with outsiders.
With everyone in the village busy, Jiang Zhi became the most idle person in Xujia Village.
However, this idle person still has something on his mind.
It's almost the end of May. Li Laoshi and Qin Shi have been gone for almost half a year, and Lianhua is about to give birth.
As agreed with Qin, she said that if she couldn't cure Lianhua's illness, she would rush back to take care of her during her postpartum period.
There was only one letter before the Lunar New Year, and there has been no news since then. We don't know how the two people are doing.
Sending letters from the city to Xujia Village via the post station was convenient, but getting the letters into the city was troublesome, as the post station was not a private post office.
As it turned out, Li Laoshi and Qin Shi were reliable. In less than two days, a letter was delivered from Jincheng Prefecture to Cao Yicheng, asking him to pass it on to Sishuitang.
Jiang Zhi received the letter, quickly read through its contents, and immediately revealed a look of surprise: "I didn't realize Li Laoshi was such a capable person. Oh dear, Qin Ling has no way to come back!"
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