Rebirth in the 60s: A Path to Counterattack-Chapter 79 - 0. Intention to Raise Chickens (Collected 2,400+)

After a night of deep sleep, Shuzhen woke up again when the day was already bright.

Pulling open the curtains, seeing the sun outside, it must be around nine or ten o’clock.

The bedding on the kang where Lianshan slept had already been folded and stored in the kang cabinet, and the room was tidied up neatly. The thousands of catties of mushrooms that were processed overnight last night were also properly placed in the yard.

She didn’t know where he got those forty or fifty large frames from, but the shallow round frames with a diameter of more than a meter were set up on racks supported by bricks and wooden sticks.

The small yard was densely packed with these large frames, leaving only a walkway about a meter wide from the house door to the courtyard gate.

After a morning of sun exposure, the topmost layer had shrunk considerably.

The fungus, with less moisture and easier to dry, seemed half-dried already.

It was from the note left by her husband on the dresser that Shuzhen learned they felt it was a massive harvest after a day of mushroom picking, so they set off early in the morning, bringing enough dry food and sacks. After tossing the mushrooms and fungus into the specially borrowed drying frames, they hurried up the mountain.

However, seeing Shuzhen sleeping soundly, Lianshan couldn’t bear to wake her to follow them into the mountains.

Anyway, there was someone at home to guard everything, and those mushrooms and fungus drying outside needed someone to keep an eye on them and turn them over from time to time!

Perhaps worried she might have any complaints about being left behind, Lianshan left Shuzhen a long note in his few known Chinese characters with handwriting that wasn’t quite neat. With a tone like soothing a child, he talked a lot about the importance of looking after the house.

It amused Shuzhen to no end: was she really the type who couldn’t stay home and had to follow the excitement up the mountain?

Just as a golden finger-like existence, if she didn’t go with them, they really couldn’t count on another big harvest like yesterday’s, could they!

Drinking the porridge simmered to perfection, with a layer of rice oil floating on top. Along with the garlic eggplant mixed last night and the two eggs specially boiled by her husband. This nutritious and delicious with a thick feeling of love brunch... uh, well, should be called a brunch ended.

After tidying up the dishes, Shuzhen followed Lianshan’s instructions and turned over the mushrooms and fungus in the courtyard frames one by one.

Then she checked her prey—the four wild chickens, one male and three females.

Seeing these four drooping without much spirit, the cornmeal mixed with water knotweed in the feeder had been scattered all over. The cornmeal was almost pecked clean while the water knotweed remained unchanged.

Shuzhen furrowed her brows, thinking this wasn’t sustainable.

In these days, families with worse conditions might not even be able to have cornmeal at every meal, let alone feeding it to chickens?

Besides, relying on these few wild chickens to lay eggs and meet the home’s egg needs, they couldn’t be spoiled to the point where they’d only eat grain and not grass, right?

Otherwise, even if she could feed them with her supernatural abilities without any effort,

the annual grain distributed by the production team was limited, and whether there was enough for the 360 days was uncertain. Even having plenty to eat was a blessing, so where did one get these grains to feed chickens?

Whether it led to suspicion or being criticized for waste, it didn’t match Shuzhen’s plan to lie low peacefully until the campaigns were over, and then rise strongly when the winds of reform blow in.

Maybe, it’s worth trying the worm-fed chicken method she discussed with her second sister-in-law yesterday!

Suppressing a slight sense of nausea, she took a small hoe (garden hoe) and dug in the garden area where the soil seemed loose and looked like earthworms might exist. In a short moment, she fished out over ten still wriggling little worms.

Seeing the ten or so earthworms thrown in, the previously droopy four chickens suddenly jumped up to madly chase and snatch them.

Shuzhen couldn’t help but grin: it seemed the worm-fed chicken method worked, and feeding wild chickens this way was highly viable as well!

Yes, to earn more solid currency—eggs, she deeply felt the necessity to reveal this worm-fed chicken approach.

If she could raise dozens of chickens without spending any grain, even if starting today she never set foot in the fields again, who could call her lazy or idling away selfishly?

What, you’re worried about being branded as bourgeois remnant?

Don’t tease.

That’s just an extreme phenomenon in very few areas, isn’t it?

In both lifetimes, she never encountered any situation where too many seedlings had to be pulled out because they exceeded some prescribed number and were thus seen as bourgeois remnants to be eradicated. Nor exceeding the number of chickens, geese, and ducks allowed before being considered as bourgeois remnants to be trimmed away.

On the contrary, there were always calls from above to grow more vegetables, raise more chickens and ducks to support the working brothers and contribute to the nation.

It simply didn’t allow private trading; the government purchasing stations offered very low prices.

People, who were already struggling to get enough to eat, naturally wouldn’t fall for that trick again and would rather plant more corn, potatoes, peas, and such in their backyard plots.

After all, more grain means less hunger.

Moreover, chickens, ducks, and such cannot grow without grain, and they aren’t diligent in laying eggs without grain either.

During these times, making sure folks were fed was quite the hassle, so who had the mind to raise more grain-consuming beings with low purchasing prices that might also be swept away by an epidemic?

If not for the high demand for eggs, and the mandate from above regarding the chicken raising task, there might hardly be any households raising chickens voluntarily.

Now with the idea of raising chickens without grain, not only could one bolster the family’s egg supply bank. Publicly, there was a decent income, avoiding the hardship of living modestly even with a golden finger at hand. Just buying new clothes required racking one’s brain for suitable words, seeking legitimate sources for money and cloth coupons, and such.

She could also coax everyone in the village to join in, improving everyone’s overall living standard. This way, it wouldn’t become a village-wide sensation when someone made new clothes, nor would it attract side looks when cooking meat twice.

Most importantly, as enthusiastic contributors to the poultry industry, she and her husband would naturally be model workers, like outstanding individuals.

With such a positive image, anyone trying to pick faults or frame them would find it difficult.

Moreover, when the Worker Peasant Soldier University quota comes down next year, with Dai Honghua’s couple’s suggestion, and the villagers they benefited for poultry’s sake nominating them,

her desire to send Lianshan to study and train at the Worker Peasant Soldier University with aspirations for a national civil servant career in the future had a great chance to become a reality!

Oh my, the more she thought, the more she felt revealing this worm-fed chicken method was imperative indeed.

However, to raise chickens, one must first properly establish worm farming first.

The positions of both the front and back garden plots were suitable, just that the entire garden was planted with corn. The corners and edges were crawling with beans, cowpeas, and squash.

To set up a worm bed and raise worms, the corn in the garden must be harvested first.

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