The little one's purse connects the two worlds, turning a desolate village into a paradise.

Ya Ya looked on in surprise: "You waited specifically for me? What happened? Is there no more trash? You don't need us to collect it anymore?"

"It's not construction waste. I... I wanted to ask, you gave me a basket of bok choy yesterday, right? My grandpa really enjoyed it and kept talking about it. He asked me to ask if you had any left. We won't take it for free; we'll pay for it."

Cheng You took Ya Ya's stroller and helped her carry it up the steps in front of the commercial city.

Why is Sister Chengyou also buying bok choy?

Ya Ya was stunned.

The vegetables here are cheap and plentiful, so why are you asking me to buy them myself? Do you want to support the village's business?

Or is it that not only the wild vegetables growing in the mountains, but also the vegetables grown in their Lotus Village are so popular and delicious?

After returning to the village last night, Ya Ya told Grandpa Fang and the others about Grandma Wang's desire to buy bok choy regularly. Grandpa Fang and the village chief immediately gave it a careful consideration.

The bok choy grown in the field can sell for five yuan per pound. One bag of seeds is planted in one plot of land. This batch is only the first harvest, but it will still weigh eighty pounds. In another ten days or half a month, the vegetable field can harvest another batch with the bok choy hearts.

That must weigh at least a hundred kilograms, and you can earn almost a thousand yuan from one plot of land!

It sounds very appealing. If a few more plots of land were cultivated, it would provide the village with another stable source of income.

Previously, when Ya Ya went to the morning market to buy ordinary vegetables, a pound of Chinese cabbage cost only a few cents, and slightly better ones cost one or two yuan. Why can the small Chinese cabbage grown in Lotus Village sell for five yuan a pound?

If everyone is willing to pay a high price for the vegetables from Lotus Village, they shouldn't take advantage of it.

We still need to check if there's any difference between their vegetables and those bought outside.

After Ya Ya rested, the village chief and Fang Tiesheng and the others did not go back. Instead, they went to the other end of the vegetable garden in the dark, picked two vegetable leaves, one for each of them, and also had a few more large cabbage leaves that they had taken out of the cellar.

If we don't bring this up, they haven't really noticed any difference. For villagers who have just escaped poverty, as long as it's food and can fill their stomachs, that's good. They don't have the desire to savor the subtle differences in taste.

Now, with a sense of inquiry in mind, I carefully ate a bite of Chinese cabbage and a bite of my own baby bok choy, and I discovered that there really is a difference.

The vegetables brought back from that area were plentiful and cheap, but they were very watery and lacked aroma. Sometimes, after chewing them a few times, they even had a slightly astringent and bitter taste.

But the rapeseed was also bought from there by Nannan, so why is there such a difference?

Is it because of the land beneath our feet, or because of the water?

Fang Tiesheng rubbed a handful of soil under his feet and slowly said, "Whether growing vegetables is good or bad ultimately comes down to two things: soil and irrigation water. The difference between the vegetables we grow and those in other places is just these two things."

The village chief nodded in agreement.

"Tiesheng, you've been to that area. Do you remember what the water and soil were like?"

Fang Tiesheng recalled the scene of the place he visited. It was shrouded in fog all day long, and there was an indescribable strange smell in the air, which was far less refreshing than the mountain air in Lotus Village.

Looking around, he saw only cement roads, with hardly any thick, fertile soil to be seen. Yet they could sell it in large quantities, so there must be plenty of land. He had never seen soil before, so he had no way of knowing. He didn't even drink a drop of water, but hadn't Nannan filled a large bucket from the tap?

"Let's compare it with water first."

"become."

Fang Tiesheng and the village chief got up and went to the three-in-one bathroom with running water. They filled two bowls with water, took small sips, and frowned in unison.

The water in this bowl had a slightly strange taste, and swallowing it made my throat feel rough and tight. It was nothing like the sweet and refreshing spring water from the back mountain, nor was it as clean and pure as the well water from the ground.

"It seems that water is a key factor." The village chief put down his bowl. "In the future, we will still have to rely on well water and spring water for irrigation. I originally thought that having water storage tanks would save a lot of trouble in the future, and we could get water for irrigation here. It seems that we can't save on water."

"Da Niu and Hu Zi plastered the well walls with stones and cement at the entrance of the village. They should be completely dry by tomorrow. Once it's firm, they can dig deeper. After the new water source comes out, they can let it sit for a day or two before using it."

With the recent drought, this well is the most crucial water source for growing vegetables, and we can't afford to be careless.

……

Seeing that Ya Ya was standing there silently for a long time, Cheng You thought that the child was too embarrassed to ask for food or leave. After thinking for a moment, she said softly, "If you want to go buy something, go ahead. I was just asking, it's nothing."

Ya Ya suddenly snapped out of her daze, her mind racing to calculate the number of vegetables stored in her space.

Grandpa Fang said that her space can keep things fresh, and she put all the freshly picked bok choy into her space. She sent out several baskets of them in the past two days.

"Sister Chengyou, wait a minute."

Ya Ya reached out her little hand and started counting on her fingers, muttering to herself: "I gave Auntie a basket, Grandma Wang gave me two baskets, Brother Zhao, Sister He Miao, Uncle Shopkeeper, Uncle Double Chin, and Sister Cheng You."

Each basket weighs about three jin (approximately 1.5 kg), so more than twenty jin (approximately 30 kg) were sent out, leaving about fifty jin (approximately 25 catties) in the basket.

Seeing her like this, Cheng You didn't urge her, but waited for her to finish muttering.

After figuring it out, Ya Ya looked up at her and said in a clear voice, "Sister Cheng You, I still have a lot more!"

As she spoke, Ya Ya bent down and lifted the lid of the trolley, revealing a large, bright green box.

Cheng You was taken aback, then couldn't help but laugh out loud: "You come out to shop at the trade market, why are you carrying so many vegetables with you?"

And when she helped carry the stroller, it didn't seem that heavy.

It seems her recent workouts have been effective?

Ya Ya scratched her head with a chuckle, then reached out and handed over two large bundles of fresh, tender bok choy: "Sister Cheng You, is this enough? Here, take it to your grandpa."

"No need to deliver, I'll buy it." Cheng You quickly waved her hand, put the bok choy from Ya Ya's hand back into the trolley box, and closed the lid: "Come on, come with me to the office, there's a scale inside, I'll buy ten pounds from you."

Cheng You estimated the approximate weight of the vegetables in Ya Ya's cart and reported ten jin (5 kg).

It wouldn't be good to just take all the vegetables from the little guy's plate at once.

In the office, Engineer Yu was organizing documents. He greeted the two men as they entered.

"Hello, Mr. Cheng, and you're here too, little one."

"Where is the scale, Mr. Yu? I want to weigh some vegetables." Cheng You nodded, first helping Ya Ya to sit down on the chair before asking.

"Vegetables?" Engineer Yu was taken aback, but didn't ask any further questions. He quickly found a portable electronic scale and grabbed a plastic bag to hand it over.