When the grain was being harvested earlier, the villagers had already selected several locations, but Xie Ming didn't like any of them.
Finally, he used some tricks, borrowing Master Xie's influence, to borrow a landlord's house in the suburbs, which happened to have a granary attached.
The interior has basic windproof and waterproof facilities, which are much more reliable than those in the mountains.
The county only knew that the land had been requisitioned by higher authorities, but they had no idea who was using it.
The villagers were initially panicked, knowing that once the communal dining halls were established, households were no longer allowed to store food.
An old woman in the next village hid 10 eggs and 20 jin of coarse grains. She was reported by a local hoodlum and was labeled a capitalist. Not wanting to implicate her descendants, the old woman deliberately ran herself to death under an old tree at the village entrance, and only then was the matter settled.
They've harvested so much grain; it's creepy to look at.
The villagers all knew that if Xie Ming hadn't used that house as a cover, they wouldn't have been able to do anything.
The Chen clan clearly benefited greatly from Xie Ming, undoubtedly providing them with a way out.
Chen Fu was confident that everyone he recruited knew what was important, and since they were all members of the Chen clan and had been recommended by the clan chief, no one would be so foolish as to leak the information.
Xie Ming wasn't worried about any of this. What did he have to be afraid of? If anyone dared to mess with him, he'd just pull out a few blueprints, and then no one would know who was messing with whom...
"Brother Ming! What do we do now? There's so much grain." Staring at the grain scattered everywhere in the granary, the members of the second team were a little at a loss.
Xie Ming looked at the members who were much older than him and told them his plans.
I remember in one world he was an orphan, and the old man who adopted him told me about the life-saving methods of a notorious corrupt official in the Ming Dynasty.
The old man said this: The corrupt official knew he had no hope, but those above wouldn't let him die peacefully. So the official handed over all his possessions, asking only to keep a dilapidated thatched hut.
The officials knew that this old man in his seventies or eighties had no one to feed or water and probably wouldn't live much longer, so they didn't confiscate his thatched hut.
As it turned out, the man lived a good life for several years. Finally, the officials sent people to check, and good heavens, what the corrupt official had built was not a thatched hut, but a "golden house" piled up with grain!
Xie Ming thought this story was worth considering; the abundance of grain was quite striking. But what if they made "yellow mud bricks" from millet flour and soybeans, and "black bricks" from sweet potatoes?
After it was made, the villagers piled it up in their houses, who would have known it was edible?
He shared his idea, and immediately someone thought it was suitable, so it was settled. However, things had to be postponed because Qian Youdong might have to change shifts and return to the village.
Xiangyang Village
Qian Youdong returned just before the summer harvest was over. Apart from the crops that had to be handed over to the state, the rest of the crops were still standing in the fields. The commune members dared not move them until the Party Secretary gave instructions.
"Are all the seeds ready?" Qian Youdong stood at the edge of the field, shouting orders with an air of authority.
"They're all piled up in the warehouse, Secretary! If we don't harvest the crops in the fields soon, it'll be too late!" The team members were still anxious.
"What are you afraid of? We eat in the canteen every day, you won't go hungry. The people at the factory have been saying these past few days that XX county has achieved a yield of 5,000 jin per mu, it's been reported in the newspapers. The whole country has a bumper harvest, the flour is almost piled up to the top of the granaries. You lot do nothing but worry about going hungry, instead of learning from other places to increase grain production. I have to go to the provincial capital to find the instructor. Humph!"
After he finished speaking, he swept his sharp eyes across everyone present.
After showing off his power, he began assigning tasks: "Harvest the summer grain as soon as possible, and burn any that can't be harvested. Clear the fields and plant seeds quickly, so that next season each mu can yield tens of thousands of jin of good harvest."
Xie Ming and his team members exchanged glances. Another opportunity had come; they decided to grab as much as they could.
Their village has very fertile land! They can harvest quite a lot from this.
After Qian Youdong finished showing off his power, the whole village sprang into action.
The whole village was bustling with activity, but he always felt something was off, as if some inexplicable force was lurking right under his nose.
They sent out a few lackeys to inquire around, but they were either beaten by the wife of the neighbor and called hooligans of the old society, or scolded by the old lady of the neighbor's house as parasites of socialism.
It looked the same, but Qian Youdong felt something was off. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, and since he couldn't cause trouble for anyone, he just moved on from it.
After the village finished harvesting the summer grain and cleaning up the fields, Qian Youdong frowned again.
The reason was that after he went to the steel plant, he saw a newspaper article praising a certain village for producing 10,000 jin of grain per mu.
At a previous county meeting, he reported a target of 10,000 jin, but now other places have already reached 10,000 jin.
Xiangyang Village reported that if they reported another 10,000 jin, they would fall behind. So he talked to the instructor for a long time and finally decided to deepen the arable land by half a meter and plant 30% more seeds per mu.
This meant that some land was without seeds, and seed replacement wasn't something that could be done just like that. So he gave the few acres of land without seeds to teams 2, 3, and 5.
As for what to plant or how to plant it, he didn't care at all. He thought that after the autumn harvest, if the harvest was not good, he could just remove the team leaders and replace them with his own people.
Xie Ming received the news and told the team leaders early in the morning. After discussing it, they decided to plant sweet potatoes on all those lands.
As for seeds, they had them in the grain they secretly collected, so there was no need to worry about them.
After the planting began, the villagers were exhausted and nearly skinned alive.
Xie Ming was glad he hadn't gone to work. He used to be so foolish as to work in the fields for Qian's family, but now he wasn't going to be so stupid.
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