Gasp! She's a Time Traveler Using Modern Tech to Improve Ancient Life-Chapter 416 - 413: The Family’s First Business Venture

Matters in other towns of Mao County naturally concern Xiao Chong, the parental official of Mao County. Meanwhile, Lin Family Manor has already begun bustling in the wake of the typhoon.

Although the typhoon caused damage to many homes, especially those built with thatched mud, which completely collapsed, thanks to Lin Wanwan, not only could they exchange seafood for rare tiles, but they also gained a side business with sweet potato vermicelli.

The value of cotton is unclear to everyone, but the worth of vermicelli is well known. Once this batch of vermicelli is made and brought to town to sell, it will surely exchange for plenty of corn and cloth!

Compared to other villages, Lin Family Manor, living by the sea, suffered the least loss — since they have very little land, the sweet potatoes and other crops were successfully harvested by the women before the typhoon.

The clan’s men, naturally, helped the Lu Family Manor men harvest the cotton that the two manors jointly planted.

The Lu Family Manor, not far from Lin Family Manor, suffered much more in this typhoon. After all, they are authentic farmers, with far more land than Lin Family Manor, and naturally more crops.

This fierce typhoon brought visible damage to the fields, leaving countless crops, soon to be harvested, torn down by the storms. Even those that barely survived were broken, with roots damaged and leaves harmed.

Especially the late rice, prone to disease after enduring the typhoon, faces pest threats and might suffer from plant epidemics. Whether they can hold until the October harvest, and what the yield will be, is uncertain. To achieve half the usual annual yield would be a blessing.

Due to this, even as Lu Family Manor began drying their cotton, spirits were low.

After all, cotton is inedible and its worth remains unknown, whereas the tangible loss of reduced grain production in the fields is evident.

How can these farmers, accustomed to relying on the elements, find comfort?

Yet they were fortunate to be in the same village as Lin Family Manor, which exchanged corn for many sweet potato seeds. This time sweet potatoes yielded plentiful results, with their high output unmatched by ordinary crops in Great Tang.

Moreover, the timing was perfect, enabling everyone to dig them up before the storm hit.

Apart from sweet potatoes, Lin Family Manor’s Village Lady Le’an opened her granary to aid nearby residents whose homes collapsed severely in the disaster.

With Lin Wanwan’s relief efforts and the presence of sweet potatoes, at least people from Lu Family Manor and Dafeng Village won’t face starvation before the autumn harvest, a silver lining amid misfortune.

Of course, wishing for ample and delicious meals would be too much. Farmers reliant on the weather faced such a devastating typhoon before autumn harvest—it’s fortunate enough not to have starved; how could they dare to expect full bellies?

No matter how tough life gets, one must strive to live it out with full effort.

Now, every clean open space in both villages sees cotton drying. For this purpose, during the earlier idle farming period, people went up the mountains to cut new bamboo and wove many bamboo mats.

Children, ever carefree, were delighted to see the snowy white cotton on the drying ground for the first time, running to call it "white clouds," wanting to frolic in it, only to be caught by the adults and get a spanking.

These cottons are treasures of the adults!

The tax collection begins in a month; whether cotton can exchange for expected hemp and grains hangs on what happens after drying.

Besides drying cotton, Lin Family Manor also has to make vermicelli.

Making vermicelli is primarily the responsibility of the women, and during the sweet potato vermicelli period, Lin Family Manor shuts its village gates, allowing no relatives to visit!

Regardless of married-out daughters or incoming wives’ families, all are outsiders; the sweet potato vermicelli making mustn’t be revealed!

Though Xiao Mingfu said that vermicelli was long recorded in books, the Clan Leader does not heed such details.

Whether noble landlords wish to make vermicelli isn’t something the common folk can obstruct; the Clan Leader only knows that no farming families in the local ten miles can make any kind of vermicelli.

The vermicelli appearing in town comes from circulation in other communities.

But now, they, Lin Family Manor, know how to make sweet potato vermicelli!

This time, the whole village planted sweet potatoes, with a total of twenty acres and harvested ten thousand pounds of sweet potatoes! With Great Tang’s sixteen ounces to a pound, that converts to sixteen thousand modern pounds!

Though less than modern yields without fertilizers, to people who previously harvested only 120 to 240 pounds per acre, sweet potato yields were a super harvest!

Even without making vermicelli, eating sweet potatoes alone would prevent starvation.

However, sweet potatoes are less durable than potatoes, and Mao County’s humid climate doesn’t allow for northern-style root cellars; such would mold here!

Thus, without processing, neither potatoes nor sweet potatoes compare to millet or rice.

Since last year, the County Government gathered village elders and chiefs quarterly to educate on agricultural planting, including warnings that sprouted potatoes are toxic.

Though sprouted sweet potatoes aren’t as toxic as potatoes, in humid Mao County, sprouting often leads to rot, rendering them inedible.

Thus, Xiao Chong, after consulting with Lin Wanwan, wrote in his publicity plan that sprouted sweet potatoes shouldn’t be eaten.

One cannot expect illiterate peasants to differentiate, so better to make it straightforward.

Now Lin Family Manor processes sweet potatoes into vermicelli and starch, both far easier to store than raw sweet potatoes, whether for selling in town or keeping at home.

Thus, while making vermicelli and starch, the women of Lin Family Manor display abundant enthusiasm!

To ensure secrecy, the Clan Leader doesn’t allow unmarried girls to participate. From the Clan Leader’s view, the incoming daughters-in-law are more family than daughters destined to marry out.

While Great Tang sanctioned divorce in towns and noble households, rural areas knew nothing of divorce, not even abandonment. How hard is it for a peasant to marry a wife with expensive dowries only to abandon!

Once a woman marries into Lin Family, she becomes family in life and death.

Lin Wanwan naturally sympathized with young women and persuaded the Clan Leader that all, whether men or women, are part of Lin Family Manor!