For a while after that, everyone in the brigade was run off their feet. Even Meng Zhiqiang and the others who had kept fishing stopped setting nets and went to work in the fields.
Besides earning work points, they also had to harvest the crops on their own plots.
Although Li Long had said he would go fishing once he finished with the corn and oilseed sunflowers, he kept working for a while longer. After all, the sugar beets in the five mu of feed-crop land still needed harvesting. Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei were busy with the brigade's work, so the sugar beets fell to him. Tao Daqiang came along to help too, and a full day of digging was exhausting.
Digging sugar beets was different from picking corn, after all. They grew big and took a great deal of strength to dig up. Even together, the two of them could not finish one mu in a day.
Tao Daqiang was a little better at this than Li Long. Whatever else, he had done more farmwork than Li Long.
After a day of digging, Li Long looked at the blisters rubbed up at the bases of his fingers and smiled wryly.
Why put myself through this?
But there was nothing he could do. Before, he could have taken out ten yuan, hired ten people from the brigade, and finished it all in a day.
Now everyone was taking part in the brigade's rush to bring in the harvest, and he felt too embarrassed to undermine their work.
After hauling a cartload of sugar beets home, Li Long was so tired he genuinely did not want to move.
Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei only got home as Li Long was unloading the sugar beets. Li Juan had made cornmeal porridge