Qin Li glanced at her, as if seeing through her thoughts, and said with a deliberate smile: "Then I'll thank you for all the hard work in raising pigs, chickens and vegetables for our family from now on."
"It's not hard, it's what I should do."
How could Chen Tan not understand the hidden meaning of his words, and responded to him with a silly smile.
The three of them chatted while picking vegetables, and soon they had finished picking the radishes and cabbages.
Qin Li filled a basket with two baskets of cabbages and three baskets of radishes and placed them in the corner of the room where Qin Qiuniang and the others slept.
The rest was packed into sacks and stored in the cellar.
He went to the shed behind the room where he slept and pushed aside the pine needles to reveal a large rectangular board.
He moved the wooden board away, revealing a thick straw cover made of woven straw. When he removed the straw cover, he discovered a six-square-meter cellar.
He carried out a bag of sweet potatoes and half a bag of corn kernels, and then sent the radishes and cabbages down.
When Chen Tan helped him, he saw that in addition to sweet potatoes and corn kernels, there was also a pile of dry corn cobs with stalks, rice ears, wheat ears, dried mushrooms, and other vegetables, which occupied most of the cellar.
But she still vaguely saw a door behind the pile of junk.
Qin Li quickly closed the cellar.
Then, the two of them worked together to loosen the soil in the vacant land, leveled it, and sprinkled vegetable seeds on it, leaving it for growing vegetable moss to eat next spring.
As for garlic sprouts, spinach, and coriander, the big ones were pulled up and stored in the room where the sandalwoods slept, and the small ones were covered with straw. Even if it snowed, they could turn over the straw and pick the vegetables to eat.
The next day, the heavy snow that had been suppressed for half a month finally fell, and it flakes all day long.
The weather was getting colder and colder. Qin Li came home from work in the evening and moved the two large water tanks in the shed to the middle of the yard and filled them with water. On the morning of the third day, a layer of ice had formed inside, but the center part had not frozen yet.
He used a leather hose to drain the water out, leaving behind a thick crust of ice against the wall of the tank.
He put a heavy wooden lid on the water tank, and it became a simple refrigerator.
He looked at Chen Tan, who had been helping him, and said, "I'll buy ten pounds of meat tomorrow. You and grandma can make some dumplings and freeze them inside. If you don't want to cook, you can just cook the dumplings."
"Okay." Chen Tan nodded, but there was a teasing smile in his eyes.
I can't tell, he's such a talented person.
Qin Li saw the smile in her eyes and asked, "Am I funny?"
"Ah?" Chen Tan was stunned for a moment. "No, I didn't laugh. The meal is ready. I'll go wake up grandma."
"little things!"
Looking at the fleeing figure, Qin Li cursed with a smile and went into the kitchen.
He had breakfast first, then carried 50 kilograms of corn kernels that he had taken out of the cellar the day before yesterday and went to the brigade headquarters to grind them.
When I came back, Qin Qiuniang and Shen Tan had already eaten and were sitting on the kang reading.
He sat on the edge of the kang, looking at the man who was studying seriously, and said, "Let me teach you how to write."
"Yeah, okay!"
Chen Tan did not hesitate, she now urgently wanted to "learn" to write.
"Come to my room."
Qin Li got up and went back to the house, and Chen Tan hurriedly followed him.
There was no kang in Qin Li's room, so it was much colder than the room where she slept.
"sit."
Qin Li pointed at the desk and took out a few children's notebooks and a copybook of regular script from the bookshelf.
Chen Tan took the things, opened them and saw that they were all written in simple elementary school handwriting.
"You've never written before, I'll teach you."
Qin Li picked up a pencil from the pen holder and took her right hand from behind.
The smooth and soft touch spread from the palm of his right hand to every part of his body, and he relaxed as if he had been electrocuted.
The tips of his ears suddenly turned red and his heartbeat accelerated. He steadied his disordered breathing.
He picked up the calligraphy book, opened the first page, and pointed to the first character, "人," and said, "Write it according to the pattern above."
When he touched her just now, Chen Tan was also panicked. After hearing what he said, she nodded repeatedly, "Yeah, okay, I can write. I wrote on the ground with a branch."
It was her first time writing, so she didn't dare to write too well, but she was also afraid that he would correct her.
She wrote slowly, but her handwriting was neat.
Qin Li stood beside her, leaning against the bookshelf, looking lazily at her burned face, which seemed not so ugly anymore.
The slender and thick eyelashes, like a palm-leaf fan, covered the almond-shaped eyes.
Thinking of her eyes, Qin Li's smile deepened.
He had never seen a girl with eyes so big and bright, as watery as black crystals soaked in a mountain spring.
I wonder if pearls flowed out of her when she cried?
"Brother, look, is my writing good?"
Chen Tan finally finished writing a page. When she looked up at him, her bright smile concealed a little emotion of seeking praise.
Qin Li's mood was lifted again. He raised his hand and rubbed the top of her smooth head. Feeling that it felt good, he rubbed it again. Seeing that the tip of her jade-white nose was red from the cold, annoyance flashed in his eyes. "You are great. I won't write anymore. Go to the kang and warm up."
"Okay," Chen Tan put away his pen and went to the bookshelf to get a boxing manual, "I want to see this."
"You want to learn martial arts?" Qin Li looked at her in surprise. "You're already twenty, you can't learn it."
"Who said that? I'm only seventeen. The age reported on my household registration is older."
After Chen Tan finished speaking angrily, he took the book and walked away with a smile.
The reason why the original owner knew that he was only seventeen years old was because he heard it from the old people in the village when he was a child.
They also often said that she was lucky because she was the only child in the entire brigade who gave birth in the county hospital.
However, when Hu Cuifen heard someone talking about this, she scolded them.
They said those people deliberately exposed their family's shortcomings and carried manure to fight with others.
Gradually, the villagers stopped talking about her birth.
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