After weighing, Zhou Huaian gave her the money, "Sister Wang, you are you, and Cai Ermei is Cai Ermei."
Wang Chunhua was stunned for a moment before she understood. "I understand. I won't let him send truffles."
Zhou Huaian nodded and said to Xu Erchun, "Why don't you eat something here?"
"I ate." Xu Erchun picked up the backpack, "We're leaving first."
"Great!" Zhou Huaian put the truffles into a bamboo basket and went to the backyard to eat with Zhou Yiding.
Zhou Huairong wiped his hands and asked, "Youngest, how many pounds did you collect today?"
Zhou Huaian thought for a moment, "After deducting the ones that don't make the grade, there should be two to three thousand kilograms."
Zhou Huaishan laughed and said, "I thought we could collect three or four thousand today! Still not as much as we dug?"
Zhou Huairong: "No one fought for our position when we went there. We were all strong laborers, and we went to the forest where truffles grow the most. Of course, we got more than them!"
Yang Chunyan: "We are so busy this afternoon just with goods from our village. I think tomorrow someone from Fangtian and Guanyin will send truffles to sell. If that happens, we won't be able to handle it."
Zhou Huairong nodded, "The old man has said it before, I also want to tell you something!"
Zhou Huaian was worried after hearing this. "If all of them are delivered, our oven will not be big enough. Will it be in time to build another one?"
Yang Chunyan thought for a moment and said, "It's still in time! The bricks originally reserved for Sister Yumei to build the store are still there. I can invite Master Liu to rush and build another one."
Zhang Xiuxiang said, "If we build another room, our backyard is narrower and the ground is not hardened, so it will be difficult to build!"
Yang Chunyan smiled and said, "This is easy. Just build the oven in the corridor between my house and my third brother's house, and make a door in the wall of my house. This will save the bricks for two walls!"
The old man said, "That's fine. The aisle is already hardened, and if we build it in between the two ovens, it will be easier to look after."
Father Zhou put down his bowl and chopsticks and said, "I'll go call Master Liu and the carpenter and we'll start work tomorrow morning."
"I'll get you a flashlight." Zhou Huaian also put down his bowl and chopsticks.
After everyone had finished their meal, Jiang Yu and a few others also came, and each of them started working with a brush.
More than half an hour later, Zhou's father came with Master Liu. After checking the location, he asked the Zhou family to prepare mud and cement and start work tomorrow.
A dozen people were washing until around ten o'clock, and there were only a few baskets left. Maybe there was not enough water in the well, so the water went on strike and no water came out. They had to take the baskets to Li Qiuyue's house for washing.
Everyone was busy for another hour, and it was almost twelve o'clock before all the truffles were cleaned, packed into bamboo baskets and sent to the baking room.
Yang Chunyan and Zhang Xiuxiang brought the cooked potatoes and sweet potatoes to the lantern and said, "Let's eat something to fill our stomachs."
Zhou Yiding picked up a potato and said, "I've been hungry for a long time. My sister-in-law is really thoughtful."
Yang Chunyan pointed at the old man who was leaning back in his chair and smoking a leaf cigarette and said, "How could I have thought of this? It was Grandpa who thought of this."
The old man laughed and said, "You don't know if you've never worked late at night. In those days, we worked by torchlight. If we didn't eat something after work, we would toss and turn in bed because of hunger and couldn't sleep."
Helper Wu Qiufang took a bite of a potato and said, "This faucet in your house is great. Water just flows out as soon as you turn it on. If I were to use water to wash, I don't know how long it would take!"
Zhou Huaian said thankfully: "At the beginning, I thought that the water used for cleaning herbs would be much larger, so I built the well twice as big as other houses, otherwise we would have run out of water long ago."
Father Zhou laughed and said, "Why didn't you mention that the labor cost of building the well was more than twice as much as others."
Jiang Yu said: "It's worth spending twice as much money, it saves a lot of trouble!"
Father Zhou: "When they talked about digging a well, I thought they were fooling around. My husband and the well digger came to see it and said the terrain was suitable. After all, they earned the money themselves, so I agreed to it."
The old man patted him and said, "We are old and not as smart as the young people. We should listen to them more."
Zhou Yiding ate two potatoes while sitting in a rattan chair. He yawned and rubbed his sore wrists and waist tiredly. "I'm going back now. I'll send my cousin and aunt back. I won't go up the mountain tomorrow morning. I'll have a good sleep before coming back."
Zhou Huairong and his companions also said tiredly: "We are going back too. We still have to dig yellow mud tomorrow morning!"
Zhou Huaian nodded, "Okay!"
After seeing them off, the old man said to Zhou Huaian and his father, "You all go to bed. I'll stay here tonight to turn the truffles and add coal."
Father Zhou: "Old man, you are not very sleepy anyway, so you should go to bed first. I will stay here."
The old man waved his hands repeatedly, "Just go if I tell you to, why are you so long-winded!"
Yang Chunyan thought for a moment and said, "Huaian, go and move the recliner to the backyard. We'll put some quilts and cotton on it so grandpa can lie down and rest for a while."
"This is a good idea!" Zhou Huaian hurried to the front yard and carried the recliner over.
The two men spread out the recliner, and the old man sat on it comfortably before releasing the dog, washing up, and returning to the house.
Zhou Huaian came in with an account book and an abacus, "Let me calculate how much I collected today!"
Yang Chunyan saw him clacking on the abacus and asked, "When did you learn how to use an abacus?"
"Your man is capable of so many things!" Zhou Huaian winked at her proudly, "Now you understand, you're lucky to marry a man as versatile as me."
Yang Chunyan saw his smug look and felt that he was just short of having a long tail behind him...
"It seems that I have a good eye for talent and have invested in a man with great potential!"
Zhou Huaian turned his head curiously, "Yan'er, what does a man with potential mean?"
Yang Chunyan looked at him with a smile, "It means that although a certain person has not achieved much at the time, he is actually a responsible and capable man. As long as he seizes the opportunity, he will achieve great things."
Zhou Huaian's mouth almost grinned to his ears after hearing this. He put down his abacus and went over to hug her, resting his chin on her head, "Yan'er, do you really think so?"
"Yeah!" Yang Chunyan hugged his strong waist.
Zhou Huaian held her face and kissed her. After a while, he let go of Yang Chunyan, whose face was flushed. "You are too tired today. I will let you go for now!"
"Go away!" Yang Chunyan snuggled into the bed somewhat embarrassedly. After a while, she heard the sound of him fiddling with the abacus beads again. She fell asleep while listening to it.
Zhou Huaian wrote down the total account. There were a total of about one hundred households in the village who sent truffles over. A total of more than 3,800 kilograms of first, second and third grade truffles were collected, and 640 kilograms of those that were not of the same grade were collected.
More than 600 kilograms of truffles can at least soak two to three thousand kilograms of white wine. It seems I have to send some to Doctor Wang to see if they accept such small pieces?
There were also villagers who asked me to help bring back some pork, which weighed more than 200 kilograms in total, and they all wanted fat meat. When I got there, I just talked to the pork sellers and asked them to bring a pig to the village to sell.
Zhou Huaian put the account book away, rubbed his cold hands, walked to the bedside, saw that Yang Chunyan was already asleep, got on the bed, lay beside her, kissed her, closed his eyes and fell asleep.
The old man dozed off for a while, then added some coal to the stove, took off his cotton coat, took a small bamboo rake into the baking room, and turned over the truffles in the bamboo flats.
Standing in the baking room is like being under the hot sun in June. After a while, beads of sweat flow down my neck...
…
The next day, as soon as the alarm went off, Zhou Huaian quickly reached out to turn it off, turned his head and looked at Yang Chunyan, "Don't use the alarm next time, so as not to wake you up."
Yang Chunyan looked at him sleepily, "Are you leaving?"
"Well!" Zhou Huaian said softly, "The old man and grandpa are here, you can sleep a little longer!"
She nodded, and then reminded him worriedly, "We have to deliver the last few truffles into the city today. Ask Yi Ding to go with you."
"I want to pick a few kilograms of smaller ones than the third grade and send them to Doctor Xiao Wang for a look."
"Those truffles are small, but they taste just as good as the big ones. We can't use them all up to make wine, so you can pick some and send them over to have a look."
"Yeah!" Zhou Huaian put on his coat, opened the door and went to the backyard. He saw that his father and the old man had both gotten up. "Grandpa, where did you put the small ones that were dried yesterday?"
The old man brought over a bamboo basket and said, "There are about ten pounds of it. Do you want to send all of it or half of it?"
"Half is enough." Zhou Huaian picked up the bamboo basket filled with truffles, "This is the last 95 kilograms. These truffles were sent to Ning'an. The ones sent later will be the joint efforts of several families."
Father Zhou: "How much did you sell the ones you dug for?"
Zhou Huaian calculated, "Not counting the more than 30 kilograms of special goods, plus what I sold today, it should be three thousand."
The old man and Zhou's father rubbed their hands happily after hearing this. "This is what we call making money. We earn more in half a month than we earn in our entire lives."
Zhou Huaian looked at the two elders with a smile, "I'll give you a big red envelope for the New Year."
Father Zhou was so happy that he couldn't close his mouth. The old man nodded repeatedly, "Okay, Grandpa will be waiting."
The three generations loaded vegetables and truffles into the truck bed. Zhou's father opened the gate and said to him, "Don't forget to ask Yiding to go with you."
"I understand." Zhou Huaian drove the tractor out of the yard.
Yang Chunyan was awakened by the noise of the tractor, and she stretched and got out of bed.
The old man who was sweeping the yard with a broom saw her coming out and said, "It's still early, why don't you sleep a little longer?"
"I'm awake now." Yang Chunyan tied her braids and said, "Grandpa, how about we cook egg noodles in the morning?"
The old man shook his head. "I cooked some potatoes. There's still some cold rice in the rice cooker. You can make some potato paste for us to soak in the rice."
"Okay, I'll go pick a handful of green onions." Yang Chunyan walked to the wall, and Wangcai and Lai Fu followed her, wagging their tails.
She kicked them gently and said, "Don't make any noise. You'll have bones to chew on when your master comes back."
Yang Chunyan took the green onions to the backyard and saw a dozen potatoes in a colander. She peeled the potatoes and mashed them with a rolling pin. She fried them with lard until fragrant, then added water and rice soup and brought to a boil. She then poured the cold rice in, brought it to a boil, and added the chopped green onions.
As she put the potato rice into the ceramic bowl, she thought that potatoes and green peppers are a perfect match, and it would taste even better with green peppers. (End of this chapter)
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