Chapter 34 Winter Bamboo Shoots
In December, the strawberries in the greenhouse began to ripen gradually. As the number of views of Xia Wu's videos increased, her fan base became more and more solid, and she basically received three to five hundred orders every day.
Winter is the time when strawberries are on the market. There are many varieties of strawberries on the market and the prices are mostly low. However, once you have tasted the strawberries grown by Xia Wu using spiritual spring water, most people will look down on the goods sold on street stalls.
Several workers hired by the village came to pick strawberries at around six o'clock every day, and then packed and shipped them. At the beginning, there were enough people, but later, as the number of orders increased, Qiu Lan took the initiative to find Xia Wu and asked if her two children could also come to work in the morning.
She asked embarrassedly because she saw that Yang Mingyuan could earn ten yuan and have breakfast by working for about an hour every morning.
Qiu Lan's husband passed away, and she married far away. She had no help from her parents' home, and no one in her husband's family took care of her. She raised two children, a boy and a girl, by herself, and made a living by growing and selling vegetables in the village.
Because her family is poor, the government provides subsidies every month. Both of her children are in compulsory education and are in the sixth grade. They do not need tuition, but some miscellaneous fees are still necessary.
Xia Wu knew her family's situation. Winter was coming and the vegetables in the garden hadn't grown well. During the time Qiu Lan had been working for her, she had rarely gone to town to sell vegetables. Thinking that the family had no source of income, she probably came to her for help out of desperation.
"Okay, can the two kids get up? If they can get up and it won't delay their schooling, then have them come over too."
Qiu Lan was overjoyed and kept saying that children don't like to sleep in and they will definitely be able to get up.
The next day she called her two children to come along. Xia Wu heard from her mother that the three of them arrived at 5:30 and went to the strawberry garden to pick strawberries without any delay.
Qiu Lan has a pair of children, a boy named Yang Ping and a girl named Yang An. Both children are dark and thin. Although the clothes they wear are a little small, they still look clean. Their mother is Xiao. Neither of them likes to talk. They just work hard.
Xia Wu saw that there were few children in the village who were not dark and thin.
Most of them are left-behind children, who are looked after by the elderly at home. It is good enough for them to have food and drink, and clothes that don’t keep them cold. Who has the time to care about so many things?
At least with Qiu Lan looking after them, Yang Ping and Yang An are pretty well-behaved. I heard that they are both among the best students in the class.
They are from the same village. Yang Mingyuan also knows Yang Ping and Yang An. He is two years younger than the twins. They are in the sixth grade while he is in the fourth grade.
The three children were still a little unfamiliar with working together, so Xia Wu arranged for them to go to school together, and asked Yang Mingyuan to ask the twins if he had any questions.
Yang Mingyuan said rather embarrassedly, "They are already in sixth grade and are very busy. How can they have the time?"
Yang Mingyuan has been working for Xia Wu for some time. Sometimes Yang Mingyue would come to work when she was at home after school on Saturdays. Xia Wu treated the two siblings very well and paid them the wages they deserved. Sometimes when Yang Mingyuan went to school, Xia Wu would give him eggs for him to eat when he was hungry.
It was because of Xia Wu's attitude towards the children that Qiu Lan deliberately called the two children to work together.
She thought that Yang Mingyuan had stayed at Xia Wu's place for a long time, so he might be special. Seeing that her children were silent, she hurriedly said, "It's not difficult to explain a few questions. If you don't know anything, just ask. If your brother Pingping doesn't know, there's still your sister An'an."
"Did you hear that? What score did you get on the last midterm exam? You're only in the fourth grade, and you didn't even pass Chinese or math."
Xia Wu felt a little disappointed with her son. Her impression of Yang Mingyuan had changed compared to before. She thought that this child just needed adult discipline. In fact, he was kind-hearted and filial. He saved all the wages he earned from working for Xia Wu and found Grandpa Yang to ask how to treat his grandmother's rheumatism.
It's really great for a ten-year-old child to have such filial piety.
Sometimes Xia Wu would ask a few more questions about Yang Mingyuan's grades, only to find out that he was an absolute poor student.
He's already in the fourth grade, but he doesn't even know pinyin. He can only do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division within 100, which makes people dizzy.
Yang Mingyuan touched the back of his head sheepishly and chuckled, "Sister Xia Xia, I understand."
After the children finished their work in the morning, Xia Wu settled their bills one by one. Although they had already had breakfast, she still asked Liu Guizhen to cook some more eggs or sweet potatoes and corn for the three children to take with them on the road.
The child is not fully developed yet, and he has to get up so early in the morning and work and study at the same time, so he must get enough nutrition.
Yang Ping and Yang An also paid ten yuan an hour, a total of twenty yuan, which they gave to Qiu Lan for safekeeping. Yang Mingyuan kept the money for himself; he wouldn't spend it recklessly; he was very frugal.
The children went to school together, and the adults could feel more at ease. With the large number of orders these days, Xia Wu was only responsible for typing out the delivery orders and delivering the packaged packages to town. The rest was done by Guihua Niang and the others. After a while, everyone understood what was going on.
Since they were all from the same village and received Xia Wu's daily salary, no one felt comfortable slacking off or doing less work.
However, there are so many orders that it takes them the whole morning to pack, usually about six hours.
The hourly wage is fifteen yuan, and they can earn 90 yuan in the morning. Based on thirty days in a month, that's almost three thousand yuan a month.
Qiu Lan was very happy every time she received money. It was much better to get money just for working than selling vegetables. Sometimes she would work hard to carry vegetables to the street and squat there all day long, but she might not be able to make much money.
Especially after they finish their work in the morning, they are free in the afternoon. Qiu Lan can go home and do some work, such as taking care of the vegetable garden, which is much better than before.
Mr. Yang Si has no grandchildren, so he is alone at home. His children and grandchildren only come back during the Chinese New Year, and each of them gives him some money. He is not short of money, but he is bored at home. He comes to Xia Wu to work and chat when he has nothing to do, and he looks much better in spirits.
He liked the opera player that Xia Wu bought very much, and asked Xia Wu to buy him one online specifically for listening at home. After finishing work in the morning, he found a rope to tie up the player, slung it across his waist, and put it wherever he went. It was also a beautiful scenery in the village.
Shi Hongniang was very happy to earn money, as it could relieve the pressure on her son. If her daughter-in-law was not physically disabled and could not do such delicate work, she would probably have the audacity to ask her daughter-in-law to do the work.
Among these four people, the most annoying one is Guihua's mother. She was driven out by her three bad sons, and her daughter-in-law also disliked her in every way. They usually didn't even say a word to each other when they met in the village. Who knew that Guihua's mother worked here in Xia Wu and could earn nearly a hundred yuan a day. When her sons and daughters-in-law knew about it, they would send their children to their grandmother's house to beg for money every now and then. Sometimes she wanted to eat strawberries, and sometimes she wanted to buy milk.
But Guihua's mother is still a weak-willed person. She gives everything to any grandchildren who ask for it. When Mr. Yang Si and Shi Hongniang know about it, they both advise her to be tougher, think more about her own funeral, and save some money for herself. Otherwise, when she can no longer work, who will be kind enough to support her?
Xia Wu was deeply moved by the various aspects of life in the village. These were things she had never encountered before.
Having seen so much of life, when I think back on the things she did in the past, I always feel a sense of disconnection.
After sending out all the online orders, there were still some strawberries left. Xia Wu prepared to ship the strawberries to town to sell as usual. The townspeople almost knew her, a pretty girl who came every now and then to sell her home-grown strawberries. They didn't know whether they had been treated with pesticides, but the strawberries were really delicious and not expensive.
After winter strawberries are on the market, any fruit store can sell 10 to 21 kilograms of them. Xia Wu sells them at a higher price than before, 18 yuan per kilogram. It is on a first-come, first-served basis, and she leaves when they are sold out. But even so, there are still many people buying her strawberries.
After selling the strawberries, Xia Wu loaded the online shopping packages into the car and then went home with his brother.
There isn't much to do at home, so I do everything slowly and leisurely. Every day seems very long, but when I lie down in bed and prepare to fall asleep, I feel an unusual sense of satisfaction.
After working hard selling strawberries for more than half a month, after deducting the initial investment, labor costs, material costs, express delivery fees and other miscellaneous expenses, Xia Wu made a net profit of 30,000 yuan from more than two acres of strawberries.
At this rate, if the strawberries in the greenhouse can be sold until the beginning of next spring, she can save almost 100,000 yuan.
In the afternoon, Xia Wu had nothing to do, so she put on the new cotton-padded jacket that Liu Guizhen made for her, ate roasted sweet potatoes in the yard, played with her mobile phone, read the comments on the videos, and then went to the group to watch her friends chatting.
Zhou Huila's fan group already has more than 500 people. According to him, this group is basically made up of Xia Wu's die-hard fans, which can be seen from the strawberry repurchase rate on his WeChat store.
However, after eating strawberries every day, people's interest in buying them is far less than it was at the beginning.
Someone in the group asked: "Xia Xia has already bought the whole mountain, right? Do you have anything else to sell?"
"I remember she said the last time she came to the group that the mountain was only booked in November. It shouldn't be that soon that new products are released, right?"
"Next year will be almost done, @XiaXia, what are you planning to plant on the mountain?"
Xia Wu suddenly popped up. She was also struggling with what to plant on the mountain, so she decided to ask everyone's opinion.
"I haven't decided what to plant yet. There are some fruit trees on the mountain left by the previous owner. There are hundreds of loquat trees, over a hundred grapevines, and a dozen or so jujube trees from our area. Do you have any good ideas?"
"Oh my god, am I seeing things? I really called out Xia Xia!"
"How big is the mountain Xia Xia packed with?"
"We do have over 700 mu of usable land, but there are still some areas that haven't been reclaimed."
"What's the temperature like where you are? What's suitable for growing?"
"A lot of things can be grown, so don't worry about that."
"Over 700 acres of land, Xia Xia is so impressive! With such a large mountain, we must plant more crops. It would be best if we could harvest them all year round. My family loves peaches and watermelons. Xia Xia, do you want to plant some?"
Xia Wu also loves peaches and watermelons, so she replied firmly, "We must plant them."
"Okay! We have a kind of blood peach here in my hometown. It's so crispy and sweet that it makes you intoxicated. Do you have any there? Can you grow it?"
Xia Wu really didn't know and had never eaten a blood peach.
At this time, the netizen with the ID name [Xue Pan] has begun to recall the past. When he was a child, there was such a peach tree in his home. Later, the tree was gone, the elderly in the family passed away, and he also left his hometown. He has eaten countless peaches, and he can't forget the blood peaches of his childhood.
[Xue Pan]: "I have a feeling Xia Xia will definitely be able to grow some delicious blood peaches. I can bring my wife and son to your place to pick them myself. I'm definitely not short of money!"
Xia Wu sent an emoji of herself wiping sweat. Why do they all want to visit her mountain?
"There's nothing on the mountain, it's bare, and we're in a very remote area, so you won't have anywhere to stay if you come here."
"That's nothing. One of my biggest hobbies in life is hiking and camping." Another group member also wanted to come.
Xia Wu thought for a moment and said, "I plan to raise some chickens and ducks next year. The village said we can build a management house for the farm. Can you help me think of a good building? It would be best if it can be used for living and storage. If you really want to come visit later, you can have a place to stay."
As soon as these words were spoken, the group was in an uproar, and Zhou Hui quickly @ all members.
"Anyone who has time, please show up. Let's brainstorm and help Xia Xia figure out what to plant on the 700 acres of land on the mountain. Does anyone know how to design a house?"
Soon, Xia Wu received a lot of suggestions. Some people suggested that she grow seasonal vegetables, a little of everything. Nowadays, many vegetables in the city are sprayed with pesticides and hormones. They wanted to eat original and pollution-free seasonal vegetables of all seasons.
All possible fruits and vegetables were arranged, including peaches, plums, apricots, pears and prunes. Someone even asked if durian could be grown in Xia Wu's hometown.
Are you kidding me?
In addition to fruits and vegetables, we are all carnivores. It is recommended that Xia Wu raise more chickens, ducks, geese and pigs. We can't always eat vegetables and turn them into rabbits.
In short, after these canned people who are used to living in the city have established a connection with Xia Wu, Xia Wu's mountains have become their spiritual paradise. They almost treat this land as a QQ farm, thinking that they can raise and grow anything.
Although the group members talked a lot of nonsense, Xia Wu still benefited a lot, especially since there were indeed some talented people in the group. Knowing that Xia Wu wanted to design a mountain, some people who studied landscape design came to help her with the planning, and some who worked in architectural design offered to help her with the design drawings for free.
I have to say that these enthusiastic netizens are definitely the most selfless and dedicated group of people in the world.
Xia Wu was deeply moved.
She made a bold statement in the group, welcoming those who are good at landscape design and those who are familiar with house design to come for on-site inspection, and she will cover their food, accommodation and transportation.
But you have to have real skills.
[Xue Pan]: "I've had enough of being a programmer. If I had known earlier, I would have studied landscape design!"
Others in the group echoed.
"Xiao Wu, are you home?"
Qiu Lan's voice suddenly came from outside the yard. Xia Wu put his phone in his pocket and asked, "Sister Lan, what's wrong?"
Qiu Lan was carrying a large bamboo basket, a smile on her face. She put the basket down and said to Xia Wu, "I was bored and went to the foot of the mountain to dig up some winter bamboo shoots. I thought I'd bring some to you. Come on, these are all for you."
Liu Guizhen also came out of the house and saw a pile of winter bamboo shoots in the corridor. She said in surprise, "Oh, I almost forgot that the winter bamboo shoots should be sold out. Just give me two or three, and you can take the rest back!"
"No need, I'll give them all to you. Not many people in the village go there to dig bamboo shoots. I see there are a lot of them, so I plan to dig some more and dry them into dried bamboo shoots. They'll last us a long time!"
Xia Wu had never seen winter bamboo shoots before. She squatted there, picked up a short and plump one, and looked at it. "Mom, how do you eat winter bamboo shoots? Are they delicious?"
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