Shui Qing is discussing personnel resettlement issues with Fan Jin and Bai Manshan.
There are 23 people in 4 households. They can live in the houses that Jiang Hehu vacated for them, but it is not appropriate for them to stay there for a long time. They still need to have their own places so that everyone can live, do things and work more conveniently and freely.
Bai Manshan didn't treat himself as an outsider. He took a big gulp of mung bean soup and said bluntly, "My suggestion is not to use bricks, but to use adobe bricks for the walls. This will reduce the number of times we need to go out."
I've calculated that I can make at most four or five more trips to Baijiazhuang to transport potatoes, and I need to finish in about half a month. Going out more than that would increase the risk. Half a month later, it will be the end of July. The chances of being targeted while transporting bricks and tiles will be much smaller, but it's not impossible.
So if you can do it once, don't do it twice. Four households, four houses, and about thirty vehicles from your village, two trips a day should be enough for the gray tiles.”
If bricks are used to build the walls, then there will be many more; it would probably take at least ten days and twenty or thirty trips in total.
In years of famine, when others can't even afford food, how can they not be envious of those who can still build brick houses?
But roof tiles are still needed. It rains a lot here. Even if we don't put on roof tiles this year, we'll still need them next year. Otherwise, it's just an endless cycle of replacing thatched roofs, which wastes manpower.
You should know that Shuiqing's family isn't short of work right now; on the contrary, they have a ton of work waiting for people to do it. It would be good to use the manpower saved for other things.
Fan Jin estimated the progress of the Ding family's wall construction: "If all goes well, the wall of Aunt Ding's house can be completed in ten days. Then we can start making adobe bricks and digging drainage ditches."
"Yes, these preliminary tasks can be prepared whenever there is free time, but I have calculated that your schedule is very full."
Look at this group of men. If they come back at the end of July, they need to build houses for themselves. Building houses requires making adobe bricks, transporting gray tiles back from the village, digging drainage ditches, laying foundations, and preparing beams... In August, they will have to start plowing and cultivating the land to prepare for the next potato planting season. No one in the village has the time to hire them.
"You still have hundreds of acres of land to cultivate, and in between, you also have to take care of the medicinal herbs on the mountain. I heard that you've discovered yam and he shou wu that need to be propagated by cuttings? And next month you'll be sending people to the prefectural city to sell rabbit meat?" Bai Manshan chatted, thinking about how much work his large family had to do!
The main problem is that he wasted most of the time.
However, he had no choice. If the potatoes weren't transported there, the food supply for the more than two hundred people in Baijiazhuang would be in jeopardy. Fortunately, Shuiqing and Jindi were understanding and gave him the potatoes without hesitation.
Shui Qing was worried that Bai Manshan might feel guilty, so she comforted him, saying, "The cuttings are almost done, and there aren't that many vines left to propagate. The main thing now is to collect yam seeds for planting. One person can do this job."
Only Fan Jin was able to handle it.
In addition to 'collecting' yams, another task was to sow He Shou Wu seeds—I bought dozens of kilograms of He Shou Wu seeds from the shopping mall, and tried to sow them in every corner of both mountains.
Compared to cuttings, sowing seeds is much more efficient. They grow naturally among the trees in the mountains and forests. As long as you sow enough seeds, there will always be some that will grow!
The people freed up can then do other work.
As for selling rabbit meat, "Nowadays, there aren't many rabbits being sold in the village. At first, we would only go to the prefectural city once every ten days or so, and the round trip would only take half a day, so it was alright."
Bai Manshan nodded, feeling somewhat relieved.
After returning and taking a nap, the men didn't rest in the afternoon either.
The eighteen people worked non-stop all afternoon, making a lot of spikes and placing them all around the perimeter of the high ground where they lived.
Better safe than sorry; an extra layer of protection provides an extra layer of security.
These spikes won't kill you, but if they pierce your shoe and go into your foot, your attack power will be basically nullified.
These spikes are all on the outermost edge. My family has repeatedly warned me, and I've also informed the villagers, so I'm not worried about accidental injury—if someone really insists on going against my advice and refuses to take the road, then there's nothing I can do.
Qin Yilin watched with great envy.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
