Chapter 38 Autumn Harvest - Epilogue
As autumn drew to a close, Zhao Xuan finally removed the summer mat and mosquito net, replacing them with thick mattresses. She thoroughly cleaned the wardrobe in the bedroom that held summer clothes, putting away the short-sleeved shirts and hanging up long-sleeved shirts and trousers.
She and Lu An didn't have many clothes; they only had a few outfits to rotate throughout the season. She also found a few extra pieces for Lao Dao to change into, as he was tall and Lu An's size suited him perfectly.
The second rice harvest was indeed poor, yielding only 300 jin of grain. The wild boar they had never even seen took pity on them, causing trouble down the mountain once before disappearing without a trace. However, according to Lao Dao, the number of wild boars would increase in the future, and some defensive measures would still be needed along the fields.
After the weather got a bit colder, the three of them harvested all the vegetables in the garden and burned the field. The high temperature would kill the insect eggs in the soil, reducing the risk of pests for the next batch of vegetables. After burning, the field was tidied up and covered with a layer of dry straw to maintain the temperature, which would be beneficial for the seedlings' growth.
There's no need to worry about not having fresh vegetables. Wild gourds and pumpkins are still growing in the village, as are the stems of wild taro leaves. You can break them off, slice them, and stir-fry them with chili peppers for a delicious meal. There are also wild vegetables like scallions, which you can pick as you go.
Zhao Xuan hadn't seen the Yao family for a long time. He ran into the dog by chance, and the dog said that his parents were widening the small river channel used for power generation, as the dry season in the mountains had arrived.
The dog seemed to have grown taller. When herding sheep, he had gotten used to riding the bicycle that Lu An had repaired for him, which made herding sheep less strenuous. Sometimes, when Zhao Xuan saw the sheep stop to graze, he would park the bicycle to the side, take out a book from the basket on the back seat, and read it. It seemed to be a children's book, and he read it over and over again.
Lu An's arm had healed long ago, and Lao Dao's leg wound had healed, but he still felt a lingering pain in his injured leg, so he continued to use crutches. Until one day, Zhao Xuan saw Lao Dao walking back and forth with crutches for a while, and then pointed out the problem she had noticed with uncertainty: "Brother, is it your left leg that's injured?"
Upon hearing this, Lao Dao glanced at his left leg, which was supporting him on the ground, and suddenly realized, "No wonder my calf never gets better!" When he uses crutches, he should theoretically tuck his injured left leg in and walk with his right leg supporting him, but for some reason, he often uses the wrong leg.
After correcting this outrageous mistake, Lao Dao's leg recovered quickly.
After that, Lu An and Lao Dao often went out together. Lao Dao seemed to be teaching him some hunting techniques, such as how to set traps. The two of them would often be out for a whole day, and when they returned, each of them would carry a large load of firewood home.
The firewood comes from dead wood or broken pieces of wood. In recent years, the vegetation has become increasingly lush, and towering trees are everywhere in the uninhabited mountains and forests, but they rarely cut them down—these trees have been growing for decades and are not easy to come by. Their demand for firewood is already sufficient from dead wood and broken pieces of wood.
The collected firewood would be chopped into small pieces of the same length by Lu An, and then stacked in the corner of the yard where it could be sheltered from the rain. He and Lao Dao were unprecedentedly enthusiastic about collecting firewood. Every day, they could be seen chopping and stacking firewood in the yard, working with great enthusiasm. In a short period of time, the firewood on one wall had been stacked up to the height of a person.
Firewood will lose moisture after being dried in the autumn sun, and it will burn very quickly.
Because of the off-season, 460 seemed to have even less to do. In the past, it could accompany Lu An to hunt or carry a small cloth bag to pick fruit with Zhao Xuan. But now that Lao Dao accompanied Lu An into the mountains, the fruit had completely fallen, and 460 felt that this family no longer needed it to contribute much. So it would run into the mountains every few days, and sometimes it would be gone for several days at a time.
The autumn sun is so warm, shining everything with a brownish-yellow light. The mountains in the south are not covered with yellow leaves because of autumn. Most plants are still green, only turning from the emerald green of summer to a dark green.
The sky is getting higher every day, and the clouds are all wispy, indicating that it won't rain for the next few days.
Zhao Xuan collected the dried clothes on the third floor, including a small green and brown blanket. She put the clothes in the closet and hung them up, then took the small blanket, which smelled of sunshine, and went downstairs to place it on the large sofa that 460 had been sleeping on all day.
Hopefully, this little blanket will give 460 a warm winter.
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