Her Cultivation Diary

Chapter 37: 37.Tea Garden Fertilization_1

The red-haired auntie’s sales ability was indeed second to none.

Under her leadership, regular customers casually ordered three or five jin each, while new customers hesitated before taking one or two.

So, when another group of customers saw the message and took time out of their schedule to come over, they discovered—

“I was only half an hour late, how come there’s none left?”

“Yeah, didn’t they say that nobody liked to eat Milk Vetch today and wouldn’t buy it?”

“Right! I hesitated for ages before coming, planning to just buy one jin to try, as a way to support the boss!”

Song Tan: ???

Were there such outrageous statements in the group?

She quickly checked her phone and, sure enough, a lot of familiar avatars were discussing how Milk Vetch was unpopular, with great seriousness as if the business was about to fail.

But when she opened the WeChat payment, many had scanned the QR code and paid a hundred and eighty yuan.

Song Tan: …the ways of the world are truly deep!@@novelbin@@

The customers also realized what was going on, and now with tears in their eyes, they looked at her empty baskets, finally shifting their gaze to the Milk Vetch salad in Qiaoqiao’s hand that had not been finished, stirring with eagerness:

“What’s this?”

Song Tan simply handed over some disposable chopsticks: “This is the unpopular Milk Vetch.”

A few customers, with mixed feelings, each tried a bite with restraint, and tears streamed down their faces in an instant—

“If I let them deceive me again, I’m a puppy!”

Qiaoqiao’s eyes lit up: “Woof woof woof!!!”

Stimulated by this, the crowd had no choice but to sadly finish the rest of the dish, then agreed to come back the next morning to buy in large amounts, before leaving reluctantly.

Song Tan: …it’s not that serious.

Once the people left, Song Tan quickly looked at the small basket of Milk Vetch in the rear seat of the car: “Let’s go, Qiaoqiao, to the express station.”

I promised that person from out of town, and I need to send it to him.

…

When she got home, Song Tan counted the money she received that day and found that she had another two thousand yuan, even though she hadn’t picked much more that day.

Wu Lan had gone from being bewildered to calmly accepting the situation, even starting to plan out that plot of land:

“If you ask me, with this money-making, you should stop feeding the cows and pigs.”

Song Tan shook her head: “Mom, the main purpose of growing this is to fertilize the fields. The fields haven’t been cultivated for many years, they need to be taken care of.”

“Besides, Milk Vetch grows fast. With so much land, we can’t possibly sell it all, so there’s no need to be frugal.”

As soon as she finished speaking, she saw Song Sancheng getting ready to go out with a hoe on his back, she looked at the dull sky that seemed like rain was coming: “Dad, what are you doing?”

Song Sancheng replied: “I’m going to dig at Tea Mountain. When I went up the mountain the other day, I found that our tea plantation there has started sprouting. The old leaves are green and lush, so I might as well apply some nitrogen fertilizer before it rains.”

Fertilizing the tea plantation generally needs to be done before a rainy day, by lightly digging up a layer of soil and sprinkling the fertilizer on it.

This way, when the rain falls, it’s easy for the plants to absorb the nutrients without burning the sprouts.

He said, and there was a hint of gleefulness in his tone: “I think our land this year is full of Spiritual Energy; everything that grows tastes great. We should pick more tea leaves; they’re bound to taste good!”

His words made Song Tan think of the old tea plantation at home.

In past years, the tea leaves could still make some money, but as the internet developed and marketing became more aggressive, tea leaves without a brand like theirs lost their market.

So, everyone let the few acres of tea plantation go untended, just keeping the leaves for personal consumption. If they really wanted to make money, they would go out to work in the latter half of the year.

Song Tan’s family, because of Qiaoqiao’s condition, the couple felt sorry for their child and refused to take him to the factory, so someone had to stay home each year.

Naturally, there was more work to do managing the family fields.

The air grew increasingly moist, a sure sign of spring rain by evening, and Song Tan thought of the faintly bitter yet sweet aftertaste of her hometown’s tea leaves, stirring her own longing.

At that moment, she turned around and grabbed a hoe, “Dad, let’s do this together.”

Song Sancheng wanted to stop her, “This kind of physical labor, for a young lady like you…”

But then he remembered how hard-working his daughter was, how she could effortlessly carry two large baskets at once and he fell silent.

After thinking it over, he decisively called for his son, “Qiaoqiao, let’s go, we’re going to till the fields!”

Qiaoqiao burst out, “Are we planting corn now?”

…

Tea Mountain was still some distance from home.

They needed to circle around to the back of the mountain, climb the path over it, and then reach the other side to see the expansive tea gardens.

This vast area, naturally, all belonged to Song Tan’s family.

Looking at the lush green leaves, Song Sancheng couldn’t help but sigh, “The weather’s been good this year, the spring cold isn’t that severe. In previous years, we would have had snow by now, and the tea leaves would almost certainly have been damaged.”

As he spoke, he started to dig trenches with his hoe.

Song Tan really didn’t have any experience with fertilizing, but she followed suit and energetically started digging.

With each move she made, strands of Spiritual Energy wrapped around the rows and rows of tea leaves on both sides…

The sky grew darker, as if rain would start falling at any moment.

Song Sancheng looked at the vast expanse of land he had quickly tilled, and then at the areas that Qiaoqiao had carefully fertilized, and he was shocked—

“You’re digging so fast!”

Normally, it would take a long time to take care of this tea garden. If they waited until October to apply the base fertilizer, digging deep trenches, it would take him over a week on his own!

But now, in just over an hour, such a large area was finished—even for light shallow digging, that was an incredibly high efficiency.

The experienced farmer was puzzled:

“Have I been eating more lately, or has my body recovered, that I feel so energetic the more I work?”

Song Tan remained silent, pretending that it had nothing to do with the Spiritual Energy she released.

Song Sancheng didn’t even consider her for a moment, he just went to inspect the area she had dug and expressed his surprise at her overly agile hoeing—

“Wow! You really are born for farming! Look at this work, fast and fine!”

“Daughter, it seems the land and water of our home really nurture people. Look how much stronger you’ve gotten!”

Qiaoqiao followed behind with the hoe, huffing and puffing as he spread the fertilizer, sticking out his tongue at Song Sancheng, “Daddy, you’re slow at farming!”

Song Sancheng chuckled, “As long as I’m better at planting corn than you, it’s fine.”

“Qiaoqiao, don’t follow behind your sister, just go row by row.”

Recently, being so busy, he realized too late; they had already missed the best season for fertilizing.

Plus, it looked like the rain was coming half a day earlier than forecasted, so there was no time left to dig anymore.

They could only do as much as possible, and anything left would simply have to be spread on top of the soil.

As he looked over the tea garden, Song Sancheng sighed again, “These four or five acres of tea, if we harvested them diligently, we could get a hundred and some pounds of dry tea by the end of the spring harvest.”

“But there’s so much to do at the beginning of spring, there’s no time to deal with it, it’s really a pity.”