Return to the small mountain village in 1983

Chapter 129: Beating dates, I sit at the children’s table

After sending my parents home, it was completely dark when we came out.

The meal lasted for over an hour and ended with candles being lit. It's past nine o'clock now. There is no moon these days, and the stars look particularly bright.

When I got home, Xiulan was clearing away the dishes. Lin Heng came over to help her.

"Give these to Xiongba." Xiulan arranged the meal and handed it to Lin Heng. There were also cooked chicken bones and internal organs.

Lin Hengduan came out and poured Xiongba into the dog basin, looked at him and said, "This is a big meal tonight."

Xiongba didn't make a sound, he ate with big mouthfuls and cracked the bones. He didn't know whether he was satisfied or dissatisfied.

Back at home, Lin Heng washed Xiaoxia's face and feet, and then read a storybook to coax her to sleep.

When Xiaoxia fell asleep and he went out to take a shower, Xiulan had already washed herself.

"What do you think?"

Xiulan asked as Lin Heng got into bed.

"I was thinking about passing by Carpenter Liang's house in a few days and asking him to help him make a big wooden bucket for bathing. I want to take a bath." Lin Heng said with a yawn.

Xiulan said softly: "If you want to take a bath, just get one. Now you don't lack this little money."

"Then let's take a bath together then?" Lin Heng chuckled.

"I knew your thoughts were not pure." Xiulan snorted lightly.

Lin Heng squeezed her hand: "Then you still lie in my arms?"

Xiulan snorted: "Then who asked you to marry me? I will stay here forever."

……

The two chatted quietly, biting their lips and flirting from time to time.

Lin Heng held his wife in his arms. He originally just wanted to eat two bites of meat wrapped in paper, but he got out of hand. It makes the already tired body even worse.

"It's over! I don't even want to go down to the river tomorrow." Lin Heng sighed. Some things are really beyond my control.

Xiulan nestled in Lin Heng's arms and said softly: "Then we'll go the day after tomorrow."

The bones in her body were also soft now, and she just wanted to nestle in Lin Heng's arms. There was still a faint smell of heather in the air.

"It's all your fault." Lin Heng said deliberately.

Xiulan rolled her eyes: "Yes, yes, it's all my fault, all for me.

I don’t know who made the first move and begged for their cooperation. "

"Haha." Lin Heng also remembered that his wife had just reminded him, but he didn't listen to anything and just wanted to come.

"Sleep and sleep."

Xiulan regained a little strength and lay down next to her to rest.

Lin Heng soon fell asleep. He took a long nap and didn't get up until around ten o'clock the next morning.

Lin Heng got up and came out. In the backyard, Xiulan was picking vegetables in the pavilion, and Xiaoxia was lying on the railing watching the fish, throwing in some food from time to time.

On the other side of the grape trellis, not only did the previously planted wild grapes come to life, but the new vines that grew out also climbed onto the trellis.

Lin Heng suspected that if he had planted them earlier, he might still be able to eat wild grapes.

In the corner of the wall, the dead cypress that had been left there and ignored has grown green leaves again, and its vitality is frighteningly tenacious.

Lin Heng walked over and took a look, holding the flower pot and placing it on the edge of the fish pond.

This natural cypress bonsai fully expresses the artistic conception of life and death.

"The rice was left in the pot for you. Go and eat it yourself. There is tea for you on the table." Xiulan said without raising her head.

"Okay." Lin Heng nodded and went to the kitchen to eat.

In the morning, my wife made rice, and the dishes were cold cucumber shreds and stir-fried green beans.

Seeing the tea on the table, Lin Heng sighed that his wife was so considerate. This was a cup of mulberry and wolfberry tea.

After dinner, he ate tea with mulberry and wolfberry. He had no choice but to make up for his deficiency.

Xiulan brought a jumping Xiaoxia over and saw that he even ate mulberries, and was very satisfied.

"What are parents doing today?" Lin Heng asked curiously.

Xiulan looked at him and said, "My parents went to threshing rice for Third Dad and his friends today, and we will do the same tomorrow.

Third mother came over in the morning and said she must let us have dinner at noon. "

"That's it, we have to go. If we don't go, they will definitely come and call us." Lin Heng nodded, it was good not to have to cook by himself.

Xiulan nodded, looked at her husband and said, "After you finish eating, let's go pick dates. Mom said the dates on the beams have turned red, and many birds have been eating them in the past two days."

After a pause, she was a little doubtful: "Can you still climb trees now?"

Lin Heng immediately raised his head and chest: "Of course, who are you looking down on?"

"Then let's go, I'm just afraid you'll fall." Xiulan smiled.

"Okay." Lin Heng went to the house to get a hook and a hatchet.

After looking at it, he took the slingshot on the wall again.

"Honey, I forgot to ask, is the new kitchen knife easy to use?" he said as he walked out.

"It's very sharp, much better than the previous one." Xiulan responded. He took the basket and pulled Xiaoxia out.

"Punch dates, beat dates, I want to eat dates!!"

Xiaoxia wore the small straw hat Xiulan had made for her, waving her hands and cheering.

"Wang Wang!!"

The male bully lying under the eaves also ran out wagging his tail.

The little golden cat Jinbao turned over, yawned and continued to sleep.

The sun is a bit bright today, but it’s worth going out to eat red dates.

When you leave the yard, you can hear the sound of threshing millet on both sides of the river. The sun is good, and many families are threshing millet.

"You guys are threshing millet today too." After visiting the Yang family, Lin Heng looked at Li Caifeng who was drying the millet and said.

Li Caifeng saw Lin Heng smiling and nodding: "Yes, the sun is nice today, what are you doing?"

Now that she no longer competes with Xiulan, she naturally loses her temper.

Ever since the price of mulberry rose and Lin Heng became rich, she has completely given up comparing herself with Xiulan. I found a woman of similar strength to compare with.

"Let's go date hunting." Lin Heng responded with a smile.

"Oh, I have indeed aged these past two days." Li Caifeng nodded.

When Lin Heng and the others passed by, she still couldn't help but feel envious.

Lin Heng was such a shock to people. Since he came back in May, this person has changed drastically.

Lin Heng came to his family's sweet potato field in the east of the village, six or seven hundred meters away from the Shiban River. There was a cypress forest here, where his great-grandfather, grandmother, and grandfather were buried.

To the east of the cypress forest is the sweet potato field. Next to the cypress forest grow two jujube trees as thick as a bowl and a persimmon tree with a diameter of more than thirty centimeters.

This year, not only are dates in abundance, but so are persimmons. Green persimmons the size of a child’s fist are hanging all over the branches.

Lin Heng took a quick look and found two red ones, and planned to pick them for his wife and children to try.

"Dad, there is someone on the tree." Xiaoxia pointed to the jujube tree and said.

Lin Heng had also seen it a long time ago. There were three or four children picking dates. However, as the saying goes in the countryside, "There are no railings under the fruit trees." If you pick a little and eat it, no one will say anything to you as long as it is not beaten.

"Uncle Lin, let's pick some dates to eat." A child on the tree said with a smile.

"Come down, I'll knock it off and you can pick up some to eat."

Lin Heng walked under the tree and said with a smile that this child seemed to be Liu Lan's second son.

"Okay Uncle Lin, let's help pick it up." Several children on the tree quickly climbed down.

"Xiulan, take your daughter away. I'll climb up the tree and start beating her."

Lin Heng said something, and first climbed up the jujube tree on the left. When he reached the top of the tree, he picked up the stick and started to smoke. The rain of jujubes continued to fall.

"It's raining, it's raining!!"

Xiaoxia jumped up and shouted, and would have run down the tree if Xiulan hadn't pulled her.

Not long after, Lin Heng pulled all the dates off the tree. The ground was covered with red dates, and Lin Heng had nowhere to stand under the trees.

"Let's help pick it up." A few children started to pick it up first.

Xiulan picked up the basket, and Lin Heng came down from the tree and pulled Xiaoxia. She picked one up from the ground and stuffed it into her mouth hurriedly, not caring whether it was dirty or not.

Lin Heng grabbed her, and she stared at him blankly with her mouth open.

"What are you looking at? Don't you know how to wipe the dust off?" Lin Heng brought it over, picked a red one for her, wiped it and handed it to her.

These dates have not been treated with pesticides, so there is no big problem if you rub them and eat them.

Xiaoxia took a bite, chewed twice, revealed her dimples and said, "Sweet!"

Lin Heng also ate one himself. It was crispy, sweet and delicious, with a bit of the sourness and fragrance unique to dates. He couldn't stop eating it after three bites.

Picking it up and putting it in the bag, eating it at the same time.

Xiaoxia finished eating one and picked up another on the ground. She wanted to wipe it on her clothes, but then she remembered that her mother said she was not allowed to stain her clothes.

Looking at her father, she secretly wiped the jujube on the corner of his clothes, then took a bite, showing a happy smile.

Lin Heng didn't notice at all and was concentrating on picking up dates.

Soon Xiulan's basket was full, and the snakeskin bag in Lin Heng's hand was half full.

It adds up to fifty or sixty kilograms, not including some taken away by the children in the village.

"Do you want to hit the other jujube tree?" Lin Heng looked at his wife and asked. "Beat them all, otherwise they will be eaten by bees and birds. My sister-in-law has already beaten the big tree on the other side of the cornfield, so there is no need to leave it for them." Xiulan nodded and said.

These red dates are very good when dried, whether you make tea or stew chicken or ribs.

"Okay." Lin Heng went to another tree, took a stick and whipped most of the dates off the tree in a short while.

After picking it up, he didn't even put it in the snakeskin bag, so he filled half of the bag before filling it all.

"Let's go home." Xiulan wiped her sweat and said, the weather was still too hot.

"Wait a minute, I'll get some persimmons to eat." Lin Heng pointed at the persimmon tree and said.

Xiulan advised: "Don't climb the tree. The two red persimmons are too far away to reach. Forget it."

"No, I will pick some persimmons and pickle them to eat." Lin Heng said with a smile. He picked thirty green persimmons on hand and put them in his pocket.

"That's okay." Xiulan nodded.

The so-called pickled persimmons are naturally not thrown into a sour jar for pickling, but pickled in warm water.

Put the green persimmons into a bucket, cover them with some leaves and corn husks, add warm water and soak them for four or five days before eating.

At this time, the persimmons are no longer astringent and become crispy and sweet, very delicious.

However, please note that the persimmons must be almost ripe. Persimmons that are too green will not be cooked properly.

"Let's go home." Lin Heng said with a smile. He likes to eat pickled persimmons.

On the way home, the two broke off a few tender corns in the cornfield and took them back.

Xiulan is going to make red dates, pumpkin and polenta for dinner.

"How about chopping more and grinding some pulp to eat?" Lin Heng asked, looking at the tender corn.

Corn pulp cake tastes good if you eat it occasionally. It is a rural delicacy formed by grinding older tender corn and fermenting it overnight.

It can be eaten steamed or baked into pulp cakes. The special scent is quite nice.

Of course, the premise is that you eat it occasionally. If you eat it often, it won’t work.

"Okay, mom was still saying she wanted to eat it yesterday. But let's do it in the afternoon. Then chop more and grind it into pulp for us to share among the three families." Xiulan nodded and said.

"Okay." Lin Heng nodded and walked back with Xiaoxia and Xiongba.

When she got home, Xiaoxia took off her shoes and climbed onto the mat.

Lin Heng took a sip of honeysuckle and cordyceps herbal tea, which Xiulan had brewed when she went out. It was already cold now.

Honeysuckle and cordyceps were both picked on the Dragon Boat Festival, and they are among the best. After one sip, my whole body felt much cooler.

After resting for a while, Xiulan brought two garden dustpans, looked at Lin Heng and said, "Help sort them."

"Okay." Lin Heng nodded, threw away the bad ones, and separated the red ones from the non-red ones.

The red ones were taken out, washed and dried into red dates, and the non-red ones were eaten.

The two sorted for a while, and then Xiaoxia ran over to help.

While chatting and sorting, it took more than half an hour to finish sorting.

"I'm going to get a weighing scale." Lin Heng turned around and went to get a weighing scale.

"Seventy-five pounds of red dates and thirty pounds of non-red dates. There are quite a lot of dates this year." Lin Heng said with a smile.

These have all been picked out, and the rotten dates that were fed to the pigs and badgers would have weighed twenty or thirty kilograms.

Xiulan also had a smile on her face: "It's indeed a good harvest. If you dry three pounds and one pound, you can harvest 25 pounds."

The jujube trees will grow more and less every year without artificial thinning of flowers, fruits and vegetables.

"Dad, I want to be called you too." Xiaoxia looked at Lin Heng and said crisply.

"Then let me weigh you." Lin Heng looked at her and found a basket with a rope.

Let his daughter squat inside, and he lifted her up and weighed her.

"Eighteen pounds, Xiaoxia, you weigh eighteen pounds." Lin Heng looked at her and said, this is a very healthy weight.

"I'm a lot fatter than before. I was only [-] pounds in July." Xiulan said as she took her daughter out.

In the past few months, the food has been good, and my daughter has gained a lot of weight.

"I'm eighteen pounds!"

Xiaoxia didn't know how much eighteen pounds was, so she kept mumbling about it. She ran to tell Jinbao several times, and then told Xiongba several times, including the pig badger and forest musk deer.

Lin Heng looked at Xiaoxia and Xiulan, who washed the red dates, boiled water in a pot, then took them out and poured them into a round dustpan to dry.

He also spread the gauze that Lin Heng had bought to make a ground cage on top to prevent insect bites.

In the current weather, it will take about three or four days to dry.

As for the remaining thirty kilograms of fresh dates, only people can eat them.

This is not much. Lin Heng and Xiaoxia ate less than half a catty in a short time.

After getting the dates, the two of them sat in the house drinking tea and enjoying the coolness. Lin Heng had rested and went to soak the green persimmons in warm water.

Xiulan took Lin Heng's hundred-smelted steel dagger to peel the corn, washed it and ate it in the evening.

After doing this, the two of them took a shower in their sandals and lay down on the mat.

The mat is spread on the ground and it is much cooler to lie on it.

Lin Heng found a book and read it for a while before putting it down, lying aimlessly on his back, looking at the wooden ceiling in a daze.

"Aren't you going to do it over there in the fish pond?" Xiulan asked as she was playing with her daughter's dolls.

"Let's do it tomorrow morning. I don't want to move today. I'm not in a hurry. We won't release shrimp seedlings until next year." Lin Heng said.

The second fish pond has not been disinfected yet. Tomorrow morning we will get two to three hundred kilograms of quicklime to disinfect it, and then soak it in water.

"Dong Dong Dong!!"

Lin Heng had just been preparing the microphone for a while when there was a knock on the door outside.

"Brother Lin Heng, you're going to my house for dinner." Lin Hai shouted from outside the door.

"Come on, come on." Lin Heng put on his shoes.

On the way out, he looked at his watch and saw it was already half past one.

"Brother Lin, the food is ready. Come over and eat quickly."

As soon as Lin Heng opened the door, Lin Hai said quickly.

"Leaving right away, do you want to eat dates?" Lin Heng asked.

Lin Hai shook his head: "If you don't want to eat, I have a lot of them at home."

"That's okay." Lin Heng nodded, changed into a pair of shoes, and took Xiulan to Lin Hai's house.

"Brother, you are so powerful. You have become rich all of a sudden." Lin Hai said enviously on the way.

He watched Lin Heng rise step by step, and his envy was beyond words.

Lin Heng laughed and patted him on the shoulder: "Why is it so prosperous? The shop doesn't make much money."

"That's better than us farmers. Brother, what do you think I can do to make money?" Lin Hai began to learn from his experience.

His relationship with Tian Yan has been developing well recently, and he wants to change his situation more and more.

Lin Heng thought for a while, looked at him and said, "Well, you can plant fruit trees. I will buy fruit saplings tomorrow spring. I can help you buy some, or you can come with me. Although it will take several years to bear fruit, But if you take care of it, it’s a long-term deal.”

"Okay, then I will go with you then." Lin Hai nodded and said.

While they were talking, several people had already arrived at Lin Hai's house. From a distance, Lin Heng saw Lin's father and eldest brother surrounded by a group of people chatting.

Seeing that the Lin family has become wealthy, many people want to learn from it or get close to them. This is human nature.

"Boss Lin is here."

"Boss Lin is living a cool life now."

Seeing Lin Heng, a group of people smiled and complimented him.

"Don't make fun of me with the word boss. I don't make any money at all." Lin Heng shook his head and said with a bitter smile.

"We don't believe it. If you have money, please take care of us."

"Tell everyone how much money I made."

A group of people continued talking, a bit heckled.

Lin Heng reluctantly took his wife and children into the house. He didn't want to say anything more to these uncles, because there were so many people.

In the room, Lin Hai's brother Lin Shan looked at Lin Heng and said with a smile: "Hurry up and sit down, the food will be ready soon."

After he separated, his house was built on Shanghe River, which was a bit far from the center of the village. He usually focused on farming and rarely met Lin Heng.

When he heard Lin Heng's recent deeds, his jaw almost dropped. His cousin, who couldn't hold himself up, had become rich, and he felt envious for a moment.

"Lin Heng, Xiulan, please sit down quickly. The food will be served soon." The third mother, Li Xue, was even more kind. She personally came out to pour water for Lin Heng and Xiulan, and even gave Xiaoxia a biscuit to eat.

"No need to go to such trouble." Lin Heng said quickly.

"What's the trouble? You guys sit down first and I'll serve the food." His third mother smiled and shook her head.

Lin Heng stood up and wanted to help, but his third mother held him down and said that a few of them were enough.

There were many people helping to thresh the millet today, and three tables were held, one for the drinking men, one for the women, and one for the children.

Lin Heng didn't feel like drinking outside, so he took Xiulan to sit at the children's table.

As soon as he sat down, all the uncles chatting outside the room came in and sat down at his table.

Lin Heng: "..."

(End of this chapter)