After Picking Up the Lucky Girl, the Whole Village Became Prosperous

Chapter 71: Cotton Harvest (Thanks to the babies for their monthly votes, an additional chapter will be added)

School was over this afternoon. Mrs. Wen said that she didn’t need 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 southern **** 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, so they wandered 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 the soft cotton. He asked Jiang Sanlang, “Sanlang, can you sell this cotton?”

 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.

 It is much easier to spin cotton thread than ramie kudzu silk.

As long as you harvest it carefully to avoid getting any grass clippings, and then remove the cotton seeds, you can put it directly 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 death.

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 all these seeds?"

“My Bao’er bought it from the dealer, 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 Yingbao and said with a smile: "Your Yingbao is indeed very lucky. I have 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 in his life. Alas, those terrible things at 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 a thousand kilograms of lint cotton.

 One thousand pounds of lint cotton, after being dried and fluffed, can be used to make two new soft cotton-padded clothes for everyone in the family, and it is more than enough to make a dozen quilts.

　　The items needed for making cotton were also told to him by his daughter. The girl 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, hesitant.

 He is not ready to sell all the cotton seeds yet.

Since my eldest and second brothers, including my parents, have to plant the dry land on the south slope, and I will definitely plant more than ten acres next year, this amount of seeds may not be 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 just needs two acres of land. Alas, my old cold legs can't stand the cold."

A villager next to him laughed and said, "Speaking of Mr. Chen, your legs have been cold for many years. I haven't seen your legs get cold even when there was no cotton."

Chief Chen stared at the man, his beard rising in anger: "Little bastard, you are the only one who talks a lot."

A few 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 leader and village chief also want to buy it, but he doesn’t want to sell it, so another 40 kilograms will be lost.

 I plan to plant another ten acres of cotton next year. Calculating ten kilograms of seeds per mu, that is one hundred kilograms.

 The eldest brother, the second brother and his parents also want to plant ten acres of seeds, which is three hundred kilograms of seeds.

I estimate that I can still have four to five hundred kilograms of cotton seed left.

These seeds are all rare. If they were sold to people from other villages, he wouldn't want to sell them without a tael of silver or a pound. Of course, it’s not easy to tell the clan leaders 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 his two younger brothers stayed with their parents on Nanpo 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 a shocking news. It was from Chen Zhao's family.

“You don’t know, Chen Zhao’s eldest sister jumped into the river yesterday.” Erni said with interest.

Yingbao was stunned.

 Chen Wan jumped into the river?

 “What happened next?” she asked, “Is anything okay?”

How can I 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.

Having no sympathy for the other person, nor helping the other person.

 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 liked him very much, especially in front of Mr. Han. The two sisters were almost trying to please the younger brother.

In my last 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 the Han family, I would pity her and feel sorry for her, and would stand in front of her and push her to run away.

 As a result, he was beaten by the Han family and put in a chicken coop at night without food.

Ying Bao really 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 families for cultivation, there was no shortage of food at home, and sometimes the food was better than the Jiang family now.

Even though Chen Wan was often beaten, she was not deprived of clothes and food.

 The result was 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 left 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 settled on their in-laws' families and started wedding ceremonies at the age of eight or nine.

 When the mother-in-law’s family comes to give gifts during the New Year and festivals, they will definitely give the girl a piece of red cloth to make clothes.

So all the girls in the village would run to see the girl's son-in-law, until the boy's head dropped to his chest.

 (End of this chapter)