Back to 80, start from gold digging

Chapter 9 Chopping Wood
The embroidery factory received an order from the No. [-] Municipal Weaving Factory a few years ago, and specially customized a batch of pillow covers for the New Year's Day for a certain department of the resident army.The job is done clean and beautiful.The leader of the first factory's support for the army was highly praised by his superiors. When he was happy, he waved his hand and allocated ten water bottles as gifts to the embroidery factory as a reward for outstanding workers.

Zhao Wenlan was very happy to get a water bottle with the title of 'embroiderer expert'. This is an army green water bottle, even if you have money, you may not be able to buy it. It's more exciting, she is more excited than getting double overtime pay.

Everyone in the family knew the origin of the kettle and how much Zhao Wenlan treasured it. No one expected that she would take it out at this time.

Zhao Wenduo touched the warm cloth cover. Although it was just an aluminum water bottle, which was completely incomparable with a steel-lined thermos, it was already a great thing here, almost as big as the big ones for household use. It exists, and she is willing to use it for her. This second child is really good!
The morning time passed quickly, and an hour or two passed by.After breakfast, I cleaned up and it was 05:30.

Li Cuizhen went to the West Wing. The Guo family also asked for leave today to cut firewood on the mountain.The five members of Guo's family are all strong laborers. The three boys are all in their twenties, and they are all as capable as a calf.

The couple of the Guo family are honest and easy to get along with, and they usually get along very close to each other. Li Cuizhen came over and asked the two to help take care of Zhao Wenduo who was going up the mountain alone. Nodding his head, he told her to rest assured.

When Zhao Wenduo got up, he went to greet Luo Siping first, and asked her to ask the teacher for a day off. The reason was that she had diarrhea and ran to the toilet six times in the middle of the night, and she hadn't gotten up yet.

Luo Siping scratched her head when she heard this: "In the past two days, there are quite a lot of students who have had diarrhea in our class. The teacher doesn't know if he can believe it. What if he doesn't believe it?"

What to do, salad!You are an idiot when you are a teacher. This reason is made up when you hear it. It’s not like eating food from one pot. How can so many people have diarrhea together?But it's better than nothing, and she can't go to the house to check one by one, knowing that it's a lie and that's it.

Doesn’t every family in this village look at the food, because there is work and food, and they can’t get enough to eat, so why are they thinking about learning or not?There are many children, and it is difficult to support them. It is good to survive, and it does not matter whether they go to school or not.And this is not an isolated phenomenon, it is generally the case. Those who can go to the third and second grades, drop out halfway, are everywhere.

Two days ago, Zhao Wenduo heard Li Cuizhen and Zhao Mingyu chattering that if the fifth child was born, there would be no one to take care of her, and she would still have to work to earn food, even if there was no one at home.It doesn't matter that the fourth child is too young, after thinking about it, it is most suitable for the third child to come down.

This was vaccinated in advance, and the ward will call in advance, meaning to tell Zhao Wenduo to stop studying and come down to take the children to do housework, so that the adults can free up their hands to earn money to support the family.Although he didn't say it explicitly, but with Li Cuizhen's status in the family, it was almost a settled matter, even if it was delayed, it wouldn't last long.

Zhao Wenduo is dispensable to this matter. He has read books for nearly 20 years, and his knowledge reserve can be regarded as sufficient. It is not a problem for such a simple thing for elementary school students.

The problem is, she has the knowledge, but she doesn't have the diploma at all. She can't fail to graduate from elementary school and go out in the future under the name of being semi-literate.Compared to the difficulties we would have encountered back then, the problems we are facing now are just a piece of cake.

Even if it is to not drop out of school, we must solve the difficulties in front of us, and this firewood must be chopped no matter what.

Of course, Zhao Wenduo can also understand Li Cuizhen's difficulties. It's really not easy to support the family, the old and the young, the weak and the sick.It's not that she is cruel to the children, she just wants to pamper them more and she doesn't have that condition, if she spoils them all, she doesn't go to work, doesn't go to work, what to eat and drink?The pressure of life forced her to harden her heart, neither spoiling her children nor herself.Only in this way can the day go on.

Luo Siping's guess is 90.00% accurate. Zhao Wenduo didn't expect the result. Whether the teacher is angry or not is not within her scope of consideration. The task ahead is not to continue to go to school, but how to get through this winter warmly .

After the confession, Zhao Wenduo went home directly, took the sickle and rope for chopping firewood, carried a pot of water on his back, and simply cleaned up, followed the Guo family couple out of the village.

Bailangli Village is a typical small mountain village in the north. You can see large and small hills near the village. The two nearby mountains are Dongshan and Nanshan. Nanshan is steeper and more dangerous, and Dongshan is more comfortable and low.

There are three kinds of firewood for fire here. Adult rough wood is cut down and unloaded into several pieces, and half of the firewood is made by chopping a few times from the middle with an axe. It is resistant to burning and has a high temperature. It is the best firewood for heating in winter.Of course, it takes the most effort. Without the cooperation of a few strong men and suitable transportation vehicles, it is almost impossible to transport it down the mountain.The second type is a thick stick with a diameter of [-] to [-] centimeters. It is cut off and sawn into sections, which is neat and does not take up space, and it burns for a long time.The third category is the low shrubs that are finger-thin and thin, collectively called Zhichai, which are easy to cut and not resistant to burning, and are more convenient to transport.

In winter, most of the firewood piles prepared by every household are the third type of firewood, followed by stick firewood, and half-cut firewood is the least.

When people in the village say they want to go up the mountain to cut firewood, most of them mean to get this kind of firewood.

This is what Zhao Wenduo went up to the mountain to cut this time, and the Guo family and his wife would also chop some sticks if they had spare energy. After all, there are men from the Guo family, so this kind of hard work is not a problem.

Nanshan Mountain is not far from the village. Compared with the former, the trees are more luxuriant and there are more firewood.It's just that the snow is deep and the roads are slippery in winter, so it's not worth taking that risk for a few bundles of firewood.After all, there are sticks of firewood on any mountain, and these families in the village can't finish cutting, of course, choose the one that is easy to get on.

In winter, the mountains are covered with a vast expanse of whiteness. It has just snowed heavily, and the snow buried the legs and wrists on the mountain road where no one walks.

The Guo family felt sorry for Zhao Wenduo's young age and being a girl, so they walked in front and let her walk in the back.Even so, when Zhao Wenduo walked halfway up the mountain, the not-so-thick low-cut cotton shoes on Zhao Wenduo's feet were already filled with snow.

"Miss San, the trees here are quite dense, so you can cut them here. Uncle Guo and I will walk to the top of the mountain." Guo Qiu Huizhen stopped and said.

"Well, okay, then I'll cut here, you go up."

Fix these trees in one place, and if they are all gathered together, if you cut them down, I will not be able to cut them down, and if time is lost, they will not be able to get work done.The trees on the hill were thicker and the road to walk was longer. Zhao Wenduo knew that this was because she was considerate of her frailty and took care of her.

"If you have anything to do, call us, we're not far away, you can hear us with your voice," Guo Huairen said.

Zhao Wenduo nodded, watched the two continue to go up the mountain, and turned around to look around.Most of the trees growing on Dongshan Mountain are short, and most of them are Moringa and oak trees, and they are not very old. They will be as tall as a human head, with gray-skinned bare branches scattered with a few withered and brown leaves, straight and straight. Standing in the snow, they are about the thickness of a thumb.

Chopping firewood is not considered a technical job. Even if you have never eaten pork, you have seen pigs go. As long as you can bring down the standing sticks, you will be done.But the problem is, how to put it down, where to cut a tree, close to the ground, or the middle part, seemingly simple questions, but it varies from person to person.

Zhao Wenduo has not been here for too long, and he has only heard about chopping firewood from other people's mouths, and he has never seen it with his own eyes.And this point was ignored by everyone around them. They thought that such a trivial matter as chopping firewood was really not worth teaching them personally, and they didn't even think about explaining things that three-year-old children knew.

Fortunately, I worked with Zhao Wenying for half a day yesterday, so I generally understood it.

(End of this chapter)