Throughout late February and the first half of March, Li Long was busy selling harvesters.
The village roads had dried, and the children could happily walk to school on clean roads.
The reeds along the roadside had sprouted shoots, but the children pulled them out almost as soon as they appeared. On their way to or from school, practically every boy carried a great handful of reed shoots.
As for what exactly was fun about pulling them out-there really wasn't anything. They looked like arrows with their pointed tips, but at most, the boys could throw them like darts, and their poor balance made them tumble.
But boys were boys. At seven or eight, when even dogs found them annoying, they would do whatever they saw the others doing.
Fortunately, Li Qiang set an example for the other children. He took the handful of reed shoots he brought home to Old Ma's Place and fed them to the roe deer in the pen.
There were quite a few roe deer and red deer in the pens now. Li Qiang and Li Juan especially liked the little ones born that winter.
When they had time, they fed the greedy young roe deer and red deer the shoots one at a time. They could squat beside the pen watching them for half an hour.
At first, the other children didn't dare enter Old Ma's Place. Mainly, when Uncle Lao Luo first started raising wild boars, he worried that they would stay wild even after they grew up. Those children were always climbing everywhere. If they climbed into the wild boar pen and got gored, or into the red deer pen and got rammed, it would be serious.
So the children who sneaked over had been scolded a couple of times. Once word