"This... is worrying," Hongji's father sighed as he saw the scene, swallowing the words he wanted to scold.
The safety of the kids, a concern he bore as a grandfather, poor people can't afford to get sick.
Another reason he dare not scold was that his wife and daughters hadn't come to work, yet all the kids had shown up, making him somewhat embarrassed by the looks from the villagers working in the fields.
Siya heard her elder sister's call and obediently stopped, waiting for her sister and father to come over.
"Siya, weren't you supposed to watch your little sister? Why did you disobey and go play in the water?" Daya picked up Siwa, intending to head back, her sickle still in her other hand, fearing she might accidentally hurt her sister.
Er Ya and Sanya were picking up fallen rice grains in the field. Seeing something was up, they both stopped and looked over.
"Elder sister, Wuwa wants to pick flowers," Siwa mentioned as her elder sister carried her away, not forgetting the flowers Wuwa had mentioned wanting.
"Those flowers..." Daya wanted to say not to pick them, they didn't have time to play.
"Daya, take your sister back first, dad will pick the wildflowers for you."
Hongji had already reached the edge of the ditch to pick boughs of honeysuckle and wild daisy.
"Be careful, be careful," Shiqi pointed out the wild orchid to her father while continuously gesturing.
Hongji looked at Wuwa, trying hard to understand what she was saying but couldn't make out her alien language.
"Dad, Wuwa said she wants to uproot that flower to plant it,"
Daya, always thoughtful, had been looking after her sister all along and understood more of this mute language.
"Wuwa is so young, what is she planting flowers for? It's not good to plant such wildflowers in our yard; it's better to plant a melon," Hongji said, his hands, however, contradicted his words, digging up even the orchid's roots with his sickle.
"Hehehe," Shiqi watched her father, who verbally refused but indulged his child, realizing that her father could indeed be cultivated further.
"Are you happy now? Don't have your Fourth Sister go picking flowers anymore, and you don't move either, what if you fall into the ditch? Just sit quietly, okay?"
Hongji placed the stems of the wild daisy, honeysuckle, and a red wild orchid in front of the little child.
This man thought to himself at this moment, such a young child wouldn't think about planting flowers, she must just want to destroy them.
Hongji then called on Daya to continue harvesting rice grains.
Shiqi's eyes followed her father and sister as they continued to harvest, and she thought of something, How long will they keep harvesting rice by hand?
She, previously a wealthy girl, as the saying goes, hadn't seen a pig run but had eaten pork; she knew farmers had a machine called a harvester, but such modern equipment wasn't available now.
Neither had she seen a human-powered threshing machine, were her grandfather and father planning to bundle up the harvested rice and carry it back to thresh?
Considering the weight of the rice seedlings and the grains, no wonder it took several days to work two acres of land.
With a harvester, perhaps even two acres would be done in an hour?
Alas, in this backward era, an unknown dynasty from the books, without modern machinery, everything had to be done by hand, making work difficult.
Shiqi once searched online, how much rice do farmers harvest per acre?
She later found out, if the harvest was good, one acre could yield over a thousand pounds.
She looked at the rice seedlings in the field, which were not very lush, the rice didn't seem to be very abundant. Could this acre yield a thousand pounds?
We also saw that some rice seedlings had flat rice grains; having 500 catties per acre was already not bad.
No wonder, even with two acres of land, planting two seasons a year still wasn't enough to feed the family with so many mouths to feed, and they weren't applying scientific farming methods; these past few months had been managed by the children.
Ye Shiqi felt that them having a harvest from these two acres was already quite good and she admired her elder sisters for their virtues.
A little honeybee flew towards Ye Shiqi, and then several more honeybees started circling quickly above her.
"Insects!" Siwa, frightened, trembled slightly; the small child was afraid of insects and had never seen insects bigger than mosquitoes, which looked quite terrifying.
Ye Shiqi was initially scared too, thinking these insects were coming to sting her. She had heard shortly after birth, her elder sisters discussing how Mrs. Li had been stung by a wasp and had ended up swollen like a pig's head with hands and feet all puffy. It had been by these yellow things that she had been stung.
Upon closer inspection, these didn't look like yellow wasps but rather the honeybees from the rumors. Looking at the flower in her hand, could it be that the honeybees were here for the blossoms?
Ye Shiqi glanced at her frightened elder sister, who was covering her eyes and head. She suddenly thought of a brilliant idea; could she store these creatures in her "space"? Perhaps then she could have honey from the bees?
While her elder sister was covering her head and dared not look, Ye Shiqi silently muttered a command, and both the flower and honeybees were stored into her space.
"Where are the insects?"
It was only when Siwa no longer heard the buzzing sound that she moved her hands away from her eyes, saw that the insects were indeed gone, and finally thought to check on her younger sister.
"Wuya, are you alright?"
Ye Shiqi's response to her elder sister was just an eye roll; shouldn't her sister have chosen to protect her first when faced with danger?
"Hehe, the insects are gone." Siwa, carefree, took Wuya's hand and began laughing happily.
Ye Shiqi let Wuya hold her hand while she continued to observe the beauty of nature.
Just as she had expected, after leaving the rice for a while, grandfather, father, and her elder sister started bundling up the rice. Grandfather and father were both carrying the rice, placing one end of the sheaves in a basket to prevent the grains from falling to the ground.
Daya also carried a lighter load, leaving the responsibility of carrying Wuya to Er Ya.
Carrying the dew-laden rice was rather heavy. They jogged with their burdens, struggling a bit, and after they had returned to eat breakfast, they came back here to work.
Along the way, the villagers who worked like them were all rushing past, too busy to even exchange greetings.
When they all returned home, the adults set down the rice in the courtyard, preparing for it to be threshed.
Hongji saw his two sisters eating in the kitchen. His mother was nowhere to be seen.
"Er Ya, Sanya, you'll have to thresh these grains later," Hongji said.
Hongji had originally planned to have Er Ya and Sanya help cut the rice, but seeing his mother absent and guessing she must have gone to his eldest sister's place, he sighed inwardly, feeling helpless.
Ye Shuzhi and Ye Shuzhen, hearing they could stay indoors rather than go out in the sun, both nodded happily.
"Where's mother?" Hongji's father entered the kitchen to have breakfast and didn't find his wife.
"Mother just went out, said she'd be back by lunch," Ye Shuzhi paused her meal and looked at her father. Her expression conveyed a message of not speaking ill of her own mother, believing that her father would understand.