With Yang Family no longer selling vegetables, Juhua's workload lightened considerably, and she actually found herself with free time during the day. But her leisure didn't last more than a few days before she was swept up in the flurry of New Year's preparations: butchering pigs and curing meat, making puffed rice candy, pressing tofu, spring cleaning, washing the quilts, and so on. The hustle and bustle continued right up until the New Year's Eve feast.
But this kind of busyness was a joyous and welcome thing. In previous years, they weren't this busy. And why was that? They were so poor they had nothing to prepare, so of course, they weren't busy. Therefore, Juhua didn't mind this kind of work at all. 'Busyness means a bountiful harvest!'
It would be impossible to recount every trivial little task, so we will only record a couple of the more interesting events.
One day, Meizi and Liu Xiaomei came looking for Juhua, bursting with excitement.
