My village can't be like this

Chapter 4 Going to the Market
Eyes opened and closed, the night passed quickly.

Amidst the crowing of cocks, Zhang An quickly woke up.

Today is Sunday, which is the day for the big market in Hongyan Town. Some people need to carry the extra things at home to sell on the market, and they will get up early in the morning, and they will get up before dawn and start their journey.

When Zhang An was still studying, every time he went back to school from home, he had to get up and go to the town to take a bus before dawn.

Because it took a while to get from Changqing Village to Hongyan Town, and it took about an hour to drive the eleventh road for a distance of ten miles.

The shuttle bus only runs from the town to the county, and the villages on the way can still hitch a ride, and the villages that are not on the way can either take a horse-drawn carriage or ride a bicycle, and those who don't have both can only walk.

In order not to spend money on food on the street, Wang Fang got up early in the morning and started cooking.

What I ate this morning was no longer noodles, but the leftovers from yesterday's dinner, fried with rice.

I was going to walk to the town, but when I reached the entrance of the village, I met a villager driving a horse-drawn carriage, so I took the opportunity to hitch a ride.

The carriage is considered a big item in the village now, not to mention that the carriage costs hundreds of dollars to build, a horse alone is worth a lot of money, so there are only three or four families in Changqing raising horses.

But raising horses is also beneficial. Usually, driving a car can pull various things for others, such as food crops, and stone, lime and wood for building houses, etc., and it will pay back after one or two years.

In fact, cows can also pull carts, but cattle in mountainous areas are a bit too abrasive, and the efficiency of pulling carts is much lower than that of horses.

From the village to the town, going uphill and downhill for a while, all kinds of insects and birds in the woods also started to hold concerts.

Sitting in the carriage, the footsteps were much faster than walking, and it took half an hour to reach the town.

In fact, the whole market is not an open dam like the markets of later generations, but stalls are set up along the road in the town.

There is a basketball court at the corner of the street, but there are carriages parked in it every time it is time to go to the market.

Walking along the road, you can see various stalls, selling clothes, pots and pans, and buying food and so on.

I heard from my dad that in the past few years, when there were not so many people buying goods and setting up stalls, most of the things had to be bought from the supply and marketing cooperatives, but since the past two years, although the supply and marketing cooperatives are still open, they are not as good as before Many people went.

His father, Zhang Jianguo, obviously had a way. When he came to the town, he walked towards a restaurant with a backpack on his back, and came back with an empty backpack after a while.

It should be that every time my father had something before, he sold it to this family, so as a long-term partner.

"Six fish and seventeen catties, the boss gave one yuan and ten cents per catty." The talking father handed the 18 yuan to the mother.

Sure enough, the financial power of the family is still in the hands of my mother. My mother belongs to the kind of person who cares about the family and budgets carefully. In her words, when they separated, their grandparents didn't give anything, basically two catties of oil. , Two handfuls of noodles and a small bag of rice were sent away.

The two started from scratch, from a room in the old house to separate, and now they come out and build a house by themselves.

It is said that his father Zhang Jianguo was not easy when he was young. He often went out to play with friends and did not go home for a few days. Later, after something happened, his father never went out again, but worked diligently at home.

So the family can have the current conditions, and my mother must be the number one contributor.

After wandering around the street a few times, Zhang An carried the ten catties of lard that his mother bought at the meat stall, and after buying some vegetable seeds and seasonings, there was nothing else to buy.

While his parents were going to the meat stall, Zhang An also took the opportunity to ask the old peach seller for a price. Now the peaches are on the market, but most of them are local varieties, not big in size, and the taste is not bad, so They are not expensive, only fifty cents a catty.

Now at eight or nine o'clock, the sun has risen. If I don't go back now, I will be uncomfortable in the sun when I walk back at noon.

The reason why people come very early every time they go to the market is that the road is far away, and the other reason is that they come and return early, so as not to stare at the sun and hurry.

On the way back, although the road was relatively long, it was not difficult to walk when talking about time.

"Dad, why don't we also raise a horse in our family? We don't need to buy a big horse, just buy a small pony. Anyway, I'm fine now. I can take it up the mountain and raise it for a few months. I have plowed the land, so I have to borrow other people’s cattle every time, what a bother.”

After listening to Zhang An's words, Zhang Jianguo also thought deeply. He had already asked someone to find a job for his son, but there was no news so soon.

"I can also buy one. The pony is not expensive. It is more convenient to have it at home. I often borrow it from other people's house. Even if I give Baomi every time, they are not happy every time." My mother also expressed her opinion .

Because in the village, not every family has such valuable things as livestock. Changqing belongs to a village with a lot of paddy fields and arable land, and human cultivation is definitely not enough, so they often borrow other people's cattle and horses for use. Every time I give some corn as a reward.

But even so, you have to wait for the host to run out, and sometimes you have to queue up, and the host is not happy if there are too many times.

"It's okay, take advantage of the fact that the seedlings have only been planted and landed in the past few days, and the harvest will not be harvested in a few months. I will go to the cattle and horse market in a few days to have a look. If there is a suitable one, I will buy a pony and raise it. Anyway, the pen at home is big. Raising just two pigs is too much."

"It doesn't have to be a pony. If you don't find a suitable one, a calf is fine. Anyway, our family doesn't plan to pull a cart."

It was too hot to walk home under the sun above our heads, so everyone didn’t have any appetite at noon, so we just got something to eat and it was over. My parents couldn’t stay idle, so they went to the mountain with a hoe to see The corn in the field is gone.

Zhang An was left alone at home with nothing to do, so Zhang An turned over the vacant space in the vegetable garden.

At the fair, Zhang An saw that his mother had bought vegetable seeds, and he must have wanted to fill up the vacant space.

Now I don’t plant when I’m idle, and when I’m busy, I don’t have food to eat. When rural people come out to hold banquets, they basically don’t buy vegetables to live on.

Zhang An's family's vegetable plot is quite large. This is because when the house was built, the plot was already quite large.

Later, when I asked someone to look at it, the homestead of the house happened to fall in the middle, resulting in a large yard in front of the house and a vegetable garden three or four cents in size behind the house.

Because my mother can't stay idle, this vegetable field is full all year round.

Zhang An first removed the weeds on the ground, and originally planned to feed them to the pigs in the pigsty, but who knew that these two pigs would not take a look at them.

After all, I am used to eating space grass, so it is difficult to accept this kind of weed anymore. Even if I almost eat it, it must be more tender.

In short, it is easy to go from simple to extravagant, and difficult to go from extravagant to simple.

It made Zhang An laugh. If he hadn't waited for the two pigs to grow meat and sell them at a good price at the end of the year, they would really starve them a few times.

Finally, the grass was held aside to bask in the sun. After the hardened land was loosened, the grass was almost dried, piled together, and burned to ash.

Because there were not too many, it didn't take long to burn out.

(End of this chapter)