A Blessed Daughter - Chapter 479

A Blessed Daughter
Chapter 479 – Have the villagers of Shitou Village contract the sandy land (1)

Translator : Virichime
Editor : Chu
This translation made by Virichime.
Please read my translation only at Moonlight Teatime. 
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Wei Ruo left the distillery and passed through Shitou Village. The villagers she encountered along the way warmly greeted her one after another.

“Young Master Xu!”

“Benefactor Xu!”

“Benefactor, come have a drink of water at my place!”

“……”

Wei Ruo smiled and responded to everyone’s enthusiasm, but politely declined their invitations.

Shi Dayou came out of his house with a hoe slung over his shoulder. When he saw Wei Ruo, his face immediately lit up with a smile.
“Young Master Xu! You’re here! Is there anything the distillery needs help with?”

Every time he saw Wei Ruo, Shi Dayou would ask the same question.

“Thank you for your kindness, Village Head.” Wei Ruo replied. “There’s nothing needed at the moment.”

“Young Master Xu, don’t keep calling me Village Head—it makes me feel awkward,” Shi Dayou said. “Just call me Dayou.”

“Alright, Brother Dayou,” Wei Ruo said, then asked, “How have the bamboo fungus from the mountain been selling recently?”

-bamboo fungus

Shi Dayou smiled as he answered, “Thanks to you, Young Master Xu, they’ve been selling very well at the city market. We exchanged the silver for rice, flour, and meat and distributed them among the villagers. Everyone’s very happy and deeply grateful to you for showing us this way to earn money.”

“Distributed them?” Wei Ruo asked. “Weren’t people supposed to pick them themselves and sell them at the market?”

Shi Dayou explained, “No. There isn’t much bamboo fungus on the mountain. If everyone rushed to pick it, it would be gone in no time. And it doesn’t keep well—it spoils quickly. There aren’t many buyers either, so if everyone sold it at once, the price would drop. Plus, competing with each other to pick it would interfere with farming.”

He continued, “So after discussing it, we decided to send a few women from the village to handle the picking. What they collect belongs to everyone collectively. After paying those women their wages, the rest of the money is shared by the villagers, while everyone else continues working the fields.”

Hearing Shi Dayou’s explanation, Wei Ruo couldn’t help but show an appreciative look. This Shi Dayou truly was a village head with foresight.

Looking at the warm and earnest Shi Dayou before her, a sudden idea arose in Wei Ruo’s mind.

“Brother Dayou, have you ever considered leading the villagers to take up some other lines of work?” Wei Ruo asked.

Over the past couple of days, Wei Ruo had already noticed that the per-capita amount of farmland in Shitou Village was not large. The village had surplus labor even after farming, and she just happened to need manpower.

“Other lines of work?” Shi Dayou looked at Wei Ruo in surprise.

“It’s still related to farming,” Wei Ruo explained. “I’ve seen that not far from my distillery there’s quite a bit of wasteland. It belongs to the neighboring village. I bought it a few days ago and plan to use it to grow some crops. I need people, and I’m thinking of leasing the land out for contract farming.”

Wei Ruo had had her eye on the sandy land near the prefectural city for a long time. It was only because she had been busy last winter that the plan had been delayed until now.

The silver used to purchase the land this time came from the medical fees Zhu Zongyu had paid her earlier.

There were already plenty of workers on Wei Ruo’s estate, and for the time being she did not want to hire more long-term laborers. Leasing the land out to others would save her a lot of trouble.

Shi Dayou looked astonished. “But Young Master Xu, that wasteland can’t grow crops. The terrain is bad, and there’s a lot of sand and gravel, nothing will grow there.”

If crops could be grown on it, the neighboring village would never have left it unused, much less sold it to an outsider so easily.

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