Chapter 287: Returning to Normal

Chapter 287: Chapter 287: Returning to Normal

Harvesting sweet potatoes is exhausting. It’s pure manual labor, and you really need two or three people to keep up.

Sweet potatoes grow underground, so first, you have to cut away the lush vines. These vines are much more troublesome than wheat stalks. Once cut, you can’t just throw them away; you have to haul them back home.

After being air-dried, they can be used as winter fodder for pigs, horses, cattle, and sheep. They can also be used directly to feed grass carp, as their nutritional value is several, or even more than ten, times that of other weeds.

At worst, they can be burned as firewood. So, no matter how much trouble they are, farming families treasure them.

Once the vines are cleared, an ox-drawn plow is used to unearth the sweet potatoes. A single pass of the plow turns them all up from the soil. Since they are planted in rows, this has to be done pass after pass.

The depth of the plow is also crucial. If it’s too shallow, it will slice the sweet potatoes. The damaged pieces are difficult to find once buried in the dirt, and even if you go to the trouble of digging them out, they won’t be as good for making things like dried sweet potato slices later on.

However, this was no challenge for the veteran farmers.

The experienced farmer would guide the plow from the front, while others followed behind, loading the sweet potatoes into baskets or tossing them directly onto a flatbed cart.

Only when a cart was full could people sit down and catch their breath. Then, someone else had to be arranged to haul the full cart home and unload it.

The work wasn’t over once they were home. The sweet potatoes had to be divided into two batches. One batch was stored in the root cellar, while the other had to be cut into slices and sun-dried.

The sweet potato slices took up a lot of space. If there wasn’t enough room in the courtyard, they had to be laid out in the fields. Only after they were completely dry could they be gathered up to be sold or stored as provisions.

For a field of over ten mu, the work would take about ten days, and that was with the help of livestock and proper tools.

Families without a plow or an ox could only wait until their neighbors were finished and willing to lend their equipment before they could start their own harvest.

Those who couldn’t wait had to dig them out by hand with hoes or a type of hand rake.

The Hu Family had less land; their sweet potatoes were planted in a small patch of wasteland they had once cleared. The area wasn’t large, so they simply dug the potatoes out by hand and were mostly finished in a few days.

Ji Liansong’s family had planted more, but they were shorthanded.

Since the harvesting process involved constant bending and squatting, Ji Mingfang wasn’t sent to the fields. He stayed home to look after Erya and Sanyang, which allowed Ji Xuelan and Yang to work without any worries about the house, putting all their effort into the harvest.

Daya was also a diligent worker. Despite her young age, she never slacked off. With her sharp eyes, she followed behind the adults, specifically looking for any sweet potatoes that had been missed.

Of course, the main workload fell on Ji Liansong, but since his foot had only recently healed, he wasn’t as fast as in previous years.

When Hu Liang first started at the brick kiln, he knew nothing; Ji Liansong had taught him everything personally. Once, he was almost crushed by a collapsing pile of bricks. If Ji Liansong hadn’t yanked him out of the way, he might have been buried alive.

He had never forgotten this debt, so he discussed it with Widow Xie. They agreed that she and Hu Ximei would stay home to slice the sweet potatoes, while he would take Hu Dacheng to help Ji Liansong’s family.

Widow Xie agreed without a second thought, deciding that after they finished slicing their own potatoes, she would go help them with theirs.

After seeing how hard Daya worked, Ji Huan felt she might have been coddling Dabao too much, so she started taking him to the fields with her occasionally.

Dabao was extremely particular. He would only pick up sweet potatoes that were aesthetically pleasing to him, and their size and shape had to be uniform. Any that didn’t meet his standards were completely ignored.

Daya couldn’t understand what was wrong with the little boy. She could only follow behind him, picking up the ones he left, sighing with a worried expression on her face.

Everyone else found this hilarious.

But he was just a child. It was fine for him to experience a little of the hardship of labor, but he shouldn’t be overworked.

Dabao would listen to Ji Huan; if she told him to stop, he would. Daya, however, would not. Whenever anyone told her to take a break, she would just shake her head and say she wasn’t tired. Her sensibility was heart-wrenching.

Ji Huan had to find another way. For instance, she would have Dabao sit down to rest somewhere and then ask Daya to look after him.

Although Daya wanted to help lighten her mother’s load, she still remembered the sesame crisp Ji Huan had given her.

She liked her "Auntie" Ji Huan and couldn’t bear to refuse her request, so she would stay put and keep a close eye on Dabao.

Fortunately, Dabao had a habit of treating strangers as if they were thin air; otherwise, he probably would have had a meltdown.

With the extra hands, their work speed increased significantly. By the time both families had finished everything, it was mid-September.

The vagrant’s walk had almost returned to normal, and he had no trouble gripping things with his right hand. He was perfectly capable of managing his daily life without relying on others.

He still hadn’t mentioned anything about when he might be leaving.

Ji Huan didn’t bring it up either. She just progressively increased his exercise load, having him continue to practice single-leg heel raises to correct the residual impairment in his ankle’s plantar flexion and dorsiflexion. Then, she had him try activities like slow jogging and brisk walking to gradually restore his ankle’s flexibility and rebuild the strength and mass of his calf muscles.

"From now on, the focus is on strengthening your lower leg. Light jogging and brisk walking will help you regain muscle strength and rebuild your calf muscles..."

"Miss Wan! I’m back!"

Hu Dacheng burst into the courtyard like a gust of wind, startling the drowsy little Ding. The animal jolted, arching its back and letting out a series of low growls at him.

"Did you find some money or something? What’s with all the excitement?" Ji Huan shot him a glare.

He just chuckled.

"The teacher taught us some new characters today, and two of them were ones you’d already taught me! None of the other kids knew them, but I did. The teacher praised me a bunch!"

’No wonder he’s so pleased with himself.’

Ji Huan teased him, "I seem to recall someone just a few days ago, crying and screaming that he wouldn’t go, even rolling on the floor and refusing to eat."

"I... I didn’t know then! I didn’t know school was so much fun, and the teacher isn’t that scary..."

Hu Dacheng felt embarrassed just thinking about it.

On his first day at the village school, Hu Liang had to drag him there by the ear the entire way.

He wasn’t used to it for the first two days and didn’t pay much mind to anything. But by the third day, he’d gotten to know the other students and suddenly discovered how much fun it could be.

’And being praised by the teacher in front of everyone felt amazing! If I’d known, I would have studied more with Miss Wan last year.’

"I can’t talk anymore! I have to go home and write each of today’s characters ten times. The teacher is checking them tomorrow!"

Watching him scamper off and disappear in a flash, Ji Huan shook her head and smiled.

’Actually, she had originally wanted to send Dabao to the village school as well.’

’After all, she wasn’t a professional teacher. She could tell him stories and teach him a few characters day to day, but Dabao was a boy. If he was to put down roots and make a life for himself in this ancient society, he needed to receive a "proper" local education—something she couldn’t give him.’

’She had another motive, too. At the village school, Dabao would have more opportunities to interact with children his own age. Slowly, he might get used to having other people around and even learn how to interact with them.’

’It was a hopeful thought, but how would she know if it could come true unless she tried?’

’Dabao couldn’t stay at home forever.’

’Their courtyard could be his safe harbor, but it shouldn’t become his cage.’

’He had to grow up and venture out eventually. How could he do that if he never saw the world beforehand?’

’Seeing Hu Dacheng’s transformation made her all the more hopeful.’

’But after thinking it over and over, she decided she couldn’t rush things.’

’Dabao had been with her for nearly a year, and he had only just started to stabilize. She was afraid that if she made a sudden change like this, all her previous progress would be for naught.’

’It was better to wait. She could send him next spring. Enrolling at seven or eight years old wasn’t considered too late, anyway.’