pdf-ebookys Chapter 211 Still Young
Chapter 211 Still Young
Fortunately, the land in the backyard is spacious enough, otherwise there would be no room for everyone. Two horses can live in one shed, and the cow can live in a separate shed.
After measuring the foundation, several people took hoes and started digging.
The old man carried a wine gourd on his back and carried stones from the river one by one. Each stone was flat and suitable for paving the ground. After carrying two trips, he would hold the gourd and drink a few sips happily before continuing with the next trip.
Zhou Xing poked her head out of the shed, watching the old man carrying the baskets one by one, and smiled at Li, "Second Aunt, Master really spoils Guoguo. He lets her do whatever she wants, and she helps with everything. Grandpa didn't dote on her that much when he was alive."
Li smiled sincerely and said, "Yes, it's because the master and the apprentice hit it off. Otherwise, how could the two of them become master and apprentice with so many people on the road? It must be your grandfather's blessing in heaven. If it weren't for the old man along the way, we don't know if we could have made it here alive."
Zhou Xing thought for a moment and said, "Maybe it's true. Not long after grandpa left, the gentleman came. Grandpa is blessing us in the dark."
Each family member does his own thing.
Zhou Guo and a few others dug out the pit, measured the size of the wood, and started sawing. Zhou Guo was already very skilled at this job. After all, she had been sawing in the mountains for several days at that time. Now she had developed her hand speed and knew how to control the rhythm. She sawed two-thirds of the wood, and Zhou Mai and Zhou Mi volunteered to saw the remaining one-third together.
After sawing, I started to drill square holes. There were no nails. A shed this big couldn't be tied up with a few ropes. I had to drill holes and cut a small column the size of the square hole at both ends of the beam. When the time came, I plugged the two sides in tightly and it wouldn't loosen. It was the simplest mortise and tenon structure.
Several people have been working on this job for the whole morning. Although Zhou Guo is strong, she has never done such delicate work. The size is the most difficult to grasp. If it is not shaved too thin, it will have to be shaved again. You will know later that it is better to shave it bigger than too much. If it is too big, it can be modified and polished, but if it is too thin, it can be discarded.
The three of them had not finished drilling all the holes when it was time for lunch.
The old man carried so many loads of stones in the whole morning that the stones were piled up in one corner almost forming a mountain.
Zhou Guo walked out from the backyard and saw the pile of stones at a glance. Upon closer inspection, he found that each stone was suitable for paving the yard. They were flat and angular. The stones also looked thick and would not crack easily.
Zhou Mai and Zhou Mi were also stunned. "Sir, how many trips have you made? You didn't take a break for the whole morning, did you?"
As he was speaking, the old man came in briskly from outside carrying a basket of stones.
Zhou Guo hurried over to take it, saying as he took it, "Master, are you exhausted? Don't work this afternoon, take a rest. When you're done inside, we can carry it together. It won't take long to carry it back."
The old man shook the gourd and said, "You gave me this wine just to ask me for help, but now you don't need it?"
Zhou Guo said, "I wanted you to help, but I didn't ask you to carry all these stones by yourself. Look at this pile, it's like a mountain. It's enough for others to carry it in a day. Although you have some skills and can afford to do this, you are old after all, so you should take it easy."
The old man is 62 years old this year, and he is over 60 years old, so he is indeed not young anymore.
"Huh, I'm not as old as you say. I can still run, jump and eat. When I go out, people ask me if I've just reached the age of 50." The old man wasn't convinced and kept saying that he was old. But he was not old at all. Compared to those gray-haired, toothless, hunchbacked people, he was still a young man.
Zhou Mai smiled and said, "Yes, sir, you are not old at all. When you go out, you look at least a circle younger than people of the same age. You look very energetic. People would believe you if you said you were in your forties."
The old man twirled his beard with satisfaction. He had worked for a whole morning and had sweated a little, but his face was rosy and he looked in good spirits, even more energetic than when he came back from the mountains.
I never had this much energy when I came back from the mountains before. I saw him becoming more and more silent day by day. I don’t know if it was because there was no one to talk to in the mountains.
But Zhou Guo felt that if a person stayed in the quiet mountains for too long without anyone to talk to, his mood would be affected, so he tried not to let the old man go into the mountains alone. After all, people still need to stay among people. Look at the old man these days, he is in better spirits and eats more than before.
I didn't stop him. I let him do it if he wanted to. He would rest on his own when he got tired anyway.
After lunch, Zhou Guo and his colleagues started drilling again. With the experience from the morning, they could work much faster in the afternoon. However, because they did not have the right tools, their speed was still slow.
Zhou Guo used his own dagger and dug bit by bit. Zhou Mi and the other two borrowed tools from the well digger. Although they were not very easy to use, they were usable.
Several people patiently dug and polished the hole bit by bit, and finally all the holes were dug out in one afternoon.
The old man spent an afternoon building a new stone mountain next to the stone mountain.
Li and Zhou Xing made several new sets of clothes. They had each made a new set of autumn jackets, and their thin cotton-padded jackets were almost finished. The next steps were shoes and socks. At this time, people could still wear straw sandals, which were a bit troublesome to make. The two of them could only make two pairs in a day without stopping. Fortunately, except for Zhou Guo, the shoes of everyone else were barely wearable.
When Zhou Dacang and Zhou Gu came back, they saw two large piles of stones in the yard. They were shocked. When they heard that the old man had brought them up from the river today to pave the yard, they felt bad. "One more day, after the last day of work tomorrow, everyone's house will be almost built. Sir, please wait for Damao and I to come back the day after tomorrow, and we will work together. How can you do such a heavy job alone? What are Ermao and Sanmao doing?"
The old man waved his hand and said, "They are even busier. They have been busy all day. Your little niece wanted to move the barn to the backyard, so they were busy all day."
The two looked at Zhou Guo in surprise.
Zhou Guo said, "It's too smelly to keep it in the yard, there are too many mosquitoes, and it's dirty. It's everywhere, and we have to pave the yard. So we just moved it to the backyard."
Zhou Mai said, "Uncle, brother, we can put up the shed frame tomorrow."
The two men walked to the backyard and saw a floor full of wood and debris. Upon closer inspection, they found that the holes and pillars at both ends of the wood had been prepared, and they only needed to connect them together tomorrow.
Zhou Dacang couldn't help but touch Zhou Guo's furry head. He was filled with emotion for a moment and didn't know what to say. His father and brother were gone, and he was the younger uncle in the family, the head of the family. These things should have been done by him, but the land reclamation, paving the ground, and building sheds were all done by his little niece and two nephews in their teens.