Chapter 279

At noon, he went home for dinner, and in the afternoon, the family of three went to help the Gu family harvest those oil sunflowers—the Gu Bo Yuan family had four mu of land, half corn and half oil sunflowers. Gu Bo Yuan plus the four people of the Li family, finished the work in less than two hours.

"The old man was right, there is really strength in numbers." Gu Bo Yuan sighed, "If I did it myself, it would take two days."

"That's right, many people are good at working, few people are good at eating steamed buns." Li Jianguo said with a smile, "Each has its own advantages."

Li Long thought to himself, now you absolutely can't imagine, forty years later, don't talk about many people being good at working, at that time a cooperative has thousands of mu of land, a few people can handle it. Of course, now even if I tell you, you won't believe it.

In the evening, the cool breeze was blowing, the family was eating watermelon under the shed, Li Qiang's mud-slab pistol was accidentally broken by him, so Li Long let him find the exercise book that Li Juan used up before, and tear the paper to fold a Mauser pistol.

Because children at this time have read the little books "Mine Warfare" and "Tunnel Warfare," and feel that the one with the twenty-round long magazine is more powerful, so they first fold five small bags, and then string them together with chopsticks. Each of the five small bags uses two sheets of paper, and two sheets of paper are needed when combining, but when folded, it still looks like something.

After folding, Li Qiang happily took it to play—Li Long said, this is a reward for his good academic performance.

Li Juan just looked at it from the side, and didn't envy it too much, girls are older, and are not interested in guns or anything, so Li Long folded a simple "East, West, South, North" for her, taught her how to play, and let her play with classmates when resting at school.

The principle of this thing is very simple, but in this era of lack of entertainment, it is really very attractive.

The next day after breakfast, Li Juan took Li Qiang to school, Li Qiang was very excited, holding the paper pistol and running out excitedly, Li Long hurriedly shouted and exhorted:

"Don't play when you are in class, don't let the teacher confiscate it and then lecture you."

At this time, the teachers here basically don't beat children anymore, but lectures, scolding, etc., are definitely common. Parents usually don't care, and children's psychology is not so fragile, sometimes they are lectured by teachers and dare not tell their parents, because they are afraid of suffering "secondary injury."

In the eyes of parents, only naughty children will be lectured by teachers.

"Little Uncle, I know!" Li Qiang said loudly, and then ran away shouting at the top of his lungs "Ah—", with his schoolbag swaying behind him.

"Qiangqiang, slow down! If you run again, I'll hit you!" Li Juan shouted at Li Qiang from behind, chasing up quickly, turning to the main road, Li Long could still hear Li Qiang's voice at the gate.

Having a good toy and urgently wanting to show off to good friends is very normal, children, there are not many things to compare.

Li Jianguo harnessed the horse-drawn carriage, Liang Yuemei boiled pig feed to feed the pigs, Li Long took a few sticks and went to the threshing floor.

Oil sunflower threshing can only be manual at this time, and it can't even be threshed like wheat, because the quantity is too small. And this matter can't wait, because soon the oil sunflowers and other crops in the team will also be harvested, this work counts as work points, Li Long didn't plan to participate, but the threshing floor must be vacated as soon as possible.

Doing this work is relatively easy, take a stick and sit directly on the pile of oil sunflowers or next to it, take a flower disk of oil sunflowers and knock it, through vibration and reaction force, knock the oil sunflower seeds down, after knocking clean, throw the flower disk to one side, and continue to the next one.

It is considered repetitive labor.

After the oil sunflower seeds are knocked, they still need to be winnowed to winnow out the sunflower tails—this sunflower tail mainly includes shriveled seeds and impurities that fall off the flower disk, this thing is usually for feeding cattle and sheep. Feeding pigs is also fine, but pigs don't like to eat it very much.

As for the flower disk of the sunflower, it is purely for feeding cattle and sheep. Of course, animals like roe deer, horses, and donkeys also eat it, and it must not be wasted.

Li Long knocked three flower disks here, and Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei came over. It is relatively comfortable to knock in the morning, the sun is not so scorching. People came to the threshing floor one after another to start working, because the distance is not far, you say a word and I say a word, chatting while knocking, and gnawing melon seeds in their mouths—usually looking for tender ones to gnaw.

Li Long looked at this flower disk, thinking that forty years later in his previous life, such a large flower disk appeared in the supermarket, ten yuan each, at that time when he was shopping in the supermarket, he felt it was really dreamy, can this thing still be sold so expensive?

However, in that era, except for agricultural products not rising in price, really everything's price rose.

For example, wheat is three yuan per kilogram, and bran dares to sell for two yuan eight—raising pigs at home requires buying bran, one kilogram equals one kilogram of wheat!

When corn is harvested, it is two yuan one to two yuan five per kilogram, depending on the moisture situation, but raising pigs, the feed for piglets is three yuan per kilogram, you love to buy or not!

Of course, having said that, the sunflower flower disk sold for ten yuan in the supermarket, collected from farmers, can have five cents or one yuan is a high price.

After all, there are thousands of plants per mu, even if it is five cents per disk, farmers are considered to have made a big profit, and they are also very happy.

He remembers that after being a farmer for so many years in his previous life, he really made money three times. Once was when the price of cotton suddenly rose from six yuan in previous years to eleven yuan, at that time most of the people who planted cotton in the village made a fortune, and some bought cars directly.

That year, the Li family planted twenty mu of cotton, which was really considered not making money.

The second time was when a group engaged in agricultural products came to the village to sign contracts with farmers to plant millet. At that time, the agreed contract fee per mu was four thousand five. At this time, the team had already engaged in drip irrigation, and the cost of planting one mu of land was almost two thousand. If it was four thousand five, it must be making money, and most people in the village signed the contract.

Of course, the contract also had regulations, it must reach eight hundred kilograms of millet per mu, if it cannot reach it, it will be downgraded. If it exceeds it, it will continue to be collected at four yuan per kilogram.

Li Long and the people in the team didn't know how these people calculated the yield, and felt that eight hundred kilograms was a suitable one. They actually underestimated the yield of drip irrigation farmland. And the old farmers who had planted millet in their hometown before knew it.

As a result, at the end of that year, this group almost went bankrupt because of paying money—the yield per mu was all above one thousand two hundred kilograms!

Those who planted millet made a fortune, and then at this time they had already used WeChat, look at the circle of friends, those who like to play in winter, go skiing, travel to see ice sculptures everywhere, from after autumn to early spring, occasionally roast a sheep or something.

Of course, the village added another batch of cars.

Originally, that group was prepared to sign a three-year contract with farmers in the village, but the second year they began to increase the yield standard in the contract, and finally it was not negotiated, and this matter was yellowed.

The third time was still cotton, cotton once again rose from the base price of five or six yuan to ten yuan, at this time every household's cotton was basically fifty or sixty mu, some had more contracted, hundreds of mu or thousands of mu, which really made the people in the village make a fortune once.

However, when they got the money after autumn, there were people who specifically set up traps. Those who couldn't resist the temptation, the money earned after a year of hard work, was directly gambled away in one night.

At that time, Li Qiang had already been admitted to university and left, and several people in the village who were about the same age as him, older than him, and didn't get admitted to plant land, several of them cut their fingers or abandoned their families and disappeared, leaving behind a mess of bad debts.

Later, it was the above who took action, directly letting forty percent of the farmland plant cotton, and the remaining sixty percent of the land was left idle, which is called rotation.

And in the second year of the rotation policy, that sixty percent of the land was planted with wheat, which is to ensure that the rice bowl is held in one's own hands.

Before this, almost all the land was planted with cotton, even if the price of cotton in the first year rotted to two yuan eight, and the labor cost of picking flowers in the second stubble was three yuan, losing to the family, but the second year, every household still planted cotton—wanting to gamble.

Li Long recalled, and then looked at the neighbors who were smiling and knocking on the flower disks, feeling that the poorer they were, the easier they were to be satisfied. At this time, having their own two mu of land, most of the things received can be decided by themselves, then they are really satisfied.

In the distance, someone selling popsicles rode a bicycle over, Li Long shouted at that person, the popsicle seller hurriedly came over. "Three cream ones." Li Long took out money.

With his net worth, buying popsicles for everyone else on the threshing floor is nothing, but there is no need to be a big head at this time. This year, he has earned a lot of money with the team, so don't stand out at this time.

Sure enough, after buying here, the other families all took out money to buy popsicles, but basically they all bought ordinary ones.

Others didn't have any opinions because Li Long didn't buy them popsicles, at this time people were mostly still quite simple, and very concerned about face.

When it was almost noon, Liang Yuemei went back to cook first, the sun shone directly on the top of the head, Li Long felt that sweat was coming out of the hair seams, but looking at the many that hadn't been knocked, he thought about persisting.

"Without Xiao Long, take the bag, put the sunflower heads in the bag, put them on the horse-drawn carriage, and after loading, pull the horse-drawn carriage back."

Li Jianguo knew that Li Long didn't like doing farm work, so he assigned him a new task.

Li Long didn't pretend, stood up, patted the sunflower dregs on his body, and went to load the flower disks.

When he returned home, Liang Yuemei had already cooked the dishes, prepared to pull the noodles, Li Long helped to burn the fire here.

Continue in the afternoon.

!.

In two days, the oil sunflowers were knocked, and the next step was to harvest the team's.

Li Long withdrew from the battle at this time, and went to catch fish with Tao Daqiang.

Not lacking these work points, let others earn them.

After catching fish for a week, the team's oil sunflowers were harvested and bagged, the flower disks were divided by each family, and then Li Long followed Li Jianguo to harvest corn.

Breaking corn cobs is a bit like harvesting oil sunflowers, you can break them and then cut the stalks, or you can break them while cutting the stalks. The corn brought back this time is not placed on the threshing floor, but piled up in his own home.

Bags of corn are piled up under the shed in the courtyard, and the next step is relatively big work.

At this time, there is no machine for shelling corn, purely manual shelling. Basically, it is done day and night. Use a screwdriver, which is a screwdriver to shovel the corn cobs down two rows of corn kernels, revealing long rows of gaps, and then use your hands to rub the corn kernels down.

Usually after a day, the thick part of the palm, which is the thenar eminence, will be rubbed bright red, or even rubbed rotten.

But looking at the corn kernels piled up like this, most of them are considered their own food, and farmers at this time only have joy in their hearts.

No matter how tired, they are happy.

Five or six years later, there was that kind of small hand-turned shelling machine, and later, there was a shelling machine driven by a tractor—and the combine harvester can only harvest wheat at this time. It must go through several generations of improvement before it can harvest corn and oil sunflowers, and later the cotton picker was popularized, and the long-term flower-picking army for twenty years began to decline.

Li Long worked solidly at home for three days, and then took Daqiang to Gu Bo Yuan's house to work for two days, which was considered to have finished the corn of the two families, and then he didn't plan to participate in other farm work.

The idle house at home can no longer be considered an idle house, piled up with corn and oil sunflowers and wheat—wheat is divided by the team to each family, which requires each family to grind it into flour themselves, of course, some people grind out many bags directly, saving trouble, but most families grind one or two bags directly, and grind again after eating. Oil sunflowers too. Because wheat is easy to store, flour is not easy to store.

That evening, what was boiled in the pot were several common things in the farmhouse.

If it is put on the table of the previous life, this is called a farmhouse bumper harvest.

Inside are the tender corn that grew after breaking corn. Every time you break corn, you can have a few, some look tender, but after boiling, you will feel a bit old. The verification method is also simple, you can't just look at it tender, you have to pinch it with your hands, if you can gently pinch out the juice, it is really tender.

There are also potatoes newly dug from the self-reserved vegetable plot. The large ones are left to make dishes, the small ones are not easy to cut, so they are simply boiled.

In fact, children prefer to put potato eggs under the stove to burn, and putting a few under the stove in winter is also very good.

In addition to corn and potatoes, there are edamame—which is actually soybeans. Mainly because there is a layer of hair on the bean pod, so it is called edamame.

Finally, there are soybeans—actually fava beans, but the village where Li Long is located, soybeans are called soybeans, and fava beans are called soybeans, this name was not distinguished until a long time later, after students learned it back. Then someone in the village suddenly realized that they had called it wrong for so many years; some people felt that it shouldn't be like this, fava beans are clearly bigger than soybeans!

A lawsuit that can't be pulled clear.

These things boiled together will inevitably string flavors, fortunately everyone basically has skin, and doesn't care much.

The space in the room is small, and it is a bit stuffy, so in the courtyard, serve a large plate, and eat there by yourself, chatting.

Li Long thinks this is quite good. In the last few years of his previous life, it was very difficult to find someone to chat with. Sitting together and chatting for a few sentences, they started swiping their mobile phones, each looking at their own short videos, the sound was very loud, noisy, and very boring.

"Without Xiao Long, the work at home is finished, will you catch fish tomorrow?" Li Jianguo asked.

"Wait two more days. In two days it will be the Mid-Autumn Festival, wait until the Mid-Autumn Festival to start catching fish, and then sell the fish and buy some mooncakes back."

There are not so many stresses about the Mid-Autumn Festival here, such as worshipping the moon, it is just a family eating a mooncake together. Li Long doesn't like to eat that thing very much, it is too sweet, too hard, occasionally eating some jujube paste is fine.

I don't know if there are only five kernels now.

"That's fine." Li Jianguo nodded, "Rest for two days before going. I heard people in the team say, you haven't caught fish these few days, our dad is not here, those few who catch and sell fish can earn a few more yuan a day."

"Hehe, then let them be happy for a few more days."

Thanks to book friends Wukong Eight Precepts, 161220021500841, 20240519184324453, Suiyuan Jianghu for the rewards, thanks to everyone for the subscriptions, monthly tickets and recommendation tickets support!

(End of chapter)