The Farm Life Of a "Fool"

Chapter 46

Still, there were two other great helpers who had contributed a lot for the event, Tangtang and Guoguo. They two had collected plenty of ash as fertilizer for the whole land with merely a hundred copper coins.Not only that, but they had improved their interactions with the village's children, and they seemed to have taken over as the children's head.

This made both Xu Ran and Liu Tong very happy. They happily kissed and hugged their two children. Xu Ran also gave the two children ten taels of silver, which they were allowed to keep as pocket money.

Every child in the village had received a different amount of money as a reward. The adults had not anticipated their children receiving money while playing outdoors. They were all ecstatic, of course.

Wu Mei's family was the happiest of all. Dahu was the village's eldest child, as well as the strongest and fastest runner. He'd made 15 pence on his own. Yueya'er earned three pence despite working slowly. Wu Mei and the others didn't care about how much money they got actually, but they were glad that their children had grown up.

Initially, Xu Ran and Liu Tong did not expect Tangtang and Guoguo to devise such a plan for collecting ash. These two children, according to Xu Ran, were extremely intelligent. They would be the future backbone of the country if they could find a decent teacher to teach them!

However, they were now confronted with the problem that Xu Ran's wallet had run out of money. To be more precise, they were now cash-strapped. Mr. Hu was given more money than the combined cost of labor and freight. More than 200 taels of silver vanished in an instant. Furthermore, their family recently purchased two piglets and twenty ducks. All of these added up to a lot of money in payment. Xu Ran felt distressed when counting all these!

But there was no way out. They had to pay for all those.

The construction of Xu Ran's new house began on February 15 with the sound of firecrackers. All that needed to be planned was already in place. Everyone in place was overjoyed. This marked the start of a happier life for the family, its members, and their entire lives.

Now their new house was at last under construction.

And Xu Ran's family became preoccupied. The land had already been prepared by the villagers for the planting of rice seedlings. Since Xu Ran knew that vegetables and corn seedlings were grown at the same time, he was able to keep up with everyone else and scatter all of the vegetable seeds he had purchased across the field.

However, since there were so few corn seeds, they were given special attention. Pieces of land were removed one at a time, and the dung was poured over them. The sickles were then used to draw squares on the ground, and the corn seeds were then planted one by one in the soil.

People in the village covered the seedlings with tree branches because there was no plastic sheeting available at the time. They initially covered them tightly and refused to remove any branches until the seeds germinated.

At first, Xu Ran also wanted to cover the land with those branches, but he changed his mind when he saw the brown paper at home. He realized that he could use the brown paper as plastic sheeting, which could be taken away after the seeds germinated.

Thus, the whole family started to get to work, while Mr. Hu helped to put the corn seeds one by one into the field.

Liu Tong was a quick and tidy person. He did all of the heavy lifting while Xu Ran helped him. Then he gave instructions to a group of people who were scribbling squares on the ground and scattering corn seeds. The whole family had finished planting all of the corn seeds, covering them with brown paper, and then clapping their hands after a day of hard work. The work was thus over.