The next day, Tian Jing, still worried, came to check again. Seeing Jiqing and Jixiang following behind Little Black, pulling a mop together, she smiled:
"Are Jiqing and Jixiang helping Aunt Li with chores?"
"Captain Tian."
"Little Great-Aunt."
"Little Great-Aunt."
"Mmm." Tian Jing nodded to Li Wanting and squatted down to ask Jiqing and Jixiang if they had slept well last night and if they were used to the food in the cafeteria.
The two brothers nodded together, indicating that they slept well, ate well, and played well.
Tian Jing patted the little heads of the two children: "Then Little Great-Aunt is relieved. I won't be coming to see you for a while."
"Mmm." The two brothers nodded and continued to pull the mop: "We will mop the floor."
"Jiqing and Jixiang are really capable." After praising them a few words, Tian Jing left with peace of mind, as she had to guard the Kushan mountain.
...
After several days of exploration, Zhangshan Village finally located a spring under a large rock in the back mountain.
Wang Zhongfei convened a village meeting and conveyed the town's requirement to transform the grape sheds into a grape picking park.
He informed the villagers about the plan to charge for the spring water from Zhonghe Village, and how he, in consideration of the villagers, had hired geological exploration experts to find a new spring.
He asked the villagers if they wanted to open the spring.
The villagers, of course, wanted to.
"Alright," Wang Zhongfei said, having waited for this response: "The exploration costs and the costs of opening the spring will be entirely borrowed from the bank. This loan will be deducted from the income generated by grape picking."
"Additionally, because the Zhonghe Village wine factory was destroyed by villagers from our village, our grape sheds, like Zhonghe Village, have become picking parks."
"Regardless of the income from picking, we have clearly become beneficiaries, and Zhonghe Village has become a victim."
"Therefore, twenty percent of the income from grape picking will be used to compensate Zhonghe Village, and you are not allowed to have any objections."
"Those who have objections will hand over their sheds and will be assigned by the village to plant."
"Back then, if Mayor Li could manage the vegetable and watermelon sheds without the villagers of Kushan, I can too."
"Meeting adjourned. Villagers with nothing to do, go and gather cow dung first, otherwise, I'm afraid you won't have enough cow dung to fertilize the grape trees."
"There was so much cow dung in Zhangshan Village that it was thrown into the flowing wells of Zhonghe Village. The fertilization task can definitely be guaranteed, right?"
"Otherwise, wouldn't we be ridiculed by Zhonghe Village? Right? Get moving quickly and go to your relatives' villages to pick up dung."
The joy of the villagers of Zhangshan Village not being controlled by Zhonghe Village turned into the bitterness and embarrassment of having to go everywhere to pick up cow dung.
No matter how embarrassing and bitter, they had to go, because the town had issued a mandatory regulation: grape trees must be fertilized with cow dung and irrigated with spring water.
Tian Jing couldn't help but laugh heartily when her husband told her that the villagers of Zhangshan Village were visiting relatives to pick up cow dung:
"Wang Zhongfei is a talented person, even more so than you. What is Zhonghe Village doing?"
Tian Jing didn't believe that Zhonghe Village's cow dung could be used.
Speaking of Zhonghe Village's actions, Li Zhengguo praised: "Zhonghe Village has made a big investment this time."
Of the ten thousand yuan fine imposed on the Tian family, only three thousand yuan had been paid so far.
Peng Tie, the village head of Zhonghe Village, approached the town and requested that the town take over the debt of seven thousand yuan from the Tian family.
He then obtained a loan of twenty thousand yuan and took about a dozen villagers to buy beef cattle calves.
He planned to have every household in Zhonghe Village raise a cow:
"Peng Tie said this is a gamble. Every household raising beef cattle will ensure cow dung. After the beef cattle grow up, they can also sell beef."
"The price of beef is getting higher and higher. If beef cattle farming can be established, Zhonghe Village's development will be driven by both farming and animal husbandry."
"I agreed to Peng Tie's request, and half of the dry seedlings from the nursery will be sold to Zhonghe Village each month as feed for the cattle."
Tian Jing nodded. The dry seedlings each month were too much for Kushan Mountain to feed chickens and rabbits.
"I didn't expect Zhonghe Village, which has always been hesitant, to take a risk this time."
"They were forced to," Li Zhengguo chuckled. "Wealth was within reach, but it was destroyed by the jealousy of Zhangshan Village."
"So they decided to forge their own path and use the real cow dung from raising cattle to suppress Zhangshan Village's grape picking."
"I'm quite idle now, watching how these two villages will compete."
"You're watching a show?" Tian Jing chided him. "This is a mistake in your work."
"Mistake or not," Li Zhengguo said indifferently, "Now, I'm not giving advice to the two villages. I'll just watch the feasibility of their plans and approve their loans."
Half a month later, Zhonghe Village returned with six trucks of over three hundred calves, causing a stir in several villages.
The next day, Peng Tie invited the town leaders to visit Zhonghe Village to see if any improvements were needed.
The cow sheds were uniformly built against the west courtyard wall of the front yard, occupying half of the front yard's open space and half of the open space outside the yard.
This meant that the west courtyard wall of each house was demolished and rebuilt into a cow shed.
The cow sheds were four meters high, and from a distance, the west courtyard walls of each household looked like small blockhouses. The low walls of the cow sheds were 1.2 meters high, and along the inner side of the low walls were troughs 80 centimeters high.
The ground inside the cow sheds was paved with cement, and a layer of grass was spread inside, serving as the cows' sleeping nests.
Li Zhengguo thought it was good. It was neat, and to achieve this in just over twenty days was quite impressive.
"To make the cow sheds a highlight, hygiene must be maintained. If necessary, clean them twice or three times a day."
"Otherwise, if the village is filled with the smell of cow dung and buzzing flies, it will be counterproductive."
Peng Tie nodded. He had already warned the villagers: if they failed to comply, their calves would be confiscated, and the cow sheds would be demolished.
With Zhonghe Village so ostentatiously inviting town leaders, other villages would surely come to visit as well.
The village heads of the three villages in Kushan Mountain, even if they didn't need to raise cattle, came to learn from Zhonghe Village's boldness.
And of course, the village officials of Zhangshan Village.
Wang Zhongfei looked on with envy. What he envied was the obedience of the villagers of Zhonghe Village led by Peng Tie.
He wondered when his Zhangshan Village would be so efficiently governed.
Peng Tie smiled and said: "We also have to thank the Tian brothers from Zhangshan Village. It was they who ignited the villagers' ambition. The villagers said they must not be defeated by cow dung."
Wang Zhongfei's mouth twitched.
The deputy village head and accountant of Zhangshan Village had been privately criticizing their village head for only telling them to pick up cow dung and not thinking of raising cattle before Zhonghe Village.
Hearing Peng Tie's sarcasm at this moment, they blushed with shame.
When Tian Jing heard her husband talk about this matter, she laughed and said that the Tian brothers had finally done something good.
...
Ouyang Meihua and her husband, after being taken around by Ouyang Lei for over ten days, returned in a hurry.
It was already March, and after the Awakening of Insects, the nursery would have to resume work. If she hadn't wanted her husband, the "frog in the well," to have a good look at the capital, she would have returned long ago.
The chickens her mother-in-law had brought were almost gone, leaving only rabbits.
If she didn't leave soon, those dried wild game would also be eaten up. Wouldn't it be better for them to eat at Kushan Mountain?
She felt pained that what they had painstakingly brought was being eaten by them. Her mother-in-law, however, didn't mind, saying that they were tired from traveling and should eat well upon their return.
Her mother-in-law only went out once and never wanted to go out again.
She complained that taking buses and subways was too crowded, that traveling took too much time on the road, and that all they saw were houses and walls, with nothing interesting.
She said that even if they drove her out, she wouldn't go, saying that it took a whole day to walk through the Forbidden City, which tired her feet. She couldn't imagine how the concubines and palace maids walked in their platform shoes.
When she returned, she told her sister-in-law these words. Her sister-in-law just smiled and said that modern people didn't understand the thinking of the ancients.
But Ouyang Meihua's true intention was not to ask about this. She wanted to ask her sister-in-law: "Are you really leaving Lili at home?"
"Of course," Tian Jing nodded. "I never wanted to marry her off in the first place. Now that Hao Hao and the others are in a difficult situation, it's only natural that I keep Lili."
Ouyang Meihua then asked: "Will the children born later really have the surname Li? Will Hao Hao's wives agree?"
"Do I need to listen to their opinions?" Tian Jing said indignantly. "They have to agree to this before they get married."
"If they go back on their word later, I can also go back on my word and make sure they don't get a cent."
"If they don't get their parents' old-age support and still have opinions, then they are really too ambitious."
"No," Ouyang Meihua waved her hand. "You didn't understand what I meant. They are not fighting, but can't they earn for the children?"
"With such a large family business in your hands, who wouldn't be envious?"
"Lili will take care of you in your old age, and Hao Hao's wives won't object."
"Lili's children will have the surname Li, so they will get their rightful share."
Ouyang Meihua left. Tian Jing thought for a long time and felt that what Ouyang Meihua said was indeed something that needed to be clarified in advance.
In the future, each child would only get what their own family earned. There was no reason for the grandchildren to redistribute.