But it's okay to try it once in a while, but eating it every day is really nauseating.

In particular, the corn kernels are not peeled when they are crushed. They taste very rough, a bit tooth-gripping, and have a sour taste, making them very difficult to swallow.

If he didn't have no choice, he really wouldn't want to eat it.

I was thinking about something, but I ate so hard that I got stuck in my throat and screamed.

Wang Manyin hurriedly climbed down from the earth kang, rushed to the water tank, took a ladle of cold water and drank it for a few sips, and finally drank it down.

In fact, eating corn wowo is quite good. Nowadays, many people in Gugan Village can’t even eat this at home. Most of them are black wowo made from sorghum.

That stuff is more unpalatable, tastes bitter, is difficult to digest and can easily cause constipation.

Happiness comes from comparison...

After eating a corn nest and having food in his stomach, Wang Manyin finally felt at ease.

Next, he carefully fastened the remaining nests and placed a stone on the top of the basin. This was mainly to prevent mice.

Rats can be called the first of the "four pests", and they definitely deserve their name.

Wang Manyin was shocked when he first arrived: These guys were so rampant that they climbed onto the pot table to steal food in broad daylight.

He took two bites of a corn nest from the middle, soaked it in rat urine on the edge, and left a few grains of rat droppings. The smell made Wang Manyin almost sick to the point of vomiting.

These guys were even more lawless at night, as if they were holding a meeting in a cave dwelling, chattering and making noise non-stop. They even ran up and down on the broken quilt in the middle of the night.

What made Wang Manyin even more speechless was that when he was cleaning his cotton boots yesterday, he found a nest of rat cubs inside which had not opened their eyes, and the cotton wool had been bitten.

The predecessor was so lazy that there were more than a dozen mouse holes dug under the cave walls, but he never took care of them.

In the past few days, Wang Manyin kept sealing the hole with small stones and lumps of earth, finally allowing the mice to settle down.

However, the method of sealing the hole only addressed the symptoms but not the root cause. He planned to find time to raise a cat.

***

The red sun is rising, and the Loess Plateau in late autumn is extremely desolate.

Wang Manyin stood on the top of the cave dwelling and looked up. The mist curled up, and what he saw was a stretch of rolling earth-brown mountain ridges that stretched to the end of the sky.

Even closer, there are layers of steamed bun-shaped hills.

You can vaguely see a thin green color, which is the winter wheat that has just sprouted and the wild grass that has not completely died.

A small river meanders through the cliff ditch, which is the Dongla River mentioned in the book. The hundreds of households in Gugu Village are scattered on the mountainside, in the ditch, and among the cliffs.

Smoke from cooking is floating above many cave dwellings, as breakfast is being prepared.

The cave dwelling of Wang Manyin's house was dug outside the village, with no neighbors on either side. The nearest Wang Qiusheng's family was fifty or sixty meters away, with a deep ditch in the middle.

If something happened between the two families, they would shout across the ditch.

Today, the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, is the day when the commune gathers for the Shige Festival.

According to memory, the Shige Festival commune held meetings on the fifth day of the lunar month (the fifth, fifteenth, and twenty-fifth day of the lunar calendar), and the streets were deserted during the rest of the time.

Of course, if farmers want to buy salt, kerosene and other daily necessities, they can go directly to the supply and marketing cooperative.

Moreover, market management is relatively strict now. Except for some things that farmers produce and sell themselves, many of them do not allow private transactions.

However, if there is demand, there will be trade, and there is still a pigeon market in the Shige Festival commune privately. Counting the jiwaiji voluntarily formed by the people in eight villages in Shili, they also open every fifth day and are usually completed before breakfast.

If Wang Manyin wants to buy local chickens, he must go to the pigeon market early.

For this reason, he deliberately put a blue khaki top over his tattered cotton-padded jacket. This was the only decent piece of clothing he had and he was reluctant to wear it.

Gu Guan Village is seven or eight miles away from Shigejie Commune. The distance is not too far, but there is no serious road and it takes about half an hour to walk through the ditches and ravines.

It was already a bit late for Wang Manyin to go to Pigeon Market at this time.

As soon as he got down to the dirt road, he saw an old man carrying a dung basket on his back, walking slowly. The man had a greasy white sheep's belly handkerchief wrapped around his head, a torn sheepskin jacket, and a hemp rope tied around his waist. He was a standard Loess Plateau figure.

Image of an old farmer.

This old man's name is Wang Mancang. He is over 60 years old. He is in good health and hard-working. He carries a dung basket on his back and collects dung basically every day before dawn.

At this time, I have picked up less than half of the basket.

Wang Mancang also has two younger brothers named Wang Mantun and Wang Manyao.

In terms of seniority, he is the eldest brother of his predecessor. The same great-grandfather, he has not yet released the fifth server.

In fact, most of the families in Gu Guan Village have the surname Wang, so the clan relationship is relatively simple. After all, they all have the same ancestor.

Because of this, Wang Manyin was fooling around all year round, and the villagers turned a blind eye.

Walking closer, Wang Manyin smiled and said hello: "Brother Mancang, you are picking up dung, how can you earn work points by getting up so early?"

Yes, you can earn work points by picking up manure.

The crops are just a flower, all dependent on fertilizer.

There is a shortage of chemical fertilizers these days, and fertilization in farmland basically relies on soil manure.

The production team called on every household to pick up dung. A dozen kilograms of dung could be worth one agricultural work point, and they would be weighed together at the beginning of spring.

In other words, the old man worked hard all morning and earned about five cents.

"You are such a coward. If you don't do serious business all day long, why are you running around?" Wang Mancang glanced at him sideways, with obvious disgust.

A hard-working man loved by farmers.

The old man obviously looked down upon this kind of wandering ghost.

Twenty years ago, he would have probably starved to death.

What's even more unreasonable is... when he was working in the team a few days ago, he heard someone say that such a coward was engaged to the eldest daughter of Sun Yuhou's family in Shuangshui Village.

Wang Mancang really couldn't figure out what Sun Yuhou liked about this second-rate guy.

Wang Manyin was also speechless. The other party said three sentences with two words of "毬".

Future generations would definitely think that he was deliberately cursing people.

But it was very normal in this era, and it was completely oral. Just like what is said in "Qibi Gou", "the words are inseparable from each other."

"You get busy, I'll go to the commune to go to the market." Wang Manyin replied nonchalantly. Knowing that others looked down upon him, he had no intention of chatting.

After saying hello, we hurried along the dirt road.

By the time the sun peaked over the mountain ridge, he had already arrived at Shigejie Commune.

The pigeon market is located in a cliff ditch outside the commune. There are large jujube trees planted at the exits on both sides, which are used as shields. In addition, there are people specially posted outside to help keep an eye on the scene.

If other people want to go in and buy or sell things, they need to pay a venue fee of 5 cents.

My predecessor was a frequent visitor here and was very familiar with it.

Now during the off-season, there are quite a few people coming to Pigeon Market, there are hundreds of them.

The clothes are very simple, basically three colors of black, yellow and blue.

Those people wearing torn and patched homespun cotton-padded jackets, with gray heads and dirty faces, naturally belong to farmers from nearby villages. There are also some people wearing blue khaki cloth, who should be eating commercial grain in the town.

This situation is normal, and food is now supplied in fixed rations.

Many families that eat commercial grain have many children, and thirty kilograms of grain per month is not enough for the adults alone. They also have to come to the pigeon market to buy high-priced grain.

Wang Manyin glanced at it and found that the items were quite abundant.

There are those selling tickets, those selling cotton wool, cotton cloth, tobacco leaves, grains and vegetables, hand-woven wicker baskets, dung baskets, dustpans, etc.

There are also piglets, lambs, chickens, etc. for sale...

In a word, except that no industrial products are sold here, it is almost the same as the market in later generations.

Seeing Wang Manyin appear, several familiar people immediately came over to say hello. Cats looked for cats, dogs looked for dogs, and turtles followed the tortoise.

These people are all well-known wandering ghosts in eight villages in ten miles and eight villages, and they have a good relationship with the original person Wang Manyin.

After chatting with them for a few words, Wang Manyin went straight to a woman wearing a blue scarf on her face and a floral cotton-padded jacket with a double-breasted collar.

"Sister, how do you sell these two native chickens?"

"One piece per catty." The woman had obviously inquired and directly shouted the real price.

As for the market price of local chickens, Wang Manyin naturally knows that in the supply and marketing cooperative, one pound per pound is considered a fair price.

He had already agreed in his heart, but even though he was here, it would be unprofessional if he didn't set the price if there were jujubes but no jujubes.

"How about Jiumao?"

"No, I won't sell it if it's less than a dollar. I asked before I came here, and it's the same price." The woman didn't give up a penny.

"Okay, just one piece." Wang Manyin did not insist anymore.

For him, the pigeon market is about to end, and it is business to buy things as soon as possible.

The difference is just a few cents, it doesn't matter.

Next, the woman carried two native chickens to the manager of the pigeon market and asked him to help weigh them and settle the accounts.

Nowadays, most of the older generation of rural people have never gone to school, and many of them are illiterate and cannot calculate accounts.
To be continued...