After lunch, Lao Li and his wife returned to the county town!

Li Youwei was worried about the welfare items that had not been packed away at home, so she and Zhou Yang left the Liu family with their children.

On the way, Li Youwei happily told Zhou Yang about the grand occasion of distributing welfare goods today. Listening to her daughter-in-law talking excitedly about how much rice, flour, grains, oils, and daily necessities were distributed, Zhou Yang was also in a very happy mood.

In fact, Zhou Yang knew how much Li Youwei distributed, because the printing factory was also affiliated with the research institute, and the welfare products they distributed were exactly the same as those at the research institute.

Besides, Zhou Yang asked Qiao Weiguo to purchase these welfare products. Zhou Yang knew what they were all about.

But seeing his wife's happy expression, Zhou Yang did not interrupt her and even chimed in a few words from time to time.

When I got home, the two little ones were already asleep.

After entering the door, Li Youwei told Wenhui and Baoer to do their winter vacation homework first.

Since the college entrance examination was resumed and more than 200 college students were admitted in the village this year, the village members have paid more attention to their children's studies and strongly requested the teachers to give these children more winter vacation homework.

Naturally, teachers will not refuse parents' requests, so these children feel the dual care of parents and teachers.

Taking advantage of the time when the children were doing their homework, Li Youwei and Zhou Yang immediately packed up these welfare items, sorting them into categories and putting them away. They were very busy.

The total amount of welfare goods for two people is quite a lot. The pork alone suddenly gained more than 40 kilograms. There are also two chickens, 10 kilograms of eggs, and a lot of other supplies.

The two of them were busy for a while before getting rid of these welfare items, and then Zhou Yang started making cured meat.

In this era without refrigerators, there are only three ways to preserve meat for a long time, namely air-drying, curing and pickling!

In Saibei, it is most commonly made into air-dried meat or pickled pork.

On the one hand, making air-dried meat and marinated pork is relatively simple and not as troublesome as bacon. On the other hand, the climate here is more suitable for making air-dried meat and marinated pork!

It’s just that Zhou Yang likes to eat bacon, so if there is extra meat at home every year, they usually make it into bacon.

This year is no exception!

In the kitchen, Zhou Yang put the star anise into the pot and stir-fried over low heat.

After frying until fragrant, add peppercorns, fennel, etc. and continue to stir-fry slowly over low heat until crispy.

Then find a pounding jar, pour the crispy spices into the pounding jar and pound into powder, add salt and put it into a bowl and set aside.

Then Zhou Yang took out the processed pork, pig trotters and pig heads, and spread the fried spice powder evenly on the fresh pork...

The meat had just been marinated, and Zhou Yang was about to remove some thatch and smoke it after the meat was marinated.

Just as he was about to leave, Zhou Yang heard movement outside the gate.

When I got up and took a look, I found that Huzi ran in with several younger brothers and sisters from the old house.

In addition to the children of the Li family, there were also a group of little children standing at the gate, all children from the village.

Pushing the door open and coming in, Huzi saw Zhou Yang in the kitchen and immediately greeted him: "Uncle, we are here to play with Bao'er and Wen Hui!"

"Where are you going to play in this cold weather?" Zhou Yang asked with a smile.

"We went to Xiaohegou to play with ice carts. My dad made several for us!" Huzi said with a proud look on his face.

Bao'er in the room also heard Huzi's voice, and ran out without wearing any shoes, and said happily: "Brother Huzi, you are here, has uncle finished the ice truck?"

"It's done, let's go quickly!"

Bao'er did not agree immediately, but looked at Zhou Yang and said: "Dad..."

"Go, but you have to pay attention to safety, especially the ice chisel, don't hurt anyone!" Zhou Yang warned.

"good..."

After saying that, Baoer happily returned to the back room, called Wenhui and was about to go out.

Seeing her daughter's hurried appearance, Li Youwei immediately asked her to put on clothes, gloves and a hat. She had to take measures to keep warm when going to play outdoors in this weather.

Fortunately, Wen Hui was more sensible. When he heard that he was going out, he prepared their cotton coats, gloves, and hats early.

It wasn't until everything was tidied up that he took Bao'er and followed Huzi and the others out of the Zhou family.

After the children left, Zhou Yang and Li Youwei said hello and then took Chen Beixuan out.

But instead of going to the research institute, he went straight to the Li family's old house.

...........

The old house of the Li family!

Li Fengnian was sitting astride the edge of the kang, smoking a dry tobacco pot. As he breathed, the sparks in the copper dry tobacco pot flickered.

At the same time, a lot of dark brown residue has fallen on the ground.

Dry cigarettes are different from cigarettes. They don't have so much ash after burning, but they do leave a layer of residue inside the cigarette pot. Sometimes people need professional tools to remove this.

Next to Li Fengnian, Wang Ping and Zhang Genwang were also slumped on the edge of the Kang, with a large bowl of tea in front of each of them.

"Lao Li, this is the situation. We have to make preparations before those educated youth leave!" Zhang Genwang said while holding a dry tobacco pot in one hand.

Wang Ping also echoed: "Yes, after all the educated youths leave, Liang Feng will be the only one left in the village who can settle accounts. He alone will not be able to win even if he is tired and lies down!"

Li Fengnian first took a puff of cigarette, then exhaled a puff of smoke and asked: "Then what do you two mean, let me transfer some people from the commune to you?"

"We definitely can't afford the cadres in the commune. See if you can transfer some educated youth from other brigades!" Zhang Genwang said.

Wang Ping said: "I heard that there are more than 120 educated youths in the Fugou Brigade. Although they all took the college entrance examination this year, it seems that not many passed the exam. Let's see if we can get all of them to our village?"

"There is also the Xuejiawa Brigade. They seem to have more than a hundred people there. It would be better if we can get them here together!" Zhang Genwang said.

Li Fengnian smiled and said: "It's really thirty years from Hedong and thirty years from Hexi. Thinking about it a few years ago, I heard that the commune cadres wanted to build an educated youth center in our village. Most people were not happy because they were afraid that the educated youth would be built there."

After they came here, they robbed us of our food rations, and every member of the commune was very unkind to the educated youth."

"Look at the situation now, only a few years ago, the educated youth are about to leave, and you are not happy, so you came here specifically to ask me to find educated youth for you!"

Wang Ping said with a smile: "That's not because everyone was suffering in the past. I remember a few years ago, our village could only distribute more than 300 kilograms of grain throughout the year. We had to go hungry for most of the year, so there was no surplus grain.

Feed outsiders!”

Zhang Genwang said: "A harvest of 300 kilograms a year is already a good harvest. There was a year when our village was hit by a disaster. After delivering the mission grain, each person only received 18 kilograms of wheat."

"On New Year's Day, steamed buns have to be mixed with 30% of stick noodles. On New Year's Day, I have a meal of steamed buns. On New Year's Day, I make dumplings. After the second day of the Lunar New Year, I can't see any white noodles. Look at it now. It's really like heaven and earth.

....”

"Who says otherwise? Life was really hard in the past few years. The villagers themselves didn't have anything to eat, so how could they still support the educated youths?"

Then Li Fengnian said again: "Fortunately, our lives have finally gotten better in the past few years. Every household is not only full of food, but also gets a lot of money..."

While they were chatting, several people suddenly heard rapid footsteps coming from outside.

Looking out the window, he saw Zhou Yang striding in with guard Xiao Chen.

When several people saw this, they immediately stopped talking and all their eyes were fixed on Zhou Yang...

.........
Chapter completed!