After the Mid-Autumn Festival, all the farmers in Kaiyang County became busy.

The golden fields reminded the diligent farmers that the harvest season had arrived once again.

Seventy percent of the workers in the entire stationery factory took a harvest leave to return home and focus on the autumn harvest.

The remaining thirty percent of the workers, who received double salaries, continued to be diligent in their posts.

As the main steward of the Lady’s Box, Yun Niang stayed at the factory during this autumn harvest to oversee the shipment of new products, ensuring the first batch of one hundred Lady’s Boxes could be delivered on time.

With Song Yu managing the factory operations, Qin Yao had no excuse not to join in the fieldwork this year.

However, if she was to suffer, she wouldn’t let the entire family off the hook.

Apart from Mrs. Li, who had to wash clothes and cook for everyone, and Little Lai Fu, who had to tend to the cattle and horses, the rest, Yin Le, Da Lang Brothers and Sisters, all went to the fields.

At this moment, under the scorching sun, battered by the merciless rice husks, the four siblings, wielding sickles and repeating the harvesting action, began to miss their ’immensely kind’ old father at home.

If father were at home, this year’s rice wouldn’t have fallen to them to harvest.

The four siblings exchanged a secret glance, on the forty-fifth day of their father’s absence, wishing he... would return to work.

Mrs. Li, carrying the prepared lunch, came to the field. Yin Le, whose head felt like it would explode under the sun, immediately threw down his sickle and rushed to meet her.

He claimed, in a grandiose manner, that the basket was too heavy and offered to help with it.

When the gauze on the basket was lifted, Yin Le exclaimed with joy, "Master, there is cool melon drink!"

"What, what?" Sanlang squeezed in, "Wow! It’s cool melon drink!"

Mrs. Li sympathetically wiped the sweat from Sanlang’s forehead and called Da Lang, Second Lang, and Si Niang over for a break.

"Madam, you should rest too..." Before Mrs. Li could finish speaking, Qin Yao flashed forward and was already vigorously drinking the watermelon juice Yin Le had poured.

Mrs. Li helplessly chuckled, squatted down, spread out the gauze, and laid out the meal.

Harvesting rice is physically demanding, so in the past two days, each meal included meat. Today’s lunch was braised pork, stir-fried eggs with green peppers, and a jar of cabbage tofu soup.

The portions of meat and eggs were very large, more than enough to go around.

The tofu soup had been cooled for half an hour, and now the heat had dissipated entirely, making it pleasantly cool and delightful to drink.

As Mrs. Li laid out the meal, Qin Yao and her children attacked the food as if they had been starving, burying their heads in the rice bowls.

This continued until they had eaten more than half a bowl of rice, their inner emptiness filled, they then slowed down, enjoying the shade provided by the straw canopy, the breeze from the river, and admiring the fruits of their labor over the past two days.

The family had five acres, more than half of which had been harvested. With half a day of work in the afternoon, the harvest would be complete.

And this was even with them working half an hour and resting for fifteen minutes. If it were other families, they would have finished seven to eight acres by now.

After finishing lunch, resting for a while, and drinking all the watermelon juice, Qin Yao then called the children and apprentices to continue working in the field.

Yin Le, along with Da Lang and Second Lang, was responsible for cutting the rice, while Sanlang and Si Niang tied the rice stalks into bundles. Qin Yao threshed the rice on the spot with a barrel.

If she worked quickly, she would join the harvesting team with a sickle.

Busy until evening, after two days, the family’s five acres of rice were completely harvested.

Next is drying the grains.

The backyard expansion was completed, and Song Yu’s family of three had moved in before the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Now the ground at home was covered with bluestone, and the main bedrooms were lined with wooden planks, neat and tidy, making the children feel the house was much more spacious.

With a spacious backyard, Qin Yao had gone to the town before the autumn harvest and bought six drying mats in one go. Now all spread out, they could dry all of this year’s newly harvested grains.

Under the strategy of refining three-tenths of the good fields and roughly tilling seven-tenths of the middle fields, the overall harvest of Liu Family Village increased by ten percent compared to the previous year.

The meticulously cultivated fields had a yield of at least 430 jin per acre.

Moreover, for households like Liu Dafu’s, with high-quality fields and meticulous cultivation, their eight acres surprisingly reached 530 jin, surpassing Qin Yao’s own record for per-acre yield in previous years.

In contrast, Qin Yao’s family’s per-acre yield decreased significantly this year, not even reaching 500 jin, with a total yield of 2,300 jin for five acres.

Of course, the reason was simple: she had turned her five acres into experience fields for village chiefs and heads of towns to tryout.

The family’s grains were left for Yin Le to watch over with the children, while Qin Yao hurried to the town.

After the autumn harvest comes tax collection, which is of utmost importance for the entire Sheng Country.

To ensure complete collection of grain taxes across the regions, Sheng Country devised a very detailed tax collection procedure.

The Storage Officer in charge of taxes had assigned tax collection tasks to various states and counties before the official autumn harvest.

In this tax collection activity, Qin Yao, a mere village leader, was to play a crucial grassroots organizational role.

Taxes are passed up from the bottom, level by level, and each village is the starting point for tax collection.

Qin Yao and the village chiefs from several other villages in Jinshi Town went to the village chief’s house to report each village’s autumn harvest situation and take over the tax collection tasks from the village chief.

Because the refined cultivation method originated from Liu Family Village, the county paid special attention to the village’s harvest this year.

Qin Yao assigned the task of compiling the village’s autumn harvest data to Liu Yang and Liu Qi.

However, since the rice had both early and late-maturing varieties, and it was only the beginning of August, they had to wait another half a month to compile all the data.

But even the half of the autumn harvest data Qin Yao had now was enough to make the other village chiefs envious.

"This year, our Liu Family Village’s highest per-acre yield was 532 jin from Liu Dafu’s land."

"The lowest yield for refined cultivation also reached 430 jin, though the roughly cultivated lower fields, despite being seeded with high-quality rice initially, still maintained an average yield."

Qin Yao put away her manuscript, looked up at the village chiefs, and smilingly concluded:

"In general, the ’three-tenths refined seven-tenths rough’ cultivation plan for Liu Family Village this year has achieved a phased victory! It has increased Liu Family Village’s overall harvest by ten percent compared to last year!"

The village chief looked at Qin Yao with satisfaction; it was this young person who brought such a great surprise to Jinshi Town.

An increase of ten percent was something they hadn’t dared to imagine before.

If Liu Family Village’s cultivation method were applied to other villages under Jinshi Town, their entire town’s harvest next year could also increase by ten percent.

If one uses 100 jin per acre as a base, a 10% increase means 110 jin.

Adding up all the tens of thousands of acres in the entire town, it would amount to hundreds of thousands of jin of grain!

Just the thought of it almost brought the village chief to tears with excitement.

But before he could finish being excited, Qin Yao asked the question that concerned everyone the most on behalf of all the villagers.

"Village chief, is this year’s grain tax still one-fifteenth?"