In early July, the wheat harvest began.
Li Jianguo's tractor went out alongside the agricultural machinery cooperative's reapers and Kangmaiyin combines to harvest the wheat.
Following Li Long's advice, Li Jianguo had applied to the team to establish a cooperative, also applying for a compound to serve as its base.
Xu Chengjun had approved it without putting any obstacles in his way. The compound would be beside Li Long's cooperative, but its construction would have to wait until the single-story houses on the village homestead plots were finished.
They were still living in the old compound anyway, and there was room to park the tractors there, so there was no hurry.
It was also cotton-topping season. Many villagers went to earn money topping cotton at the cooperative, while others topped, cultivated, and weeded their own cotton.
That made the wheat harvest less important than before. People could do the sums: the money they earned working at the cooperative would easily cover the cost of harvesting their wheat with a Kangmaiyin.
They would lose the wheat straw and get no wheat chaff back, but it saved them worry and work.
So this year, only two or three families used the threshing ground south of the New Settlement. Most had a Kangmaiyin harvest their wheat, hauled it back to their own yards for winnowing, then either delivered the grain they owed to the state or put it into storage.
With fewer people working at the threshing ground, those scenes of communal labor were hard to come by.
Most of the machines used to harvest wheat in the Fourth Team were Kangmaiyin combines, because they saved trouble.
So most of the Li family's reapers went to work in other villages.
A few other families in the village had bought reapers before, including Xie