Chapter 22: The Farmer’s Lucky Daughter and the Lack of Food

Wang Xiuxiang poked Lin Yue’s forehead with her fingertip, “Why don’t you say you’re making white flour buns? Who eats black flour steamed bread these days? Many families are running out of food. I heard you’re going to work, and the strong men in the village are all vying for the job.

My mother-in-law knows you have an allowance now and are living a little better. She’s also afraid you’ll be too dangerous alone with the children, so she dared to arrange for you to build a courtyard wall. Otherwise, she wouldn’t dare to bring it up now.”

Lin Yue was scolded speechless and quickly pleaded guilty.

She hadn’t cooked for so many people before. The main cooks were Mrs. Su and Wang Xiuxiang, mother and daughter-in-law.

Lin Yue and Liu Jianhua had a good relationship, but the three of them could manage. If they called Liu Jianhua over, someone might gossip behind their backs, so she didn’t bother her.

The materials for the rammed earth wall weren’t hard to find. Several young men went to the eastern ditch early in the morning and picked up several baskets of yellow sticky clay.

Usually, if a family wanted to build an earth wall, the husband would spare some time to make some mud bricks, and they could build it themselves.

But drying the bricks was too time-consuming. The brigade headquarters had a set of rammed earth wall molds that could be used.

The rammed earth wall was a physically demanding job. They had to mix yellow mud and straw with water, pour it into the mold, and repeatedly ram it with a wooden mallet.

Several young and strong lads were sweating profusely, but smelling the aroma of food coming from the kitchen, they were all full of energy, and they finished more than half of the work in the morning. There was a little left, and they could finish it in the afternoon with a little more effort.

In the afternoon, after the courtyard wall was built, the men helped Lin Yue build a simple outhouse in the corner of the wall.

The structure was simple, just building two earth walls and enclosing them with the courtyard wall, then digging a pit inside and placing the toilet bucket in the pit, making a common outhouse in the countryside.

When the toilet bucket was almost full, they would carry it to the vegetable garden to fertilize the vegetables.

As for how they went to the toilet in the previous months when they didn’t have an outhouse, Lin Yue could only say, it’s a long story.

As dusk approached, Lin Yue sent the workers away. She then built a simple chicken coop against the west wall to raise chickens.

As for the three sheep, she would have to return them in a few months when the children were weaned.

Later, Lin Yue secretly bought two lambs and raised them in the space with the three sheep. They even gave birth to several lambs. This was a secret she kept to herself.

Although mutton was also a type of secondary commodity subject to unified purchase and distribution, it wasn’t as strictly controlled at this time, especially in rural areas. People would turn a blind eye to some special circumstances and wouldn’t be too strict.

But if someone wanted to make a living out of it, they would be caught.

Lin Yue was able to buy the sheep secretly because she took advantage of this loophole.

A few days after the courtyard wall was built, spring plowing began in the village.

Lin Yue still carried the children on her back, with a water bottle filled with boiled goat’s milk on her waist, and went to the fields with everyone to earn work points.

The two little ones were already over four months old. It was actually quite inconvenient for her to carry two children on her back, but luckily, the siblings were very well-behaved in the backpack and didn’t make a fuss.

Lin Yue had to get up early every morning to dig wild vegetables in the wild.

In just a few days, the wild vegetables in the fields had multiplied. There were shepherd’s purse, noodles, sesame seeds, ash-colored vegetables, broom seedlings, bitter herbs… She could fill a bamboo basket in an hour by getting up early.

Many families used these wild vegetables mixed with sweet potato flour to make vegetable dumplings as their daily food.

Lin Yue didn’t lack any vegetables or grains in her space except for wheat and white flour.

But she was afraid of being discovered, so she had to get up early to dig wild vegetables every day, just like everyone else.

She had read novels before, and whenever the female protagonist went into the mountains, she would always have an adventure. She would either dig up ginseng or Ganoderma lucidum, or find a treasure.

Lin Yue didn’t dare to expect such things. She wasn’t arrogant enough to think her luck was so good. Besides, she didn’t know what ginseng or Ganoderma lucidum looked like, and even if she encountered them, she wouldn’t recognize them.

As the saying goes, different professions are like different mountains.

Besides, the villagers were scouring the mountains every day. Even a different kind of wild vegetable in a remote corner could be dug up. If there was something valuable, it would have been discovered long ago.

That’s how Lin Yue thought at first, until one day when she was working, she heard everyone talking about how Liu Jianhua’s younger sister had dug up Ganoderma lucidum in the mountains.

On her way home from work, she saw someone asking Wang Sanshenzi, and Wang Sanshenzi had a smile on her face like a blooming chrysanthemum, her joy couldn’t be concealed.

Lin Yue had heard that there was ganoderma lucidum in the Da Cang Mountain, as well as a kind of herb that looked similar to ginseng called Codonopsis.

The village elders said that people occasionally dug them up in the past and sold them to pharmacies in the city for a lot of money.

But they had hardly been seen in the mountains in recent years.

Lin Yue and Wang Sanshenzi’s family lived close to each other. In the evening, she saw an old man trembling as he came out of her house, muttering, “Yes, yes, it’s ganoderma lucidum. I saw one when I was young, exactly the same as this…”

The next day when she went to work, Lin Yue and Liu Jianhua got together and quietly asked about it.

Liu Jianhua didn’t hide it, after all, the whole village was talking about it, “Yesterday morning, I went to dig wild vegetables…”

“My younger sister said she wanted to go to the eastern cliff. Our work site is on the west mountain, you know? The family didn’t want her to go at first, afraid it would be too far and she’d be late for work.

She wouldn’t listen, she insisted on going.

She did end up being late for work, but she brought back a huge ganoderma lucidum.

” She swallowed, “You know, we’ve never seen what ganoderma lucidum looks like. If I saw it, I’d probably think it was some kind of dried mushroom. I wouldn’t even think of it as ganoderma lucidum.

My younger sister, on the other hand, recognized it and even carefully picked it up.

You know, she could have just kept it a secret, but she let a lot of people see it. And some people recognized it immediately as ganoderma lucidum.”

Lin Yue said, “I was thinking the same thing. Your family is a bit too high-profile. This is ganoderma lucidum, not some wild vegetable. Aren’t you afraid that someone will be jealous and do something behind your back?”

Liu Jianhua sighed when he heard this, “I told her, but no one listens to me! You don’t know, my father-in-law went out drinking during the New Year and fell asleep on the roadside. Luckily, she insisted on searching for him with the whole family. Otherwise, my father-in-law might have frozen to death! She was sick earlier this year, and she’s been much more stable after she recovered. Now she’s the apple of everyone’s eye in our family. I dare not say a word she doesn’t like!”

Seeing Lin Yue’s surprised look, she couldn’t help but lean over and whisper, “Speaking of my younger sister, she’s really lucky.

Let me tell you, she even picked up a wild chicken from the mountains the other day! And it wasn’t even caught by her. The chicken fell into a pit, and she found it!”

This was the classic plot of a novel in the future. Lin Yue’s mind had already automatically generated a 100,000-word novel called “Reborn as a Lucky Farmer’s Daughter”.

Look, this is the treatment of a protagonist. She’s the apple of everyone’s eye at home, and she can find treasures when she goes out. This is already a different level.

She let herself get carried away for a moment but then dismissed it. She couldn’t just suspect everyone who was lucky of having a golden finger like a protagonist.

Lin Yue thought that everyone would be excited about this for a while and then forget about it. It was just something to talk about for fun. In this era, buying and selling was strictly controlled. If someone sold ganoderma lucidum privately, they would be caught and sent to a farm. She didn’t think anyone would risk it for profit.

Unexpectedly, in the following days, more and more people went to the eastern cliff. Even people from other villages heard the news. The area where Zhang Xiaohui found the ganoderma lucidum was almost trampled flat.

But ganoderma lucidum isn’t like cabbage. It’s not easy to find, so naturally, no one else found any. Gradually, people stopped going there.

At this time, Lin Yue’s mind was no longer on this.

After the Qingming Festival, more and more families in the village were running out of food, and the wild vegetables were almost all gone.

This is when you could really see the gap between the rich and the poor. Some families were truly struggling to make ends meet, relying on the wild vegetables they dug to survive. They were very enthusiastic about digging wild vegetables, even more so than working. Lin Yue had seen people fighting over a handful of wild vegetables or a single elm tree.

But some families still had a relatively good supply of food. They might not be able to eat their fill, but they weren’t starving.

For example, the head of the brigade’s family had a son who worked for the government and could eat meat once a month.

On her way to work, Lin Yue saw two little boys squatting under a tree, pulling a long earthworm out of the ground.

She recognized the two children as the grandsons of Zhang Zhixiang from the west end of the village. The older one was six or seven years old, and the younger one was four or five.

A few days ago, Liu Wushenzi’s youngest son was almost drowned while secretly catching fish in the reservoir because he was too hungry.

Lin Yue felt very uncomfortable when she heard about it.

Now, seeing these two children catching earthworms, she thought they were going to fish as well. She was about to stop them when she saw the four or five-year-old boy eagerly snatch the earthworm from his brother’s hand and stuff it into his mouth, dirt and all.

Lin Yue was startled and hurried over to pry it out.

But the two children thought she was trying to steal their earthworms. They clutched the box in their hands and ran away.

Lin Yue took a quick glance and saw that there were several more earthworms in the box.

In this place, when food was scarce, the men and women who could earn work points were fed first. Those who worked less ate less. As for the children, they were given enough to eat to keep them from starving.

After all, if the adults died of hunger, the children wouldn’t survive either.

This was the wisdom passed down from their ancestors. Lin Yue had always thought it was reasonable. Only when the adults were full could they have the strength to find food for the children. Most families who thought they were great for prioritizing their children couldn’t survive the famine years.

But when she actually saw two pale and thin children who were so hungry that they were eating earthworms, she realized just how cruel the world was.

Lin Yue stood there, watching the two children run away, and couldn’t recover for a long time.

When she remembered that she had to hurry to work, tears were already streaming down her face.

She wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand and made a silent decision.