Chapter 71 Cotton Harvest (Thanks to the babies for their monthly votes, an additional chapter will be added)
Author: 久l久
Chapter 71 Cotton Harvest (Thanks to the babies for their monthly votes, an additional chapter will be added)
After school this afternoon, Mrs. Wen said she didn't have to go to school in the afternoon, so Yingbao took her two younger brothers and her mother to pick cotton on the south slope.
The cotton planted on the south slope has all bloomed and is ready for harvesting.
The Jiang family and some villagers are helping to pick cotton in the cotton field, and they have almost picked it now.
When Yingbao and Aniang arrived, the snow-white cotton they picked was piled on the bluestone in the yard, forming three large piles.
"Hey, this is cotton." Chen Cunzheng and his clan leader had nothing to do. They also strolled to the Jiang family's new house on the south slope. When they saw a yard of white cotton wadding, they couldn't help but grab a handful and check it out.
"It's so soft." Patriarch Chen couldn't put it down because of this soft cotton wool, and asked Jiang Sanlang: "Sanlang, can you sell this cotton wool?"
Jiang Sanlang nodded: "We can sell the rest we keep for ourselves, but we can't sell them all."
The daughter said that the cotton could be spun and weaved, so he planned to let his family spin some thread first and try to weave some cotton cloth.
Spinning cotton thread is much easier than using ramie and kudzu silk.
As long as it is harvested carefully, it will not be stained with broken grass clippings, and then the cotton seeds are removed, and then it can be directly put on the spinning wheel. Unlike ramie and kudzu, it has to be soaked and peeled, and then beaten to extract silk, which can be tiring to a person.
Jiang Sanlang's family didn't plant much ramie this year, and they didn't even harvest the kudzu vines in Beishan.
Chen Sanyou asked: "Sanlang, where did you find these seeds?"
"My Bao'er bought it from the seller, saying it was Fanbang's seeds." Jiang Sanlang didn't hide it.
The daughter did buy a lot of seeds from the salesman, but he didn't know which salesman she bought them from later.
The patriarch looked at Ying Bao and said with a smile: "Your Ying Bao is indeed very lucky. I lived to be sixty years old and have never seen a child more beautiful than her." No one else has this kind of luck.
A person can easily buy cotton seeds from a salesman that he has never seen before in his life. Alas, all those terrible things in his home should really be thrown into the manure pit to be fertilized.
Jiang Sanlang smiled and did not answer.
This time from four acres of cotton, it is estimated that more than 2,000 kilograms of seed cotton can be harvested. If the cotton seeds are stripped, there will be about one thousand kilograms of lint cotton.
After one thousand pounds of lint is dried and fluffed, it can make two new soft cotton-padded clothes for everyone in the family, and it is more than enough to make a dozen quilts.
His daughter also told him the items he needed to make cotton. She also drew a long bow for playing cotton, saying that it could be used to play the lint into soft cotton wadding.
It is said that the salesman told his daughter this.
"Sanlang, do you sell these cotton seeds?" Chen Sanyou asked: "Can you sell some for my family to plant?"
Jiang Sanlang scratched his head and hesitated.
He is not ready to sell all the cotton seeds yet.
Because my eldest brother, my second brother, and my parents all have to plant the dry land on the south slope, and I will definitely plant more than ten acres next year, so this amount of seeds is probably not enough.
Seeing Jiang Sanlang in trouble, Chen Sanyou said: "Sanlang, I don't want more, just enough to plant two acres of land."
When Patriarch Chen heard this, he immediately stretched his neck and came over, "Sanlang, my family also needs two acres of land. Alas, my old cold legs can't bear the cold."
A villager next to him laughed and said, "I'm telling you, Mr. Chen, your legs have been cold for many years. I haven't seen your legs get cold even when there was no cotton."
Patriarch Chen glared at the man, his beard standing up in anger: "You little bastard, you are the only one who talks too much."
Several people laughed and said, "We have also agreed with Brother Jiang to buy cotton seeds. If you want them, you have to line up according to the rules."
Jiang Sanlang smiled helplessly.
These five people came to his house to help, and he had promised to sell each of them twenty kilograms of cotton seeds, which is one hundred kilograms.
Now the clan chief and the village chief also want to buy it, but he doesn't want to sell it, so he loses another forty pounds.
I plan to plant another ten acres of cotton next year. Calculating ten kilograms of seeds per mu, that’s one hundred kilograms.
The eldest brother, the second brother and his parents also want ten acres of seeds, which means three hundred kilograms of seeds.
I estimate that I can still have four to five hundred kilograms of cotton seed left.
These seeds are rare items. If they were sold to people from other villages, he would not be willing to sell them without a tael of silver or a pound.
Of course, it's not easy to tell the clan leader and others about this.
After picking cotton, the most tiring thing is to pull out the cotton stalks.
Those cotton stalks are like small trees and must be uprooted before the next step of plowing the fields can be carried out.
Fortunately, Jiang Sanlang is very popular nowadays and many people come to help.
Just give a shout in the village, and twenty or thirty young men will come. It only takes one day to pull out all the cotton stalks in the four acres of cotton field.
Yingbao and her two younger brothers stayed with their parents on the south slope for one night before being sent back to the village the next day.
As soon as she got home, Erni ran over and told Yingbao the shocking news that it belonged to Chen Zhao's family.
"Don't you know, Chen Zhao's eldest sister jumped into the river yesterday?" Erni said with interest.
Ying Bao was stunned.
Chen Wan jumped into the river?
"What happened next?" she asked, "Did anything happen?"
How can she describe her feelings towards Chen Wan? She is like a familiar stranger.
In fact, the children of the Han family have little affection for each other, nor do they have the kind of sisterhood that ordinary people have. Their way of getting along is one of indifference.
They don’t have sympathy and love for each other, and they don’t help each other.
This includes myself.
Of course, I only have no affection for them as sisters, but I feel sorry for my twin brothers to the core of my being.
I thought about how I had been tortured so much in the Chen family in my previous life, and sometimes I was almost dying of illness, but they wouldn't even look at me.
Chen Wan was already in her teens at the time, and Chen Zhao was only two years younger than her eldest sister.
However, since Mrs. Han gave birth to her son Chen Xu, her two sisters have liked him very much. Especially in front of Mr. Han, the two sisters almost tried to please the younger brother.
In my previous life, when I first arrived at the Chen family, I tried to treat them as real sisters. When the eldest sister was beaten and scolded by Han, I would pity her and feel sorry for her. I would stand in front of her and push her to run away.
As a result, he was beaten by Han and put in a chicken coop at night without food.
Ying Bao actually thought that her eldest sister would take care of her and at least bring her some food.
Because the Chen family was not poor and had hundreds of acres of farmland, most of which was leased to other people for cultivation, there was no shortage of food at home, and sometimes the food they ate was better than that of the Jiang family now.
Even though Chen Wan was often beaten, she was not deprived of clothes and food.
It turned out that no, Chen Wan didn't even ask her a question the next day, and it was even more impossible to let her out secretly.
"I heard that he was rescued." Erni blinked and said, "It was a passing fisherman who rescued her."
"Fisherman?" Could it be the fisherman Chen Wan finally married?
Chen Wan later married a fisherman who was six or seven years older than her and was said to be doing well.
"When the woman was rescued, she had no clothes on and was lying naked on the ground. The fisherman even controlled the water and patted her belly."
Erni said with excitement, "Now that the whole village has seen Sister Chen Zhao, how can we talk about her husband's family in the future?"
Yingbao: "...Sister Erni, you are not yet nine years old, how come you know so much?"
Erni snorted, "Who doesn't understand this?"
Children in the countryside mature early, and some have made arrangements to marry their in-laws at the age of eight or nine and start wedding ceremonies.
During the New Year and festivals, when the husband’s family comes to give gifts, they will definitely give the girl a piece of red cloth to make clothes.
So all the girls in the village would come to see the girl's little son-in-law, until the boy's head dropped to his chest.
