There were two dozen bills of money. Wen Jiajia counted them last night and found that there was a total of 2,528 yuan.

Some coins were placed in a bamboo tube on the table. When Wen Jiajia had enough coins to fill a bamboo tube, she would take it to the bank to exchange for banknotes.

There are quite a few tickets, but most of them are industrial tickets.

The most popular thing to be issued in the army is industrial tickets, and Wen Jiajia’s factory has also been issuing them recently.

Now that the family had accumulated enough industrial tickets, it was easy to buy a sewing machine. Wen Jiajia was waiting for Wei Dai to come back to buy it, as she couldn’t bring it back by herself.

Then there are cloth coupons and cotton thread coupons.

Both types of tickets can be used to buy clothes, but cotton thread tickets are a little more valuable because they can be used to buy not only clothes but also cotton, while cloth tickets cannot be used to buy cotton.

Five cloth coupons and four cotton thread coupons.

Wen Jiajia thought about it and decided that these five cloth coupons were enough for everyone in the family to make two summer clothes.

You have to buy it because the ticket is about to expire.

However, the cotton thread tickets are still a long way from expiration and can be used at the end of the year.

Finally, there are grain coupons, meat coupons, and some rare coupons, such as soy product coupons, pastry coupons, milk coupons, and so on.

Yes, there are milk tickets, which are also issued by the factory. You can buy milk at the milk station and milk powder at the supply and marketing cooperative.

Among them, Wen Jiajia only had two meat tickets, which together weighed only one pound and two ounces, not enough to make braised pork.

When it comes to eating braised pork, you have to eat it to your heart’s content.

She sighed, folded the tickets, tied them with rubber bands, and put them back into the iron box.

She closed the drawer with a clang, locked it, held her chin in her hand, looked at the mountains in the distance, and began to miss Wei Dai again.

If Wei Dai were here, he could buy meat without a ticket.

_

Another package had arrived from my hometown. Ever since Wen Jiajia sent New Year’s goods before the New Year and some uneaten bacon and sausages after the New Year, my hometown has always been sending things.

How much money can be saved by doing farm work? Wen Jiajia looked at the large and small bags of food and felt a little jealous.

The bulk of the things sent this time was millet. Wei Dai mentioned in the letter that she loved millet, so this time they sent this much.

She weighed it and it was 12 kilograms.

How could Wen Jiajia not know how much millet a family could get in a year? It was about ten kilograms. In other words, the millet that the old couple and the eldest brother’s family sent was almost untouched.

In addition to millet, there were also longan and red dates.

Longan and red dates are both specialties of my hometown, especially longan. The longan in my hometown has small seeds, thick flesh, and tastes sweet.

This time, a big bag was sent, a really big bag, which took up half of the package and was enough for Wen Jiajia to eat for half a year.

After all, you can’t eat this stuff every day. Just eat two every few days or put a few in sweet soup. Eating too much will cause nosebleeds.

Wen Jiajia put all her things away and began to search for things at home, preparing to send them back when she had time.

Unfortunately, my family really doesn’t have anything to send recently, but I can send some industrial invoices, cotton thread invoices, etc. back home.

Wen Jiajia undoubtedly acted quickly, so she wrote a letter and mailed the ticket home the next day.

On the second day after sending the letter, Wei Dai finally came back after more than two months’ absence.

Wen Jiajia almost didn’t recognize him because the man in front of her was as black as charcoal.

Wei Dai still smiled at her, and his smile was extremely bright.

Under the strong sunlight, his white teeth were very noticeable and sparkling.

“Jia Jia, I miss you so much.”

As he said that, he wanted to rush over and hug Wen Jiajia.

“…”

Wen Jiajia leaned over and hid behind a pillar under the eaves, staring straight at Wei Dai and saying, “Go take a shower first!”

There was a threat in her words.

From a distance, she could smell a sour odor.

Wen Jiajia urged, “Hurry up, there is hot water in the pot. The sun is strong right now. When you are done, wash the clothes directly, and they will be dry by evening.”

Wei Dai never expected that his wife would behave like this after he hadn’t seen her for more than two months. But smelling his clothes, they were indeed sour and smelly.

He had a sad look in his eyes and went into the bathroom carrying a bucket full of hot water.

Wen Jiajia even yelled at him, “Don’t rush to wash. You have to at least rub your whole body three times with a towel, and don’t come out until you’ve washed for 10 minutes!”

“Got it—”

He also wanted to save face by shouting so loudly.

In the yard, Wen Jiajia looked at the backpack left on the ground by Wei Dai and didn’t even want to touch it.

This person must have gone to stay in some deep forest because she found a dead spider on the backpack.

What the hell is going on here?

However, Wei Dai came back safe and sound, and Wen Jiajia finally breathed a sigh of relief.

My heart, which was hanging in the air, landed safely.

More than ten minutes later, Wei Dai pushed the door open. Wen Jiajia sniffed around him, making sure his body was clean before hugging him.

She rested her chin on Wei Dai’s chest. Wei Dai lowered his head, hugged her tightly, and kissed her forehead fiercely.

“Missed me?” he asked.

Wen Jiajia nodded heavily: “Yes!”

“I missed you too.”

Wen Jiajia frowned: “You really took a long time this time. Will there be such long missions in the future?”

“I don’t know about that. It depends on the arrangement.” Wei Dai didn’t want to let go of his wife for a moment. He bent down, put his hands on Wen Jiajia’s thighs, hugged her, and the two returned to the living room.

The weather has become hotter, and when Wei Dai left, he had to wear two shirts or even a sweater. Now there is a palm-leaf fan on the table and he is wearing a thin short-sleeved shirt.

After being held by him for a while, Wen Jiajia couldn’t stand it anymore and pushed Wei Dai: “It’s hot. It’s been very hot at home recently.”

Wei Dai let go and picked up a palm-leaf fan to fan her.

“Were you about to go out?” he asked.

Wen Jiajia: “Yes, the cucumbers planted in our vegetable garden must be ripe. If we don’t pick them, they will be taken by those naughty kids.”

She discovered yesterday that four cucumbers were missing from the vegetable garden. She had counted them clearly and could notice even one was missing.

The cucumber seeds this year are good. They taste crispy and sweet, and not too numbing on the lips. Wen Jiajia eats them as fruit.

Wei Dai said, “Then pick all the ripe ones and pickle them.”

Wen Jiajia said angrily, “If I wanted to eat pickled ones, I would have picked them a long time ago. I just like to eat fresh cucumbers.”

As she spoke, she suddenly stood up and took out half a watermelon from the cupboard as if presenting a treasure: “Look! Our watermelons are ripe too. Our watermelons are the first to ripen, which is worth my frequent fertilization! And they are very sweet, with thin skin and lots of flesh. There is nothing wrong with them except the watermelon seeds.”

Even decades later, the seedless watermelons like Rock Sugar No. 1 and 8424 Kirin Melon are not as fragrant as her melon!

Wei Dai had been away for so long and had been eating dry food all day, so of course, he missed this juicy watermelon.

So he ate up the entire half of the watermelon.

Wen Jiajia told him not to throw away the melon rind because she needed to save it for cooking.

“Who can throw away the melon rind?” Wei Dai said, putting the slightly red melon rind on the kitchen stove after eating. “When we were kids, we had to take the melon rind home when we stole melons from outside.”

There is a lot of sand in their village, so they plant several acres of watermelons every year.

The watermelons grown in their village are indeed tastier than those grown in the surrounding villages, so people always come to steal them.

The villagers came up with an idea. They let these children watch the melon fields and beat up anyone who stole the melons. After all, it was the children who beat them up, so even if the thief had his brains beaten out of him, he would not be ashamed to come to the village to look for the thief.

The key point is that these kids all act like the boss and I am the second boss. They appear in groups with wooden sticks in their hands. Even burly men have to think twice; after all, a master can be killed by a random punch.

However, this method can only control melon thieves from other villages, not thieves from their own village.

You can look at it, but you also have to eat the melon.

The villagers turned a blind eye and regarded it as payment for their services, without pursuing the matter any further.

When Wei Dai was a child, he thought he had kept it a secret and had not been discovered for stealing melons for so long. When he grew up, he realized that it was just that people didn’t tell him.

He then peeled the melon rind, both the edible side and the skin side, until only a thin layer was left.

Looking at the cupboard again, the melon rind in the bowl was even thinner than what he had peeled.

After Wei Dai came back, Wen Jiajia had no mood to go to the vegetable garden again.

At noon, they had fried melon rind with peppers and a bowl of steamed egg custard, which was a simple meal.

In the evening, after dinner, when it was still light, Wen Jiajia called Wei Dai to go down to the trap.

Recently, logistics has allowed families to place ground traps by the lake, so every day some people bring a small stool to fish, and some people bring ground traps to fish.

But the fish in the lake are so clever that there are many people who go three days without catching a single one.

Even if they did catch any, they were all small, miscellaneous fish that they would not like to waste fuel on when they took them home.

Wei Dai exclaimed, “The fish in the lake are very cunning and hard to catch. The last time the lake was opened to us to fish was three years ago, and I spent an entire night without catching a single one.”

“Could it be harder to catch than the fish in the river near your home?”

“Yes, but there are a lot of crabs in the lake. Do you want to eat them? If not, I will release them when I collect the traps.”

Wen Jiajia was surprised. “Eat it—why don’t you eat it?”

It might not be the peak season for crabs yet, but it’s better than early spring.

Steam the crabs and dip them in ginger, soy sauce, and wine. They’re especially delicious when dipped directly in the sauce.

Wen Jiajia added, “Oh, and if you catch any crayfish—those red ones—save them for me too.”

Wei Dai asked, “Fried with garlic, right?”

“Have you tried them?” Wen Jiajia was quite surprised. “Didn’t people say no one eats these?”

Wei Dai went out with the trap and bait. “Of course I’ve eaten them. There are meaty things, after all. Just wait. We might not catch any fish, but we’ll definitely get some crayfish and crabs.”

“Hey, I’ll come too!” Wen Jiajia suddenly had an idea and wanted to see how many crabs and crayfish they could catch.

Wen Chun and Wen Xuan, seeing their aunt and uncle heading out the door, paused their radio and hurried to follow them. They had figured out the schedule and knew the radio would replay the program.