The next day the rush harvest began in a great hurry. In every house, whether the strong hands or the old people and children, anyone who could still work went down to the fields, and only a few old people with bad legs were left at home to cook.
Although the weather had stayed overcast these few days, at least it hadn’t rained.
They worked five days before all the wheat was got back into the granary, and reckoning it up carefully, the yield per mu of good field actually came to over eight hundred catties. You had to know that before, the highest had only been six hundred catties, and after drying and hulling, it worked out at over three hundred catties a mu.
The other lower-grade fields opened from waste land were worse still, to work a whole year and get four hundred catties counted as not wasting the effort.
The taxes of the Tianqi dynasty weren’t light. A mu of good field had to hand over three tenths of the grain, lower-grade newly cleared land was tax-free the first two years, and from the third year the taxes were the same.
The Yan family had planted three mu of wheat and got back two thousand six hundred catties, which counted as a rather good harvest. The rice wouldn’t be ready for another month, and the potatoes and sweet potatoes in the field not until the eleventh month.
After the people of Yanjia Village had finished getting in the wheat, the sky that had been overcast for half a month finally opened in heavy rain.
Everyone’s strained nerves could relax at last. Fortunately they had got the grain in before the weather turned, and once the men from the county office had come and taken the grain away there would certainly be a good deal left.
Yanjia Village lay in the south, where the weather was suitable, and potatoes and sweet potatoes were planted twice a year, harvested in the fourth month and the eleventh month, afterwards, when it turned cold, they burned wheat straw and the like for ash to enrich the soil. Households that really had a hard time of it also went on growing vegetables, and took them into town before the year’s end to earn a bit more money to help the household along.
Heaven seemed to have been holding it in a long while, this one rain came and went for three days, and a good deal of weed came up in the fields.
After the sun came out the villagers arranged to go up the mountain and gather mushrooms, every household here knew a good many kinds. Yan Xi went up with Yan Yu and Feng Yue, and thinking of the green-cap mushrooms and boletes she had eaten before, she couldn’t stop craving them. In her past life these things had been very dear, two or three hundred a kilo, and the good ones over a thousand.
Most of the villagers gathered together to look, but Yan Xi didn’t want to go along. With that many people together you couldn’t find much at all, so she simply took the two of them straight to the place where they had picked grapes before. That was far from the village and generally nobody came, so it was all the better for Yan Xi and the others.
After one rain the wild vegetables and mushrooms in the ground had all pushed up, each ahead of the other.
When the three of them got there it was as if wolves had got into a sheep pen.
“Auntie, Auntie, I’ve found termite mushrooms. Wow, there’s a whole patch of chicken-thread mushrooms here, and up ahead there’s more—”
Yan Yu was full of energy the moment she got there. The dried mushrooms stored at home had long since been eaten up, and this time she meant to gather plenty. Second Aunt was a good hand at cooking, and the mushroom soup she made was so delicious it would make your eyebrows fall off.
They worked all morning and only got ready to go back at noon. Between the three of them they had gathered nearly twenty catties of mushrooms, of every sort, quite a big harvest.
Of these it was Yan Xi who had gathered the most matsutake and termite mushrooms. Although the three of them were never far apart, every time it was Yan Xi who spotted them first, and in some spots that Feng Yue and Yan Yu had clearly already searched Yan Xi could still find some when she looked again. The two of them couldn’t help admiring Yan Xi’s luck.
These few days of drizzle had left the soil in the woods damp, very suitable for mushrooms to grow, and the three agreed to come again the next day and bring Zhou Fen along too, with four of them they would certainly gather more.
They met nobody the whole way home, presumably the villagers had picked the nearby ground pretty much clean.
“How did you do today? A lot of people from the village went, I saw some who had picked a whole basket.” Zhou Fen came forward to meet them.
“Second Aunt, Second Aunt, our luck was really too good today. We went a long way, to the hollow in the hills where the grapes grow, and we picked a whole back basket. A lot of it is matsutake and termite mushrooms. Xiaochun says the Huichun Tang in town buys these, her family sold quite a lot of them two months ago, and she gave me a piece of maltose candy too.” Yan Yu was a child after all, hearing the family ask, she poured it all out.
“Aiyo, how is there so much? I doubt the whole village has this much put together. Sort out some good-looking ones in a while, and after lunch have Third Brother take them into town and sell some. He’s seen more of the world, he certainly won’t be cheated.”
Feng Yue went inside and set down the back basket, and they began to sort them by kind and lay them out separately. Some mushrooms, because of differences in how they were cooked and how long, couldn’t be done together, in case improper handling caused poisoning.
Yan Xi picked out the ones that had been crushed. Boil a mushroom soup for supper and there was no telling how good it would smell, what they couldn’t finish could be put out in the yard to dry and kept for the twelfth month to stir-fry with meat, which would let you eat two extra bowls of rice.
Sorting through, there were a dozen or so catties of whole ones. Zhou Fen took a few of the damaged ones to the kitchen, meaning to make a plain stir-fried termite mushroom: first put in garlic and ginger slices and fry them fragrant, then put in the termite mushrooms, and when they were nearly done put in green and red chilies and fry them till just cooked, then toss it all together evenly and dish it out.
Then she boiled a morel soup as well. There was no fresh meat in the house, so she could only slice a few pieces of the cured pork the old house had given them and stew it together, and the flavor was good too.
After the meal Yan Jiang shouldered his load and went out, saying not to wait for him for supper, he certainly wouldn’t be back early.
Yan Jiang went straight to town in one stretch and headed for the Huichun Tang.
“Sir, what would you like?” The apprentice was behind the counter tidying the medicines, and seeing Yan Jiang he hurried up to greet him.
“Is your shopkeeper in? I have some fresh matsutake and termite mushrooms here, gathered only this morning. See whether you’ll buy them.”
“Wait a moment, I’ll go and call the shopkeeper.”
The apprentice trotted off to the back, and the shopkeeper came out after him.
“Let me see the matsutake. If they aren’t damaged we’ll buy them at three hundred wen a catty.”
Yan Jiang opened the back basket and gave Shopkeeper Wu a few. “The family has already sorted them, what I’ve brought are all whole ones like these.”
Shopkeeper Wu took them and examined them carefully a while. It really was as Yan Jiang had said: the caps of the matsutake were whole and the stems weren’t damaged either.
“Bring them all out, I’ll take the lot. And in future if you have more you can bring them to our Huichun Tang.”
“There’s eight catties three taels here in all, that comes to two taels four mace and ninety wen for you. Count it.”
“As for the termite mushrooms you have left, the pharmacy doesn’t need them, but I’ll buy them for myself. My daughter-in-law has just had a fine fat boy, and I’ll take them back to build her up.”
Termite mushrooms didn’t fetch as much as matsutake, it had rained not long ago, and anyone diligent who went into the hills would come back with some. The shopkeeper took the lot at eighty wen a catty, and the remaining termite mushrooms sold for three mace and six wen in all. With the two taels and more from before, looking at these three mace of silver Yan Jiang was already quite calm. This earned far more than casual day labor, it was only that such good things weren’t always to be had.
Today was market day, and before he came Yan Xi had asked him to bring some meat back, that evening they would make wild mushrooms stir-fried with meat, and there was no telling how well it went with rice. Last year the second sister-in-law had made it once with red scallion mushrooms, and the taste had stopped people in their tracks.
Yan Jiang got to Butcher Wang’s stall and found the fat meat was nearly all sold, but there was still plenty of lean left, and the marrow bones and offal were still lying there, drawing no small number of flies.