After entering late July, the rain gradually decreased, all the sorghum and corn on the hillside had ears, and the cotton gradually turned white!
The rice in the field has tillered, and the original sparse leaves of the seedlings have gradually increased, filling the reserved row spacing.
After the wheat was dried, it was divided equally between the two families, and Mr. Man's family received a hundred catties.
Now there is another harvest in sight.
Thinking of being able to divide hundreds of kilograms of rice, without having to pay taxes, and to be able to eat white rice and white noodles in the future, Mr. Xiaoman laughed from ear to ear every day, and even his rickety waist straightened a bit.
Jiangzhi is also busier. This is the time when fruits and vegetables are most abundant, and it is also the best sunny day of the year.
The pumpkins, beans, and winter melons in the fields have grown so much that it’s hard to even eat them every day.
So melon slices, dried vegetables, bamboo shoot slices, mushrooms, fungus, and medicinal materials were dried everywhere on the hillside.
Several women were digging through and drying the house every day, frantically storing food and medicine for the winter.
The cotton in the fields has begun to be picked, and twenty or thirty cottons can be picked every day.
Holding the soft cotton ball and looking at the plump cotton bolls, I felt more joyful than seeing gold and silver. I really didn’t dare to lose any of them.
This is something that can save lives. When Jiang Zhi picked it, he felt more pious than ever before and was so excited that he almost cried.
She never dreamed that one day she would live in such a humble state.
I couldn't help but swear in my heart that as long as I could return to modern times, I would eat well, dress well, and no longer throw clothes of unsatisfactory styles into the trash can.
Xiaoman and Xu Errui had a new mission. They began to search for wild cotton in the mountains.
Now is the time when wild cotton blossoms are blooming. The flowers are very beautiful, with the beauty of roses, the elegance of lotus, and the unique freshness and refinement of the mountains.
It's just that this beauty is useless in the eyes of ordinary people, and is not as important as its seeds.
There is an extra spring phoenix and a little baby on the mountain. The cotton for winter clothes is not enough, and some other filler must be added.
The fruit of wild cotton is fluffy and white, and looks like cotton, but it has no fiber and cannot be spun or weaved.
wild cotton
It can only be used to linen coats like reed catkins, and it can barely block a bit of cold wind.
In addition to collecting wild cotton, Xu Errui and others also collected plant roots and used them as medicine.
Pound the fresh roots of wild cotton and apply it externally to treat bruises. Boil it in water and take it internally to drive away roundworms.
The formula for Xu Dazhu's waist injury has been changed, and now he uses wild cotton.
In addition, Xu Errui and Xiaoman have a more difficult task, which is to fight hemp.
The men farming and the women weaving in the countryside are at ease. Being self-sufficient sounds romantic, but in fact it is miserable.
Dressing and eating here depends entirely on your own hands.
In addition to growing crops, kudzu vines must be cut in May and June, and flax must be beaten in July and August. The diligent women need to spend their free time spinning and weaving to make linen clothes and kudzu cloth for the family to wear and wear shoes.
From harvesting hemp stalks to sewing clothes, there are many processes.
The skin is peeled, dried in the sun, and torn into thin threads. The twine is then rubbed by hand and boiled with stove ashes to remove the gum from the twine until it becomes fine and soft. It also needs to be repeatedly washed and dried, and finally dyed and woven.
Of course, these things are still interspersed with other farm work, but food cannot be wasted for clothes.
It takes about half a year to make a piece of clothing from Lala's miscellaneous items.
Playing hemp under the hot sun is dirty and tiring. The hemp leaves are prickly and the long hemp pole is so heavy that you need to be wrapped tightly before you dare to enter the ground.
The hemp seedlings grow on a relatively concentrated gentle slope. Although they are wild, people from Xujia Village have cultivated them intentionally for many years and they are growing very well.
In previous years, villagers rushed to harvest, but this year no one competed.
In order to satisfy hunger in the spring, the kudzu vines on the mountain were dug too hard. In June, only a few kudzu vines were cut. Now they rely on hemp poles to provide clothing for everyone.
This time, four people went to the field. Jiang Zhi and Chunfeng chopped hemp poles, while Xu Errui and Xiaoman carried fresh and heavy hemp poles back.
At home, Grandma Xiaoman and Qiaoyun hurriedly peeled and dried the skin, while Xu Dazhu and Nini were also scraping the remaining green skin with knives.
There is no idle person in the farmhouse, and even the chickens at home are busy looking for food to lay eggs for humans.
Because chickens that don’t lay eggs can only be put into the pot.
Life on the mountain is so peaceful, but there are changes in the village below.
Under the close surveillance of Jiang Zhi and others, those greenhouses have been erected.
Now a lot of people are coming, but most of them are carried, followed by some medical soldiers with red cloth strips tied on their arms.
Everyone already knew from Chunfeng that the greenhouses in the village were the wounded camps set up by the new army.
The New Army is the name the rebels gave themselves.
Jiang Zhi has also been feeling uneasy in the past few months. He has not known the plot direction of the male protagonist for a long time, nor what the situation is.
I just want to avoid the rebels, but I don’t want to be a savage on this mountain for the rest of my life!
Fortunately, the wounded soldiers camp was built at the bottom of the mountain, and everyone was lying on beds. There was no need to worry about the refugees gathering and wandering up the mountain.
And he can also get a little bit of outside news from it.
For example, now, we can see that the number of injured people being sent is gradually increasing, and there are also a few more graveyards in the fields outside the village.
I'm afraid these people don't have time to manage them even if they know there are villagers on the mountain.
The fighting outside was life-and-death, but it did not affect the two families on the mountain who went all out to provide food and clothing.
Things will never be smooth sailing, and the problem of competing for food with rabbits and sparrows happened again.
In fact, it’s not like it’s happened again, but it’s never disappeared.
As August approaches, the corn stalks are about to become plump, and the sweet potato rhizomes planted on the rocky mountain sides are beginning to swell.
The most fearful animals have also arrived after hearing the news, and are about to start the feast they bring to your door.
On the hillside, a few pairs of eyes just saw a group of wild boars strutting towards the hillside full of crops in broad daylight, gnawing at corn, sorghum, and sweet potatoes.
There were more than a dozen animals in this group, including a sow, a boar, four to five half-sized pigs, and seven or eight small wild boars that were over a foot long and had yellow-brown stripes on their bodies.
Xu Errui pounded the ground angrily: "It's over. Once this group of wild boars have destroyed everything, there will be nothing left."
Xiao Man was impatient and wanted to jump up while holding the hatchet: "I'll fight them!"
Jiang Zhi shouted sternly: "Xiao Man, don't be reckless! Your life is more precious than that food, so you have to use your brain!"
As the saying goes, the most ferocious beasts are one pig, two bears, and three tigers.
It's not about their combat effectiveness, but how harmful they are.
The most powerful fighting force is of course the tiger.
But tigers will not leave their territory casually. They are alert by nature. They will avoid people when they encounter them and rarely conflict with humans head-on.
The second is the bear.
Except for female bears with cubs, they often have short-distance contact with people. The first reaction when seeing humans is to flee.
But pigs are different. Pigs are stupid and not afraid of people.
An adult boar can weigh up to four to five hundred kilograms, is extremely powerful, has a bad temper, is moody, and can go crazy at every turn.
They are as fearless as the big rooster and the big white goose among the three hegemons in the countryside.
Now there are not only boars in this group of wild boars, but also sows with cubs.
Where is the pig group? It is simply a barrel of explosives that may go berserk at any time. Even tigers must stay away from it.
Once a conflict breaks out, the humans on their side have almost no power to resist.
