kingnovel Chapter 402 Planting Rice
Chapter 402 Planting Rice
The total amount came to eight strings of seven hundred and sixty-eight coins!
Zhou Guo's eyebrows jumped when he saw the number, and he couldn't help but ask, "Mom, weren't the pine mushrooms we sold last fall too cheap?"
Such a good thing, but she sold it for only fifty cents per pound. This is not selling at all, it is simply selling at a low price!
Li hesitated and said, "No way, fifty cents a pound, isn't that enough?"
Zhou Guo said: "But I think pine mushrooms are more delicious than goat mushrooms."
Zhou Mi shook his head and said, "No matter how good something is, it needs someone to know its value. No one here knows it. If it weren't for the two foreign merchants, I'm afraid no one would buy it at ten cents a pound. You should be content."
The old man nodded as he drank his tea. "That's right. If pine mushrooms were sent to a big restaurant in the capital, they would probably cost more than 100 or 200 coins. But in Pianguan, 50 coins per pound is the most you can get."
Zhou Guo secretly decided to wait until autumn to pick some and bring them to the provincial capital. There are many people who know the goods there, and there are also many foreign merchants. By then, um... 90 cents a pound, it should be possible to sell them, right?
Zhou Mai held the account book and said, "If we can make so much money by selling wild vegetables, do we have to go to the mountains to look for them later? Which mountain has bracken? We can go and pick them after school."
Zhou Mi nodded repeatedly. He liked making money.
Zhou Su also raised his hand and said, "I, I will help to pinch them too. I can also go to the mountains."
Too bad no one took him there.
Zhou Guo shook his head and said, "Forget it. We made such a big fuss today. I'm afraid there will be more people selling bracken on the street in the future. We can't sell it at a high price if there are too many. Now it's six cents a bunch, but I'm afraid it will only be two cents a bunch, or even two bunches for one cent. After all, there are plenty of these things in the mountains. At most, we can sell them once more, but there are probably not many sheep mushrooms in the mountains. We have searched those mountains. Without sheep mushrooms, we can't sell these wild vegetables for much money."
After the price was lowered, I didn’t know if a cart of ferns could be sold for even a hundred coins.
Anyway, the whole family is very happy to make so much money from selling wild vegetables.
Even the food tasted especially delicious. We had stir-fried wild boar meat with lamb mushrooms for dinner. After we had finished the bacon, we had to eat stir-fried vegetarian fern. But even though it was vegetarian, everyone ate it with relish. It only cost six cents a handful, and so many city people bought it!
In the next few days, Zhou Guo and his companions followed the villagers into the mountains. No one dared to go deep into the mountains anymore and just wandered around outside.
But in this way, the amount of mushrooms that can be found will gradually decrease, and several people can only pick up a basket or so every day.
After three or four days, they did pick up five baskets, but after that they could not pick up any more. The whole family could only pick up one and a half kilograms of grass in a day in the mountain, and gradually no one went there anymore.
The villagers brought the last batch of sheep mushrooms into the city to sell, and this year's mushroom selling business came to an end.
Zhou Guo looked at the large sieves of sheep mushrooms drying in the yard. She planned to wait until they were dried and keep half and sell the other half. Even if she priced them at 200 wen per pound, she thought she would be able to sell them, right?
After all, there are not many goods. I just don’t know whether the master will be willing to let her sell them when the time comes.
In the following days, the whole family picked up six baskets of sheep mushrooms, weighing about 130 to 140 kilograms, which was much less than last time. She was reluctant to sell them. There was no more on the mountain, and she didn't have any stock at home, so she had to keep some.
After these are dried, I estimate there will be about 16 or 17 pounds. If I sell half of them... then I will have to spend 400 coins per pound to make back the money I earned from fresh ones!
It’s so expensive, no one will buy it.
Zhou Guo shook his head and thought it would be better to forget about selling the dried ones.
After this delay, her seedlings can now be planted in the fields.
That day, after breakfast early in the morning, the whole family went to the fields and began to pull up the seedlings, which were green, tall and strong.
Li pulled out a few and said seriously, "The rice seeds we bought from that old man last year are indeed different. These seedlings are particularly strong. Maybe we can really have a good harvest."
Zhou Guo said: "Mom, the seedlings are growing so well, you shouldn't just praise the seeds, I also played a big role, okay?"
Zhou Xing smiled and said, "Yes, I won't forget you. We all saw that apart from eating and sleeping, you devoted all your attention to this. The rice seedlings have grown so well, of course you have contributed the most."
Everyone nodded with a smile.
Make a bundle of each bunch of seedlings, tie them up with hay and put them in a dustpan.
Anyway, there were more than two acres of land in one place, so the seedlings could be pulled out all at once and the ox cart could be driven to the fields.
The field had been harrowed long ago, and the soil was as fine as sand and smooth.
After applying the base fertilizer, Zhou Guo plowed the field again and harrowed it several times. Now the field looked clean.
Li said, "The work done on this field is almost as good as your grandfather's. He would take your uncle and father to work on the field day and night every spring. After the work, they would be exhausted. We should help them later, so that things would be better."
He sighed and said, "At that time, all the cows in the family were sold."
With cows, we can not only save manpower, but also plow the land several times. The yield of grain produced by intensive cultivation and that produced by rough cultivation is very different.
Zhou Guo smiled and said, "Mom, by autumn, maybe the harvest from my two acres of thin land will be able to catch up with what Grandpa grows."
Li smiled and said, "Then I'll wait. If I can catch up, I will burn paper for your grandparents to tell them that our Guoguo is amazing. He is already an expert at farming at such a young age."
Bundles of seedlings were thrown high into the air and evenly scattered to every corner of the field.
Zhou Guo went down to the field holding two sticks tied with thin hemp ropes. He and Li each took one. Li stood at the edge of the field, while she walked inside holding the other.
The two men held sticks, measured and confirmed that the hemp rope was straight, then inserted the sticks in their hands.
This is the rice planting line she made herself.
It can prevent the seedlings from floating up and drifting to the other side when transplanting them, and can also plant the rows of seedlings neatly and orderly.
After the seedling line was inserted, one person dragged over a bundle of seedlings, untied the hay on top, took them in small handfuls, and inserted two or three seedlings at a time along the seedling line.
When a row was full, Zhou Guo and Li pulled out the sticks and stepped back, then thrust the sticks back into the field again, measuring the rows straight at the appropriate distances, and everyone started planting again.
The old man had nothing to do, so he rolled up his trousers and came down to plant rice. There were so many people that a row was full in no time.
I only planted five or six plants, and before I could satisfy my craving, I had to back off again.
It just so happened that Zhou Mai and Zhou Mi were on a day off today, and together with little Zhou Su, eight people finished planting one acre of land in more than half an hour.
By noon, only the last few acres of land were left.
Zhou Xing went back to make lunch first.
The remaining seven people finished tilling the several acres of land in less than half an hour.
With more than two acres of land and seven and a half people, it only took half a day to finish the planting.
The seedlings had not been planted yet, with only two bunches left. Zhou Guo divided them into four bunches and found a place to plant each one. If some seedlings in the field did not grow well, he could use these seedlings to make up for the shortfall.