Chapter 166: Chapter 162: Very Good-looking

The old lady sighed. “Assigning land to each household is fine. Dandan’s and Ding Bang’s household registrations are with the Public Security Bureau, so as a lone old woman, I won’t be allotted much land.”

He Xianghua smiled and said, “Great-aunt, our Lexing Team has more farmland than any of the other teams around here. Niu Bei Mountain and a few small, hilly plots are all going to be distributed. When all is said and done, you alone could get two mu of farmland, a two-fen private plot, and a vegetable patch.”

The old lady spread her hands and laughed. “Even if they gave me more land, I couldn’t farm it! Whichever one of your families wants to, just go ahead and use it. Just weigh out some grain rations for me each year, and I’ll be happy.”

Yang Meihua smiled and shook her head. “Great-aunt, there’s no need to give it to someone else to farm. When the time comes, you can just spend a little money to hire people to plant the rice shoots and harvest the grain. That’s all there is to it.”

He Xianghua nodded. “Exactly. Don’t mind how everyone acts when they work for the team, like they’ve been starved for three days. As soon as they start working their own land, they’ll be full of energy. There’ll be plenty of people looking for day labor then!”

He’d felt ever since the meeting that they should have assigned the land to individual households long ago.

When working for the production team, everyone slacked off. This was because the system had been set long ago: able-bodied men earned ten work points for a day of labor, women and the elderly earned seven to eight, and people like Lin Lan only got six.

In a team of several hundred people with no assigned tasks, most people thought, ’If others are slacking, why should I work so hard? I won’t get a single extra work point for it.’ As a result, work that could have been done in three days was dragged out to five.

The harvests grew worse with each passing year, and the grain distributed to the members dwindled. The members couldn’t eat their fill or stay warm, causing them to lose more and more faith in collective labor. In turn, the slacking only grew more severe.

Once the land was assigned to households, everything people produced—whether a lot or a little—was their own. If they finished their work early, they could even find odd jobs to earn extra money for their families!

“Yes!” Lin Lan laughed. “By that logic, Little Douzi and I will get four mu of land. How could I possibly farm all that by myself? I’ll have to hire people, too.”

The old lady nodded. Her thoughts turned to the ten-odd mu of winter-flooded paddies and the fish ponds at the foot of Niu Bei Mountain. She looked at He Xianghua and asked, “How will they divide up those winter paddies and fish ponds?”

He Xianghua thought for a moment. “After I got back from the meeting, we held a smaller one at the team headquarters. Plenty of people want the fish ponds. The winter paddies are the tricky part. From what I gather, Liu Guozhi wants to package them with the good plots for whichever families draw them.”

The old lady nodded. “Exactly. The fish ponds will generate a visible income throughout the year, but the winter paddies aren’t very useful anymore.”

Before the irrigation canals were built, the winter paddies were used to store water over the winter. This provided a water source for the following year’s rice crop, ensured the spring planting could happen on time, helped cultivate soil fertility, and increased drought resistance by retaining moisture.

Ever since the canals were constructed, the winter paddies didn’t serve much purpose. If they were really going to implement the household responsibility system, figuring out who to give those ten-odd mu of winter paddies to would be a real problem.

Lin Lan recalled something from her past life. There was a family that had a conflict with the team leader. When it came time to draw lots for the land, the team leader rigged it so that the lot their family drew assigned them several mu of land, more than half of which were winter paddies.

The family knew the team leader was deliberately targeting them, but they were powerless. No one else was willing to give up the good land they’d just received for a new drawing.

The whole family was furious for a few days, but then the son sought advice and came up with a plan. He hired workers to dig the paddies deeper, turning them into fish ponds. In less than two years, they became the wealthiest family in the team.

At this thought, Lin Lan smiled. “Brother-in-law He, the families who get the winter paddies will have to pay a smaller public grain levy and poll tax, won’t they?”

He Xianghua nodded. “They should. A winter paddy means losing a whole season’s income. Nobody would be willing to pay the same taxes as someone with prime farmland. The team committee is still meeting to discuss how exactly to divide up the land.”

Yang Meihua looked at Lin Lan. “Now that the land is being assigned to each household, I bet they’ll stop cracking down on small businesses. Lin Lan, you’re the one who’s going to be making the real money from now on.”

Lin Lan chuckled. “What I make is just hard-earned money. We’re still awake after you’ve gone to bed, and we’re up and working before you’ve even woken up.”

’I wonder when I can get to the provincial capital,’ she thought. ’I should see if they’re selling dough mixers, proofing boxes, or refrigerated cabinets yet. It would be even better if I could find an electric oven and some kind of vacuum sealer.’

Yang Meihua recalled Li Guizhi mentioning the other day that she had helped Lin Lan procure some rapeseed oil and beans, earning over a hundred yuan just from the autumn harvest. Half-joking, half-serious, she said, “Lin Lan, my family also has large white beans, fava beans, and the like. How about I collect some and sell them to you?”

’Even though her husband, Xiang Hua, was a deputy leader, he didn’t get any real benefits from the production team. It was better to be a factory worker, with a fixed monthly salary and all sorts of ration tickets. The team members worked themselves to death all year and weren’t even allotted a single jin of oil. By selling the beans to Lin Lan, they could earn an extra couple of cents.’

Lin Lan nodded readily. “As long as the quality is good, go ahead and get them. I need large white beans, fava beans, soybeans, peas, and both red and mung beans.”

Yang Meihua smiled. “You can rest assured about that. I won’t bring back anything that isn’t good.” ’I’ll head over to my parents’ home tomorrow and collect some,’ she thought.

After chatting for a while longer at the old lady’s house, they all went their separate ways.

After Little Douzi washed up and went to bed, Lin Lan and Lin Yuezhen finished mashing all the bean pastes. They prepared the mung bean cakes and pea cakes, placed them in a bamboo basket, and covered them with gauze.

The bean paste and red bean paste were put in a bamboo basket and covered with a damp white cloth. The pumpkin was left in the steamer, ready to be made into pumpkin cakes first thing in the morning.

Lin Lan glanced at her watch. It was already past eleven without her realizing it. The two of them washed up and fell into bed. It felt like she had barely fallen asleep when it was time to get up again.

They kneaded dough, cooked the pumpkin cakes, and rolled the kidney bean rolls. By the time they finished, it was already seven o’clock. Zhou Xiaohong arrived not long after the Wang Zhixue brothers had picked up their delivery.

After the morning market delivery was sent out and they had eaten breakfast, Little Douzi, Little Kai, and the other children left for school. Lin Lan and Lin Yuezhen started dismantling the gourd trellises in the vegetable patch.

The thick bamboo poles used as stakes were left in the garden, but all the thin bamboo canes were pulled out and stacked under the eaves behind the west wing. They uprooted the pumpkin, winter melon, and green bean vines—which had turned yellow and withered from the frost—and spread them out in the courtyard to dry into kindling.

The two of them worked all morning just to get the vegetable patch cleared. Then they turned over the soil, spread a layer of manure, and hoed it finely. They sowed seeds for stem mustard and bok choy, watered them, sprinkled some wood ash over the top, and finally covered everything with a thin layer of rice straw for insulation.

Lin Yuezhen gestured to Lin Lan, “We might as well dig up the potatoes in the private plot today. Then, once the vegetable seedlings are ready, we can plant them.”

“Good idea.”

Lin Lan grabbed a hoe and a basket and went to their private plot. She pulled up the potato vines, plucked the potatoes attached to them, and tossed them into the basket.

Just as the two of them were working up a storm, Li Xiangyang arrived at the courtyard gate on his bicycle. Wangcai, who had been lazing about, leaped up joyfully at the sight of him, wagging its tail and barking excitedly.

He had just set a basket of vegetables down in the yard when he noticed it was covered with drying vines. He turned and saw Lin Lan standing in the doorway. A smile touched his lips. “Are you digging? I’ll come help.”

“We’re digging up potatoes,” Lin Lan replied with a small smile. “Did you need something?”

He was wearing a navy-blue shirt today, its hem tucked neatly into black trousers. Over it, he wore a tunic jacket. The outfit was a little formal, but it looked very handsome.

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