bookcurios Chapter 224 Asking about the work
Chapter 224 Asking about the work
With eight more people helping, the Song family's summer harvest speed visibly caught up with the families in the village with more strong laborers.
Some families in the village who were short of manpower and had to temporarily stop their jelly business came to their senses when they saw how fast Song Zhi's family was busy with farming.
There is absolutely no need for them to stop business temporarily!
Now is the hottest time of the year and the best time to sell jelly.
Using the money earned from selling jelly to hire people to work will not affect the jelly business. Isn't that killing two birds with one stone?
In their original thinking, making money from the jelly business was just a small thing.
The farming season must not be missed, as plowing and harrowing the fields is related to the family's food supply for the coming year.
The villagers who turned the corner immediately found people to help them harvest the crops through their own means.
In this way, the entire Songjia Village presented a busy scene.
Some were harvesting wheat, some were threshing wheat, and some were carrying loads. Even with eight more laborers in Song Zhi's family, it still took the family seven or eight days to thresh all the wheat.
Of course, harvesting the crops is not the end of the story. The land still needs to be plowed, turned over, sown, watered and fertilized.
At this time, the fertilizer that Song Zhi had fermented came in handy.
Because fertilizers were scarce in the past, our family always had to fertilize the best fields with good soil fertility and high yields first.
The next best is the medium-quality field. As for the inferior field, when sowing, there is not much fertilizer left, or only some wood ash can be used as a substitute, which is better than nothing.
The most direct consequence of doing this is that the fields with poor soil fertility cannot get fertilizer, so the crops grown there are of varying quality and have low yields.
This time, the three pits of fertilizer that Song Zhi fermented were just in time for sowing.
After another busy half month, all the work of sowing, fertilizing and irrigation was finally completed.
After the sowing was completed, Song Youshan did not relax, but paid close attention to the changes in the fields. Every morning and evening, he would personally inspect the fields to determine the growth of the crops.
He knew very well that farming was three parts planting and seven parts management, and the later management and maintenance were the key to determining the harvest.
As for the crops nourished by fertilizer, it was visibly more vigorous than those in the neighboring fields. This made Song Youshan even more convinced of the feasibility of this method of composting.
Of course, this is all in the past!
After finishing the last day, Song Zhiru settled the women's wages as usual.
When the women received their wages, they were all beaming with joy, and even the fatigue of the past few days was relieved a lot.
The money they earned in this half month was more than what they earned in two months.
The employer was also very generous. He would provide them with a meat dish for lunch every day, and a bowl of green bean soup to cool them down in the afternoon.
This suddenly ended their earning power, and the women were actually a little reluctant.
When everyone had collected their money and was about to leave, Madam Liu hesitated for a long time before speaking to Song Zhi:
"Miss Song, if you need to weed or fertilize the fields in the future, please let me know. I can do any job."
When the woman walking behind heard Madam Liu ask this question, she couldn't help but stop and prick up her ears to listen to the conversation between the two.
They lived in the same alley and their families were in similar circumstances.
Families that are better off have a man to support them at home, but those that are more difficult, like Madam Liu's family, have to support the whole family by herself.
Life was indeed very difficult.
Now that he saw that Song Zhi was generous in paying wages, he thought of greeting her first. If she could still come to work, or when the autumn harvest came, he could hire her again. It would be a rare and good job.
This reminded Song Zhi that she still had a lot of wool to be spun into thread.
So she smiled and said, "Well, I do have some spinning to do right now, but it's too late now. If you'd like to do it, come home tomorrow and I'll show you how to do it."
"Later, you can take the work home and do it, and then bring me the spun wool yarn."
When Liu heard this, she was overjoyed and promised repeatedly, "Yes, yes, I will come tomorrow!"
The other women who had heard the whole process could no longer bear it and began to express their desire to do the same job.
Spinning wool is a delicate job that requires a lot of labor, and Song Zhi also intends to develop manpower for herself.
So he said welcomingly, "Of course you can. If you are interested, you can come to my house tomorrow at 9:00 PM."
"I should be home by then. I'll show you all how to do it first. You can see if you can get the hang of it and then decide whether to do it or not."
The women happily agreed one after another, and one of them couldn't help asking, "How much money can we make from spinning this thread in a day?"
Song Zhi smiled and said, "I don't pay by the day for this job."
"I will provide you with a basket of wool by the kilogram. If you help me spin it into yarn, I will give you a hundred coins. If you want to make more money, it depends on how fast you are."
"If someone were to slack off and fill in for me, barely spinning a thread or two in a few days, and yet still demand the same wages as someone who works diligently and conscientiously, I'd feel bad, and others wouldn't feel good either. Aunt, is that right?"
Song Zhi spoke very frankly, and the women nodded in agreement after hearing it.
Liu quickly expressed her opinion: "That makes sense. The more you work, the more you get; the less you work, the less you get. This is fair and just. I have no objection."
The other women followed suit, saying, "Madam Song, don't worry. We are all neighbors and we always do things in moderation. We will never be lazy or slack off."
So the matter was settled.
After seeing the woman off, Song Zhi returned home. For the past month, her family had been busy all the time, and it was rare for them to have a moment of leisure time like today.
When Mrs. Wu saw her granddaughter coming back, she patted the stool beside her and beckoned, "Come over here and have some water and rest for a while."
Song Zhi walked over to Grandma, picked up the bowl and took a sip of the mint apricot jam water, which was refreshing.
In such hot weather, drinking a bowl of cool drink like this can dispel the heat in your heart. It feels so good!
Grandma was discussing the topic of paying taxes with uncle.
Song Youshan said, "The Wang family's steward will probably come to collect rent in a few days. I've already weighed out all the grain that needs to be paid. The harvest is good this year, and Master Wang has reduced the rent for us. This way, we can save a lot of food!"
"As for paying taxes at the government office, we must go with everyone else. Once everyone has dried the wheat, we will go to the county office with the clan leader and others to pay taxes."