Just harvesting a potato took them five days, whereas families with more hands might have finished in just two or three days. With no one to help, the two sisters put in five days of work, but thankfully, all the fruits of their labor were theirs to keep.
Afterward, they troubled the village chief to help them plow the field, offering him ten cents as a reward. Once the field was level, the sisters sowed the wheat seeds that Xiao Yu had bought. In modern times, sowing is done with machines, and before that, there were manual seeders, but they had neither. So, they resorted to the most primitive method: dividing the land into rows, creating little trenches in the soil with their hands, scattering the seeds bit by bit, and then covering them with earth.
No sooner had they planted the wheat than it began to rain, saving them the cost of watering.
Xiao Yu was so bold in trying to grow wheat because the climate here was slightly warmer than the north in later times. In other words, if not for the sea breeze, it would not be as cold as the north.
To greatly increase the survival rate of the winter wheat, she also secretly watered it for two days with a watering can from her space. The seeds didn’t cost her much; after all, they weren’t from her space. Whether they would survive was up to the heavens. If they didn’t make it, she would just plant millet in the spring.
Anyway, they didn’t grow much in the winter here, so at most, it would just be a waste of tens of yuan spent on grain seeds.
Once they had thoroughly tidied up the field, it was already December. The thought of those oysters around Nameless Island made her heart race.
But her space could no longer accommodate much, and now that she had a temporary home, it wasn’t as easy to set sail freely. In the end, she had no choice but to give up.
After busying around at home, she spent over ten days supervising the restaurant. By the fifth day of December, the renovation was officially coming to a close.
Actually, Uncle Zhang had already considered postponing the opening until after the new year’s celebrations, but she felt that they could definitely make money in the days leading up to the new year.
Yingbin Building had two floors and was constructed of wood, its structure showing the passage of time, hence the need for a renovation.
Of course, the so-called renovation wasn’t as elaborate as in modern times. It was simply a matter of repainting, revarnishing, repairing where necessary, and hanging sketches on the walls of the restaurant’s signature dishes. These sketches were converted from photos from the future using software, and after adding color, the finished products were created.
They weren’t drawn by her, but they were made by her, framed elegantly and hung prominently in the restaurant.
Thanks to her sufficiently detailed design drawings, Xiao Yu closely inspected everything from top to bottom and nodded in satisfaction.
"The painting is well done, the framing of these images is elegant, and they’re hung in noticeable spots with evenly spaced lines, but this cabinet is somewhat unsatisfactory."
She had originally designed something akin to a display cabinet with glass windows for presenting clear views of cold dishes, a pity that glass was unavailable at the time.
With the cost of colored glaze being too high, she had no choice but to make a rudimentary cabinet with a screen front. Although not entirely satisfactory, it was passable and usable.
The cash register and the wine shelves behind it were set up much better than the cabinet.
After completing the inspection, she sighed, "Let’s just leave it as is for now. We can make refinements slowly over time; we can’t expect to achieve everything in one go,"
Finally, she remembered to ask, "When do you plan to open for business?" Chapters first released on novel•fire.net
"How about the 15th day of December?" he replied.
Today was the fifth day of December, leaving ten days until the 15th. These ten days were ample time to clean up the restaurant inside and out, and sufficient for her to teach Li Wei a few of her signature specialty dishes. However, they would have to close again on the 28th day of December, meaning they would be open for just over ten days, not even half a month. Wasn’t that a bit too rushed?