Chapter 12: A piece of pork
Big lights illuminated the room with more than a dozen people in it. Milky white fish soup was placed on the table. Liu Chunlan took a wooden spoon to prepare rice for each child.
An Ran was sitting in the recliner. She had just eaten. Everyone was in a bad mood today, especially her mother, who cried for a long time while feeding her.
An Ran stayed at home alone today. Brother Wen Jing looked at her and ran out when he heard the cry. She was too small to go and see.
Although there was fish soup, not much was given to each person, so they could barely finish the meal.
An Ran heard her parents talk at night, saying that her cheap uncle came to make trouble today and caused a big trouble for the family. From now on, she would not be able to hold her head up at home. A Ling and A Liu will be considered as members of their family from now on.
People, how to make a living is a big problem.
An Ran grunted, their family was really under a lot of pressure, plus her family had ten children and four strong men, a total of nineteen people.
An Ran came to his farm, which was now level 29. The grain in the warehouse was piled up into a hill, and two mother pigs gave birth to more than a dozen piglets.
An Ran began to expand a few pig pens, but she couldn't afford to raise them any more. The gold coins on her panel were only 1,086.
You have to go to the mall to buy pig feed and chicken feed, as well as various farm tools and props. You only get 100 gold coins when you harvest, which is about once a week. The medicine fields, vegetable gardens and orchards add up to only 300 gold coins each time.
Chickens lay one egg every day, and one hundred chickens harvest eighty or ninety eggs a day, which corresponds to eighty or ninety gold coins.
In the pharmacy, she recently unlocked medicine for bruises. The main reason is that the medicines come from the medicinal fields, and the medicines require experience points to unlock.
An Ran worked hard in every part of the farm, and I was exhausted!
The warm light of the morning shone on An Ran's face. It was another day. She was the most leisurely person in the family, just eating, drinking and having diarrhea.
"Fu Bao, brother, hold me."
What An Ran has to face every morning is a bunch of boys hugging her one by one, and then smacking her cheeks.
"Fu Bao is so good. Look at her smiling at me. Fu Bao likes his second brother the most. He will catch fish for you later."
After teasing Fu Bao, everyone went out, leaving Wen Bo behind to follow sister-in-law Zhenxiang.
Day after day goes like this, everyone performs their duties and does their own work.
In the blink of an eye, the bleak days of autumn have passed, and the cabbage and radish replanted by every household are ready to be eaten.
Several women were sitting around in the main room, with cold rain falling outside, holding various old clothes and rags in their hands.
The weather is getting colder and colder, but the boys are still wearing thin linen clothes, especially the older ones, whose ankles and wrists are exposed in those clothes.
"Oh! These clothes are really torn and mended. The boy is growing very fast. Look at these ankles that are red from the cold.
How can I survive the winter this year? The few quilts I used as dowry have been washed away by the water. The two pieces of cloth I left behind were said to be used to make longer clothes for Wen Ming, and I always pick up his father's clothes to wear."
Li Aling sat by the stove, putting firewood in it and warming her hands. This was the warmest place.
"Don't burn the fire too brightly. The firewood will be very wasteful. Pluck out the ash underneath. The charcoal will be stored in the stove later."
The cook was Liu Chunlan. In the pot were steamed several dry buns mixed with cabbage, a pot of clear soup with little water, and a large pot of boiled radish.
After the rice was ready, Liu Chunlan carefully wrapped a few steamed buns in white cloth, took a few pickle dumplings from a jar, put them in a bowl, and put them all into a basket.
Today it is Li Zhenxiang's turn to deliver food. Since that incident, the relationship between the several women has been very delicate.
"Mom, let me go." Wen Zhuo saw it was raining outside and wanted to go together.
"Looking at my sister at home, my mother will be back soon."
All this food is for the men on the dock. Now that winter has come, there is not much work in the fields, so those who are idle at home go to work on the dock.
The food on the pier was expensive, so I had to ask my family to deliver food.
Seeing the woman walking away covered in linoleum, the remaining women began to talk about their daily routine.
An Ran has started to eat liquid food now. Today she eats white radish, which is boiled in plain water and then eaten into a paste.
Although it's a little sweet like carrots, I'm still annoyed if I eat it every day.
"Fu Bao, eat quickly, you will have diarrhea if you wait for a while to cool down." Wenzhuo used a spoon to scrape the radish in the bowl and feed it bit by bit.
An Ran is actually not picky about food at all, but after eating this every day for half a month, she almost vomited.
"You said that my fourth brother's baby doesn't eat anything here or there every day. He's white and fat, like the fairy boy in the New Year paintings. He might have eaten something."
We can't blame everyone for being suspicious. It's just that An Ran is too fat and fair. She has been eating liquid food every day since she was weaned, and the liquid food is just a bit mushy.
Fang Cuiying curled her lips and said: "It's not like you don't know how much the old man is in pain. His eyes are protected by his lungs and leaves. He saves a sum of money from work every month to buy millet for this girl. If she is not fat, who is fat?"
An Ran listened to what several women said, what kind of nutrition is there in that millet, and every time the aunt was reluctant to part with it, the boiled out rice was almost like water, and she could see people's faces.
"Dad, you're back." Several women saw Father Wang wearing a raincoat and holding a red and white piece of meat in his hand.
“Where does this pork come from!”
Just a piece of pork made several women very excited. They saw this good thing during the Chinese New Year last year.
Even Fang Cuiying swallowed her saliva. Although her family used to be a pig butcher, the situation in recent years has been bad, and her father has switched to the scented wax business.
"Keep this piece of meat. Tomorrow is the birthday of the third child. Let's all eat something good."
Father Wang hung the dripping raincoat under the eaves, and his bare feet were covered with mud.
Li Aling brought the water she had just used to wash the vegetables and gave it to Mr. Wang to wash his feet. One of the ropes in a pair of straw sandals that were leaking from all sides was worn out.
Several boys gathered around the meat, and their mouths were full of laughter. The last time they ate meat was during the Chinese New Year, they had pork stewed with vermicelli, and there was a big pot full of it.
Liu Chunlan carried the meat into the kitchen, put it in an empty jar and covered it. The piece of meat weighed three or four kilograms and could be divided into two or three meals. The fat meat would boil out some oil and water and cooled into lard. Later, it would be eaten with cabbage and radish.
Put a little in.
When An Ran saw that Father Wang was back, her hands were waving. She had recently brought a lot of eggs for her grandfather to sell.
"Oh! My Fu Bao, have you eaten yet? Grandpa gives you a hug." Father Wang wiped off the water on his hands, lifted An Ran up high, and held An Ran in his arms for a walk.
"There are two kilograms of fine rice and a few eggs here. These good things are reserved for Fu Bao. None of you should touch her rations.
I had a dream a few days ago, about an old god. He said that our family has a god of food in the sky, a little girl. As long as we worship her well, we will have no shortage of food and clothing. All these good things are entrusted to our family.
Blessing."
This is the rhetoric that Mr. Wang came up with himself. He wanted to give Fu Bao a status in the family, otherwise he would be so partial that he would lose his sight.
"Dad, just like Fu Bao if you say you like him. The old god of food knows that you like the little girl."
Chapter completed!