A Good Country Wife

The restaurant and grocery business had started to prosper even more, and now that operations were on track, Lin Yue and Zhao Erhu didn’t need to watch over everything daily like at the beginning. It was sufficient for them to drop by when they had time, leaving the day-to-day affairs to the manager they had hired.

Now that spring was in full bloom, it was another prime season for sowing. The former magistrate, Mr. Chen, had already left Xin’an City with his family for Capital City to report on his official duties. Lately, aside from being busy with setting up their farm, Zhao Erhu and Lin Yue were also preparing for the planting season.

The bean products and sweet potato starch noodles made by Lin Yue’s family sold well in Xin’an City, and were even more popular in Capital City. However, sourcing the materials posed a problem. The bean products were manageable, as most households in nearby villages grew beans, which they could collect if running short. Zhao Erhu’s family had become renowned in the surrounding ten miles, and sometimes villagers would bring their goods to sell to them without them having to collect it themselves. But for sweet potato starch and noodles, sweet potatoes were needed.

Last year, Lin Yue’s family had planted quite a bit of sweet potatoes, but the consumption rate was unsustainable. Aside from the half reserved for seed, nearly two-thirds of the rest had already been used up. Now, supplies had stopped from the government office and the Su Residence, catering only to the Jiang family in Capital City. Even so, it wouldn’t last long. The sweet potatoes set aside for seed could not be touched unless the ones planted this year were harvested, or they purchased them from a shop. However, buying from a shop would be costly, and after factoring in the raw material and labor costs, the process would hardly be profitable.

"Zhao Erhu, sweet potatoes are good, both for storage as food and making noodles and fries, and they have a high yield. We should plant more sweet potatoes this year. Why don’t we plant all the fallow land we opened up last year with sweet potatoes? We’ve saved enough seeds to cover that. For the rest, we can buy some more land. What do you think?" Lin Yue said.

"I’m on the same page," Zhao Erhu pondered and replied, "Sweet potatoes are good. Let’s plant more. But we need to plant more vegetables too. Now that we have the restaurant, we need lots of vegetables, and we can’t have too many of those. I’ll go to the village chief’s place and see if there’s any suitable land for sale. If we delay, everyone will start sowing."

"Zhao Erhu, wait. Take these things with you. You can’t go to ask the village chief for help empty-handed." Lin Yue said as she packed several jin each of rice and flour, also including a roast chicken she had just brought back from the restaurant, and a bottle of liquor for Zhao Erhu to take along.

Zhao Erhu accepted what Lin Yue handed him with a smile. In the hectic days recently, he had almost become confused, "Wife, you’re so thoughtful. I was so preoccupied with things that I almost forgot this. It would be embarrassing to show up empty-handed."

The village chief normally wasn’t someone who smiled often, but he always had a smile on his face each time he saw Zhao Erhu. The young man’s visits were surely for something good. Even if not specifically for the benefit of the village, it would undoubtedly involve some advantage for him. He could already smell the aroma—it must be the roast chicken from the restaurant. He’d only tasted it once before but could still remember the flavor.