Witty Wife, Better Life-Chapter 75 - 73 Busy

“By the way, sister-in-law, you don’t have to go digging for veggies anymore. I’ve brought what you need, just pick it up when you come for the milk tonight.”

Ever since Xiaojuan tried yogurt for the first time, she became fond of it. To secure it for her child, Dashuan’s wife shamelessly came to ask Shen Yunfang, even offering to work for her without pay in exchange for the milk.

Shen Yunfang, of course, didn’t agree, but she did give Xiaojuan from the Wang Family two big bowls of milk every day, one to drink before bed and the other to make yogurt for the following day.

Shen Yunfang explained to Dashuan’s wife how to make yogurt with goat milk and how to consume it, which touched her deeply.

“Then I won’t stand on ceremony with you,” said Dashuan’s wife, who had spent enough time with Shen Yunfang to understand her personality. She knew that when Yunfang offered something, she genuinely wanted to give it, and if she hesitated, Yunfang would actually feel upset.

“Stand on ceremony for what, it’s no big deal,” Shen Yunfang said nonchalantly, waving her hand dismissively.

Building the fence wasn’t particularly exhausting, but it was time-consuming. So by the time they heard the sound of the work gong, the project was only halfway done. They estimated that if they buckled down that evening, they could finish it.

Shen Yunfang locked the front door, shouldered her basket, took a small shovel, and led the goats up the mountain.

After entering the woods and finding a place lush with wild vegetables, she tied the lead goat and chose a secluded spot to squat down and start digging for plants.

Yes, since the beginning of May, the wild grasses and vegetables on the mountains had started growing wildly. Some kids from the village, not quite adults, had started going up the mountain together to dig for vegetables.

They were all from poor families. While the parents went to work for work points, these kids had to become half a labor force, and these days, they would go to the mountain slopes to dig for wild vegetables almost daily.

Shen Yunfang didn’t fancy mingling too much with the villagers, so she never went to the nearby slopes for vegetables, always opting to take her goats deeper into the mountains to dig. It was mainly because she had too many secrets, and even now, going to work, she still brought along her family’s two small goats. She avoided contact with people as much as possible out of fear that someone might discover her goats and report her.

Because she was careful in her actions, and her house was located far from the village, no one had discovered her secret so far.

Shen Yunfang’s skill at foraging was quite high. Squatting in one place, she wasn’t particular about picking a certain type. As long as pigs could eat it, she would harvest it, and thus she could fill a basket in no time.

When the basket could hold no more, she would directly store the produce in her space. Taking advantage of the abundant and tender wild vegetables available at this time, she planned to save a good amount for later when the weather turned cold to feed the pigs and chickens.

The growth rate of wild vegetables was very fast; after a few more days she wouldn’t need to dig them up anymore but could harvest them with a sickle instead.

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Seeing the corn in the backyard shoot up considerably, Shen Yunfang moved the chickens from the front yard to the back. With the addition of little ducks and geese, there was a large flock, yet when released into the field, they did not appear to be crowded.

In the meantime, there was some good news: the mushroom logs Yunfang had prepared herself finally started to sprout mushrooms, and in about ten to eight days, they would have grown large.

When you have nothing, you worry, and when you have something, you still worry. Shen Yunfang found herself in this phase right now.

The mushrooms were visibly growing, but she was concerned about what to do with them after they were harvested.

If she kept them to enjoy slowly at her leisure, that would be fine, but seeing that her funds were nearly depleted, she was itching to sell them.

As she wavered back and forth, time moved into June.

The mushrooms had already been harvested twice, amounting to more than thirty pounds. With the mushroom logs in the western room still available, she guessed she could harvest around one hundred and eighty pounds once those logs were spent. But now, Yunfang didn’t have time to think about how to sell the mushrooms; she was too busy, and could only store the harvested mushrooms in her space, leaving the sales for when she was free.

So what was Shen Yunfang busy with?

Three things. First, the family’s chickens, ducks, and geese had grown to be half-sized and could be let out to free-range, but she needed to train them first, lest they wander off and not know how to return. Therefore, every morning she found herself with an extra task: herding her family’s ducks and geese towards the creek at the village entrance where everyone in the village who raised ducks and geese let theirs roam. The chickens were simply herded out from the backyard and would conscientiously return home at the sound of her tapping their feed pan when she got home in the evening.

Free-ranging held enormous benefits, with the most important being the saving of grain. Letting them go out to find their own food meant they would eat less at home when they returned half full. It was perfect.

Second, she was busy digging edible plants on the mountain. This time they were not just ordinary wild vegetables but mountain wild vegetables – adding just one character made a huge difference.

In her past life, Shen Yunfang had never lived in the mountains and was thus very familiar with the wild vegetables available everywhere, but she knew very little about the mountain wild vegetables that only grew in mountainous areas.

She came to know about them during one trip to the mountains following Brother Dashuan’s wife, where she noticed the woman’s foraging and decided not to ask questions but to observe carefully and dig the same types she did.

After returning home and trying the bracken ferns prepared by Brother Dashuan’s wife, Yunfang became fond of them. Now was the most tender time for bracken ferns; in a while, they would age and lose their taste.

Time was pressing, so whenever Shen Yunfang had a break from her regular job, she would head to the mountain to dig up bracken ferns.

The third matter was that the earthworms had almost finished breeding. The kang (a traditional heated bed) in the western room was topped with four wooden boxes, and six more boxes were arranged on a wooden shelf on the floor. It seemed the wooden boxes were now so packed with earthworms that she had no more space to divide them further.

The wooden shelves on the western room floor had always been there. Although she was busy with outdoor chores in the past months, she had not forgotten to grow leeks indoors. Later, when the earthworms began to proliferate and required space, Yunfang noted that the weather outside was warming up enough to transfer the indoor leeks outside, to grow as much as they could. After several harvests of the leeks, it was time for them to rest.

Then, the bottom shelves in the western room were all utilized for rearing earthworms in wooden boxes, and on the second layer above, she prepared several dozen more mushroom logs.

Once the mushrooms on the top were harvested, the logs on the second layer would be ready to fruit, making the process seamless and continuous.

Now that there really was no more room for the earthworms, Shen Yunfang began to spare time in the morning and evening to sort the earthworms, washing, boiling, and drying the mature ones to be stored as feed.