The moon is bright, the wind is gentle. Lying at the edge of the bed, listening to my father tell stories of the past...

Yang Ruqing and the Big An siblings, both pairs of ears perked up high, listened with great interest.

Not until Yang Huazhong finished speaking did the siblings come to their senses.

Over there, Sun Shi and Lao Sun Tou were also listening quietly. Everyone in the room was immersed in this entanglement of the ancestors of Lao Yang's family!

“Father, I have one more question.” Yang Ruqing cleared her throat and leaned forward a little.

"My grandfather was born into a peasant landowner family, with forty to fifty acres of farmland and both long-term and short-term laborers. How did he end up in this situation?"

“Ah?” Yang Huazhong didn’t expect Yang Ruqing to ask that, and was taken aback.

"When your grandfather was born, he just happened to be in the midst of a famine. For three consecutive years, there was no harvest in the fields."

Yang Huazhong shoved the last egg pancake in his hand into his mouth and continued, “Back then, many people died of starvation for miles around. Although our Yang family had some food stored, it wouldn't last that long!”

"All the laborers in the household were dismissed, and your great-grandfather began to sell the family's land."

"This area has suffered from years of drought and famine. The crops are hard to sell, and your great-grandfather died of starvation."

“Finally, they received relief grain from the imperial court and survived this disaster.”

“Your grandmother was a widow who raised your grandfather. Since she couldn't do the farm work, she sold or rented out the land. That’s how their family became poorer and poorer each day!”

Aha, so that's how it is!

Yang Ruqing nodded silently.

As far as she knew, it was not easy for a widow to raise children in this era.

If you have such good farmland and rent it out to others, just collecting some rent, your life will definitely get worse and worse.

Especially when there's no man in the family to be the pillar of support, they are bound to be bullied by people in the village.

>If someone rents your farmland for a long time, when you want it back to farm yourself, they may refuse to give it back!

Bickering is inevitable!

"Father!"

Let me know if you have other text you'd like translated!

Yang Ruqing interrupted Yang Huazhong and then asked, "I think Lan'er, your elder sister, is really beautiful! Her features don't resemble either your second uncle or your second aunt!"

>

"It's not just that she doesn't resemble Uncle Two and Aunt Two, she doesn't resemble any of our Yang family members at all!" Dayan picked up Yang Ruohui's words and said.

"Hmm!" Yang Ruocheng nodded and then asked, "Father, is Aunt Lan really my second uncle and second aunt's biological daughter?"

>

Yang Huazhong couldn't help but smile wryly and said, "Silly girl, what a silly question to ask!"

"Father, no matter if what I say is foolish or not, just tell me yes or no!"

"Yes, your cousin Lan'er is our old Yang family's legitimate granddaughter. However—"

"But what?"

"All the elderly people in the village say that your cousin Lan'er takes after her great-grandmother on her father's side!"

"Ah?"

Yang Ruqing was surprised. Wasn't that the niece-in-law who had hooked up with her great-grandfather back then?

"That fortune teller from the next village, who read Lan'er's birth chart right after she was born, said that she was probably the reincarnation of some ancestor of the Lao Yang family. It’s karma!" Yang Huazhong finally stated.

"Aha! I see."

Yang Ruqing suddenly nodded.

She didn't fully believe in reincarnation.

However, Yang Ruolan inherited the misfortune of beauty from that cousin's wife back then, which is undeniable.

And Yang Ruolan is also a real handful!

“Qing’er, we’ve eaten and asked everything we needed to. It’s getting late now, shouldn’t we wash up and go to bed?”

Sun touched Yang Ruqing and Dayan's heads, smiling and asking.

Yang Ruqing stuck out her tongue: "Hehe, tonight was awesome, okay, let's wash the dishes and go to sleep!"

Tomorrow, Chang Geng and Big Uncle Niu will come over to help them plant rapeseed and wheat.

The seeds, all of them, were borrowed from those two families.

When frost descends, millet is harvested.

It's the Han Clothing Festival now, and in a few days it will be the winter solstice.

It can be said that this season, the family missed the golden harvest time for rapeseed and wheat, and it is nearing its end.

At this time, if you plant rapeseed and wheat, next year's harvest will definitely be greatly reduced compared to those planted at the right season.

But, to be able to harvest and count some, we can't just let the land be so panicked.

After dinner, Mrs. Sun went to the kitchen to tidy up, while Yang Ruoqing called Lao Sun over to help weigh the soybeans.

According to the purchase agreement with Jūwìxuán, tofu needs to be delivered to the town's restaurant every three days during the winter.

>

Every trip delivers fifty catties of tofu, half a catty per piece, which is one hundred pieces of tofu.

According to Yang Ruqing's experience in making tofu, two jin of soybeans yield ten jin of tofu. So fifty jin of tofu would require soaking ten jin of soybeans!

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So, she weighed out ten jin of yellow soybeans with Lao Sun and soaked them in two large wooden buckets with water.

Soybeans need to be soaked for six hours before they can be ground into soy milk. Let me know if you have other text you'd like translated! ?

It's soaking now, and it will be almost ready to grind tomorrow morning.

After the whole family finished washing up, they each went back to their rooms to rest.

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The next day, Chang Geng's uncle and the Big Ox uncle both came over with their families.

Yang Ruqing's family was divided this trip, getting two mu of irrigated land and two mu of dry land.

Two acres of paddy fields remain fallow, intended to be planted with rice next year.

The half-acre plot of dry land next to the grove used to be Old Yang's farmland, but it was not suitable for growing rapeseed or wheat.

There is still one and a half mu of dry land available in the plain.

In this one and a half mu of dry land, the Sun family intends to use three fifths of the land, smoothing it out to create a vegetable garden later.

The remaining 1.2 mu of land was divided in half: one half was used to plant wheat, and the other half to plant rapeseed.

In the morning, Sun and Chang Geng went to the fields to plant rapeseed.

Yang Ruqing stayed home with Dayan.

The siblings, after a morning's work, had finally ground ten jin of soybeans into soybean milk. They filled a wooden tub to the brim and placed it in the corner, covering it with a bamboo sieve to keep the dust out.

Estimating that it was almost noon, the siblings, with aching arms, started preparing their lunch.

What are you having for lunch?

This is the problem Yang Ruqing needs to ponder.

She found a wooden barrel. Inside, there were some mudskippers and small fish being raised in water.

She caught this eel a few days ago while she was fishing, and kept it in a bucket for several days, changing the water every day.

Right now, the loach has spit out the mud and sand, so it doesn't need to be slaughtered and can be put into the pot directly.

Using a bamboo pole to scoop out the mud loaches and small fish from the bucket, I weighed them, coming up to about one jin (about half a kilogram).

Yang Ruqing decided to wait and use chili peppers to cook later. She would cook both the fish and the soup, filling a large bowl to the brim—it was a perfect dish to eat with rice.

Cornmeal, with a touch of caramel, baked into a pan of sweet and fragrant cornmeal cakes.

After the split, the vegetables in the house were provided by Auntie Guihua and Auntie Dayun.

Old Sun came over and brought some Chinese cabbage, asparagus, and mung beans.

After these few days, most of the vegetables were eaten. There were only a few yellowish cabbage leaves and two stalks of asparagus left.