47.047 Heading towards a new job
"Isn't it time yet? Why are you here at this hour?" Qiu Fuli asked.
"You're here to complete your onboarding process? I've already quit my job at the cannery and now I'm focused on the orchard. Manager Qiu, you're not going to back out, are you?"
"No, that won't happen. Our orchard isn't so poor that we can't afford to support even one idle person."
Ning Jin looked at Su Yu, and from what Su Yu said, it didn't seem as optimistic as she had described. Was he going to start planning to bring her home to prepare for having a baby soon?
"Then I'll prove to you that I'm not someone who hogs a position without doing anything." Su Yu urged him to take her to complete the formalities; she didn't plan to go back immediately now that she was here.
Qiu Fuli said he would handle it for her during lunch and would send someone over to take her to find Yu Yuan'an.
"Wait a minute, I'll go check on the orange trees on that hill, then I'll go find Technician Yu to help him out." Su Yu refused Qiu Fuli's arrangement. Compared to Yu Yuan'an, Shu Manpo could teach her quite a lot.
"Suit yourself. That grove of orange trees is yours to manage." After Qiu Fuli finished speaking, he nodded to Ning Jin and turned to leave.
Ning Jin walked with Su Yu toward the hill with the sour orange trees, teasing her, "Technician Su, you're not going to be sent home, are you?"
"You foul mouth, wish me well." Su Yu led him around for a bit and then shooed him back. All the way there, he kept asking, "If the tree dies, you won't have to pay for it, right?", "This tree has bugs, Technician Su, what medicine should we use?", "This tree is sicker than a person, and it can't talk, you'd better come back with me before you complete the paperwork..."
"Go home and cook for your two sons, stop nagging me here." So annoying! She never expected this dog to be the first to give her a piece of her mind. She's determined to do something to slap him in the face.
"You really won't come back with me?" the man asked again.
"I'm not going back. If you ask me again, I won't go back tonight. I'll just sleep in the orchard and catch bugs by moonlight." Su Yu rolled her eyes at him.
"You're such a cheapskate," Ning Jin muttered. "Then I'll head back first. I'll leave the car for you. Remember to come home tonight." He asked her mischievously while half-squatting down.
"We'll see," Su Yu said, suppressing a laugh and smoothing her hair as she adopted a haughty demeanor.
"Still getting cocky?" The man pinched her cheek, and before she could retaliate, he turned and ran.
"Childish," Su Yu said with a laugh.
After he left the mountain, Su Yu walked towards the orange trees on other hills. She hadn't felt it while standing in the orange grove, but once she came out, she felt the sun. She told Shu Manpo, "Remember to remind me to wear a hat and scarf tomorrow." She also wanted to sew two pairs of gloves as a backup.
"Mr. Liu, are you looking after these orange trees?" Su Yu ran up the second hill and bumped into Mr. Liu, who earned seventy-three yuan a month.
Liu Quan hummed in agreement and asked the woman, who had only graduated from junior high school, "Why are you here? Brother Yu isn't here."
Su Yu poked at two orange trees and said, "I think I came here for the same reason as you. I found weevils on a sour orange tree, so I came over to check if there were any. Turns out there were some, and they're quite big. There weren't any last time I came." If there were, the hillside should have been alerted.
Liu Quan was surprised that this woman was somewhat clever and even knew about weevils. He temporarily put aside his contempt and said, "These things grow fast and have many eggs, so they are not easy to spot."
Su Yu asked him what they did in previous years. At this moment, Yu Yuan'an and Qiu Fuli came over after hearing the voices. "Xiao Su, you also found bugs?"
"Yes, has this happened in previous years? Were the insects always removed manually?"
"What else can we do? We don't have any pesticides." Qiu Fuli looked at Yu Yuan'an and asked Su Yu, "Do you have any other ideas?"
"I can only say that I'm giving it a try. Whether it succeeds or not, I hope Manager Qiu will stop being so skeptical and unpredictable. I didn't quit my logistics job to work in the sun and wind and do nothing." Su Yu returned his sarcastic remark and then laughed, "From noon today onwards, I'm also part of the orchard. Let's work together. There are only a few of us doing the daily work, so there's no need for us to be sarcastic and try to appease each other, right?"
“That’s right. We’re all working for the country, so there’s no need for anyone to look down on anyone else. Xiao Su, stop calling me Technician Yu. It sounds awful. Just call me Brother Yu. Xiao Liu is 25. You’re older than him, but he’s been here longer. Let’s call each other by our first names.” Yu Yuan’an waved his hand to ease the tension and then asked her what her solution was.
Shu Manpo suggested soaking paper in insect sap, drying it, and using it as an egg-attracting mat, but this was something a novice like her wouldn't know. She wouldn't dare boast about knowledge that even seasoned workers lacked. Su Yu said she had seen information about weevils; the eggs overwinter in the soil, hatch in spring, climb trees, feed on sap and leaves, and the adults lay eggs in the roots, soil, and leaves during their breeding season. Therefore, besides manually catching the adults, it's also necessary to eliminate the eggs in the soil and prevent the larvae from climbing the trees.
Qiu Fuli went to find villagers to catch insects, Liu Quan went to experiment on how to kill the insect eggs in the soil, Su Yu went to find something to prevent the larvae from climbing the trees, and Yu Yuan'an went to inspect the peach orchard and grapevines after issuing the task.
In modern times, there would be plastic film to wrap the tree trunk, but now even a piece of paper is precious. Su Yu searched for a long time but couldn't find anything. At noon, she went back to the village with them for lunch. She asked Shu Manpo, who hadn't said much all morning, "Speak, what do you want?"
There were no demands. This morning, Shumanpo introduced the weevil and control methods to her, and she was already satisfied with just asking her to plant twenty saplings. She said, "In your time, you need pesticides, but we don't have any; you need plastic film, but we don't have any either. I don't have any folk remedies for pest control from the countryside. You'll have to figure it out yourself. If all else fails, you can even catch the bugs by hand."
Hey, it's a system that still has class consciousness, and it's still based on rural folk remedies. Without the evolution of rural folk remedies, it couldn't have been developed.
Su Yu carried her employment documents, which were actually just a sentence and a stamp. She followed Brother Yu around for an afternoon, asking him if there was any insect repulsion smell.
"I really don't know. The books mention esters and emulsifiable concentrates, but where do these things come from? Even the most familiar pesticide, dichlorvos, isn't something you can just get whenever you want. With so many orange trees, using dichlorvos to kill insects would consume the entire town's annual dichlorvos usage. Where can you get it? In previous years, we had to catch them by hand, it just took a few months." Yu Yuan'an spread his hands, indicating that he really didn't know.
Mud to plaster the tree roots? No, insect eggs can hatch in the soil. Paint? No. Lime, yes, lime. "Brother Yu, we can use lime to paint the tree trunks; it can kill bacteria."
"Can we stop the larvae from climbing the trees?" Yu Yuan'an asked. He told Su Yu to go to Qiu Fuli and buy a pack first. She would try it on a few trees first, and then we'd see if it worked.
He'd seen plenty of insects growing on trees, so he wasn't as excited or startled as Su Yu. She was so young and energetic.
Since the lime couldn't be brought back quickly, Su Yu asked someone to help her collect two baskets of leftover ash from the stove holes of a farmhouse. She carried them up the mountain under her jurisdiction, mixed the wood ash with water, and brushed it onto the tree trunks. She didn't stop until all the wood ash was used up, and by the time she stopped, she couldn't straighten her back.
"Oh, Mother, I'm really here to do manual labor." She stood on the top of the hill, rubbing her back in the sunset, looking at the shy flower buds all around, and took a deep breath of the air with the fragrance of orange blossoms. She felt that this work was not so tiring. Taking care of trees was easier than taking care of people. Their bodies don't lie, whether they are good or bad, unlike people who have a mouth that can talk.
"Brother Qiu, Brother Yu, Liu Quan, I'm going home now, see you tomorrow." She hopped on her bicycle, pushed off the pedal, and was already two or three meters away.
"You're really energetic. It's good to be young." Qiu Fuli hunched over his old back and patted Liu Quan next to him. "You should learn from him. A grown man who keeps quiet all day long, no wonder he can't find a wife." He has high standards and a choppy mouth. The girls he likes don't like him and call him a taciturn guy.
"She's trying to impress me. She was very attentive when I first arrived." Liu Quan complained. He had been busy all day because of Su Yu's terrible method, spending the afternoon in the field grabbing soil, getting soaked in water and burned.
"Let's go, we're off work too." Yu Yuan'an was the first to leave.
"Technician Su is back? I've been waiting for you for so long, I was almost in a hurry to pick you up." Ning Jin took the bicycle, got on, and rode Su Yu home.
Su Yu ignored his strange tone and asked, "Why did you come here? Are you really afraid your wife will run away?" He was waiting for her at the intersection outside the town where she would return. He didn't recognize her from a distance and scared her half to death, thinking that a bad guy was going to ambush her.
"I'm afraid I'll lose my wife and have to pay for a bicycle instead. Ouch, ouch, ouch, let go!" he cried out, grimacing. "It'll be bruised again when we go to sleep. You really hit me hard."
"You asked for it." Su Yu rubbed his waist and complained about how tired she was today, blah blah blah, and got a promise of a half-hour massage.
After getting home, she stopped talking about work, washed her hands and ate, then asked the man what time he was leaving the next day. When she learned it was seven o'clock, she was surprised: "Why so early this time?"
“It’s a short trip, not much cargo. I went to check this afternoon and half of it was already loaded.” Ning Jin picked up a scrambled egg with her chopsticks and put it in Ping An’s bowl. She said, “You and Xiao Yuan eat lunch at home. Don’t go to your grandparents’ house.”
"Why? There are times when I don't feel like cooking."
Su Yu raised an eyebrow; this was a phrase she often used when she asked her father to cook.
“Each of you gets one cent of pocket money every day, and two cents for cooking lunch at home. You can save about one yuan a month, which is twelve yuan a year. Add in the red envelopes for the New Year, and you’ll have fourteen or fifteen yuan a year. This money is yours, and your dad and I won’t interfere with what you want to buy.” Su Yu explained the financial details to them, making empty promises.
When the two children heard that they would have fifteen yuan a year, they were so happy they couldn't stop smiling. They even stopped eating their noodles and started imagining what they could buy with fifteen yuan.
The temptation was successful.
After dinner, she washed the dishes and told him to go take a shower. Ningjin took the dishes from him and said, "Go take a shower. You take such a slow shower. You shower every day and it's like you have a layer of grime on your body."
"You cooked dinner tonight," Su Yu reminded her.
"Since I'm leaving again tomorrow, I'll do it myself if I'm home, but if I'm not home, then it'll be a hassle for you."
Oh, so well-behaved and sweet!
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