Chapter 257 - 0257: The Autumn Harvest Begins1_1
Just a few days after the fifteenth of August, Wang Zhengguo rang the gong early in the morning, informing the villagers to prepare for the autumn harvest.
The Wanglou Brigade was comprised of twelve production teams, each in charge of their allocated land and responsible for their own agricultural work.
Therefore, Wang Zhengguo started dividing the tasks of harvesting and cultivating the crops and allotting the livestock among the teams. The team leaders took full responsibility for these tasks, while he directed the overall production brigade.
The Lu Family was part of Production Team Seven, led by Feng Qingxue’s older cousin, Wang Dachun.
Wang Dachun had learned from his father at a young age how to manage the brigade affairs. Over the years, he had honed his skills. He promptly assigned Lu’s father and several other older men to herd the livestock and roller the field, followed by assigning others to mend the team’s cellar. Then he arranged for the rest to cut sweet potato vines and spread them out near the cattle house to dry.
Once the sweet potato vines are dried, they will serve as livestock feed for the winter.
The sweet potatoes grown on the mountain ripen early and grow well. Every year they grow summer sweet potatoes, which are harvested before the frost comes to be used as seed potatoes.
Seed grain is more important than food grain as it has a direct bearing on the next year’s crop yield.
Many production brigades were littered with corpses due to starvation. This was because a year of either drought or floods had decimated their crops, leaving them without seed grain for the next planting season, a practice that led to a near three-year famine, didn’t it?
They were currently harvesting the spring sweet potatoes to clear the land for wheat planting.