Xu Errui scratched his head: "That's what Li Laoshi said. He said that now we have 30 mu of land, and we have to work on it ourselves. We have to get up early and work late every day. It's too tiring."
"Why don't we hire everyone? We can owe them wages now, and later we can collect the herbs ourselves, sell them, and pay them back!"
Mr. Li is now reaping the benefits of selling medicine.
Selling herbs is easier than farming, and seeing so much land, he kept telling Xu Errui that it was worthwhile to hire people.
Xu Errui grew up doing farm work. If someone had offered to hire someone a year ago, he wouldn't have agreed, and neither would his mother.
He saw three large bags of medicine being sold for two taels of silver in the county town, and he was tempted.
Indeed, while others are doing the work, you can have more time to do other things and earn more money.
Hearing Xu Errui say this, Jiang Zhi felt relieved.
It's better that Xu Errui has these ideas than to spend money, even if they're just lazy talk from Li Laoshi.
It would indeed be a waste for our people to spend all their time and energy digging, planting crops, and doing manual labor.
I'm just still thinking about how to say it in a convenient way.
After all, it would be quite abrupt for an old woman who has spent her whole life doing farm work to suddenly start asking others for help with everything.
Now that Xu Errui is saying these words, it makes more sense than if his own mother were saying them.
So she deliberately paused for a moment before nodding: "Then we need to be more diligent in the future and pick more herbs!"
Xu Errui was overjoyed to see that all his words had been approved: "Mother, I can find medicine now too. I've learned everything you taught me."
Jiang Zhi was already exhausted from repairing the road. Just thinking about having to repair the ditch for another two months made his scalp tingle. He couldn't afford to waste his time on that. Selling medicinal herbs was the real job for him!
With that decision made, Xu Errui then supervised the land preparation work in the village.
He ate and slept in the medical shed. In order to keep track of the work period, he asked the clerk of the medical shed for guidance on making account books. He became a proper boss and became more and more experienced. Every time he returned to the mountain, the changes were amazing.
Keeping things under your thumb will never lead to anything; going solo is better for growth.
On the mountain, after the road was repaired, Jiang Zhi began raising money, no longer considering the county town sixty miles away.
If you bring extra things, you have to ride a mule or horse and stay overnight. You don't make much extra money after food and drink.
There are pharmacies in Pear Blossom Town where you can buy medicine and also see what the town is really like.
It's not yet the end of the first month of the lunar calendar, so the annual herbs on the mountain haven't grown yet, and the perennial herbs were almost all harvested last year, so we can't dig them up completely.
There aren't many medicinal herbs left at home. The only thing I can sell is the rush pith that I've peeled beforehand. It's the safest thing to sell. If the pharmacy won't take it, I'll sell it to the general store as rush pith.
Another item was a large bag of dried red thorn berries, which was originally intended for Peppa Pig. However, since there were already oak nuts and sweet potatoes, the little wild boars had enough food, so the red thorn berries were left untouched.
But this can also be used as food, and now that there's a spring famine, there might be people who need it.
Knowing that Jiang Zhi was going to Pear Blossom Town, Xiao Man also wanted to sell some straw sandals woven by Xu Dazhu, some kudzu silk and hemp thread, and some wood ear fungus.
Keep the food for yourself. If you don't use all the straw sandals and hemp thread, you can exchange them for other items.
So the two families agreed to go to the market together.
The market in Lihua Town follows a set schedule: the 3rd, 7th, and 9th of each month, on odd-numbered days only.
In fact, the market in Pingchuan County is held on even-numbered days, specifically the 2nd, 4th, and 8th of each month.
When Jiang Zhi and the others went there last time, they felt that the city was deserted and sparsely populated, because they had missed the market day.
On the 29th day of the first lunar month, while it was still barely dawn, Jiang Zhi and Xiao Man carried large and small bags down the mountain to go to the market.
The little wild boar chased and stopped intermittently, only turning back halfway.
It was just dawn when they arrived in the village. They met up with Li Laoshi and Xu Errui, and the four of them headed towards Lihua Town.
The distance from Xujia Village to Lihua Town is more than ten miles, and there are no means of transportation; one can only rely on walking.
Jiang Zhi started walking at dawn and is now heading towards the town. The thought of having to walk back after the market day makes her legs ache.
There's no other way; that's how people get through it.
In modern times, my grandparents' and parents' generation relied on their own two legs to go wherever they went.
The history of having cars available right outside the door is only a little over twenty years, and there are certainly no mule or ox carts available here all the time.
Jiang Zhi doesn't need to carry anything; with Xu Errui around, he's already taken care of carrying the basket.
It's unimaginable how difficult it must have been for those refugees who not only couldn't eat, but also had to carry large bags and small packages and walk hundreds of miles on foot.
The official road was not only frequented by people going to the market, but also by other pedestrians from time to time, which was much better than the situation of the refugees before.
However, everyone seemed like a frightened bird, keeping a distance from each other and not daring to get close.
Pear Blossom Town is not far from the official road. The town entrance is located at the fork in the road off the official road. The first thing you see is a two-meter-high earthen wall.
Actually, with these low walls, Pear Blossom Town should be relatively safe.
However, the mutinous soldiers, along with villagers they had kidnapped along the way, forcibly tore down the town walls and tricked people into opening shops, which led to the annihilation of Pear Blossom Town.
A year has passed, and the low wall has been rebuilt. The new soil was laid on the old wall that had been torn down, and it is now higher than before.
Getting into town was a bit of a hassle. A large crowd had gathered around the low wall, with everyone craning their necks to peer inside. Every now and then, someone would leave, either dejected or furious.
Jiang Zhi and the other three squeezed over to see what was happening.
"Which village are you from? You're not a local, so you're not allowed in!" Several men by the low wall stopped people trying to enter the town and asked them questions. As soon as they heard that someone wasn't a local, they immediately tried to push them out of the crowd.
"I've already registered my household in Dayan Village, I'm a local!"
"no!"
"I am from Xujia Village!"
"no!"
The man who claimed to be from Xujia Village protested: "Why shouldn't people from Xujia Village be allowed in?"
The man blocking the road scoffed, "Your accent hasn't changed. Who are you trying to fool?"
The dialects in Ba County are largely similar, but you can really tell from every ten miles that the accents are different, so it's not easy to blend in with the locals.
The town of Lihua was tricked and vandalized in the middle of the night by someone using a different accent. Now, they are very wary of outsiders and don't even allow them into the town.
Once his accent was exposed, the man was immediately rendered speechless and pushed forward!
Jiang Zhi looked over and saw that they were indeed outsiders from Xujia Village.
Xu Errui called out, "Second Uncle Tian!"
The man was both angry and anxious when he heard someone call his name. He looked up and looked around and saw Xu Errui. He immediately showed surprise and delight: "It's Errui! Li Laoshi, you've come to the market too!"
As he approached, he saw Jiang Zhi and quickly bowed and nodded, "Sister-in-law Jiang!"
Jiang Zhi had already heard Xu Errui mention this Tian Gui. He was in his early thirties, and he and his wife had three children. The family of five had come from out of town.
Because there were many brothers in the family, Tian Gui and his wife were not favored by their parents, and they were the ones who usually did the housework at home.
Moreover, her parents said they wanted their eldest daughter, Tian Tao, who was only eleven years old, to get married as soon as possible so she wouldn't be idle at home.
They happened to be stranded in Xujia Village during the chaos of war, so the couple decided to stay there, since they would have to work for the rest of their lives anyway if they went back.
Jiang Zhi felt that being able to find another way out for her child was a sign of being a responsible parent, and that her thinking was not outdated.
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