Republic of China: Guandong Ginseng King

Chapter 141 Spring Plowing

The news that Qu Shaoyang was engaged to the daughter of a family in Kuandian County somehow spread throughout Maoer Mountain.

This time, those who had been thinking about marrying their daughters to the Qu family finally gave up.

I no longer have to go to Lin Ruolan every now and then to ask for news.

Lin Ruolan and Liu Dongshan also had a lot less to worry about, as they no longer had to make up all kinds of excuses to shirk responsibility.

If anyone asks again, just reply that your disciple has already been engaged and will get married in winter.

As February begins, the temperature gets warmer day by day, and every household begins to prepare for spring ploughing.

The first thing to do when farming is definitely seeds. The Qu and Liu families have a total of six or seven hundred acres of land, so a lot of seeds alone are needed.

Corn, soybeans, and sorghum are the main crops, and others like millet, broomcorn, wheat, etc. must also be planted. In addition, there are potatoes, sweet potatoes, red beans, buckwheat, etc.

If you live at home, you have to grow a little bit of everything, and avoid buying things if you can.

Although Qu Shaoyang and his team brought back some seeds from Kuandian, many of them were still of poor quality.

So Qu Shaoyang led his men to look for seeds in various places such as the area around Maoer Mountain and Badaojiang.

The days pass quickly in the busy life and Qingming Festival is here in the blink of an eye.

I have ordered a lot of fruit tree seedlings from the orchard in Kuandian before, and now I can bring them back and plant them.

So Qu Shaoyang led a few men to Kuandian and brought back the fruit saplings.

Then he took people to the other side of the wasteland and planted fruit tree seedlings on some hillsides and the edge of the wasteland.

At this time, the soil has been thoroughly thawed, but the seedlings have not yet sprouted. If you plant them in the ground, they will survive after a while of acclimatization.

I estimate that in another three to five years, these fruit trees will bear fruit.

In addition to these, Qu Shaoyang also bought two piglets, chicken, duck, goose and other breeding eggs from other people.

Nowadays, the main point of living at home is to have everything you need, and your daily food and daily necessities are all produced by yourself, so you don’t need to buy most things.

Therefore, it is necessary to raise some poultry and livestock at home.

The piglets are easy to deal with. We can use the leftover bran, corn navels, etc. from the mill at home to make pig feed and feed them first. After a while, when wild vegetables come out from the mountains, we can mix them with the wild vegetables and feed them to the pigs.

It will be easy to raise pigs in autumn. You can feed them squash, potatoes, corn cobs, edamame, dried vegetables, etc.

It was a little more troublesome to take care of chickens, ducks and geese, mainly because there were no old hens to sit on eggs at home. All we could do was spread bedding on the kang, place the eggs on it, and let them hatch slowly.

This is a technical job. Lin Ruolan has consulted many people and learned from them, but she doesn’t know if she can succeed.

In the early spring, it is time to farm. Before farming, people from the government have to be invited to survey the land and determine the amount and grade of the land.

After the government has completed the survey and the remaining money has been paid, the land will be registered and a land deed will be issued. Only then will the land be considered truly owned by the individual.

After surveying, it was determined that this piece of wasteland had a total area of ​​720 acres.

Qu Shaoyang paid money to the government and finally got a medium-sized field. After a few years when the land matured, he could pay less tax.

It was agreed at the beginning that the guys would come here to work and open up the wasteland, and they would own half of the land reclaimed.

Half of the 720 acres of land is 36 acres, which is just enough for one worker to get 2 acres.

After Qu Shaoyang discussed with Liu Dongshan, they marked out 36 acres of land in the southeast corner of the wasteland and divided it among the guys.

When the guys got the deeds to their two acres of land, they were so excited that they almost cried.

Although the land is small, it belongs entirely to them. They can save up little by little in the future, and one day they will have large tracts of fertile farmland.

At that time, they can also build a yard of their own, marry and have children, and officially settle down in Guandong Mountain. Apart from the share given to the servants, the rest will be divided equally between the Qu and Liu families.

There happened to be a large water bubble in the middle of the wasteland, so we used the water bubble as the boundary. If there was a drought in the future, we could use the water in the bubble to irrigate the crops.

After the land has been divided, it can be plowed again and then sown.

Liu Dongshan and Qu Shaoyang, with the seventeen or eighteen men in their family, worked in the fields all day long, wading through the land, digging ridges, planting seeds, and treading ridges.

It would take more than three to five days to plant such a large field. The busy work lasted until mid-April, but at least most of the field was planted.

All that's left are some corners of the land where you can plant some red beans, peas, squash and the like.

On the evening of April 12, the work in the fields was finished, and everyone drove their horses and carried their pickaxes back home.

As soon as he entered the door, Liu Dongshan shouted, "Wife, is the meal ready? I'm starving."

Spring planting and autumn harvest are the busiest and most tiring times in the farm. After working in the fields all day, one is tired and hungry.

When I got home, I just wanted to eat directly, then lie down on the kang and fall asleep.

"It's ready, it's ready. Guiying made the meal for me. Come wash your hands and come in to eat.

Chunfu, the meal at your end is ready too. Today we have salted pork stewed with dried vegetables."

Lin Ruolan came out of the house with an apron tied around her waist and a shovel in one hand. She smiled when she saw everyone.

There was so much pork at home in the winter, and Lin Ruolan couldn't bear to eat it, so she pickled it and dried it. It was just the right time to take it out and stew it.

I'm exhausted after a day's work, and I just have a little oil in my stomach to keep myself from getting hungry.

"Oh, thank you so much, my lady boss. Brothers, go back and wash your faces, it's time to eat." Jiang Chunfu shouted happily when he heard this.

The guys went back to eat, while Qu Shaoyang and Liu Dongshan washed their hands, went into the house, and sat on the kang.

On the table was a basket of two tablespoons of flatbread, a pot of bacon stewed with dried beans, a dish of soybean paste, a few sprouting onions, and a plate of dandelions and shepherd's purse.

At the beginning of spring, every household was the same. The cabbages in the cellar were all eaten, the radishes were rotten, and the sauerkraut had long been eaten.

The only things left were the dried vegetables that were dried last autumn, and now they have to take up the slack.

Apart from these, there are only sprouting onions in the vegetable garden, dandelions and shepherd's purse in the wild.

It was great to have these to eat, so Liu Dongshan and Qu Shaoyang didn't pick and choose, they just sat down and started eating.

Shuanzhu and Xiaofeng are almost one year old. Although they cannot walk yet, they crawl all over the kang and make a lot of trouble.

Seeing Liu Dongshan and Qu Shaoyang sitting down to eat, the two of them crawled over and started to grab the food.

There was no other way. Liu Dongshan and Qu Shaoyang could only hold one each and then break off a piece of cake for them. The two little guys had food in their hands so they didn't fight over it.

"Wife, come and eat quickly, what are you busy with?" Liu Dongshan greeted Lin Ruolan while eating.

"Oh, there's also a soup. I picked some chicken intestines today and made a soup for you."

Lin Ruolan came into the room carrying a small bowl of soup and placed it on the table.

Chicken intestines is a kind of wild grass. When it is tender in spring, you can make soup with some frangipani, which is quite delicious.

Lin Ruolan served everyone a bowl of soup and sat down to eat.

While I was eating, I suddenly heard dogs barking outside, and then I heard someone shouting, "Brother Shaoyang, Brother Shaoyang."

(End of this chapter)