Chapter 107: 106: Bricks and Tiles
Li Qiuyue saw her running away, turned around and looked at Yang Chunyan, laughing so hard, "You are so funny, you actually fed her a mouthful of grass, why didn't I think of that? You are really good, you are really motivated!"
Yang Chunyan glared at her and said, "I saw that you only knew how to hide and didn't dare to really attack her, so I fed her grass."
"That damn old woman, relying on her age, will cheat anyone who touches her, otherwise I would have taken action long ago."
Yang Chunyan picked up the golden vines and put them in her backpack. "Will Xu Hongbing steal our corn again?"
"He doesn't dare. They are a family of bullies who only bully the weak and fear the strong." Li Qiuyue said angrily, "The third brother said that if Xu Hongbing dares to steal our corn again, I will find an opportunity to put a sack on him and beat him to a pulp!"
"That's a good idea!" Yang Chunyan looked at her with a smile, "I thought only the youngest would do something like putting a sack on someone and beating them."
"They are born to the same mother and an old man, so they look alike in nature!"
The two men picked up the golden vines, put them in a backpack, and carried them back.
Arriving at the gate, Li Qiuyue walked into the yard in two or three steps, "Mom, we had a fight with Qian Chunhua on the mountain, she..."
Mother Zhou was so angry that she started to curse, "Shameless old woman, we haven't even settled the score with her for stealing corn, and she dares to steal things. Does she really think we are easy to bully? If she dares to come, I will tear her mouth off!"
"Mom," Li Qiuyue pulled Zhou's mother, "Let me tell you, Chunyan is so funny. She grabbed a handful of grass and stuffed it into Qian Chunhua's mouth..." She liked this about Zhou's mother the most. She was extremely protective of both her son and daughter-in-law.
"Hahaha," Zhou's mother laughed until tears came out, and wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, "Well done, to deal with such a thing that eats human food and does nothing, you should feed her grass."
Yang Chunyan came out of the room holding a pair of scissors, "Mom, where is the youngest?"
"Erchunlai called him away." Mother Zhou pointed at the peaches on the small dining table with a smile, "and brought a basket of white peaches."
Li Qiuyue picked up a few and took them to the well. "Mom, Erchun's white peaches are crisp and sweet. When can I go cut some branches and graft those small peach trees in the back hill?"
"Erchun also said that when the youngest's leg is healed, we will go to his house to prune the branches."
Li Qiuyue handed a washed peach to Yang Chunyan, "Do we need to cut off the roots?"
Yang Chunyan took a bite of the peach and said, "Yes, after cutting the roots clean, wash off the mud. If you want to sell wet goods, just dry them in the sun."
"Then you and mom stay at home and clean up. I'll go help pick up stones and mud."
"I'll go with you, just leave it to mom to clean up." Yang Chunyan said as she handed the scissors to Zhou's mother who was helping. "Mom, just clean up as I said just now."
"Okay!" Zhou's mother took the scissors and sat on a small stool and started to work.
Yang Chunyan and Li Qiuyue carried their baskets and went to the hillside behind the corn field. They saw a lot of orange-red clay piled on the slope.
After digging up the clay, it is necessary to remove impurities such as tree roots, grass roots, stones, etc. mixed in the soil.
Before making bricks and tiles, the clay must be broken up with a hoe and piled into a mound. Then, an appropriate amount of water is poured into the mound and left to simmer for most of the day. Then, several people step on the mound without stopping.
Keep stomping on the soil until there are no lumps of soil left. Then use a pry to gather up the clay. Knead it back and forth several times. Continue stomping on it until the clay becomes firm and no longer sticks to your feet.
The tamped mud is then gathered into an earthen wall, which will not collapse, and the clay for making bricks and tiles is then considered ready.
The potter uses a bow made of iron wire to scratch off a piece of mud, put it into a wooden brick mold dipped in dry sand, then scratch off the excess mud and take it to the leveled drying yard to knock out the bricks.
After the bricks are made, they are neatly arranged in the open space in front of the earthen kiln. After being dried for two days and slowly hardened, the bricks are placed in rows next to each other and patted with a wooden patter to make them smooth and flat, until they look sharp.
When the bricks are about 80% to 90% dry, they are piled up to dry naturally. After about a month, they can be loaded into the kiln and fired.
After the bricks are made, the tiles are made.
The mold for making tiles is a "tile barrel" shaped like a small wooden barrel, which is assembled from small wooden strips. The potter places the tile barrel on a movable rotating table and covers it with a layer of slightly wet fine cloth.
The potter evenly spreads some wood ash on the fine cloth, which can naturally separate the tile blank from the tile barrel.
When everything is ready, the potter uses a bow to draw a layer of mud of appropriate thickness and size on the tile barrel. He wets his hands, turns the tile barrel on the tile platform back and forth with one hand, and wipes the mud on the tile barrel with the other hand, spreads the mud evenly on the tile, and takes it to the drying yard to knock out the tile.
The finished tile blank should be slightly wider at one end, slightly thicker at the wide end, and slightly thinner at the narrow end. After the tile blank is dry, it can be put on the shelf to dry in the shade and loaded into the kiln.
When they arrived, they saw Zhao Huifang and Zhang Xiuxiang hunched over a pile of yellow mud that had formed a small hill. They were digging soil into their baskets and picking out grass and tree roots mixed in the clay.
There were also a lot of stones dug out from the wasteland piled up next to it.
The mountain people think that the foundation of a house made of stone is more solid than that of a brick one, so when they build a house, the foundation is all made of stone. The foundation of four houses is far from enough, and they have to pick up some stones from the river dam.
Nowadays, when people renovate their houses, they mostly use local materials and rarely spend money to buy them.
The stones were picked up from the river dams and mountains, and there was no need to buy the sand and gravel for building walls, leveling the courtyard dams, and houses. All we had to do was wait until the rainy season was over, go to the riverside and set up a few sand nets to sift the river sand, bring it back and mix it with yellow mud to level the courtyard dams and houses.
Li Qiuyue looked around and said, "It's better to dig yellow mud and make bricks and tiles here, so that we don't have to level it when we build the house later."
"They're quite quick, they've dug out so many tree stumps." Yang Chunyan said as she stepped forward and put down her bamboo basket. "Sister-in-law, have they dug out so many?"
Zhao Huifang looked up and asked, "Why are you here?"
"The sky was gloomy and we were worried that it would rain, so we dug up the golden vine and returned."
Yang Chunyan and Li Qiuyue picked up their bamboo baskets and walked towards the earthen kiln. On the way, they met Zhou Huaijun who was pushing a chicken cart back. Seeing the two of them coming, he quickly moved aside.
The brick kiln is half an hour away from the corn field. It is not a large brick kiln, but just an earthen kiln in the shape of a hill.
When they arrived at the earth kiln, Zhou's father and Zhou Huairong were still building a shed. In the half of the shed that had already been built, there was already a lot of yellow mud and some shrubs.
The two men poured the clay in the baskets into the straw shed and continued to walk back. They kept going back and forth between the earthen kiln and the earth pile.
When we were almost done with work, the wind started to blow, the top of the mountain was dark, and it looked like it was going to rain heavily.
Yang Chunyan and her friends carried the last load of clay to the kiln and said, "Old man, let's go back. It's going to rain heavily soon."
"Here we go!" Father Zhou and Zhou Huairong came down from the bamboo ladder. "We just finished covering the last bit."
When Mao's family first built a brick house, they worked with their uncles to use bricks and tiles fired in a clay kiln and sand and gravel sifted from the river. At that time, I was young and just thought it was fun. When I grew up, I remembered that my parents got up at five in the morning and went to bed at midnight to save a little money, and I felt that their generation was really hard.
(End of this chapter)
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