Ruirui and Feifei heard it, and followed Qingya's example to break the malt sugar into three parts and give one to Liu's father and mother respectively. Liu's father and mother were very happy.
After eating the candy, Liu's father took his three children and, with the hoe and sickle they had kept, went to the hillside behind the house to divide the private plot and dig out the sweet potatoes and cut the sweet potato vines.
The sweet potato vines were harvested and handed over to the village's pig farm. This year, the commune, seeing that Liujia Village had struggled in recent years, allocated only six designated pigs. Liujia Village currently raises a total of ten pigs. In addition to the six designated pigs, the village will receive four. However, one of these four pigs is a sow, which the village plans to keep for piglets. The village will slaughter two pigs at the end of the year. However, this is still a plan, as the designated pigs also have requirements. The purchase price for pigs is divided into six grades based on fatness, with higher grades earning lower prices. Specifically, first-grade pigs fetch the highest price, while sixth-grade pigs fetch the lowest. The price difference between each grade ranges from approximately 0.02 to 0.04 yuan per jin (0.50 kg). Therefore, based on this price difference, a sixth-grade pig weighing 120 jin (0.50 catties) could sell for around 0.42 to 0.44 yuan per jin (0.50 kg). A designated pig must weigh at least 120 jin (0.50 catties). If the designated pig is not heavy enough, additional pigs will be submitted.
Nowadays, pigs struggle to gain weight, making it difficult for villagers to eat a full meal daily, so they don't feed them grain. Every household's kitchen must have at least two vats: a water vat and a swill vat. The swill vat holds water from washing pots and dishes, which settles before feeding the pigs, giving them a bit of a fishy taste. Pigs are typically fed vegetable stalks, leaves, and grasses. Hazelnut leaves, apricot leaves, linden leaves, nightshade leaves, and ferrous leaves are all good feeds. Summer grass can also be used. While these green fodders are good, they don't help with growth. A pig rarely weighs more than 150 kilograms after a year of feeding. Sometimes, to help them gain more weight, people feed them bran for a month or so before they're ready for slaughter. Bran is a valuable resource, and many families rely on it and wild vegetables to fill their stomachs during the lean season between spring and summer.
This year there are fewer pigs, so the whole village will raise them together. Two pig-raising experts, Grandma Li and Aunt Liu, will raise them together. Each of them will feed the pigs five centimeters a day until they are slaughtered.
Generally, a basket of sweet potatoes has a vine of one centimeter. If the village pigs can't eat all of them now, they will be dried in the sun and fed to the remaining pigs and the village's three cows in winter.
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