Although she said she had some free time, she just didn't have to go out. There was more work waiting for her to do at home. This was the price of being away from home for more than a month.
Fortunately, before the frost came, Qu Ting and Huaihua came in through the small door in the fence and helped her put the cabbages and radishes in the vegetable garden into the bamboo house, and covered them with a torn quilt, otherwise they would have been frozen when she came back.
In this way, the outer leaves of the few cabbages on the edge were also frozen, and Tian Cai took the time to peel them off and throw them away and put them back in the cellar.
At that time, in order to make it easier for Mimi to come in and out, she only locked the door of the pharmacy. Qu Ting didn't know, otherwise she could help her put it in the inner room.
These days, she brought back all the mountain products from the deep mountains. She caught the last wave and spread them out on the bamboo mat in the backyard to dry. With Mimi's help, she harvested more in half a month than last year.
After they were dried, I slowly cleaned the outer shells and brought back several baskets of soapberries, which gradually filled the entire cellar.
She brought back so much stuff that the cellar couldn't hold it all, so Tian Cai put the remaining mountain products in the bamboo house and felt it necessary to build a storage room next year.
This year, Tian Cai consciously made more, intending to carry it back to the county to exchange for money. It would be fine if she could just feed the whole family like in previous years, but knowing that her great-grandmother and Grandpa Tian were not living well, she always wanted to lend a hand.
The calm old doctor who raised me is now just a young man struggling to support his family, and even his journey to study medicine is bumpy.
While talking, Tian Cai washed the soapberries and soaked them in warm water. After Qu Ting hit the chestnuts with a wooden stick, the two of them put on gloves and picked them off one by one. The chestnuts were placed in a bamboo basket on the side, and the shells were piled aside. They could be used as firewood in a few days.
"Where's Mimi?" Qu Ting looked around but didn't see the furry figure.
"Up the mountain again."
The snow that fell last night was not heavy, just covering the ground. But that made Mimi, who loves the cold, very happy. She went into the mountains to have fun early in the morning.
Tian Cai was a little uncomfortable with the sudden disappearance of a clingy person around him.
"When it finds a wife and has puppies, I want to raise one too." Qu Ting said with a pout.
Tian Cai nodded perfunctorily, "Yeah, if you're not married by then, you can raise the child."
It was during her trip to Yunnan Province that she learned from Liu Jiedong in the car that lynxes are considered adults at the age of two. The little guy is only a little over one year old now. No wonder he hasn't brought his wife back yet.
When talking about marriage, Qu Ting blushed. Her relationship with Chen Jinhui was completely settled. The Chen family was also from Liaoning Province. Chen Jinhui said that he would submit the application before the New Year. Once her political review was passed, the two could get engaged and get married in the spring of next year.
The girl, who usually has a carefree personality, couldn't help blushing when she heard people teasing her. "You only know how to tease me about this!"
Tian Cai tried to hold back her laughter, and Qu Ting shared with her what had happened in the village during this period. Most of them were small things, except for one thing.
"Didn't Zhang Chuanliang's daughter give birth to a son this summer?" Qu Ting couldn't help but grin, tapping her twice with her hands. "Do you still remember? Zhang Chuanliang's mother was so happy that her mouth was almost crooked!"
Tian Cai threw the chestnut shell aside and said nonchalantly, "The child is only five months old now. What's wrong? Is the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law fighting again?"
"Not yet, but it's almost there." She had also heard her mother talking about it. She lowered her voice and said, "Zhang Chuanliang himself has protruding ears, and Widow Yu has big ears too, but her child has Yuanbao ears. And their eyebrows are also different. Zhang Chuanliang's eyebrows are light, while the child has thick eyebrows. When they were first born, people who saw them said they didn't look like father and son. Widow Yu tried to argue that children change every day and might be completely different in a few days. She also said the child's thick eyebrows were her brother's from her hometown."
"It's not impossible that a nephew looks like his uncle."
That widow Yu does not look like a decent person, but relationships between men and women are strictly controlled nowadays. Tian Cai has been here for so long and no one has dared to have an affair.
"Come on, forget it. It's said that Widow Yu's hometown is in Shandong Province. With such a long distance between us, who knows if she has a younger brother? She just said the child looks like her uncle. Besides, she had a bad reputation before. Zhang Chuanliang's mother was afraid of having someone else raise the child, so she said she wanted to find a place to verify the relationship!" Qu Ting said this with a strange look on her face. She remembered someone she had met in the commune, and she couldn't help but look around. She dragged her small stool over to Tian Cai's side, "I want to tell you something, but don't tell anyone else."
"Well, you say." Tian Cai also cooperated by putting down the work in his hands and handing over his ear.
"I think that kid looks like Wang Ermazi from Qingshan Village!"
Wang Ermazi, Tian Cai's eyes widened, "Are you sure?"
"Sure!" Qu Ting nodded vigorously. She had only been muttering to herself before and never dared to say it out loud, for fear that the matter would get out. If the two of them really had something going on, it would have nothing to do with her. If they had nothing going on, she would be accused of spreading rumors. She didn't even dare to tell her own mother, but she felt uncomfortable holding it in because no one had said anything. Knowing that Tian Cai was tight-lipped, she dared to tell her.
After being surprised, Tian Cai thought about the character of Zhang Chuanliang and his mother, and felt that there was nothing wrong with being a cuckold.
"I don't know if there is any way to test paternity now, but blood testing is pure nonsense anyway." DNA testing is still decades away, and the Zhang family has to acknowledge this child. He is a normal legitimate child, and unless he can prove that the child has nothing to do with him, he will definitely raise the child as his father.
"If the diagnosis cannot be made, the child will have to be his. He is so unlucky. We are in the same team. What if he sees Wang Ermaizi one day? Tsk tsk..." Qu Ting said pitifully, but her eyes were full of excitement.
Tian Cai also laughed, "Wouldn't that be exciting?"
"Hahaha"
The two were laughing and joking when they saw Qin Ling and the Wang brothers pushing a cart to bring her firewood. They were all trees cut down in the mountains and had been sawed into pieces. They could be split and burned.
Although it was not the first time that these people helped her with work, Tian Cai still felt her eyes getting hot. She was used to the indifference of modern people and felt that people of this era were too simple and honest.
Qin Ling saw the two men working on the kitchen floor, and he pushed the cart from the backyard to the bamboo shed with familiarity and unloaded the items. It took him three trips to finish the transport, and after the Wang brothers left, he stacked them one by one against the wall.
He brushed off the dust on his body, went out again, picked up a bag of things and put it on the kitchen floor, took out the vegetable seeds and seasonings from it and handed them to Tian Cai, "Don't you want to grow vegetables in a wooden box? I see you didn't save any seeds this year. Take these, and the seasoning you asked for. I also got some dried shrimps for you."
Tian Cai had just finished looking at the wooden blocks in the backyard. They were enough to burn for the whole year, not to mention the winter. Seeing Qin Ling handing them over again, she puffed her cheeks and said, "Then I'll give them as money."
Qin Ling paused as he was walking out, but he didn't respond to her words. He turned around and said, "I'll come back tomorrow to chop firewood. You can burn the leftovers first."
After saying that, he pushed the cart away.
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