Chapter 999: Pure sister-brother affection

Less than a month after repairing the road, there were more than ten stones by the wall of Li Long's big courtyard.

Big and small, they looked quite ordinary. If they weren't cleaned for a few days, there was a layer of dust on them.

In fact, these were all jade picked up by Li Long during the road repair process and hauled back in the car. The biggest piece was still in the river and couldn't be hauled back.

Fortunately, he wasn't in a hurry. This thing was just hauled back now, and it was easy to be spread by people. After a few years or ten years, when everyone heard more similar news, it wouldn't be so conspicuous when hauled back then.

Of course, it certainly had to be brought back in the end, but it had to be before the mountains were closed.

There was a period of time when jasper was very popular, and many people ran into the mountains to find jade. Some found it, some were missing or injured because of finding jade, and some destroyed the environment. Finally, the official decided to close the mountains and prohibit personnel from entering the depths of the mountains.

So Li Long wasn't in a hurry, but knew there was a time point, and had to get things done before the time point.

This row of jade was placed at home. Ordinary people would only think it was ordinary stones, and no one would think it was jade.

After all, Mahe jasper that hadn't been polished and polished, most of it in the eyes of ordinary people, was stone.

Some ordinary people couldn't even distinguish between jade and ordinary quartz. In the few years when jade was very popular, many people in the village went out to pick up stones. Many people picked up stones that looked white or a bit transparent, hoping it was jade.

Unfortunately, it wasn't. When the heat faded, these stones all entered the trash can.

Not only here, but when the Gobi jade and gold silk jade in Beitun rose, it was the same. When it was most popular, many people near the Gobi Desert had dozens of tons of Gobi stones and Gobi jade in their courtyards. The stones embedded in the pedestrian streets in Kuitun Park were embedded on the day, and were dug away in the middle of the night.

In the end? If someone was willing to pay for this thing, it was very valuable. If no one was willing, it was just an ordinary object, like the Clivia of that year.

Of course, among them, the boutique gem light and the aquamarine on the Fuhai side were worth picking, but with the joining of the stone-picking army over the years, it was becoming harder and harder to pick up good things.

The road repair work ended. Although it hadn't snowed in the county yet, the preparation work for winter had to start.

There were coal mines in the mountains, but the road to the coal mines wasn't easy to walk. Small four-wheel tractors could barely pass, but big trucks couldn't.

So Li Long didn't go far to haul coal in the mountains. After all, he still had to dig the coal out himself. Why bother?

Hauling a truck of coal cost more than a hundred yuan, and people helped you haul it to the courtyard and unload it. Just find two people to help and load it into the coal shed.

Li Long hauled coal from more places this year. The acquisition station had to haul a big truck of ten tons of coal, which burned more during the day and night. The big courtyard had four stoves that needed to be burned, so Li Long let them haul twelve tons of coal. After all, the greenhouse behind still had to grow vegetables.

Sister Yang's small courtyard and Gu Bo Yuan's original small courtyard each hauled two tons of coal. This was for emergency.

The jars in the big courtyard were also pickled with salted vegetables, pickled according to Liang Yumei's method. This point was learned by Sister Yang when she went to the Fourth Team. Mainly, it was the few people who ate at home, including Gu Bo Yuan, who liked to eat this kind of pickled salted vegetables in winter.

According to Liang Yumei, the pickling method was very simple and very easy to learn, but to be honest, I don't know if it was the way of pickling or stir-frying, anyway, Li Long felt that he rarely could eat a relatively "authentic" taste.

Just happened to have nothing to do, Li Long took Mingming and Haohao to open a vegetable plot in the greenhouse, preparing to plant vegetables.

The stove had to be smeared with mud again, and a stove of coal had to be set up to see if the ground dragon had any places emitting smoke. The cotton door curtain at the door had to be taken to be washed, the fertilizer in the land had to be applied once, turned over, and then the vegetable seeds to be planted had to be selected.

These things were very trivial. Mingming and Haohao followed Li Long's butt and worked for a while before getting annoyed. Li Long simply got a pile of mud for them to play with.

He was a rural child in his bones. It was very normal for children to play with mud. It didn't matter if it was dirty, it was just mud, throw it into the washing machine and stir it and it would be clean.

If it really didn't work, washing it by hand was also fine. When he was at home, he wouldn't leave all the housework to Sister Yang. He washed his family's clothes himself.

Sister Yang's main work was cooking, and taking care of Mingming and Haohao when they weren't there. When Li Long was there, she could be much more relaxed. Sister Yang wouldn't be lazy either, and would take the initiative to find work to do.

The land plot in the greenhouse was fixed by Li Long, divided into six pieces. Chives didn't need to change. This thing only needed to be planted, and roots only needed to be divided after three or five years, so there was no need to move, just cut off what was like weeds on it now, and water it well.

The other

One troublesome aspect of growing vegetables in a greenhouse is the need for cross-pollination, but it's winter, so there is plenty of time, and Gu Xiaoxia, Sister Yang, and Han Fang quite enjoy doing this work. Mainly because there is nothing to do in winter, and pollinating the flowers is actually quite interesting.

Chili peppers need to be planted in two plots; this stuff has a very wide range of applications in winter. People in Northern Xinjiang have a very large demand for fresh chili peppers in the dead of winter, especially during the New Year. When greenhouse vegetables were not yet very popular, more than one merchant would wholesale a large truckload of chili peppers from inside the pass, use insulation methods to transport them to Northern Xinjiang, and park them at the entrance of any vegetable market in the twenty-something days of the twelfth lunar month. It is estimated that they would be sold out in less than half a day.

If done well, this single item alone could earn back the money for the whole year.

While Li Long was in the greenhouse leading Mingming and Haohao in their work, two children outside were hesitating.

"Sister, do you think Uncle will blame us?" Li Qiang didn't dare to knock on the door.

"No, why would he blame us?" Li Juan shook her head, pushed her bicycle forward, and knocked on the door, "We didn't do anything wrong."

The two of them had snuck out without telling their family, but they hadn't done anything wrong either.

Han Fang heard the knocking and came to open the door. She was overjoyed to see Li Juan and Li Qiang.

It was now the time for school to let out in the afternoon, and she hadn't expected Li Juan and Li Qiang to have ridden their bicycles to the county.

"Come in, come in quickly!" Han Fang hurriedly greeted the two of them into the house and then went to call Li Long.

Li Long was somewhat surprised to hear that these two children had come, and he greeted Mingming and Haohao to go see their older brother and sister.

As soon as Mingming and Haohao heard that their older brother and sister had come, they didn't even want the mud in their hands anymore; they stood up and ran outside, running quite fast.

The two children were at least half a head taller than their peers on average, and their steps were quite steady. They soon saw Li Juan and Li Qiang and threw themselves directly into their older brother and sister's arms.

The force was great, and it made Li Qiang sway a little.

"Why did you two come over? Come, come, come, sit down and drink some water first."

Although Li Juan and Li Qiang were relatively close to Li Long, coming over today was a bit of a "violation," so they still felt a little timid.

"Tell me, why did you run to the county? Did you ride your bicycles?"

In this era, riding a bicycle from the township to the county was about five kilometers. It shouldn't have been far, but for that era, it was already very far. Some people in the village wouldn't necessarily go to the county once a month or even once every six months, mainly because the roads were not easy to travel and transportation tools were not developed.

The distance that would take a car ten minutes in later generations now took over an hour, or even longer.

Therefore, for the two students Li Juan and Li Qiang to ride their bikes to the county, they were still taking a certain risk.

Quite brave.

"I earned some money through work-study." Li Juan had long since prepared her excuse, "My dad and mom said I could spend it myself, so I thought about coming to the county with Qiangqiang to buy some things. I bought a pencil, bought a toy gun that sparks for Qiangqiang, and used the remaining money to buy toys for Mingming and Haohao."

Mingming and Haohao each got one—a toy lion with an iron skeleton and a plastic skin. It was better than the clockwork frogs he had bought for Li Juan and Li Qiang before, and it was also clockwork-operated; after winding it up, the lion would walk with a swaying motion.

Mingming and Haohao had similar toys, but seeing Li Juan and Li Qiang give them toys, they were all overjoyed, especially when they saw the lion moving. They laughed and chuckled, touching it from time to time, clearly liking it very much.

Li Juan pulled Han Fang aside again and gave her a hardcover notebook—at this time, when students gave gifts, most were pencil cases, fountain pens, hardcover notebooks, and the like.

Han Fang was very moved and also a little guilty; she hadn't even thought about preparing a gift for Li Juan.

"Our work-study was picking wheat and picking melon skins to hand over to the school." After Li Juan finished handling the matter, she gave Li Long the specific situation, "There are quite a lot of people in our team planting melons. Last year we just picked melon skins, and I thought it would be about the same this year. After they finished harvesting the melons, I rode my bike and took bags to load the melon skins, then pulled them to the yard to dry."

"When it was time for the school to collect them, I handed in the most, exceeding the task quota, so the school weighed them for us and calculated the money."