She Only Cares About Cultivation-Chapter 809 - 768: Famine Era 9 (First Update)

During this period, the family’s vegetables grew more and more, with eggplants, green beans, tomatoes, chilies, cucumbers, and green vegetables growing well, and the sweet potato leaves in the backyard also growing lush. Sometimes she’d brush some into the space and sell some low-value government currency when selling fruit.

Since sweet potato leaves grow quickly, she dared to brush them so recklessly. Of course, she also prepared some red dates, walnuts, cauliflower, and lotus root from the space for her family to eat. As for things like chives, cucumbers, and pumpkins, which the family already had, she’d put them into the space and help sell them if they couldn’t finish them.

The reason is simple: given by the teacher; those she took away were brought for the teacher.

Anyway, Grandpa and Dad wouldn’t expose her, so she just muddled along like this.

After harvesting the wheat, she returned to the city. She was now very familiar with the road, and since it was broad daylight, her father was assured and didn’t send her.

This time she lingered around the hospital for three days and sold fifteen silver coins and ten yuan.

Taking advantage of the fact that the cooperative didn’t require cloth tickets to buy cloth, she bought ten silver coins’ worth, one silver coin for ten meters, making a hundred meters for ten silver coins. She selected several colors, and although this hundred meters of cloth wasn’t of great quality, it was at least new.

When she went home on the weekend, she gave the cloth to Mom, asking her to make some clothes for the whole family to wear. Of course, there were red and yellow colors, just right for her and sister to make two summer outfits.

The remaining ten yuan in change was spent on buying ten jin of coarse salt.

Her farmland was now at Level 10, about to level up to Level 11. At Level 11, watermelons would be available, which could fetch a better price.

Despite her frequent visits to the cooperative, she never saw any watermelons for sale.

Now was the time to eat watermelons, yet none were sold on streets; it was clear that people didn’t have spare land to plant them. If there was any land, people grew wheat, corn, sweet potatoes, or potatoes instead. Even soybeans were more favorable than watermelons!

Helping to plant corn, sorghum, buckwheat, and sesame for the family, she spent four days in the city selling vegetables and fruits, earning twenty silver coins and thirty yuan.

Adding the previous forty silver coins, she now had sixty silver coins and thirty yuan.

With thirty yuan, she bought five jin of vinegar and five jin of soy sauce.

She spent ten silver coins to buy four barrels of Milk Essence for her grandparents, younger brother, and sister, and five silver coins for three jin of small mill sesame oil.

She also used five silver coins to buy thirty meters of good quality cotton fabric, intending to make some undergarments for herself.

This time, she saved forty silver coins again.

She brought back so many things that it wasn’t feasible to carry them all at once, so she decided to slowly take them out and first brought out a barrel of Milk Essence for her grandparents to supplement their nutrition.

Grandpa saw such a precious thing and disapprovingly looked at her: "You’re squandering money again, giving us these things is just a waste."

"Grandpa, don’t worry, I’ll earn more in the future. Now it’s one barrel, and later it will be a whole box. Just enjoy it; as long as I can afford it, granddaughter will buy it for you. It’s not wasteful for anyone to drink it. You’ve both saved and scrimped all your lives to raise us, and now it’s time to enjoy life."

Time slipped into July, with her time at home and in the city roughly half and half. Since she needed to stock up on supplies, she saved forty silver coins this month.

Previously, when in school, she could save 20 silver coins in a month because she could only set up a stall one day a week. But now, during the holidays, time was freer, and she made full use of it; each day she reaped two to three harvests. In July, her land level rose to Level 11, and she could only carry one watermelon at a time, each selling for five silver coins, managing to sell about three a day.

She sold one at one place, and then moved to the next since her basket could only fit one; it wasn’t easy to transfer them back and forth so she had to change places.

With this method, she saved forty silver coins in July and used the money earned from selling vegetables to buy toothbrushes, toothpaste, towels, underwear, and hair ties for each family member, and spent thirty silver coins on thirty jin of cotton.

Prices varied due to scarcity.

While staying in the space, she rarely bought food essentials since there were corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and pumpkins in the space—enough to satisfy her hunger.

After buying cotton, she had fifty silver coins left.

In August, she earned thirty-five silver coins, converting it all into cotton, as the cold winter was approaching and she wanted to save up cotton to make cotton-padded clothes for each family member.

In September, school started, and she became a third-year middle school student. Thanks to summer study, she had reviewed all the third and fourth-year courses.

She meticulously recorded areas she didn’t understand, raising them with her teachers during school to reinforce her learning.

The school’s meals were as hard to swallow as ever, scarcely seeing meat year-round, making her accustomed to a vegetarian diet. However, she was slightly better off than other students since she could occasionally bake corn, sweet potatoes, and potatoes in the space and munch on a tomato or cucumber for a treat. She couldn’t bear to eat expensive fruits herself, for the money could buy cotton and fabric instead.

But to boost her nutrition intake, she still bought a basket of eggs now and then, boiling one each day.

While unable to afford much else, eggs were a must; she sourced them from nearby villages by going door-to-door, buying four for one silver coin.

In contrast, in the city, one silver coin bought three eggs, and in winter, sometimes only two—a steep price. Even braised eggs sold at school cost one silver coin for two.

In this era, prices were very arbitrary. Instead of being set by the market, scarcity dictated price—items scarce were costly, while those plentiful were cheaper.