Her Cultivation Diary
Chapter 888 - 870. Building greenhouses

Chapter 888: 870. Building greenhouses

Song Sancheng’s dream of getting a car fell through once again because the family simply didn’t have the time to help him choose one. They were completely focused on finding people to source materials for the new greenhouse project.

This was a big project, as no one in town had taken on such a task. Instead, they had to go through several channels to find a company in the urban area. Representatives from the company came to survey the site and immediately made a suggestion:

"Why not build the greenhouse on this flat farmland right by the entrance? Just pick two acres or so."

First, it’s close to home, which makes it easy to look after.

Second, although the mountain slopes are gentle, they’re not suitable for construction, while the land here, despite differences in elevation between fields, only requires adjusting the base stakes for building the greenhouse, which is not a big deal.

But with that, the sparsely planted vegetables in the field at the entrance could finally end their tremulous existence in the cold wind, almost as if they were about to perish.

"Uproot them! Plow the field! Fertilize the soil! Redo the ditches and ridges!"

While the greenhouse team went back to determine the dimensions and prepare the blueprints, the field was already bustling with renewed activity. Zhou Maozhu and others who had just taken a break were considering whether to go picking vegetables for a quick hundred bucks a night, but now there was work to be done again.

"I’m telling you!" he said while helping to till the soil, looking quite content: "Working a few days on, a few off, making money and still getting rest - the arrangement is quite nice actually."

Others said to him, "You might like resting, but I sure don’t – have you heard? The road construction crew is about to reach our area, and they’re hiring! 150 a day, I’m thinking about going."

"What? One fifty?"

Everyone perked up: "Do they provide meals? What are the working hours? What kind of work will we be doing?"

"That I’m not sure about – ask Secretary Xiaozu, she has the scoop."

And it was true, Secretary Xiaozu was quite informed. Currently, she was holding fried pumpkin cakes – that morning, there had been two pumpkins left over from cooking pig feed, and Master Jiang, tired of pumpkin soup, had decided to make fried pumpkin cakes instead.

And that’s exactly what he brought over to Lao Song’s family. His cooking skills were indeed impressive, the pumpkin cakes were crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, sweet but not cloying, with a pleasantly sticky chew –

Yum! Delicious!

In short, Secretary Xiaozu, holding two pumpkin cakes, ambled onto the road and heard everyone’s questions.

"Road construction? There’s not much heavy labor involved in road construction nowadays, as they use road rollers to smooth out the base now."

"You guys will just be doing some minor touch-ups on the edges and corners... But I haven’t heard about them hiring anyone. They don’t need many people for such a task, no need to recruit back and forth along the road."

"It’s my relative who told me," said one villager somewhat sheepishly, "the food there is so bad that people from other villages are making a fuss and quitting."

Huh?

They quit because the food is too bad?

Secretary Xiaozu couldn’t picture it, as she... well, she ate every day...

Cough.

She couldn’t help but gossip: "How bad can it be?"

And who doesn’t love gossip! Everyone huddled together, squatting in a circle, chatting excitedly: "Didn’t they already finish the road in Chen Village? Now it’s our turn to tamp it down and add the water-stable base layer, so there’s more traffic."

With increased traffic, what secrets could there be?

Regarding that food –

Everyone asked Secretary Xiaozu, "Do you know who the head chef over there is?"

"Who is it?" Secretary Xiaozu took a bite of her pumpkin cake. It was a bit cold, but no matter, it was still delicious.

"It’s that Mr. Zhai from the neighboring village! Yes, the one, relative of Zhai Xiaofeng up on the mountain!"

Wow! What a coincidence! Secretary Xiaozu is extremely impressed with Zhai Xiao’e, who hid meat and didn’t wash vegetables for two days on the mountain. Now, both his eyes are sparkling:

"How is it her again?"

"She is somebody’s distant relative, with such an honest look... Actually, I heard from my relatives that she doesn’t even peel the potatoes she eats every day, and from the pot of meat she cooks, you can’t get three slices."

As everyone chatted, Zhou Maozhu was the first to back out: "If that’s the case, I’m not going."

"You silly? If you can’t get full, just go home and eat. The road we’re working on is so close to home!"

Zhou Maozhu stayed silent for a while, then suddenly grumbled: "Nowadays, my home doesn’t have good food either."

The reason was simple; Li Lanhua would pick vegetables on the mountain every evening. They would eat the leftovers from the kitchen before collecting vegetables, and by the time she finished around four o’clock, it was just the right time to lend a hand in the kitchen and sneak in an early meal.

Since there was no work during the day, they would sleep in the afternoon, and apart from some random chores around the house in the morning, there really wasn’t much to do.

Given this, why wouldn’t eating a ready-made meal cooked by the chef be better than going back home to cook?

But because of this, the noon meal became much more perfunctory. Zhou Maozhu had already eaten sour cabbage with minced meat for three successive mid-days, and he couldn’t stomach it anymore.

He grumbled: "Anyway, I’m not going to work on the road; I’ll work for Lao Song’s family—they need to set up greenhouses, prepare and sow the land; they’re pretty busy too."

Two acres of land, he could work slowly by himself and have a few days’ worth of food.

"But then again, the road construction can’t last that long, right?"

Secretary Xiaozu calculated: "Leveling the roadbed will take about twenty days, soon our village will also be compacting it to prepare for water stabilization, then pouring concrete, once it’s dry laying asphalt, and the bonding layer..."

"There won’t be much need for manual labor in the later stages. If you’re thinking of working till New Year’s, that’s not happening."

She pondered: "By mid-December at the latest, the road should be open!"

Ah! This news made everyone even happier than whether there was work or not! Once the asphalt road was laid, cars could drive smoothly and straight to their doorsteps, and the kids coming home for holidays would be safe and speedy...

And no worries about damaging the car chassis due to bad roads!

...

While the villagers fantasized about the future, Song Tan was also at home, staring at her notebook in bewilderment:

"Why hasn’t Professor Song come back yet!"

What should be planted in her greenhouse to be both reasonable and outstanding, this degree was hard to grasp!

"And this conference thing, why does it have to be in winter? Aren’t spring and summer fine?"

In spring and summer, you just grab what’s in the field, and there’s no need to think about it! But now, apart from radishes and green vegetables, there’s nothing left in the field; you can’t possibly bring a couple of fish and pig trotters to the event at the end of the year!

Xin Jun, however, had done some research: "There are conferences all year round, in all sizes for various industries, we just didn’t know about them before, which is why they seemed esoteric. However, this conference that Professor Song mentioned is of a higher standard."

Of course, it was still niche—after all, who cares about agriculture?

And Xin Jun added:

"I checked the information, and it seems that the conferences in spring and autumn are generally aimed at the public."

"But the one in winter might be more specialized, focusing on the development of certain features, to be reviewed by judges—for instance, the cultivation focus might be on a family’s radishes that are sweet and not spicy when eaten raw."

"The reason for choosing winter is also characteristic of the conference, because the conferences in summer and autumn have already finished. Some crops from late autumn or winter might not make it in time, so they have to catch the winter session. It’s about being as efficient as possible and not affecting the planting for the next year..."

After all, for crops, if you miss the right season, you might delay the whole year!