My village can't be like this

Chapter 593: Good Harvest

Sure enough, speak of the devil and he will appear.

As soon as school was over in the afternoon, the naughty children immediately ran home, put down their schoolbags, and then ran to the fields in groups.

"Uncle An, Uncle An, are there many grasshoppers in your house? Can you catch some for us?"

Zhang An had just thrown away the straw without grain in his hand when he found Zhang Bao running over with his group of friends.

The rice harvest days every year are the favorite time for naughty kids because they can catch grasshoppers to their heart’s content.

In fact, they could have picked the rice before it was ripe, but the fields were not dry yet and there were rice ears everywhere, so they only dared to pick them along the ridges.

If you go into the fields to catch them, you will definitely destroy the rice in the fields, no matter whether it is your own rice or someone else's. You will definitely be beaten by the adults when you get home.

During the days of rice harvest, they can catch them in the basket without causing any trouble, and they can catch more and bigger grasshoppers than usual, which makes them very happy.

Zhang An’s field was right at the entrance of the village. As soon as the naughty kids came out of the village, they were the first to run towards this side.

Moreover, in their hearts, although Zhang An is an adult, he gets along very well with them, unlike other adults. This is one of the reasons why they came straight to Zhang An's house.

"You came here right after school. If you don't do your homework at home, you'll probably get scolded in the evening. Hurry up and catch them. We need to collect the grains."

Zhang An also grew up from a child and was no longer surprised by this. After laughing and scolding them for a few words, he let them go catch grasshoppers in the fight.

Anyway, they just happened to have a bucket of millet in it at the moment, and they needed to fill the bucket with the millet before they could continue threshing millet, so it wouldn't delay anything to let them catch it.

"We have already finished our homework at school. We must catch lots of grasshoppers today."

Under normal circumstances, these naughty kids would be terrified when it comes to homework and adults at home.

But today was suddenly different. No one looked worried or afraid on their faces.

It turned out that they did this so that they could catch grasshoppers in peace after school. They had already finished their homework while in school.

The little ones who came to the fields at this time were no more than eight or nine years old. They were either not the eldest in the family or the only child, so they did not have the burden of housework.

"Why do you catch so many grasshoppers? You can't eat them all?"

Grasshoppers taste pretty good whether fried or roasted, especially with some salt sprinkled on them.

But if there is too much, you cannot finish it in one meal. If you leave it for half a day or a whole night, it will become soft again and will not taste good anymore.

"If you can't finish them, you can feed them to the chickens. My chickens love to eat grasshoppers, especially the old hens. After eating grasshoppers, the eggs they lay will be very big. This way my dad won't scold me."

Zhang Bao and his friends said proudly while they were lying in the fighting bucket catching grasshoppers.

They are very smart now. If they catch grasshoppers and take them home to feed the chickens and ducks, they can have fun and will not be scolded by the adults when they get home.

Later, when Zhang was installing the millet, he picked out the grasshoppers from the scoop and gave them to them, and immediately received the little ones' sincere thanks.

Of course, only Zhang An could enjoy such treatment. Other adults could not because they could not treat these naughty children as patiently as Zhang An. Most adults would think that it was a waste of time to see them catching grasshoppers and would scold them away.

"Alright, alright, we've finished catching them. Go play somewhere else. We're going to thresh the grain."

After all the millet was filled into the basket and all the grasshoppers were caught by the kids, Zhang An pulled the basket forward a little and continued to thresh the millet.

"Okay, Uncle An, we'll come back after you finish fighting here."

The naughty kids listened to Zhang An very much and did not continue to interfere with them threshing the grain in the fields. At Zhang Bao's command, they ran quickly to another field.

"Okay, Mom, let's cut these today and cut the rest tomorrow. You go home and prepare dinner first, and we'll come back after we finish threshing the millet."

Seeing that more than three acres of rice had been harvested today, and less than half was left, the harvest would definitely be completed tomorrow, so Zhang An asked his mother to go home first to prepare dinner in advance and take a rest at the same time.

Because you have to bend over all the time when cutting rice, it is actually quite tiring.

"It's still early, why don't I make some straw first before going back?"

Although Wang Fang stopped using the sickle, she was not in a hurry to go home as it was not too late as the elementary school students had just finished school.

"There's no need to rush to tie up these straws. We can collect them together after the millet is harvested, and let the sun shine for a while longer. Anyway, our farm is right in front of our door, so we can come and work on it anytime."

At this moment in the fields, in addition to the bags of rice scattered here and there, there was also straw from the harvest.

If it were in the past, when they were needed to feed livestock, they would naturally have to be kept well.

But now, even if the livestock in Zhang An's family need to survive the winter, they cannot rely on this straw. Even if the horses and sheep in the family will eat some, they can't eat much, so Zhang An tied up the straw without thinking.

It just so happens that the weather has been good these past few days, so we can take this opportunity to dry them out a little longer so that they can be burned more thoroughly when used as ash to fertilize the fields.

After hearing Zhang An's arrangement, Wang Fang stopped talking and collected all the sickles in the field and took them home.

At this time, only a few acres of rice had been harvested in the field. For Zhang An and his companions who had harvested more than two acres of rice in just one afternoon, it was not too much.

Although Zhang An had worked in the fields under the scorching sun for a whole day and was sweating a lot, he did not feel too tired. The speed at which he threshed the rice was still about the same as when he first arrived.

But this was not the case for Zhang Jianguo. He did have much better endurance than the others, but except for loading the grain this afternoon, he had not taken a break. He had been working with Zhang An and Zhang Yixing until now, and his body had already felt tired, but he had been persisting.

"Dad, there's not much left. It won't take long. Drink some water and catch your breath."

Zhang An looked at his father rubbing his waist from time to time, and then he spoke.

In fact, he mentioned it several times in the afternoon, but Zhang Jianguo was worried that he would not be able to collect all the goods, so he did not take a break.

"Okay, I'll take a break then."

Zhang Jianguo looked at the harvested rice in the field and saw that there was indeed not much left, so he didn't insist.

Seeing that he had harvested more than two acres of rice in just this afternoon, which was several times faster than other families, equivalent to the speed of seven or eight people, he no longer worried about not being able to harvest the rice in time due to lack of people at home.

So he sat on the straw with the gourd in his hand, drinking water and taking a breath. The gourd contained space spring water, which could replenish a lot of physical strength, which was why Zhang Jianguo was able to hold on for so long.

"Not bad, Zhang An. I was thinking that since you have so many fields, I would come over to help after I finish harvesting mine. I didn't expect that you have already harvested half of them today."

While the three groups were taking a break, Zhang Jianguo walked from the road to the field.

"Hey, uncle, have you finished collecting the crops?"

Zhang An chuckled and started talking to Zhang Jianwen.

"How can it be that fast? Today we are harvesting the fields at Chahe, which are less than one acre in area. We just came back from harvesting. But it's not too early or too late now, so it's not convenient to go to other places to harvest. We might as well take a good rest and go back to work tomorrow."

The villagers' fields are scattered here and there, and are not concentrated together, and the same is true for Zhang Jianwen's family.

In fact, Zhang An’s family was like this before, but they were all transferred here later.

It actually takes a lot of time to work on fields that are so scattered. It's fine if they're not far apart, but for fields that are far apart, it sometimes takes an hour or two to go back and forth.

This is the case with Zhang Jianwen's family. The field on Chahe River that he owns is similar to the field on the riverside.

If they were all together, they should be able to harvest a few more acres of rice in a day, but now they have wasted a lot of time on the road. Even if they can harvest some by the river now, it will be too late to thresh it. They can only wait until tomorrow.

"I thought my family had harvested enough this year, but I didn't expect your family to be even more amazing. We have only harvested two or three acres of land, but we already have more than thirty corns, which is much more than my family has."

Then Zhang Jianwen noticed the bags full of millet in Zhang An's field. After a quick count, he found that there were more than thirty bags, which really shocked him.

The bags of millet in every household in the village are almost the same. One bag can hold more than 80 kilograms of millet. These more than 30 bags together contain at least more than 2,000 kilograms of millet.

Although this is still wet millet that has not been dried, it is only more than two acres of paddy field. The most important thing is that this is chicken blood rice, whose yield is not as good as hybrid rice.

If Zhang An's family harvested all of these six acres of paddy fields, they would be able to harvest five or six thousand kilograms of millet.

As they are all farmers, this yield shocked him. He was almost overjoyed when he saw the harvest from his own fields this year.

But now, when he saw the millet from Zhang An's family, his excitement disappeared instantly. He felt that there didn't seem to be much at home.

"Not much more, at most only a hundred kilograms more per mu. It may be because my family's base fertilizer was well fermented this year, plus there was no drought, so the harvest is better than in previous years."

Zhang An himself felt quite guilty because he knew the reason. It was mainly because there had been no rain since the rice was planted this year.

Many families in the village have paddy fields near the river, so it is naturally not easy for the paddy fields to dry out.

But when the water level of the river drops, it becomes difficult to drain the water in the ditch.

Many families have hired diesel pumps to draw water from the river to irrigate the fields, so that there is always water in the fields.

Although the cost of pumping water is higher than in previous years, at least there is a big river in the village to pump water. If we move to other places, we won’t be able to spend the money even if we want to.

But there are many families in the village, so people have to queue up if they want to pump water.

Zhang An was usually lazy, so when he went to look for a water pump, many villagers had already lined up in front of him. It would take at least a week for his family to get their turn.

But if we really had to wait that long, given the scorching sun at the time, the fields would have been cracked by the sun.

So Zhang An was too lazy to queue up to pump water, and simply released water from the space to irrigate the fields at night.

So, their family's few acres of paddy fields have been using space spring water for a month or two.

He didn't stop until it rained and the river rose again.

But during these two months, the rice in the fields had already been nourished by the space spring water.

As a result, not only did their family's millet grow bigger this year, but there were also a lot of grains hanging on the rice ears, and the harvest soared sharply.

"I don't think it's the base fertilizer at all. Think about the past two years, everything you planted was harvested well, and everything you raised grew strong. This may be your family's good fortune."

Zhang Jianwen originally wanted to ask Zhang An what kind of fermented base fertilizer he used this year, but he suddenly remembered what happened in Zhang An's family in the past two years.

The pigs they raised each weighed three or four hundred kilograms, much heavier than those of other families. They also raised more and more chickens, ducks and geese. The millet harvest in the fields had been very good in recent years. Even though there was a total crop failure before, they still harvested more than others.

So Zhang Jianwen suddenly felt that this had nothing to do with other reasons. It might be that Zhang An's family had good luck. Otherwise, it would be okay if it happened once in a year, but it has been like this in recent years. Apart from this explanation, he couldn't think of any other explanation.

Farmers believe in luck very much, because in the past some families had outstanding harvests.

For example, when some elderly people get old, if their family members touch them, then whatever the family plants during the year will not be very good. Either they will not grow well or they will break everywhere.

Zhang An didn’t believe these things before, but when his grandparents passed away, he personally took his three brothers and his mother’s three sisters-in-law to the two elderly people.

He clearly remembered that during those two years, the crops from the three families' fields were really not very good.

Later, when Zhang An's second grandfather found out, he told Zhang An's father and several brothers that when they were planting crops in the fields, they should call the two old men, meaning that they should come and help with the planting.

After hearing what the old man said, Zhang Jianguo and his two brothers did as he said.

Strangely enough, ever since the three families hired two old men to help with farming, both the rice and corn in the fields grew extremely well that year, and the harvest was excellent.

Later, other people in the village encountered the same situation. After they hired an old man to farm, the situation seemed to improve a lot.

So for these things, if you really can't find the reason, it's better to believe it a little. There's no loss anyway.

"It seems to be true. Maybe it's just like what you said, our family's luck has come."

After hearing the first half of Zhang Jianwen's words, Zhang An's heart suddenly skipped a beat, thinking that Zhang Jianwen had discovered something.

He didn't feel relieved until Zhang Jianwen said the second half of his sentence.

Although Zhang An himself knew what was going on, but since he was able to bring back the space, who could say that this was not their family's luck?

(End of this chapter)