Chapter 956
Military Households
White rice and meat are delicacies that can only be eaten during festivals, and eggs can be eaten from time to time, but it is almost unheard of to cook them together with meat like this.
Even though Pan Yun's cooking skills were mediocre, as long as there was enough oil and salt, and meat and eggs, she couldn't make a bad dish. Anyway, the children thought it was the best dish they had ever eaten.
A large pot of rice and a large pot of vegetables were served, but Pan Jun and the other three only ate until they were about 70% full, while the remaining eight children ate until their bellies were round.
I ate too much and couldn't move; I could only lie half-reclined to digest.
Pan Yun also sat with them in the courtyard to bask in the sun and digest their food, and chatted along the way.
After a delicious and hearty meal, the children treated them like family, and they echoed whatever Pan Yun mentioned.
Then they learned that they were all military households. The military camp was more than 40 miles away, but the military dependents were scattered around the area. The land outside belonged to the "adults," and they lived here to farm for the adults.
Pan Yun asked, "Since you are military households, the land reclamation should be for the garrison, so why is it being cultivated for the 'adults'?"
Don't let the complexity of this question fool you; the children may be young, but they're not stupid.
Adults always think that children are too young to understand anything, and they don't hold back when they speak to them. In reality, even if children don't understand, they will remember it and may even take it for granted.
For example, the eight-year-old said, "We don't have farmland. The adults are of noble birth and have money, so they spent money to buy a lot of land for us to farm. My dad said, it doesn't matter who farms the land, we'll still live the same life."
Pan Yun then asked, "How many acres of land does your family cultivate, and how much grain do you harvest each year?"
"I don't know how much we'll harvest, but we planted twelve mu of paddy fields and eighteen mu of dry land, we planted all sorts of things."
Pan Yun: With so much land, do you have any oxen for plowing?
“My family and his family share a cow, which was given to us by the adults.” The little boy pointed to one of the little girls and said proudly, “Because my family has a lot of land, and we farm it well.”
Pan Yun looked at him gently: "If you cultivate so much land, won't your grandfather, father, and uncles have to work in the fields every day?"
“Yes, we go every day. If we don’t farm diligently, we won’t have anything to eat. Even in February and March, we can still eat two meals a day, one of which is dry food!” The little boy was particularly proud when he mentioned this, and the other children looked at him with envy.
Pan Jun wrote everything down. Before the adults returned, they washed and put away all the pots and pans, and cleaned the yard.
Judging from the time, it would probably take some time before they returned, so she simply said goodbye to the children, got into the carriage, and went directly to the fields to talk to the parents.
The road is lined with rice paddies on both sides. From a distance, people with their heads down and backs bent in the fields look like gray dots in a sea of green, very inconspicuous.
But it is these individual gray dots that support the greenery, making the greenery in the fields orderly and neat.
After walking for a while, the four of them saw a family in a field below the road. This was the closest family they had seen so far.
Pan Yun gestured for Tao Yanbai to stop the car. She walked to the edge of the field and called out to them, "Old man, I would like to ask for directions."
The old man in the field bent down, looked up, squinted at her for a while, and finally saw her clearly in the halo of light. He then washed his hands in the field, covered his lower back with one hand, and slowly straightened up with the other hand supporting his knee.
Because he had been bent over for so long, he couldn't straighten up for a moment, but he still walked towards her with his back slightly bent. A lot of water had been drained from the field, and now there was only a thin layer of water left.
He walked across half a field and only when he got closer could he see Pan Yun clearly. Seeing that she was a girl, he looked up at the road and saw that the person leading the horse was a young man. Although he was not very old, he was at least a man, so he felt relieved: "Where are you going, young lady? The typhoon has just passed, and there are many refugees outside. Some of them may have become bandits. You must be careful when you go out."
Pan Yun said, "Yes, we wanted to go to the capital to visit relatives. We took a side road for a while and then returned to the main road. We don't know if we are still on the right track, so we wanted to ask you, sir."
The old man walked onto the ridge of the field, then stepped into the ditch beside it to wash the mud off his feet. He casually swatted away the leeches clinging to his calves before straightening up and saying, "To get to the capital, just follow this official road downhill. After another seven or eight li, there's a fork in the road. One goes straight ahead, and the other goes north. Oh, the one to the right. Just turn right and keep going."
Pan Jun saw the leech that had fallen down rolling on the ground. Before it could even roll into the ditch, the old man picked up a stone and smashed it in two.
Pan Yun saw that he didn't care, her eyebrows twitched slightly, and she said, "Leechs have a strong vitality. Even if they are split in two, they will come back to life once they enter the water. Even if they are weak for a period of time and cannot suck human blood, after a while, one part will grow a head and the other part will grow a tail, and they will become two leeches."
The old man glanced down at the leech at his feet, casually smashed it, and said nonchalantly, "If I kill this one, there are countless others in the fields and ditches. Leeches can never be eradicated, so I don't bother to crush them."
But crushing them isn't a big deal; it just takes a little more effort.
Pan Yun: "I heard that leeches are most afraid of sunlight. As long as you keep them away from water and put them in the sun to dry, they can be dried into leeches in a day and can be used as medicine."
The old man was slightly taken aback, not understanding why she was talking so much about leeches. He hesitated for a moment and asked, "Young lady, do you want to buy leeches?"
Pan Jun was also taken aback for a moment, then smiled and said, "If the old man is willing to catch and dry them, I am willing to buy them at a high price."
The old man thought about it seriously. He knew there was a pool of muddy water, but because there was little water in that area and the terrain was low, water from all directions gathered in that one place.
Every time we went to work in that area, the cattle could only drink water and bathe there to cool off, which resulted in a lot of leeches in the pond.
Not only were they numerous, but they were also ruthless.
Since we're short of money, it wouldn't hurt to go and catch some leeches.
The old man immediately walked to the grass by the roadside, wiping his feet with it as he asked, "Young lady, does your family deal in medicinal herbs? How do you want to buy these leeches?"
Pan Yun said, “My family has several doctors who treat patients all over the place, so we also buy medicinal herbs. Leeches are called water leeches in medicine. They can break up blood stasis and remove blood clots. Because medicinal herbs are expensive, the purchase price for one ounce is two hundred coins.”
The old man's voice was hoarse: "How much?"
Pan Yun smiled and said, "Two hundred coins per tael. If the quality is good, we can raise the price even further. In pharmacies, the highest quality leeches can sell for two hundred and seventy coins per tael."
The old man was heartbroken when he looked at the leeches he had crushed; they were money.
Because Pan Yun had provided him with a way to make money, the old man was no longer in a hurry to leave and sat on the grass chatting with her.
Pan Yun asked, "With such a severe typhoon, the imperial court has reduced taxes; could the subsidies possibly make up for the losses?"
The old man said, "We are military households, not included in this category, so it has nothing to do with us." (End of Chapter)