Ye Shiqi followed her elder sisters out, solely concerned about the long-term workers laboring on the estate. Among the five sisters, except for the younger Shiqi whom the elder sisters wouldn’t allow into the kitchen to work.
The four elder sisters of the Ye family, along with their maids, busied themselves in the kitchen: boiling mung bean soup and heating water.
These tasks would not be done at home, but at the estate in the kitchen.
The estate indeed had a kitchen, and the long-term workers would be there guarding the estate, eating their three meals a day there.
Of the two Ye estates, the five sisters would not visit both; they boiled water and cooked mung bean soup in the kitchen.
The soup was distributed to the people assigned to this estate, and then the five sisters carried two buckets of mung bean soup on an ox cart to the other estate.
At the other estate, there were also only long-term workers guarding it, and Uncle was there too.
The ox cart was very busy today, responsible for transporting the rice. The estate’s rice could not be dried there, as they had a grain drying yard specially built for the Ye family.
Of the two estates, only one grew rice. They sent the rice to the grain drying yard, where part-time workers, hired for the job, were busy sweating through their clothes in the golden October.
Not every household had farmlands; many people worked tilling the lands of rich families, and after paying their dues, there wasn’t much left.
Later people felt this wasn’t right, as so much local land had been sold to these bosses, and more and more villagers were left without land.
So they relied on labor jobs to earn money, managing to buy food with the wages they made, and everyone in the family would pitch in during the busy agricultural season.
The Ye family’s five sisters didn’t mistreat the workers of the grain drying yard, also sending them mung bean sweet soup.
Of course, such treatment was not available every day, and the Ye Family’s sisters wouldn’t cook in the kitchen daily.
On days when they didn’t work in the kitchen, they would distribute extra reward money to the workers, allowing them to add dishes to their meals during the busy season.
Many more people in the village preferred working at the Ye estate; even doing part-time work like now was more appealing than working for other estates or rich families, who didn’t offer as many benefits.
In addition to a few rich men in the village who would hire help, this year there were several more bosses who contracted estates; when villagers couldn’t find work at the Ye side, they would opt for casual labor at other bosses’ or at a rich family’s place.
There were a fixed number of long-term workers; whether they worked well or how much money they earned was known only to themselves.
Next to the Ye Manor, at the Mengs’ estate, the workers were also frantically harvesting.
Overseeing their work was Housekeeper Meng, protecting the harvested rice from being stolen or snatched away by covering it on their estate ground.
Housekeeper Meng admired the neighbor’s Lady, who showed concern for the workers even during the busy farming season.
Take, for instance, his own daily hustle, where occasionally he would hear Madam Meng inquire, the Lady having invested in this estate yet often indifferent, apparently unconcerned whether the harvest was good or not.
Housekeeper Meng bore no grudge that his employers had bought the estate, making him work so hard to manage it.
He always believed that Old Master wouldn’t stay here for long. Eventually, the estate would be sold or rented to someone else, whether he would still be in charge was uncertain.
He’d heard that there was some ongoing enmity between the Lady and the farmer girls next door, but he thought it was just petty jealousy of young girls, unlikely to cause lasting resentment among the adults.
Old Master was more concerned about the economic development in the county, which was related to his own career and that of his loyal servant.
Housekeeper Meng didn’t have many concerns, aside from the fact that the rice seedlings at the Ye estate seemed more vigorous and productive.
He’d worked hard, but their estate’s yield could not compare to that of the Ye Manor.
One could tell just by looking at each panicle of rice in the seedlings; he couldn’t believe it was a matter of better seeds at the other household, never really figuring out the issue.
He had visited the other Ye estate as well, where they had built cottages and a large fishpond complete with pavilions.
Housekeeper Meng wondered who would be so leisurely to enjoy such luxuries in this rural area.
Were the Yes simply behaving irrationally with their wealth, pouring money into such chaotic investments? At least the investments of the Tang Family in various places seemed more sensible.
Aside from undeveloped mountains, all the purchased lands were cultivated with rice.
For unknown reasons, he always felt that despite his hard work, the rice yield was never as good as the Ye’s, a concern he had shared with Mrs. Meng.