Chapter 581: Chapter 581: Cursing Out Loud
However, Mrs. Chen’s rice fields were in Xianggui Town, and Gu Dagui went to the rice fields in Xianggui Town two days early, set up a shelter there to live in, and with the help of He Wanli, found some local farmers in Xianggui Town to hire them to harvest the rice.
Mrs. Chen was very distressed: "If the rice fields were closer to home, our own family could go and harvest them, there would be no need to hire others. Now just hiring people for the harvest is costing us a lot of money, it’s truly a loss."
Third Grandma looked at her penny-pinching ways and scoffed, "Your family has thirty acres of rice fields. If you don’t hire people, could the four of you finish harvesting them? You would be exhausted and still couldn’t finish the work."
Mrs. Chen was scolded and felt unhappy for a while, but somehow she cheered up again, and proudly boasted, "Third Aunt is right, we’re no longer just farmers, we’re landlords now, where do you see landlords harvesting their own crops without hiring others?"
Aren’t you a landlord if you don’t hire people to work for you?
"No, that won’t do. Dagui is too honest and might be taken advantage of by the laborers. I have to rush over there tomorrow to keep an eye on the workers, to prevent them from bullying Dagui and wasting our grains."
Third Grandma was resigned: "Are you worried about Dagui being bullied, or do you just want to put on airs as a landlady? You better calm down a bit. If you run over there like that, Dagui’s going to argue with you again."
Mrs. Chen wasn’t scared at all: "So what if we argue? Which husband doesn’t argue with his wife? The more we argue, the better our life gets."
Dagui is fond of her, there’s no way he wouldn’t want her. Her making a fuss now and then would also keep her in Dagui’s thoughts.
Third Grandma couldn’t be bothered with her anymore: "Just take your sharpened rice knives and be on your way, old lady; I don’t have the time to listen to your prattling."
A rice knife is a sickle, used specifically for harvesting rice and wheat crops.
Mrs. Chen had said enough, carrying the two sharpened rice knives home, she looked at the sickles and said, "Hiring others is actually quite cost-effective, saves the money for buying rice knives too."
The farmers that come to harvest bring their own rice knives and do not use the farming tools of the householders.
Xuanhu Fang, aware that Gu Jinli and the others were busy harvesting rice, learned that the pharmaceutical workshop had finished making the twenty thousand bottles of tooth powder and sent people ahead of time to inspect the goods.
Xuanhu Fang had a new batch of staff arrive, who, although not as capable as Mu Tong and the others, were also knowledgeable in medicine and competent workers. They busied from morning till evening, a full day’s work, and finally inspected all the tooth powder, paying the remaining seventeen hundred taels of payment.
Gu Jinli, after receiving the silver note, was so happy that she put it away.
Doctor Wu also said: "Manager Zhang and Manager Cheng wrote to say the tooth powder is selling extremely well; wealthy families are buying it for each and every member, and since each bottle only contains one tael, which isn’t much, it gets used up quickly, so you have to make more. Otherwise, these twenty thousand bottles won’t last long before you run out of stock."
Initially, Doctor Wu was puzzled why this girl, who disliked trouble, would only package one tael of tooth powder per bottle which increased the time for inspection. Now he understood; this was a strategy to package less, consume quickly, and sell more. She really was resourceful, and he was convinced.
He added, "In a few days, I’ll arrange to deliver another batch of bottles to you, so you won’t run out of bottles for the tooth powder."
Gu Jinli smiled: "Thank you, Grandpa Wu."
What in the world can make money sustainably? That would be consumables, especially consumables that wealthy people like.
Wealthy people don’t lack silver, and once they get used to a product, they will habitually buy it. Tooth powder and mosquito coils are universally used and quickly consumed; it’s right to produce and sell them.
After handing over the tooth powder, Gu Jinli’s families began to busily harvest rice.
Gu Jinli’s house had previously bought twenty acres of rice fields from Old Master Lu’s house, plus the eighty acres from Songzi Manor, totaling a hundred acres of rice fields. However, in Great Chu, the rice field yield was low, averaging just three hundred catties of rice per acre. Even so, her family harvested close to thirty thousand catties of rice, directly moving Third Grandpa and Third Grandma to tears.
"I never dreamed we could harvest so much grain, a whole ten thousand catties, and it’s all rice, which once husked turns into precious rice. That’s enough to eat for ten years without running out," Third Grandma said, wiping away tears, overcome with emotion.
The rest of the families also harvested quite a bit of rice, each collecting thousands of catties, which excited everyone tremendously.
Old Mrs. Yan had been poor all her life and was so thrilled to learn about the amount of grain harvested that she couldn’t bear it and fainted.
Old Mrs. Yan’s younger children, Gu Qingxi and Gui Niu, were scared and cried, and Jin Niu ran crying to Gu Jinli’s house to get help, which made Third Grandma anxious, and she hurriedly went to the pharmaceutical workshop to ask Uncle Dai to check in.
Uncle Dai quickly went to Old Mrs. Yan’s house and revived Old Mrs. Yan.
Upon hearing that his mother had fainted, Gu Damu hurried back and asked Uncle Dai, "Doctor Dai, is my mother alright?"
Uncle Dai replied, "Nothing serious, just needs to be careful from now on. The old lady’s health is quite depleted; it would be best to take this opportunity to consume medicinal soups for a year and a half to recuperate properly."
Gu Damu, being a filial son and with no shortage of money in the family, said eagerly, "Doctor Dai, just prescribe the medication, and we will definitely buy it for my mother to take."
After listening, Doctor Dai prescribed medicine for Old Mrs. Yan, "Three times a day for the first month, and then once a day after the month is over."
Doctor Dai, being a servant of Gu Jinli’s family, did not ask for a consultation fee, and instructed Gu Damu to take the prescription to Xuanhu Fang in town to get the medicine.
Old Mrs. Yan, having fainted, sighed with incredulity, "In the past, I would just endure sickness and get over it, never having the luxury to see a doctor and take medicine like this. I’m truly blessed now."
Third Grandma chuckled and said, "Just talk less and enjoy yourself."
After settling Old Mrs. Yan, the families got busy transporting the grain to the workshop compound for storage.
Since they were building shops, the families’ old mud houses had no extra space to store grain, so after discussing with Gu Dashan’s family, the grain was transported to the workshop compound. It was easy to clear a few rooms in the large five-section compound to store grain.
Half of Gu Jinli’s family’s grain was stored at Songzi Manor and half at the workshop compound, both places having granaries that could hold a lot of grain.
After the rice harvest was done, the families got busy harvesting dry-land crops.
These dry lands were purchased from Old Master Lu’s and the Zou family’s families, planted with crops such as soybeans, sweet potatoes, and overwintering vegetables at the time of purchase.
In Jianghuai and Jiangnan, winter wheat is planted, and after harvesting the wheat, they rush to plant soybeans and sweet potatoes, which are then harvested before deep autumn and winter.
After that, they got busy planting winter wheat in the dry lands.
In Jianghuai and Jiangnan, as the winter is not as cold as in the north, it is possible to plant winter wheat which is sown from mid to late October and harvested when it matures at Big Summer of the following year.
The families had been busy from early October to almost November, finally completing all the farming tasks.
"We even hired help, and it was still so exhausting. If we hadn’t hired help, it would have been deadly," Mrs. Chen said, rubbing her back. "It’s not easy being a landlady, having a lot of land can be exhausting."
But the sight of the grain in the storehouse made Mrs. Chen ecstatic again, feeling that all the hard work was worth it.
However, before she could enjoy this happiness for two days, the county government issued an edict increasing the grain tax.
The grain tax was increased by ten percent, from two out of ten to three out of ten.
Upon hearing this news, Mrs. Chen cursed on the spot: "An increase of ten percent in the grain tax, how much is that? Our family is still drinking porridge, and just as we thought about having dry rice, you increase the grain tax, what are you trying to do? Such bullying, I won’t live like this!"