The next afternoon, while they were still harvesting grain in the fields, five or six people from the Family Planning Office rode their bicycles to Zhou Huaishan's home.
When they got home, they learned that Zhou's mother had begged bitterly, and Aunt Datian and the village cadres had also said some good words for her. In the end, they set a fine of 500 yuan, which had to be paid within a week.
Zhou Huaishan waited for two days until he finished harvesting the millet before paying the fine, and also registered his child's household registration at the same time.
After returning, he said to Zhou Huaian: "Let me tell you, it's not just us old farmers who miss our sons. There are also people in the unit who pay more fines than us. I think the least they paid is more than 700!"
Seeing that he looked like he had made a lot of money, Zhou Huaian was speechless. "Do you think five hundred is too little? How can we compare with the workers? They make money every month at that time, but if we don't make money, we will have nothing to lose."
"I didn't mean that. I just thought that they always said that we farmers had low consciousness and favored boys over girls. I didn't expect that people in the unit were the same."
Father Zhou interrupted, "We are all the same as humans. We all have to eat, poop, fart, and die!"
Zhou Huaian laughed: "Hahahaha..., the old man is right, these few things are still fair."
"Youngest, did you find money? I heard you laughing outside." Before he finished speaking, Zhou Yiding rode his bicycle into the yard and greeted Zhou's father and Zhou Huaishan with a smile.
Zhou Huaian smiled and asked, "When did you come back?"
"I've been back for two days." Zhou Yiding got out of the car and put down the backpack. "The jar inside is cherry wine. Take it out for a moment."
Zhou Huaian took the jar out and asked, "How long will you stay this time?"
"I took a week off and came back to spend some time with you!"
"Tsk~" Zhou Huaian rolled his eyes, "I don't believe it at all!"
"Hehe!" Zhou Yiding laughed and punched him, "When are you going to pay your taxes?"
"The village hasn't notified me yet. It might take another ten days or so to hand it over." Zhou Huaian looked at him with a smile, "What on earth did you come back for?"
"I have a backache, so I came back to help thresh the grain. Please help me pay the tax."
"Okay, leave it to me."
"Thanks. Let's go to Ning'an together tomorrow!" Zhou Yiding smiled, got on his bike and left.
Zhou Huaishan also went back to turn over and dry the millet.
Zhou Huaian picked up the wine jar and went to the backyard alley. He opened the wine cellar and put the jar away. He came out to look at the stored Coriolus fungus. He thought of the message Wang Zhen brought back, asking him to deliver it tomorrow. He didn't know how much he could earn.
"Never mind. Anyway, the price has increased by more than ten yuan per pound compared to when I received the goods." He muttered to himself, went out, closed the door of the wine cellar, put on a straw hat and went to the back mountain.
Yang Chunyan, Zhou's mother and the old man were picking Viola yedoensis in the field. In the three-acre medicinal field, they also mixed some Lobelia and Rhizoma Coptidis.
"We'll pull out these herbs today, and we'll go to the back hill to harvest corn tomorrow." Zhou's mother frowned and said, "Yesterday I saw a lot of Striga growing in the middle of the corn field. I don't know when."
Yang Chunyan looked at her in surprise after hearing this, "Is it really a one-legged gold?"
Zhou's mother smiled and said, "Don't I recognize that thing? One year, my youngest child ate too many wild chestnuts and became indigestion. He refused to eat anything. Your grandmother went to the cornfield to find some and boiled some water for him to drink, and that's all."
"Striga is a good thing. One pound of dried sedge can be sold for 20 to 30 yuan, right?" Yang Chunyan said happily. "After we finish picking these, we will go to the corn field to have a look."
"There aren't many left. Go check with your mother!" The old man paused. "And the mangoes you brought back last year, where I buried the pepper tree, have grown to half a person's height."
"Really?" Yang Chunyan had long forgotten about those mango seeds, but she didn't expect that the old man still remembered them.
The old man smiled and nodded, "Eleven of them survived, and I told your husband that I would transplant them to the pepper field in the spring of next year."
Zhou Huaian came in and listened, "What kind of thing has eleven trees alive?"
Yang Chunyan said excitedly: "Last year, Wang Zhen gave me mangoes. I told him to eat the mangoes and save the cores for seeds. Grandpa planted 11 trees."
Zhou Huaian: "Not bad, will it bear fruit next year?"
Yang Chunyan recalled, "I heard that grafted seedlings can bear fruit in three to five years, while ungrafted native seedlings may take seven to eight years to bear fruit. I will ask Wang Zhen next time."
"Hmm!" Zhou Huaian squatted down and carried the piled herbs into the basket, "I wonder how much we can sell these for after drying them?"
"In June, we sold more than 200 radishes, sticky grass, plantain, and dandelions... It should be no problem to sell more than 200 radishes from these three mu of fields."
Zhou Huaian looked at the several acres of sticky grass planted nearby and said, "It's better to sell sticky grass. After mowing it once, you can sprinkle some fertilizer and it will grow again."
"I think it's better to plant more of these herbs that can make money quickly. Look at those Bletilla striata and Paris polyphylla, it will take several years before they can make money." Zhou's mother thought that Yang Chunyan's idea of planting some expensive herbs and some ordinary herbs was really good.
Yang Chunyan smiled and said, "Those herbs take a long time to grow, but once they grow, the money from selling them once can equal the money from selling them several times."
Zhou's mother still thinks it's better to make money quickly. "That's not good either. Growing herbs is just like growing crops. You have to rely on the weather. If you encounter a disaster and die, then your money will be worthless!"
The old man advised, "It's okay. You see, there was a heavy snowfall last year, and fewer people froze to death even though we covered them with grass. Now that the dry season is here, just open the well and water them more."
"Grandpa!" Zhou Huaian handed a cigarette to the old man and looked at him proudly, "You didn't agree with us planting before. Isn't it more profitable than planting corn, sorghum, and sweet potatoes?"
"Of course it's more profitable to grow these, but you also need to have food stored at home so that your family can live in peace." The old man took the cigarette he handed over, "Otherwise, how can you fill your stomach?"
Zhou Huaian thought about this year's harvest. "Even after paying the public grain tax this year, we still can't save much food. Tomorrow I will find Ding Dingmao or his father-in-law to buy a few thousand kilograms of food to store."
After hearing this, Zhou's mother said, "There's still a lot of corn and sorghum stored in the old house. You can sell them all and copy the grain out of the granary. If the harvest is good this year, store it in the granary."
It is the habit of the elderly that as long as there is food, they must save enough to eat for one or two years, so that even if there is a famine, they will not worry about having no food.
Zhou Huaian nodded and said, "It would be great if the land in the back mountain could also grow millet. We wouldn't have to buy millet to eat."
Yang Chunyan picked up the herbs and put them in the basket. "Huaian and Grandpa are here picking herbs. Mom and I will go to the corn field over there to take a look."
"Great!" Zhou Huaian held a cigarette in his mouth and bent down to work.
Yang Chunyan and Zhou's mother walked along the medicinal fields, jumped over the ditch, walked past Zhou Yiding's medicinal fields, and saw that Zhou Datian's family also planted some medicinal herbs in the mountains.
Mother Zhou pointed at the fence and said, "Chunyan, look, your uncle Datian's family also grows plantain, osmanthus fragrans, and smilax glabra... those."
"His family doesn't even count. Go look at Xu Hongbing. He grows whatever we grow. He even dug up a lot of gardenia seeds!"
"I remember that the herbs Xu Hongbing's family gave us this year sold for about a hundred yuan, right?"
“There are so many!”
As the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law were talking, they arrived at their own mountain land, which was next to Zhou Datian's house and was planted with pepper trees, white peach trees, and cherry trees.
Yang Chunyan saw the half-human-high fruit trees with lush green leaves under the prickly ash trees and immediately recognized them as mango seedlings. "They are growing pretty well!"
"Hmm!" Zhou's mother pointed to the corn field in front, "I interplanted some sweet potatoes on this side of the field. There are no tricholoma. There are quite a few on the other side."
Yang Chunyan's watermelon vines are all over the corn stalks, and most of the corn is ripe. "After the corn is harvested, we can dig sweet potatoes."
"We'll pick them tomorrow morning while we're not busy these few days!" Zhou's mother said as she entered the corn field. She walked to a withered corn field and pointed at the yellow and pink flowers and grass in front. "Look, this is it. As long as this grows in the field, the corn won't grow well and some even fail."
She was too busy some time ago and didn't come here to take a look. She only found out a few days ago that the corn in this field was destroyed by the tricholoma.
"It's one-legged gold!" Yang Chunyan put down the basket, "Mom, pull them all out."
Mother Zhou pulled up a few of them and said, "Look, many of them have already produced fruit. Do you want to collect them?"
Yang Chunyan thought about its growth habits, "It may not survive in a field where pesticides are sprayed. It doesn't like to grow on the ground. It likes to grow in sorghum, corn, wheat, and sugarcane fields, and parasitizes on their roots and stems."
She picked up a scutellaria baicalensis and pointed at the root. "You see there is a small tumor-like bump here. They use this tumor-like bump to attach to the corn roots and absorb their nutrients. In the end, all the nutrients absorbed by the corn are absorbed by them."
"No wonder the crops don't grow well when this thing grows." Zhou's mother still put the fruit in her waistcoat, "Such a valuable thing, take it back and scatter it to see if it survives, if not, forget it."
Strigosa uniflora is an annual plant of the Scrophulariaceae family. It generally does not grow alone, but mostly parasitizes on other herbaceous plants. It is a semi-parasitic plant and looks somewhat similar to Rhizoma Dioscoreae.
It is not particularly tall, generally a few centimeters to 30 centimeters, growing upward, with an unbranched stem and narrow leaves that are narrowly lanceolate or scaly, with only one leaf pointing upward and without branches, so folks call it "single-legged gold."
Its flowers are also solitary, generally growing in the leaf axils. It blooms in many colors, including yellow, pink, red... It has many colors and blooms for a long time. You can see it blooming from April to October.
The capsule is long oval in shape, about 3 mm long.
Single-legged gold is mild in nature, sweet and light in taste, and has the effects of strengthening the spleen, clearing the liver, eliminating accumulation and killing insects. It is widely used by the people to treat spleen deficiency and food damage in children, and has a special effect on malnutrition in children.
Yang Chunyan thought that the advent of herbicides made things much more convenient, but there was almost no trace of tricholoma in the corn and sorghum fields.
Since single-legged gold can only grow in the wild and cannot be cultivated artificially, it has become increasingly difficult to collect as its wild environment has become increasingly scarce in later generations.
In her previous life, she collected herbs in the mountains. It took her half a day to collect a small handful, which she could sell for dozens of dollars.
The price of dried goods is even more expensive, and it is called "gold among grasses"! (End of this chapter)
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