Chapter 114: Bumper Harvest

Chapter 114: Harvest

The month-long bustle of digging irrigation ditches caught the attention of villagers from other settlements who had been watching Little River Village closely.

Almost everyone who saw the bamboo tube water wheel looked amazed.

Some clan elders from other villages even made special trips to see it.

Watching the bamboo tube water wheel carry water from low to high ground, then channeling it through the bamboo tubes onto the fields and into the ditches, they couldn't help but tear up.

Among them, the folks from Little Stone Village were the most thrilled.

Upon learning that the bamboo tube water wheel was researched by Yin Hongxue and built by Gu Wen, many village heads immediately placed orders for three units.

Several village chiefs then jointly reported the matter to the town magistrate.

On the very day it was completed, the town magistrate came right away to Little River Village to see it for himself.

Once again, he was astonished.

When he learned that the inventor was Yin Hongxue, Gu Chaoning's younger brother, the town magistrate couldn't help scratching his head.

How are the brains of this family wired? Why are they all so clever?

Upon returning, the town magistrate of Ferry Crossing Town immediately wrote a letter and dispatched someone to deliver it to Sui County.

Ten days later, the county magistrate's aide visited Little River Village once again.

Perhaps because so many things had happened over the past year or two, or perhaps because they were used to receiving the advisor by now, the villagers were no longer as panicked as last time.

Gu Wen, Gu Chaoning, Yin Hongxue, and the village chief accompanied the advisor's party on a tour around the irrigation ditch system of Little River Village.

The advisor took it in stride, but his companions couldn't stop marveling at the bamboo tube water wheel.

Among them was a carpenter specially dispatched by the county magistrate, who couldn't take his eyes off the bamboo tube water wheel upon seeing it.

After his inspection, the advisor returned to the county seat that same night.

On the evening of the third day, the county sent word that, just like with the rice-fish farming method, all villages around Little River Village were to dig irrigation ditches and build bamboo tube water wheels, with the county government contributing twenty percent of the silver for each village.

The bamboo tube water wheel project was bigger than the rice-fish farming initiative, since its results were plain to see.

The messenger also brought fifty taels of silver as a reward from the county magistrate.

The bamboo tube water wheel had already spread from village to village, and now with the county magistrate's endorsement, every village was buzzing with activity.

Since the bamboo tube water wheels took time to produce, the villages started by digging the irrigation ditches together.

Several village chiefs even came all the way to invite Yin Hongxue to inspect the locations they had planned for their irrigation ditches.

A large bamboo tube water wheel was as tall as two men, and Gu Wen worked around the clock, turning one out every four days.

But there were simply too many to make, so he wrote to his master for help, and Carpenter Wang sent three workers to help out.

And so the work kept them busy right up to the end of the year.

By year's end, the irrigation ditches in most villages were nearly finished.

Even the ones not finished yet could be done with a few more days of hard work.

Worst case, there was still early spring.

The winter soil was frozen solid, making ditch-digging a real pain.

The main priority now was getting ready for the New Year.

Gu Wen hadn't expected to be busy right up to the New Year, so Gu Daniu led a crew to fix up the house in town.

In the fall, the family couldn't spare any hands, so they hired two day laborers to cut grass with Hao Laifu for the livestock's winter feed.

Fortunately, the pigs at home were either to be slaughtered or sold, which freed up a lot of feed.

This year, many households in Little River Village had some extra money and could enjoy a good New Year.

From the first household that began slaughtering pigs, the smell of meat started drifting through the village.

The Gu family, like always, scheduled their New Year pig slaughter for the twenty-sixth day of the twelfth lunar month.

That morning, they invited everyone over to join the fun.

This year, they slaughtered two pigs and also invited Gu Chaoning's uncle's family over to celebrate.

In the end, they also sent a pork leg home with the Chen family.

But there was one hiccup in the middle of it all.

With the New Year right around the corner, Young Master Chen still hadn't come back.

Landlord Chen had sent letters but gotten no replies.

In the end, he had to send a servant to check on him. He also came to Little River Village to see Gu Chaoning.

Gu Chaoning looked confused by Landlord Chen's inquiry.

"When I came back, Young Master Chen just said he was staying in the prefectural city to study."

He then emphasized how, every time he went to see Young Master Chen, he was always surrounded by a bunch of scholars.

Master Chen couldn't get any useful info and had to head back to Chen Family Village.

News didn't arrive until the morning of the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth lunar month.

Young Master Chen had returned.

But he came back limping.

And with him came ten toughs from the prefectural city.

"Young Master Chen actually racked up gambling debts in the prefectural city and gambled away all of Master Chen's family fortune."

Gu Wen clicked his tongue twice, took a sip of tea, and sighed again.

"Master Chen had a good run for nearly his whole life, and who'd have thought his son would ruin it all at the very end."

Gu Daniu couldn't help sighing too.

"He said he was studying in the prefectural city, but I never thought Young Master Chen would actually change."

Gu Chaoning sat nearby listening, his expression calm. Noticing Yin Hongxue's tea was finished, he casually refilled the cup.

The whole Master Chen business was quite the drama; even with New Year right around the corner, Chen Family Village and the surrounding hamlets were all buzzing about it.

When Gu Chaoning, Yin Hongxue, and the others went out, they could still hear people shaking their heads and marveling.

"Oh, you should have seen it—when Master Chen heard the news, his face went white as a sheet, and with a 'thud,' he keeled over on the spot."

The Gu family, though, didn't pay it much attention.

On New Year's Eve, the twenty-ninth of the twelfth month, after a big New Year's dinner at home, the family gathered in the main hall, huddled around a brazier of burning coals.

This year, they'd bought a bunch of firecrackers for the kids, and Gu Muan dragged Yin Hongxue and Gu Chaoning outside to play with them.

The kids didn't care about the cold and stayed out until they'd used up every last firecracker before heading back to the main hall.

Once inside, feeling the warm glow of the fire, they finally felt how cold it was outside.

Their faces and hands, numb from the cold, now stung and prickled like they'd been rubbed with chili peppers.

There was ginger tea simmering on the stove.

Chen Youyan closed the main hall door tight and wedged a stool against it.

Wang Xiuxiu poured each of the three kids a bowl of ginger tea and waited until they'd all drunk it before letting them sit by the fire to warm up.

As usual, the kids couldn't fight off their drowsiness; around nine or ten at night, Gu Muan and Yin Hongxue were too sleepy to keep their eyes open.

After New Year's, time seemed to fly by.

In the end, the town house wasn't rented out or sold; instead, Chen Youyan and Gu Wen moved the three kids into town to stay there.

The reason was that after the sixth day of the New Year, Yin Hongxue started going back to town every day for lessons at Painter Cen's place.

The kid would leave shivering and come back shivering.

Seeing this, the adults talked it over that very night, packed up on the seventh, and on the eighth, with the weather being good, moved right into the town house.

Once they got to the house, everyone, adults and kids alike, kept busy, first lighting charcoal braziers in every room and boiling big pots of water in the kitchen to scrub the place down.

The braziers burned for a whole day and night, and on the morning of the ninth, Gu Daniu and Wang Xiuxiu headed back to Xiaohe Village.

Yin Hongxue found it much easier getting from town to Painter Cen's house, and when he came home in the evenings, his hands and feet weren't freezing cold anymore, and his cheeks weren't all red.

The town house was big with roomy rooms; Gu Chaoning's room had a small study, and Gu Wen fixed it up specially and took him out to buy some books to fill it.

The second day after they moved in, Gu Muan was already playing with the neighbor kid, and even brought home some pastries that evening.

Chen Youyan, appreciating the gesture, sent over some homemade cured meat to the neighbors.

Neighbors in town weren't as close as in the village, but things were friendly enough, and Chen Youyan and Gu Wen gradually got to know a few folks.

Plus, since it was easier to get around town, he got closer to Feng Qiuling.

So life became interesting and pleasant.

Once the ground thawed in spring, Gu Wen took Gu Chaoning back to Xiaohe Village, while Wang Xiuxiu stayed in town to keep Chen Youyan and the two kids company.

But since there were no men around, Gu Wen and Gu Daniu would come back every two or three days.

As spring plowing got closer, villages sent people to invite them over to help and give advice, and the county magistrate even sent someone to learn, so they had to host them.

Half of Xiaohe Village still hadn't tried the rice-fish farming method from last year, and they had to go around to each household to check on things.

Luckily, the ones who'd tried the rice-fish farming method last year pitched in to help.

Otherwise, even if Gu Daniu, Gu Wen, and Gu Chaoning split themselves three ways, they still couldn't have handled it.

They worked hard and kept busy until spring plowing was done, and finally got a chance to catch their breath.

The person the county sent didn't leave and went down to the fields every day to observe.

But thankfully, they didn't need Gu Chaoning and the others to tag along.

After spring plowing, the villages finished up the irrigation ditches they hadn't completed last year.

In short, all spring long, nobody in any village had much free time.

What was satisfying was that all their hard work wasn't for nothing.

In the paddy fields, rice and fish grew together day by day, and the ditches between the dry fields, flowing with water, connected them like jade ribbons.

If someone from another town came by, they'd see that the folks in Dukou Town were all in high spirits.

When summer came, the winter wheat, which had been watered all through its growing season by water drawn with bamboo tube waterwheels, finally came to harvest.

With plenty of water, almost every wheat ear was longer and heavier, and the grains were fuller than before.

After the harvest, everyone knew this was a bumper crop—a real one, yielding two to three tenths more grain than before.

The result sent the whole town of Dukou into a frenzy, and the buzz lasted well into autumn.

From the start of the wheat harvest, anyone walking through Dukou Town could hear people around them talking about rice-fish farming and bamboo tube waterwheels.

"Oh, you have no idea—my family got three-tenths more grain."

"You got that much? You really know how to work your fields."

"Paddy fish—delicious paddy fish!"

"You're asking about that? The bamboo tube waterwheel—it's not just pretty, it draws water too. See those? My son can water the fields from that far."

"What? You outsiders really are... Well, you've got a point there."

"Yeah, Gu Chaoning's rice-fish farming, Yin Hongxue's bamboo tube waterwheel—oh, you outsiders sure know how to come up with names."

"Oh, right, this one—it's Gu Chaoning's rice-fish farming method. Not only does the rice grow well, but the fish taste great too."

"Mhm, this is Yin Hongxue's bamboo tube waterwheel. Why does it work? Oh, I can't say for sure—maybe you should figure it out yourself."

...

"County magistrate, this is this season's harvest from Dukou Town, collected personally by our people along with the town head."

The magistrate took the two thin sheets of paper and sat in silence for a long time, deep in thought.

This result could be called a town-wide bumper crop.

Whether it was rice or wheat, almost every household saw an increase of two to three-tenths in grain, and with the fish on top of that...

The magistrate's eyes got a little red.

With an achievement like this alone, his promotion was within reach!

Excellent—Gu Chaoning of Xiaohe Village, Yin Hongxue of Xiaohe Village.

Two lucky stars.