Chapter 1691 - 1089: Heroine of the Republic 63 (4000+)_3

Chapter 1691: Chapter 1089: Heroine of the Republic 63 (4000+)_3

Hu Zi, feeling embarrassed by the elder and younger aunt’s remarks, looked at An Yi and said, "Compared to elder aunt and younger aunt, I’m far behind."

Yet An Yi just smiled and patted his head: "Quite modest, you don’t have to do that. Your efforts are the best reward for me. So far, I haven’t misjudged anyone. You should seize your time to learn, so you can quickly get to the job you like."

That night, An Yi made beef noodles for everyone. It was seemingly their first time having beef, but in fact, after the cow from the space was slaughtered, she had secretly made it for them, so everyone felt the beef tasted familiar, and An Yi brushed it off with a casual explanation.

"The cows here are real treasures; nobody dares to slaughter them unless they die of old age or illness, and even then, ordinary people don’t get to eat them. But over in Su Country, with its vast and resource-rich land, there are many pastoral areas, so there are more cattle and sheep, and less pork, which is why I could get it. It’s delicious, right?"

The noodles were hand-rolled by Hu Zi under her guidance, and eating the hand-rolled white noodles and chewing the chewy beef made them feel extremely happy. Even though the snow hadn’t melted, they were sweating from eating, bursting with happiness.

This time, An Yi also bought a lot of rye flour, wheat flour, and cornmeal from Su Country, both fine and coarse (with husk). Since there’s an oven at home, she also planned to try making some coarse grain bread, and she even bought quite a bit of yeast back.

Around March 28th, it was time to report, and then gather the children to shovel snow and clean the school. The classroom still needed a stove at the beginning of the term, requiring every child to bring firewood each day, with a teacher at the school gate weighing and recording the firewood.

This firewood needed to be brought for about half a month at least. Of course, teachers also had to bring it, as long as they stayed in the classroom, anyone had to bring it, unless they didn’t want to study.

And Hu Zi and the other two were no exception.

Moreover, Hu Zi passed the school’s entrance test and directly entered the third year of junior high. If everything went smoothly, by next year, he could join the autumn recruitment of soldiers, and children like him could participate in the autumn graduation exams inland, avoiding the Northeast schooling model.

After school started, life suddenly became busy, not only for her but for the children too.

She and the two sisters were at the same high school, so they could have lunch together at noon. The two girls were in daycare with a teacher looking after them, so there was nothing to worry about. As for Hu Zi, a boy, there weren’t many concerns, and to free up more time for studying, she arranged for him to live at school, returning home only on weekends.

The dormitory fee at school was just three yuan per term, and for food, he could bring pickles from home, buy steamed buns from the kitchen, or have stir-fried dishes as per his consumption level. Although Hu Zi was living at school, An Yi still brought him food, dry goods, and homemade pickles, salted duck eggs, etc., when she went there for classes, just needing him to heat them at the kitchen later.

So Hu Zi’s life was already much better compared to his peers.

Returning home on weekends, they would go to the bathhouse for a soak together, as it was extremely cold in winter, minus several dozen degrees, making regular bathing quite infrequent. Usually, women wiped their bodies at home. Only on weekends would they go to the bathhouse for a proper soak.

An Yi wasn’t fond of these crowded bathhouses, but since there weren’t separate rooms for bathing yet, she usually used the excuse that she had already washed to let the two sisters go themselves. In fact, she really did wash regularly, having made it a habit to boil water and bathe with the children in the space, even in the dead of winter. But for the three of them, a bath once a week was extravagant. In such cold weather, each bath cost twenty cents, whereas in Spring and Autumn, it was much cheaper—ten cents for three baths. But winter was really not cheap.

After Hu Zi came to the county town for school, he seldom returned to the countryside. But come Spring, he still needed to go back home and plant vegetables and corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes around the house. After all, it could add a bit to the winter rations, right?

Now, the countryside had implemented a communal dining system, and every household went to the canteen at mealtimes, which was quite convenient.

The team leader was still asking her about fertilizer, and An Yi, after checking the fertilizer in the space, managed to provide them with 1,500 jin over the weekend, about the same amount as last time. By year’s end, it came to be seventy-five yuan and about one thousand four hundred jin of grain.

In her view, this amount of fertilizer was a drop in the bucket, but the team leader believed that having it was better than none. Moreover, the fertilizers were applied to the land they deemed more precious, just like they arranged last year, so the production output differences were quite obvious. Giving An Yi more than a thousand jin of grain compared to a yield increase of twenty percent, it wasn’t a loss at all.