In June, during the middle school entrance examination season, Zhou Yue and Tao Ran successfully took the exam. After the exam, Tao Changyi pushed a cart to bring their luggage home, just in time for the family's busy farming season.
Tao Changyi and his wife couldn't come back for the wheat harvest this year, and Tang Cuilian couldn't help much either. Cuihua had to go to work, and Cuimei was still at school. Like the other children in the Tao family, they couldn't help either. To make matters worse, the family had six more acres of land from the Zhou family this year.
No one expected that at this crucial moment, it was Cuiju and Cuihong who got up early and worked late to help the old couple harvest, dry, and thresh the wheat.
Xiao Jiu couldn't bear to see her grandma work so hard, so she let her grandma cook at home. Don't underestimate her because of her young age; she's quite strong and is now more capable than the old lady.
Knowing that the children were working hard, the old lady would stew fish one day, chicken the next, and meat the day after, trying different ways to supplement their nutrition.
The wheat harvest season requires a rush to harvest; otherwise, a sudden downpour could wipe out a year's worth of hard work.
Seeing that they couldn't take care of the Zhou family's six acres of land, the old man gave an order, and Tao Changyi and his wife, who worked in the county town, Tao Qing, who studied in the township, Tao An, who studied in the town, and even Cuihua and Cuimei all rushed back to the town to help.
After harvesting ten mu of wheat, they rushed back to the village to harvest the remaining six mu, making a total of sixteen mu. It took the whole family half a month to finally haul the wheat from the field to the threshing ground and turn each ear of wheat into grains.
After the wheat was harvested, the old man was too exhausted to get out of bed, and even the children were all weak and dizzy.
It's hot, and even with the best food, I still can't handle working more than ten hours a day.
Of course, this is not the most important thing. The wheat yield is extremely low, less than 50 kilograms per mu. After working hard for half a year, it is better to grow sweet potatoes.
But the old man couldn't bear to waste the land. From October before the Lunar New Year to June of this year, what else could he plant if not wheat?
Spring is almost here, it'll be April or May soon, we can't just leave the land empty forever, can we?
So after all the calculations, we still need to plant winter wheat on this land to get through the winter. As for what to plant in the second half of the season, that has already been decided earlier.
"These sixteen mu of land are used to grow sweet potatoes on dry land and corn on slightly better land."
All you need to do when planting sweet potatoes is to make sure they are well-watered; after that, the harvest is entirely up to the weather.
Both sweet potatoes and corn yielded higher harvests than wheat, thanks to the old couple who cultivated enough sweet potato seedlings this year.
Sweet potato seedlings are simply the sprouts and vines of last year's sweet potatoes, a process that requires a humid and warm environment.
While Grandpa and Grandma were busy with these things, Xiao Jiu also got involved and secretly put in a lot of purple sweet potatoes and white sweet potatoes.
The most common type of sweet potato on the market now is turmeric-colored, which is suitable for roasting, but other steamed or boiled sweet potatoes don't taste as good as regular sweet potatoes.
As for purple sweet potatoes, their main appeal is their unique flavor. They didn't exist back then, so if you sold them, they might fetch a good price.
In their family, purple sweet potatoes are nothing new; they've eaten plenty of purple-skinned potatoes and yellow-fleshed potatoes as well.
However, my grandparents didn't know their value, so they kept them for themselves and never thought of selling them.
If you encounter someone who knows its value, that's fine, but if you encounter someone who doesn't, they might think you're trying to poison them!
Therefore, it is still quite difficult to promote new varieties.
Sixteen mu of seedlings were planted, and at least five mu were to be planted with sweet potatoes. However, as they were planting, they found that there weren't enough seedlings, so the remaining two mu were planted with potatoes instead.
Fortunately, Zhou Yue, Tao Zui, and Tao Ran were all on holiday during the autumn planting season. Tao Ran, Tao An, and Tang Cuimei still had a week before their exams, as they had taken leave from work and needed to hurry back to study.
With my older brother and Zhou Yue around, and with the help of Sister Cuiju and Sister Cuihong, the autumn sowing went very smoothly.
After planting, they would also dig out the wheat stubble from the field, take it home to dry, and use it as kindling.
The wheat was dried at home by the grandparents, and it was dried in the courtyards of the Zhou and Tao families, and even in the town.
In town, it's Grandpa and his younger brother who are in charge, while at home, it's Grandma and Xiaojiu who are in charge. To prevent the wheat from getting moldy and spoiled, it has to be thoroughly dried in the sun.
Planting sweet potatoes is much more difficult than planting corn. First, you have to dig out the ridges, then dig countless holes in them, and then pour in manure water, which is water diluted from the composted poultry and livestock manure at home.
This one task alone exhausted the older brothers and sisters.
After the soil has absorbed the water, put the sweet potato seedlings into the pit, cover them with soil, and they are planted.
From now on, we'll have to rely on the weather for our livelihood.
Three mu of sweet potatoes and two mu of potatoes. Potato seedlings are used later than sweet potato seedlings. As long as they sprout, they can be used. Sweet potatoes are not suitable; you have to wait for them to grow into seedlings.
In addition, the grandparents also planted pumpkins and winter melons on the edge of the field, making the most of the land without affecting others.
Their front and back yards, as well as the Zhou family's front and back yards, were planted with climbing pumpkins, winter melons, loofahs, cowpeas, bitter melons, and other crops. They also planted sweet potatoes, potatoes, cotton, and vegetables in the yards. The old couple were busy every day growing vegetables.
Grandpa even planted cotton, watermelons, and cantaloupes at his home in town, which will be ready to eat in a few days.
See? As long as people and land don't sit idle, and you're diligent with the fertilizer, even if it smells bad or is troublesome, you'll eventually reap a good harvest.
She had tried growing chestnut pumpkins before, but unfortunately, they don't grow like the ones in the south, and the taste wasn't good either. In the end, the local vegetable pumpkins won out.
So no matter how delicious the chestnut pumpkin is, it won't take shape here because it's not adapted to the local environment. Everything has to come from the local area to be guaranteed.
In the past, we might have worried about what to do if we couldn't finish all the vegetables we grew, but now my grandparents never worry about not being able to finish them.
Pickle green beans, cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes if you can pickle them, dry them if you can dry them, or make them into sauce if you can make sauce.
To make tomato sauce, Grandpa would buy canned goods for Xiaojiu every time he came back from town, because canning jars could be used to store tomato sauce.
Xiao Jiu was always worried that the sauce they made would spoil, so she would secretly transfer a lot of it to her space. Fortunately, the old couple were busy with their vegetable garden every day, and the grandfather was constantly traveling between the town and the village, so they didn't have much time to take care of these pickled foods. Xiao Jiu would take the opportunity to put them all in her space.
Besides these, Grandpa also dried beans, sifted beans, and soaked beans to make soy sauce, soybean paste, and fermented soybean paste. Beans are a good thing, but the yield is not high. The beans his family eats every year are grown in the vegetable garden in town. They rely almost entirely on the weather, so the harvest is very poor, and most of the beans are rotten. Only about ten catties of beans are harvested from a few acres of land.
What can you do with ten pounds of beans?
Grandpa had no choice but to buy some beans from a large bean grower.
At this time, Xiao Jiu would secretly mix the beans of mediocre quality into the beans that Grandpa bought.
Good beans are easy to spot, which is why people choose small, inexpensive beans of average quality.
Even after the autumn planting season, there is still a lot of work to be done at home and in the fields. However, since the children are on holiday at this time, grandparents can relax a lot and only need to sit and direct the work.
Xiao Jiu and Xiao Ge would carry bamboo baskets to dig for wild vegetables every day. Summer was the season when wild vegetables were abundant. Purslane, wild amaranth, lamb's quarters, dandelion, pumpkin tips, broom shoot tips, and wolfberry shoot tips could all be picked and eaten as wild vegetables.
However, at this time, vegetables were plentiful at home, so Grandma would wash the wild vegetables and dry them in the sun. She had been doing this for two years, and the purpose was self-evident: these could save lives when difficult times came.
After the holiday started, Cui Mei, Cui Hong, and Cui Ju spent their days searching for wild vegetables, washing and drying them. This had become a tacit understanding between the two families.
The children hadn't forgotten the cicada nymphs and cicada shells either. They would run around the town and villages collecting them, soak them in salt water overnight, and then expose them to the sun the next day until the shells were so soft they could be easily crushed. They would then store them in bottles, and during famine years, these shells would not only be used as medicine but also as a source of protein.
In previous years, they would either sell them or eat them themselves, but this year, the children spontaneously took them to dry in the sun, and roasted or fried the cicadas that had already molted before they could be touched.
In the days before pesticides and fertilizers, cicada nymphs were a disaster. In cornfields, in groves, wherever there were trees, there were cicada nymphs. Children would go about their own business without interfering with each other, and the whole family could easily catch thousands in one night.
With so many, Xiao Jiu couldn't bear to dry them all, so she would secretly transfer the ones soaked in salt water to her spatial storage.
When Cuihua and her family came to visit the elderly couple, they learned of their method and followed suit, going home to store dried cicada nymphs.
In mid-July, good news arrived: Zhou Yue and Tao Ran had both been admitted to the city's No. 1 High School, and from now on they would be able to go to school with Tao Zui.
The third brother, Tao Qing, didn't do as well in school as the eldest and second eldest brothers, so he only got into the township middle school. As for the fourth brother, Tao An, he was a complete academic failure.
Then there's Tang Cuimei. In just one semester, she went from being completely unknown to becoming the top student in her grade. This made the principal beam with joy, saying that he had struck gold and that she was truly a gem.
At Tang Cuimei's request, they even gave her a junior high school final exam paper to work on. Unexpectedly, Tang Cuimei not only completed it but also scored over 80 points. What does this mean? It means that she has mastered the knowledge points of junior high school.
The reason she conservatively scored 80 was because she was worried that a score that was too high would arouse suspicion. The reason she got first place in the second semester of junior high was to let the principal see her strength. In this way, even if she scored 80 in the second semester of junior high, he would still not look down on her.
Cui Mei wanted to skip a grade, and after thinking about it, the principal agreed and even promised to tutor her at his home during the summer vacation, but Cui Mei refused.
"It's already a lot of trouble for you to skip a grade, how could I let you work so hard during the summer vacation? Luckily, I have a relative whose child is studying at the No. 1 High School in the city, I can ask them to help me catch up."
With Cui Mei's words, the principal readily found her the textbooks for the third year of junior high school and even patted her on the shoulder earnestly.
"Good boy, study hard, you must study well. Next year is all up to you. If you can get into the top high school in the city, I'll cover your high school tuition. Anyway, the school will reward you if you get in."
There is also competition between schools, and every year they look at the college entrance examination pass rate. Only a few students from the township middle school can get into the county's top high school each year, let alone the city's top high school, which is even more difficult to get into.
This might be too difficult for others, but for a time traveler, the questions of this era are incredibly easy.
A middle school, especially one from the 1950s, already had few students, making the entrance exams even more difficult. In the history of the township middle school, fewer than five people had ever been admitted to the city's top high school. So, if you could secure even one spot, that was something to be grateful for.
Ever since witnessing this young girl's talent, the principal couldn't bear to see this promising student poached by another school. That's why he not only exempted her from accommodation but also gave her the opportunity to work part-time, helping out in the cafeteria.
To secure a spot for her, he even drove away his relative who used to help out in the cafeteria.
Fortunately, this girl is hardworking, good at her job, and excels in her studies. She's a talent that money can't buy.
It has nothing to do with the rewards from above; it's more about his performance. Even though he's the principal, principals also have performance evaluations and competition.
During his tenure, it was such a great honor to be able to get into the city's top high school!
So the principal not only gave Cui Mei the textbooks for the first and second semesters of junior high school, but also the review materials for the second and third years of junior high school. He even prepared her school supplies. There's no one else who is so thoughtful.
Originally, Cui Mei wasn't under much pressure, but seeing how much the principal valued her, she put aside her playful attitude and began to calm down and diligently review the knowledge points from the second and third years of junior high school, as well as the test papers and key points for each subject.
In addition to her studies, she also has time to teach Cuiju and Cuihong to read and do arithmetic.
Compared to Cuiju, Cuihong was completely illiterate, and they had more difficulty communicating through gestures. Fortunately, it took a week to teach her her own name and addition and subtraction within ten.
Cui Mei plans to teach them pinyin and how to use a dictionary this summer.
With the ability to look up words in a dictionary, we can look up unfamiliar words directly in the future.
Whether there's something to do or not, they can look up each character in the dictionary and learn to recognize and pronounce them one by one.
Before summer vacation was even over, Cuihua packed her bags and went home. The reason was simple: her paralyzed husband had passed away.
The old lady was the only one left at home and planned to live with her children, so she dismissed Cuihua.
Fortunately, her children knew how hard she worked, and even though she didn't finish her work in July, they still gave her full attendance bonuses.
When Cuihua returned home without a job, she looked utterly dejected.
"Sister, don't worry, my tuition won't be paid by the family. As for food and such, I can save up by working part-time. My third sister works in the county town, so she doesn't spend much money either. My second and fourth sisters stay at home and save up a lot of food and wild vegetables all year round. We will definitely be able to get by."
Cui Mei was willing to expose her abilities just to save time and money, get a proper job as soon as possible, and then take on the responsibility of supporting her family.
She had previously managed to supplement the Niu family's grain supply by mixing it into their own grain. As a result, the family still had some grain left over, partly because the sisters deliberately ate less, and partly because she had subsidized it.
But this isn't a long-term solution; we still need to find ways to make money. However, saving lives is a matter of luck...
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