The Zhou family harvested their wheat with remarkable speed; within just five days, all of the Zhou family's wheat had been collected.
Fortunately, this year the Zhou family had two courtyards, where they neatly piled the harvested wheat to dry in the open air.
With the intense sunlight, two days of drying was sufficient, plus there was always the additional half-day of sun in the fields.
While Zhou Dalang and the others continued harvesting in the fields, Ms. He and Ms. Fang stayed at home to thresh the wheat with flails. With a swing of the stick, the flail spun half a circle in the air before smacking down onto the wheat ears, shaking loose the grains onto the ground.
Ms. Qian led the remaining children, who—with sticks neither too thick nor too thin in hand—sat on low stools to painstakingly go over the wheat once more.
