Chapter 253

The girl's voice startled her mother, who was tidying up things in the bridge culvert and ran out immediately upon hearing the sound.

Then she saw the girl shouting toward the north.

"Lan'er, what's wrong?"

"Mom, that uncle stuffed two pieces of meat into my hands..." Lan'er knew she couldn't catch up to that uncle, so she ran to her mother in some panic, showing the two pieces of meat in her hands.

Her expression wasn't one of joy, but of panic, and she kept explaining:

"I didn't ask for it, that uncle forced it on me, said he was trading with me... trading for my three fish..."

As she spoke, her voice was already choked with tears.

"Lan'er, it's okay, it's okay." The woman knew why her daughter was like this—she had been too strict with her before, telling her not to take things from others casually.

"That uncle... is really good." Seeing her mother wasn't blaming her, Lan'er finally felt relieved and held the meat up for her mother to see, "There's so much meat on these bones!"

"Hmm." The woman looked toward the north; at this moment, Li Long was just a black dot. She knew he was a good person, and her feelings were quite complicated.

This favor, when would she be able to repay it?

Li Long hurried home and saw that the wheat stack on the threshing ground was even higher.

The Li family's horse cart was also there, the sound of the roller was very loud, and they had already started threshing.

Entering the courtyard, Li Juan was tidying up the wheat ears she had just picked.

Li Qing Xia was butchering fish in the courtyard, and Du Chunfang was tending the fire at the stove, boiling pig feed.

Hearing Li Long's bicycle, all three turned to look.

"Xiao Long is back?" Du Chunfang's voice was the first to ring out, "What good things did you bring back this time? Look at your clothes... eh, so much blood! You didn't get hurt, did you?"

"No, I hunted a wolf and a goat," Li Long got off the bike, propped it up, and explained, "This is the blood that got on me when I was carrying these two things back."

He had been busy the whole time and hadn't managed to wash his clothes, which resulted in a strong stench of blood on him; he hadn't felt it before, but now that his mother mentioned it, Li Long felt uncomfortable.

"Go change your clothes quickly." Du Chunfang urged, "His dad, what are you still doing with those fish? Hurry and go find some clothes for Xiao Long!"

"Do you need me?" Li Qing Xia looked up, "Xiao Long, can you find them yourself?"

"Yes, yes, yes." Li Long said with a smile, "You all go back to your work. I brought back some air-dried meat, just right to hang on the wire." This wire was used for drying clothes; Li Long had used thin wire when he threaded the air-dried meat, so it was just right to tie it up now.

"Air-dried meat?" Li Qing Xia was hearing of it for the first time and watched curiously.

"It's just sun-dried salted meat." Li Long explained, pulling pieces of meat out of the sack and hanging them on the wire; these semi-dried pieces of meat emitted a faint, slightly strange aroma in the air.

"Isn't drying meat like this a bit excessive?" Du Chunfang worried, "I heard people from above came today; wouldn't it be bad if they saw it?"

"What's bad about it? What are we afraid of now?" Li Qing Xia was quite open-minded, "The higher-ups have let everyone open up, the land has been divided among families, are they still going to forbid us from eating meat?"

"I'm just afraid others will get jealous seeing it." Du Chunfang gave a rare explanation, "Back in our hometown, there are many people with 'red-eye disease'—some people just can't stand seeing others live well."

Li Long smiled and said: "Mom, it's fine, this meat will be dry in about a night, tomorrow morning when it's dry, we'll bring it inside. If we don't dry it, it will spoil. By the way, there's also what's in this basin; these are hearts, livers, lungs, stomachs, and intestines, all boiled."

Li Long opened the basin, took out a few pieces of sliced meat to distribute to Li Qing Xia and Du Chunfang, and Li Juan got the biggest piece. Li Long also asked:

"Where's Qiangqiang?"

"Went to play on the threshing ground. He said there are many grasshoppers there, wants to catch them to feed the chickens."

"This kid, he's quite sensible." Li Long said.

He looked down; the fish Li Qing Xia was butchering were mostly crucian carp, and in the chicken feed basin where the fish organs were kept, there were some white things, so he asked casually:

"Dad, are there many 'noodle fish'?"

Noodle fish are fish that have parasites in their stomachs that look like noodles, usually more common in crucian carp.

"Not many, maybe two." Li Qing Xia said, "Noodle worms are also worms, the chickens love to eat them."

Everyone was used to parasites like noodle worms; compared to the little girls in the next generation who wouldn't even dare touch a grasshopper, children like Li Juan at this time all dared to catch noodle worms with their hands.

As for pinching lice or catching field mice, the girls did plenty of that too.

"Dad, Mom, you all go back to your work, I'll send some meat over to Xiaoxia's dad's place."

"Yes, yes, yes, hurry and go." Du Chunfang urged, "Take some of the fish your dad caught too, take the ones that are already butchered, saves the trouble."

Li Long carried some fish, along with some air-dried meat and boiled organs, to deliver to Gu Bo Yuan. Gu Bo Yuan wasn't home, so Li Long placed the things on the table in the courtyard and covered them with a basin.

At this time, there was no one at home, and unless it was relatives or neighbors, generally no one would wander in; the social customs in these aspects were still quite simple and honest.

Li Long brought the rest to Uncle Lao Luo, and only then returned to the Li family.

By the time he returned, Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei had already come back, and Li Qiang was holding a canned bottle of grasshoppers to feed the chickens. Those grasshoppers had obviously been processed, their heads pinched flat; although they could still jump occasionally, they couldn't jump high.

"Little Uncle!" Seeing Li Long, Li Qiang called out happily, "Look how many grasshoppers I caught!"

"Good, good, good, the chickens will lay more eggs after eating these, and then you can eat more!"

"I don't want to eat boiled eggs!" Li Qiang protested.

"Not boiled ones, how about we have 'string chili egg-stuffed cowpeas'?" Li Long teased Li Qiang.

"Good, good, good!" Li Qiang became happy hearing this. Liang Yuemei often made this dish in this season: cowpeas and thin string chilies are cut into finger-sized pieces, and when they are almost stir-fried in the pot, the beaten egg liquid is poured in, stir-fried a few times, and then taken out of the pot. This has a spicy taste, an egg-stir-fry taste, and goes very well with rice.

"Xiao Long, you're doing alright." Li Jianguo said with a smile, "Every few days you manage to hunt something; you're a good hunter now!"

"This time it was purely an accident." Li Long explained, "I ran through several gullies yesterday to pick mushrooms, and I was really tired, so I thought about soaking in the hot spring. I didn't expect three wolves to be hunting wild goats there; actually, I hunted two wolves and two goats, but one wolf couldn't be brought back, it was too far. I originally thought about going to get it today, but I was exhausted after finishing, so I just gave up on it. I estimate that by the time I go back, that wolf might have long been eaten by other things."

Li Long said this, actually not without pride. After all, this was his biggest hunting haul since he started.

"Impressive!" Li Jianguo couldn't help but praise, "Four—with this harvest, you can call yourself an old hunter!"

"Exactly, Little Uncle is impressive!" Li Qiang said loudly, and after finishing, he whispered: "Little Uncle, what is the hot spring like? Is it comfortable to soak in? Can you take me to soak in it?"

"When the family isn't busy, we'll all go." Li Long said with a smile, "It's just that the road is a bit long."

"I'm not afraid of the long road!" Li Qiang promised loudly.

"Then I'll take you when the time comes."

Li Qiang turned to look at Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei.

"What are you looking at me for? We'll go when we're done being busy, didn't your Little Uncle say so." Li Jianguo thought so too. After the wheat harvest, the oil sunflowers and corn would take a while, and there was a gap in between, so it was indeed possible to go into the mountains to play.

"Big Brother, Mom said people from above came?" Li Long asked curiously.

"Hmm, it's the summer harvest, isn't it? The county sent people to go around to each village to urge the summer harvest and ensure every grain is stored in the granary."

!.

Of course, this "every grain stored in the granary" was just talk; it was impossible to actually achieve. After all, the land plots were so large that once the wheat was cut, they had to immediately organize threshing and winnowing, and then hand over the grain.

At this time, the main labor force was on the threshing ground, and the women in the family all had to go to the threshing ground to work and earn work points, so only the elderly and children could go to pick up wheat ears, and even then, they couldn't necessarily pick them all up.

After all, the team's land area was too large. So when autumn came and they dug up the field ridges, they could dig out many wheat grains, rice, and corn from the mouse holes.

Li Long vaguely remembered that at this time, handing over public grain usually only meant handing over 20% to 30%, and the rest belonged to the team, which also had to be distributed to each family. After the wheat on the threshing ground was threshed and collected, the next step was handing over public grain, handing over "cooperative grain" (kept by the team), and then distributing wheat to each family.

At this time, the township already had small processing plants, and the wheat distributed to each family was usually kept as seed, and the rest was all processed into flour. The Li family's habit was to process it uniformly into 85-grade flour; although it was darker, it was more filling.

In the words of later generations, this was healthy.

Compared to the interior, Northern Xinjiang had a very big advantage: after the land was contracted to households, what was usually handed over to the higher-ups was agricultural tax (public grain), team land management fees (grain ration land), and land contracting fees (fees for contracting land), and as for the so-called "three deductions and five unified levies," Li Long had never heard of them.

Without so many miscellaneous fees, farmers had more land and more motivation to farm, and they could slowly become wealthy.

This was why, not many years after the land contracting in the 1980s, many people in the village could afford televisions and tractors.

It was just that later on, the cost of farming became higher and higher, agricultural materials became more expensive, and the price of primary agricultural products couldn't rise, so the living standard of the families in the team always stayed at that stage and couldn't go up.

Dinner was the cooked offal Li Long brought back; likewise, he made a dipping sauce, boiled some porridge, and ate.

The next day after breakfast, Li Long picked some more vegetables from the courtyard and headed toward the county. Li Juan was already on vacation and didn't need to go to school; she had to do her homework at home. Li Qiang ran off without a trace after breakfast, saying he still wanted to catch grasshoppers.

Children have abundant energy and don't know fatigue, which is quite rare.

When Li Long rode his bike to the bridge culvert where the little girl was, he called out, put some vegetables on the ground, and when the girl showed her head, he rode away.

People who know how to be grateful are more likely to win people's favor and kindness. This girl was about the same age as Li Juan; Li Juan could go to school, but she could only wander, which was quite pitiful.

Li Long went to the compound, and Gu Xiaoxia had already gone to work. The things Li Long brought back yesterday had already been tidied up, so Li Long dropped off some vegetables and left for the mountains again.

When he returned to the cabin, the sun wasn't high yet; Li Long hung out the meat from the room, and he himself took a sack, rope, and rode his bike to the hot spring again.

Wolf or no wolf, there were still plenty of mushrooms there.

Today Li Long took another gully, picking mushrooms as he went. He didn't encounter any mushrooms in the first half, but when he was about a kilometer away from the hot spring gully, he slowly began to see black tiger-palm mushrooms.

By the time Li Long reached the hot spring gully, his sack was already more than half full of mushrooms; today's harvest was also quite good.

He walked into the gully with the sack on his back, his steps careful, worried about wild beasts, but he didn't expect that he wouldn't see anything until he reached the pool.

That wolf was indeed gone; except for faint bloodstains occasionally visible on the moss on the bank, everything else had vanished.

Li Long was a bit disappointed; he hadn't expected the hidden ones in this forest to be so fast!

He went to look for the mushrooms he had dumped. The mushrooms were still there, having been pawed at by something, but they weren't spoiled yet.

Li Long picked up all these mushrooms, put them in the sack, and returned by a different route.

When he came out of the hot spring gully, the sun was shining down quite blindingly, so Li Long gave up the idea of going to other gullies to pick mushrooms and walked quickly toward the cabin.

Back at the cabin, Li Long dumped the mushrooms onto the wooden floor to dry. The previous mushrooms were almost dry, so he moved these to the grass, intending to dry them until the afternoon and then collect them. Once he collected a full sack, he would go to Chen Hongjun's place to sell them.

Li Long already had his own thoughts: picking mushrooms definitely wasn't as satisfying as selling fish for money, but it had the advantage of unexpected harvests. For example, this wolf and goat. After all, eating only fish for a week would make one sick of it, but if one changed the way of eating meat every day, it wouldn't be easy to get sick of it.

At noon, Li Long still ate half a watermelon with some air-dried offal; his stomach felt slightly uncomfortable, so he went to the latrine behind the cabin to squat for a bit, and he was fine.

When he got up in the afternoon and took the sack to pick mushrooms, the air-dried meat on the pole looked almost ready.

In the afternoon, Li Long returned with half a sack of mushrooms; he planned to ride his bike to the Bai Yang Gou area tomorrow to take a look. After all, it was already hard to find them nearby.

The mushrooms on the grass slope were completely dry, and the air-dried meat on the pole was also almost ready; Li Long collected them all and put the mushrooms he brought back today out to dry.

Two days later, Li Long rode his bike with a large sack of black tiger-palm mushrooms to the county purchasing station.

He estimated these mushrooms to be over forty kilograms; according to the price Chen Hongjun mentioned earlier, it was quite a bit of money.

Chen Hongjun took a black tiger-palm mushroom out of the sack, looked at it, and nodded:

"Not bad, the quality looks very good."

"Dump them out and see, they're all like this." Li Long was very confident, "Absolutely no impurities."

"I believe you." Chen Hongjun said so, but he still had to dump them out. (End of chapter)