Chapter 32 Chapter 32 "Then Aunt Mo's family...
"Does Aunt Mo have any other vegetables? We might as well buy them from her every day." The vegetables at home are not enough now, and they can't catch up even if they grow more. It would be great if we could find a stable and trustworthy person to supply them. This way we can save a lot of time to do other things every day, just like it is very convenient to buy pig intestines from my uncle now.
Do I have to spend money to buy it again? Chen hated to hear about spending money the most. Although vegetables were not expensive in this season, it was unreasonable for farmers to sell vegetables to eat. If they didn't buy them, there would be nothing to sell tomorrow. Thinking of the income of the past two days, Chen gritted her teeth and said with pain.
"Okay, then I'll go ask your Aunt Mo."
If it were someone else, with Chen's stingy nature, she would definitely not agree. But Mo was not someone else, she was her former close friend, and they married into the village together. Needless to say, the relationship was deep. If there was anyone who would not make her feel uncomfortable if he earned money, it would definitely be Mo.
With that, Chen set off for the Mo family.
The family that Mo married into was surnamed Huang. They were the second family on the right as you entered the village. The Huang family had more than 20 people in total and had not yet split up. They were all squeezed into four yellow adobe houses.
If you ask which family in Xiaoxi Village is the most lively, it must be the Huang family. It is more lively than an opera all day long. When Chen arrives, there is an opera inside. It sounds like two children arguing about who ate more of what and who ate less of what, and the adults also join in the quarrel. The noise is so loud that it feels like it is going to blow the roof off the house.
Some idle men and women from the village who had finished their meals would stand outside the courtyard wall, their bowls in hand, and watch the show with a smile on their faces. When the host came over with a basin of water for washing feet, they would say, "What are you looking at? Haven't you seen a quarrel? Go home and have your own quarrel. If you watch again, I'll give you two copper coins each."
And this person is Mo.
She was hot-tempered, stingy, and never gave in. She had been helping her mother, Grandma Sun, to quarrel with gossipy women since she was a child. She had never lost in any quarrel in the surrounding villages, so that when she was 20 years old, no one dared to propose marriage to her. Later, by chance, when she went out to worship Buddha, an old nun in the temple introduced her to the second son of the Huang family, who was also single and of the same age.
Speaking of the second son of the Huang family, he wasn't actually ugly, and in fact, he was considered handsome in the surrounding area. Logically, he shouldn't have been single until he was 25. The reason was that his family was too poor. With four brothers, each wanted a wife, and the family relied on their few acres of land. How could they afford to marry everyone? Moreover, the second son was the second oldest and the least favored at home, so he remained single. It wasn't until the third son married into his own family that they had the money to marry Mo.
This year, Chen had given birth to her third child, Su Qinghe. When she heard that her former good sister had married, she was so happy that she ran to the banquet holding her children in her arms and carrying her three children on her back.
It was also from then on that the two of them got in touch again and resumed their previous interactions. They finally had someone to accompany them during the New Year and other festivals, and when they went to worship Buddha and attend temple fairs.
"Wu Niang, why are you here? Are there fewer chickens?" Chen was the fifth child, and her friends used to call her Wu Niang. Mo was the sixth child. There were ten brothers and sisters in her family, but she only raised four of them.
"Yes, Liu Niang, I have something to talk to you about, come here!" Chen waved her hand with a sneaky look. They have been friends for many years, so how could she not know what she meant? What good news could this be?
"What's the matter?" Mrs. Mo put the wooden bucket of foot washing water in the yard and followed Mrs. Chen to the loquat tree nearby.
"Delicious, here you go."
"What is this?"
"The pickled fish is made by my fifth daughter. It's delicious. How about you eat it before you go back?" The Huang family is large, and Chen was afraid that what Mrs. Mo brought back would not be enough for her and her daughters to taste.
"It's okay, I have a solution."
As for Chen's claim that the food was delicious, Mo didn't doubt it. After all, in her mind, other people might lie to her, but Chen certainly wouldn't. You know, when she gave birth to her daughter, she didn't even have an egg to eat during the confinement period. Thanks to Chen, otherwise her body would have been ruined long ago.
What's more, when she thought about the stir-fried pork intestines that Chen had given her these past two days, the taste was so good. She had never eaten anything so delicious in her life, and her mouth was watering just thinking about it.
"Okay, then take it. I have something good to tell you." Chen felt relieved when she heard what Mo said. Moreover, she knew that her good friend was not someone who would suffer any loss.
Then Chen quickly told Mo the whole story from beginning to end.
Mrs. Mo was a little surprised when she first heard this, but she quickly remembered that the Su family didn't have much land. However, she was still a little surprised. It seemed that the food should be selling well. Chen refused to say anything when others asked her, but she told her everything when Mrs. Mo asked her.
"It's okay." Chen didn't want to brag. After all, it had only been two days. It was good now, but who knew what it would be like in the future.
"So much!" Oh my god, earning a hundred coins a day, wouldn't it be rich in a long time? Thinking of this, Mrs. Mo's mind became active, "Don't forget me if you have any good things in the future."
"Don't worry, I will definitely not forget you. This is just the beginning and I don't know what will happen next. Anyway, I will definitely need these vegetables in the next few days. You have to ask your second brother to pick them and send them up every day."
"It's nothing. How much do you want? Just tell me the day before, or tell my girl, and I'll send it to you when the time comes. The cucumbers, cowpeas, and eggplants in the fields are all growing well. There are also a lot of green vegetables, including loofah, cabbage, peppers, water spinach, and bitter melon. Oh, and there are also young pumpkins."
The Huang family doesn't have much, but they have a lot of labor. Now the next generation is almost grown up, and they follow them to the mountains to open up wasteland all day long.
Nowadays, the imperial court encourages and supports land reclamation. As long as you reclaim wasteland, you will even be exempt from taxes for the first five years.
Not only the Huang family, but other families in the village, including the Su family, all have their own wasteland on the back mountain.
The Huang family had a lot of laborers and they opened up a large piece of land on the hilltop, which they planted with edible crops.
However, reclaiming wasteland is not an easy task. A large population is only the first condition. You also need patience, perseverance and determination. You can't just do it when you want to and not do it when you don't want to. Once you start, there is no turning back. Moreover, this is not something that can be done in a short period of time. It will take at least one or two years, and at most five or six years, to clean up the wasteland and plant crops.
The Huang family's wasteland has been cultivated since old man Huang, and it took two or three generations to finally grow something to eat. Even so, they still have to take turns to set up a shed on the mountain to guard it every day, for fear that it will be dug up by wild boars or stolen by people. These days, it is not easy for poor families to make a living.
So when Mo heard her former sister Chen say that she wanted to give money to buy some vegetables, she was so excited. You know, the mountain is suitable for growing vegetables, fruits and melons. Rice and wheat are not easy to grow, but those vegetables, fruits and melons cannot be eaten by the whole family even if they are planted. They can only be fed to pigs, chickens and ducks. As for why not sell them?
It’s not that the Huang family didn’t want to sell, but the land on the mountain was barren and infertile, so the vegetables grown there didn’t look very good and couldn’t be sold at a high price. Huang Laoer once carried some vegetables to the county town to sell, but he couldn’t sell any of them at all, and he even had to pay two cents for the entrance fee. When he came back that time, the whole family laughed at him for a long time.
"I'll go back and ask the fifth girl and then tell you." Chen said.
"I'll go with you." Mrs. Mo was impatient. She went home, put the pickled fish in her room, and hurried out.
Normally, delicious food should be taken back quietly, but Mrs. Mo refused to do so. Instead, she walked in openly and let her sisters-in-law ask her. Her nephew pulled her arm and stood on tiptoe to look at it, and she said it was fish.
"Third brother, do you want to eat?" She looked like a good aunt.
As soon as he finished speaking, his sister-in-law Zhou came out of the pigpen and pulled her son over, "Eat, eat, eat. Do you want to eat chicken shit?"
"Hahaha, third brother, come here and be good. We won't eat that fish. It's very fishy and smelly and not tasty!" The eldest wife Liu, who was watching the fun from the side, interrupted.
"Stinky~" The five-year-old boy pinched his nose and followed the adults.
Mrs. Mo rolled her eyes at them and said to her eldest daughter who was cutting grass for the pigs, "Daya, come here. Stop working and take this fish back to the house."
She loved her own children, and because she gave birth to several girls, she was disliked by the whole family. They were ordered to do everything in the family, big or small, but Mrs. Mo refused to obey. Why should her daughters be treated badly while her sons did nothing? That old couple was so partial to her that they went to the South Heaven Gate. If she didn't have any money now, she really wouldn't want to live with them.
Fortunately, she is not the type of person who would give up when encountering problems. She is a very open-minded person. If she and her daughters are not having a good life, the whole family will have no good life.
"Okay, mother." When 14-year-old Huang Daya saw her mother coming back with delicious food, her eyes were filled with joy. She stood up and walked to her mother, Mrs. Mo.
"Second sister-in-law, call Daya away. If the pig grass is not cut completely later and mother gets angry when she comes back, don't blame me for not reminding you!" Sister-in-law Liu said coldly when she saw that someone was called away by Mo.
"I will tell my mother myself. There is no need for you to pretend to be sympathetic and plead for mercy, or to stick chicken feathers on a sparrow."
"What did fourth sister-in-law say? What's the point?" Liu didn't know what it meant, but she knew it was definitely not a good thing, so she turned her head to look at Zhou.
"Sister-in-law, it doesn't matter if she scolds you." Zhou almost laughed out loud. Zhou was the type of person who would be happy to watch the fire from the other side and even add fuel to the fire as long as no one was scolding her.
Liu was indeed angry again and was about to go to Mo to argue, but she saw Mo directly push her away and said, "Get out of the way. I want to go out. I don't have the time to argue with you now."
No matter how distorted Liu's face was with anger, he ignored her and left.
Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!
Huang Lao Er was so angry that when he came back from work and saw that Mrs. Mo was not at home, he asked his sister-in-law Liu. Liu sneered and said, "How should I know? Maybe she went to see some wild man."
Huang Laoer: “?” How did her wife offend her again?
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