Farm Girl's Manor
Chapter 1103 - 353: Cousin, The Child

Chapter 1103: Chapter 353: Cousin, The Child

After the Minor New Year, the festive atmosphere in the village grew thicker as each household began to prepare food for the New Year celebration. The scents of steaming, boiling, frying, and sautéing wafted on the breeze, making mouths water.

However, the heavy snow showed no sign of stopping. In just one night, the snow had reached knee height. Several houses in the village had collapsed. Watching their homes reduced to rubble in an instant, the villagers felt like crying but had no tears to shed. Thankfully, no one was injured.

Most people in the village were kind-hearted. Those who had spare rooms in their houses let the disaster-stricken villagers stay, and those without spare rooms gave away extra cotton-padded clothes and quilts to help keep them warm. With the help of the villagers, no one froze or starved to death.

In addition to worrying that their houses might collapse under the snow and become homeless, another source of anxiety for the villagers was the greenhouses in their fields. Despite people guarding them day and night, constantly heating them, some greenhouses were still crushed by the weight of the snow, and a lot of vegetables were frozen to death overnight, an undoubtedly significant loss.

Mo Yan was also at a loss. She couldn’t risk exposing Space by directly irrigating the vegetables with pure Spirit Spring Water. Doing so, aside from making the vegetables grow wildly overnight, might cause mutations, producing cucumbers bigger than winter melons, which would be far too frightening.

Nevertheless, the snow wasn’t going to stop any time soon, and the firewood stockpiled in the greenhouses simply wouldn’t last long enough. When it ran out, the vegetables would still freeze to death, and they’d fetch an even lower price.

Therefore, when Yang Bao hurried over to Mo Family to seek Mo Yan’s advice on a solution, Mo Yan decisively instructed him to tell the villagers to pick all the edible vegetables that had grown and try to sell them the same day.

Although this would mean earning much less Silver, it was better than the greenhouses collapsing and the vegetables becoming worthless. Furthermore, after selling vegetables for over two months, the villagers involved in the greenhouse planting had earned more than they had saved in ten years, and they already had enough Silver to build new houses next year.

After Yang Bao went back, he conveyed Mo Yan’s suggestion. The villagers thought it over and, finding no better alternative to minimize their losses, reluctantly agreed, even though it pained them deeply.

On one hand, they were heartbroken over the tens of taels of Silver they weren’t earning, and on the other hand, they were distressed to see the vegetables they had carefully tended freeze to death. But by that point, there was no better solution; they could only pray that the next year would bring them good weather and not trouble them further.

In the following days, the children eagerly looked forward to the New Year, while the adults shuttled back and forth between the fields and the city, keeping busy. With the roads deeply covered in snow, neither ox carts nor horse carts could be used effectively, so the harvested vegetables had to be carried to the city by human labor.

As there were exceptionally many vegetables to sell in these few days, even with dozens of households pitching in with shoulder poles and baskets, it took two trips to carry all the harvested vegetables. Even the strongest workers were exhausted after a day walking through knee-deep snow, but fortunately, there were enough hands to rotate each day.

The New Year was a time when many shopped for vegetables, and the heavy snow made the variety of vegetables available in the market even scarcer, resulting in very good business at the vegetable stalls. By the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, all the vegetables in the greenhouses that could be sold had been sold out.

By then, the firewood stockpiled in the greenhouses was almost burned out, and many greenhouses had successively collapsed under the weight of the snow. Even if the snow stopped and the weather cleared, the half-frozen vines could no longer bear fruit.

Tang Xin calculated the amount of Silver that each household should receive late that very night, and early the next morning, they were distributed to the villagers.

Despite the impact of the heavy snow, since the villagers had followed Mo Yan’s advice to pick all the edible vegetables and sell them, the total amount of vegetables sold in the half-month was on par with the previous month. Moreover, with the New Year price increase of vegetables, each household’s share of Silver was actually not less than last month. The household that earned the most nearly had forty taels, and even the least got over thirty.

With their heavy purses of money, the villagers who had been anxious because of the snow finally felt some relief. They were even more grateful to Mo Yan, thanking her profusely and bringing her many homemade foods.

The day Mo Yan awoke and cracked the window open a sliver, she saw the heavy snow still falling outside and immediately lost the will to get out of bed. She buried herself in the covers, revealing only the top half of her face.

Mao Tuan, lying on the inside, opened its tiger eyes slightly, saw its owner lie down again, and stretched out a paw to hug its owner’s waist, continuing to sleep soundly. Its belly fur was soft and warm, feeling like snuggling up to a big furnace. Held like this, Mo Yan felt sleepy again and actually drifted off to sleep.