Chapter 36: Bountiful Sweet Potato Harvest

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"Aiwen, be good. Let's wait until next year to go to school. Didn't your brother Xiaohu start school at the age of six? Be obedient!"

"No, I want to go to school! I want to go to school with Xiaohu Ge!"

Liu Xiujuan had no choice but to negotiate with the teacher to enroll Aiwen in school.

Aiwen got his wish and was successfully enrolled in school. He became a student at Longtou Elementary School. However, he also made a promise to the teacher that if he caused any trouble during class or didn't perform well on exams, he wouldn't be allowed to continue attending.

Initially, the teacher thought that this little guy was just following his brother Xiaohu for fun. But to everyone's surprise, Aiwen was very attentive during class and consistently did well in class assignments. He learned to read exceptionally fast, and after a month, he scored second-highest in the class on a test. In the second test, he even secured the first place.

This astonished Teacher Long. He went from initially dismissing Aiwen to liking him and even began to wonder if children should start school earlier.

Tang Ailian secretly sighed; her brother seemed to be developing into a little scholar of the past.

By late October, it was finally harvest season. Two-thirds of the sweet potato fields in Longtou Village had produced a high yield, with each mu (a unit of area) yielding over 2,200 pounds of sweet potatoes. However, the remaining one-third of the rice fields produced no grains, just like the other production teams' rice.

Many production teams regretted not following Longtou Production Team's example and replacing rice with sweet potatoes. Especially those who had been talking arrogantly before, they were now eating their own words.

Tang Ailian's family also had a bountiful harvest of sweet potatoes from their two-thirds of the self-cultivated land. The sweet potatoes in their field grew exceptionally large, with the biggest one weighing as much as 6 catties (a Chinese weight unit equivalent to 500 grams). Liu Xiujuan would dig up a bunch of sweet potatoes every day after work, and she continued this routine for twenty days. Calculating it at 100 catties per dou (a Chinese unit of volume), they had more than 2,000 catties of sweet potatoes.

Oh my, with two-thirds of a field yielding over 2,000 catties, wouldn't it be tens of thousands of catties per mu? Liu Xiujuan dared not tell anyone about their sweet potato harvest; others would definitely find it abnormal. She had a feeling that their sweet potatoes had benefited from Master Ailian's intervention with Ling Water.

Tang Ailian, of course, knew that it was her who had used Ling Water on the sweet potatoes.

Fortunately, she always dug up and brought the sweet potatoes back home after work, and it would be dark when she returned. So, no one knew how many sweet potatoes they had harvested.

Thinking about her daughter, she would put a few sweet potatoes in her pocket every time she dug them up and hide them under her bed.

Seeing how many sweet potatoes they had, Old Lady Tang was naturally delighted. She had forgotten about the arguments she had with her daughter-in-law when it came to planting sweet potatoes. Now, she was only worried that it was a disaster year, and if anyone found out they had so many sweet potatoes, it wouldn't be good. She needed to find a good way to hide them.

However, with so many sweet potatoes, it wasn't easy to hide them.

"Grandma, I want to eat dried sweet potatoes," Tang Ailian said in a sweet, childish voice.

Old Lady Tang's heart skipped a beat, and she realized that dried sweet potatoes were an excellent way to store them. They didn't take up much space and could last for a long time.

She smiled at Tang Ailian, agreeing to her request, "Alright, Grandma will make some dried sweet potatoes for you."

As a result, apart from the big bag of sweet potatoes hidden under Liu Xiujuan's bed, the rest of the 2,000 catties of sweet potatoes were turned into dried sweet potatoes by Old Lady Tang, sun-dried, and stored upstairs.

While other production teams were struggling, the people of Longtou Production Team were all smiles. They had a bountiful harvest of sweet potatoes, and they had already paid their communal grain for the first half of the year. These sweet potatoes were all their own, to be consumed sparingly. Even if there was a locust plague next year, they could still get by.

Hearing from the team leaders that Tang Ailian's master had predicted two years of drought for the next two years, and after the drought they experienced this year, they all believed that there would indeed be a drought next year. These sweet potatoes were their lifeline.

Long Jiusheng looked at the sweet potatoes piled up in the warehouse, feeling very happy. He felt fortunate that he had listened to Tang Ailian's advice and planted two-thirds of their land with sweet potatoes. At the same time, he regretted not following her advice to replace all their rice with sweet potatoes.

At some point, Deputy Team Leader Long Wanqiu stood behind him and asked, "Jiusheng, with this bountiful sweet potato harvest, do you have any plans?"

Long Jiusheng chuckled, "Of course, I plan to thank Tang Ailian's master properly."

"I meant, do you have any plans for handling all these sweet potatoes?" Long Wanqiu asked with some concern.

"Handling? Ah, right. These sweet potatoes can't just be left here; they might spoil. I thought about having some women in the team make dried sweet potatoes. They can last one or two years without spoiling," Long Jiusheng replied.

(End of this chapter)