Time flies; it feels like the autumn harvest had only just begun when, in the blink of an eye, it ended. There was no joy in the harvest this year. After paying taxes, the people were left heavy-hearted, as there had been poor yields two years in a row.
The only comforting aspect was that last year's severe crop failure prompted half the farmlands to be planted with high-yield red sweet potatoes this year out of fear of hunger.
During the autumn harvest, Zhulan would occasionally visit the orphanage's estate. The orphanage's land was exempt from taxes. As the harvest was sorted and stored, the bulk of it consisted of red sweet potatoes and potatoes.
There were too many red sweet potatoes, and despite careful handling during harvesting, some inevitably turned bad. Recently, Zhulan enlisted a woman skilled at making sweet potato starch to teach the children how to process such sweet potatoes into starch, aiming to salvage as much as possible.
