To speed up the dredging, the silt dug from the reservoir bed was piled on an open patch east of the dam.
The original plan had been to haul the silt back to everyone's fields, but there weren't enough trucks, and moving it that way would have been a hassle. They simply piled it up for now and would deal with it once the dredging was finished.
Some villagers came with donkey carts or tractors to haul a load or two of silt away to fertilize their vegetable plots. They let Li Long know when they came, and he didn't turn them down.
The stuff wasn't worth much, so he gave it away as a favor.
That afternoon, when Li Qingxia drove Li Qiang to school, Li Qiang carried a bag containing the fish Liang Yuemei had stir-fried with chili peppers for him.
The green chili peppers in the vegetable plot had long since run out, but farmers weren't about to waste anything. When they cleared the plot, they picked all the little misshapen peppers and green peppers still on the plants and put them in a spare room. Grown without chemical fertilizer or pesticides, these vegetables could keep for a long time in there.
Liang Yuemei had cleaned the small crucian carp and burbot caught in Little Haizi, stir-fried them with those green peppers, and packed them into large canning jars for Li Qiang to take to school.
Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei both knew the school food wasn't very good, but there wasn't much else they could do. They could only improve his meals by sending some food along each week.
Li Long had actually suggested that Li Qiang come to his house for lunch and dinner, but Li Qiang said it would take too much time. His