Last Thursday our school chief hired three hands at the cost of 300 yuan to remove the dead stalks of potatoes with other wild plants from the plot. He had intended to have the potatoes harvested on Monday. But the rainy weather postponed it to today. This morning when I reached school with a pick for digging up those left, about ten villagers taken on had been getting in the potatoes. The co-operation between mechanical power and manual labor continued when we knocked off. The work was about to be finished before dark. The ridges need plowing twice in an attempt to turn up all the potatoes within. Today our chief had to pay the farm-hands 1200 yuan. It seems as if the cost was too high plus the seeds and fertilizer. The expenditure is large enough for buying sufficient potatoes for consumption.