Transmigrated as A Farm Girl Making Her Family Rich-Chapter 154 - 153: Picking Fruit on the Mountain

Chapter 154 -153: Picking Fruit on the Mountain

Today, Tang Shunyan’s main purpose was the lychees and watermelons; other vegetables would have people come to pick and transport them.

Tang Shunyan instructed a guard to pick watermelons there, while the rest of the people followed the large group into the mountain to pick lychees.

They could already see the lychee trees on the mountain, with peddlers picking lychees.

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The Ye family said that how much the peddlers could pick was their luck. If they picked the fruit themselves, the Ye family would sell it to them a bit cheaper. If it was the Ye family themselves who did the picking, the price would be different.

The peddlers would rather come and pick them on their own to earn a little more money. They spent all their time doing this, calling their entire families to come and pick the fruit to sell.

The guards picked up the baskets, and the others grabbed baskets as well.

Mrs. Li did not follow along; she stayed by the rice paddies as she was holding an infant a few months old and could not go up the mountain for fear of the child being stung by mosquitoes.

When they arrived at the foot of Lizhi Mountain, looking up, they saw the smaller lychee trees filled with fruit. The red fruits down at the foot of the mountain had all been picked.

Tang Shunyan saw many chickens and ducks under the fruit trees that looked quite healthy.

Upon their arrival, the chickens flew up, and the ducks ran away quacking quickly, while the big fat geese tried to fly but couldn’t.

They also saw large turkeys there, which looked to be about a dozen or so pounds in weight.

Young Master Tang Shunyan had never seen these at home; he found them all quite novel.

The guards escorted them up the mountain on a narrow path, and halfway up the slope, they found fruit trees that were not yet picked. They stopped and began picking fruit.

Ye Shiqi was the smallest in this group of people. Led by her elder sisters by the hand, she often went up the mountain with them; she had very strong legs and often visited the orchard, of course, she had her secrets.

Every few days, she would sprinkle a bit of spiritual spring water into the well, and she also went up the mountain with her elder sister, where they would add a bit of spiritual spring water to the pool every few days.

In order for the fruit trees below the mountain to not lack water during the hot weather, a large water pool was built on the mountain specifically for storing water.

In ancient times, without tap water, relying on mountain water, or watering by hand was too difficult, so they had to come up with a method. Since they couldn’t use steel pipes, they had to resort to bamboo tubes to channel the water.

Every bamboo shoot leading to each small ridge on the mountain could ensure that every fruit tree on the mountain grew well even during hot and dry weather.

This might be the secret technique unknown to other landlords who grow fruit trees.

Of course, these were secrets. Those who had not visited their mountain architectures, or even those who had but didn’t understand their layout, would not grasp the subtleties.

Ye Shiqi stood in front of a small lychee tree. At her short height, she could only reach the lowest fruits on the lychee tree. The tree, having grown for over a year, was only as tall as an adult. Being able to bear fruit in just over a year was the envy and jealousy of others.

Many people’s fruit trees do not bear fruit in the first year, and maybe even in the second year, some may have fruits. Only after the third year would they become impressive, and within five years, that’s when the fruit trees are most vigorous. Old trees might be eaten by insects, causing the wood to turn yellow and die.

The type of insect that eats the wood is known as woodworm. If people hear the sound of woodworms in their house beams after 35 years, then their house will soon collapse.

Or if woodworms eat the wooden door, this is both an advantage and a disadvantage of using wood in construction.

Once the fruit is picked from the branches, the branches straighten up.

When everyone picked the fruits, they did not put them in the baskets immediately but first tasted the sweetness of the fruits.

The lychee trees produced large fruits with small seeds, some known as Guiwei, others as Xiangli.

All of these were sweet and delicious fruits. Ye Shiqi had once read a novel that told of Yang Guifei, who desired lychees from Jiangnan so much that the Emperor spent a great deal of manpower and resources just to bring her a smile.

I once saw a TV series where eating lychees in the Imperial Palace was quite difficult. It was during the Qing Dynasty, when only a few pieces of fruit hung from each lychee tree, and they had to be transported over such a long distance to the Imperial Capital. By the time they arrived, the lychees were all gone.

In this beautiful and serene southern region, however, you can have as many as you want.

Even the wild trees growing on the mountains bear some lychees.

Tang Shunyan, having seen these planted lychee trees last year, had been looking forward to picking and eating lychees with his own hands today.

When he was a child, he’d eaten lychees but had never picked them himself. Although the Tang Family’s garden had a few lychee trees, those trees were too tall, and the fruits they bore weren’t as large or tasty as these.

“Such sweet fruit…”

Mr. Tang praised heartily, standing with his wife as they ate the fruit, the sweetness enveloping their hearts.

The Junior Housekeeper of the Tang family picked a lychee and peeled it for Mr. Tang, not caring about the many people around, feeding it to Mr. Tang.

Blushing, Mrs. Tang ate the lychee her husband fed her, her mouth sweet and her heart even sweeter. Their marriage was so sweet that others pretended not to see.

Chunxiang and Qiu Xia, being second-class maids in the service of Madam, had also had the luck of tasting lychees before, yet after tasting these, they felt the lychees they had eaten before were hardly comparable.

Just a few days ago, they all saw some fruits hanging on the lychee trees of the Tang family, preparing to start picking them in a couple of days. Even with such tall lychee trees, ladders would be needed.

Here, the lychee trees were only as tall as a man’s head, and each one was laden with fruits, appearing to have a plentiful harvest.

After tasting the delicious fruits, everyone started working, picking the fruits in large quantities.

Those who came here to pick fruits felt justified in their efforts—as such delicious fruits, it would be too much of a shame not to pick them.

The crowd put their strength to use, eating as they picked, with a string of fruits weighing more than a pound. For some individual fruits, the lychee trees were still too small, so they had to be careful not to damage too many branches, as it could affect next year’s harvest.

If the trees were grown taller and bigger, pruning some branches could be beneficial for fruiting.

Ye Shiqi was not ignorant of these matters, having asked her father to buy saplings before and requesting the nurserymen who cultivated the fruit tree saplings to share their expertise; from planting to bearing fruit, and how to fertilize, to pruning excess buds. There were so many experiences written down in a small notebook.

Her father didn’t have the time to learn all of this, and among her five sisters, she was the most idle, so the task of learning how to plant fell on them.

By teaching the long-term workers how to do the job, there was no need for the mothers with children to worry.

Since the sisters had begun to learn how to read and write characters over the past year, all five could recognize some ancient characters.

Ye Shiqi, in her previous life, had studied Chinese classics. There were many types of ancient characters, with simplified characters more commonly studied. The more challenging characters were usually taught by a teacher.

The one-year-old girl wrote her characters very neatly; each time, the teacher saw her writing, he praised her.

These five female students were taught exactly like male students, without any intention of them entering the civil service examinations, purely as part of the teacher’s duty to educate.

Ye Shiqi had some skill in Qin, Chess, Calligraphy, and Painting, and practiced with her sisters in her free time.

The teacher only taught them literature and mathematics; as for Qin, Chess, Calligraphy, and Painting, he didn’t have much expertise.

Seeing his students, especially the youngest girl, so outstanding, the teacher felt somewhat at a loss for words.

The title of Scholar was something he had strived for over ten years to achieve, always aiming to advance higher, but unable to do so. Now he taught merely to make a living.