Chapter 26: First Believe in Science

It's dinner time.

Originally, Grandma Wang and Grandpa Wang only prepared sweet potato rice to entertain their granddaughter, plus some cold-mixed sweet potato vines and leaves. The sweet potato rice was cooked quite thinly. Their purpose was to tell their granddaughter that the Wang family was poor, that it was not easy to support a large family, and that they really could not have another girl.

It's changed now.

Considering the waistcoat, scarf, gloves, rock sugar and glutinous rice noodles, let alone the meat, at least a few eggs should be added to add some meat.

Aunt Liu Hongmei was simply a worm in Grandma Wang's stomach. As soon as Grandma Wang opened her eyes, she knew what she was thinking and quickly took her two daughters-in-law to the kitchen to remedy the situation.

I picked up four eggs, made two into scallion egg drop soup, and fried the other two with leeks. It happened that there were only two crops of leeks left in the field, and they might be gone in a couple of days, so at least I would have some meat.

Finally, add some cabbage, winter melon, and sweet potato flour, and steam a big pumpkin, and you have enough dishes.

In this way, the eight-immortals table in the main hall can basically be half full, which is rich enough without being too ostentatious. It is just the right calculation.

Ye Yu sniffed and smelled the scent of eggs, which made her greedy. It was not easy to buy eggs in the city. Besides being expensive, she needed egg tickets. However, she still took advantage of her second sister Ye Lan to go on blind dates twice. Now that she was in the countryside, she had to raise a few chickens.

How many can you raise if you know better?

There seem to be three.

What a pity! If she could raise more, she would really like to open a chicken farm, a pig farm, and a duck farm... slurp slurp.

Ye Yu thought of it and asked: "Ahem, Grandma, is there anyone in the village who hatches chicks to sell... No, want to exchange them?"

"It's winter now, and the hens don't lay many eggs, so how can they sit on brood?" Grandma Wang shook her head.

Ye Yu:

"Can't we hatch chicks artificially?"

When talking about hatching chicks, we have to mention the bitter tears of people in the last days. Whether they are growing sweet potatoes or raising poultry, people serve them like their ancestors.

When the harvest season comes, a sweet potato the size of a thumb will make dozens of planting experts and animal husbandry experts jump and dance holding hands like children.

It's not that people with special abilities can't interfere, but the plants and animals that have been interfered with by special abilities have a very high mutation rate and may not be edible. Even if they can be eaten normally, the taste is probably hard to describe. The chance of the taste being normal is comparable to winning the grand prize in the lottery.

Ye Yu wasn't an expert in planting or animal husbandry, but she once craved chicken so much that she dreamed of roasted chicken, grilled chicken, beggar's chicken, and white-slaughtered chicken for a whole month...

So she went to the Agriculture Hall in the center of Hope Base every day to claim three precious eggs that were comparable to mid-level exotic beast cores, and watched them hatch chicks.

After watching for many days, an egg successfully hatched. The fluffy little yellow chicken was so cute.

It's so cute that it makes people drool.

However--

The future of animal husbandry broke Ye Yu's expectations. The little yellow chicken mutated as it grew and suddenly grew two meters tall. All the time spent these days wasted.

We can only be thankful that these artificially mutated creatures are generally not very strong and will not cause property losses to the people in the base. Maybe we can win the prize and eat them normally?

"Cluck, cluck!" The two-meter-tall 'little' yellow chicken flapped its wings and cawed twice, and its feathers covered Ye Yu's face.

“…”

I understand very well the desperation of plant scientists digging out potatoes the size of footballs from the ground.

Fortunately, we are not in the apocalypse now, and the chicks artificially hatched by Ye Yu will at least not mutate. They can be roasted chickens, grilled chickens, beggar chickens, or boiled chickens... hehe, hehe.

"Artificial incubation?" Grandma Wang muttered to herself. City people always spoke in a flowery way. "I've only heard of hens sitting on eggs, but can humans actually do that?"

Artificial incubation technology has already appeared in this era, both in the north and the south, especially in the north. Many families have built kangs. They all say that a warm kang is a good artificial incubator for wives and children.

It’s just that due to the lack of information dissemination, many technologies that seem to be common in the future may not be known to city dwellers or villagers, and it’s just a coincidence that many people hatch chickens.

Moreover, every household can only raise two or three chickens these days. Who would hatch chickens in the winter when they can hatch them in the spring? The key is whether the hatched chicks can survive. In winter, it is cold and food is scarce. In spring, there are at least wild vegetables in the mountains. Naturally, no one in Wangjiagou practices artificial hatching.

Ye Yu asked again: "If hens can do it, why can't humans? Grandma, do we have any fertilized eggs at home? Can I exchange them for a few?"

Grandma Wang, who originally thought Ye Yu was being naughty, lit up her eyes when she heard the word "exchange" and immediately changed her tune: "Yes, yes, we have two male and one female chickens at home. If you look at the eggs we pick up under bright light, you can definitely see black threads and black spots. Most of them are wedding eggs."

But the number is really small. In autumn and winter, not only do the chickens not sit on roost, but they also lay fewer eggs. This is because they keep the chickens in the kitchen. Once the first snow comes, the chickens will stop laying eggs no matter where they are kept.

Unless they can raise chickens on the kang or inside the quilt, but cloth and firewood are expensive in those days, it is not worth it for a few chickens. It is better to wait until spring for them to brood, not to mention that the number of chickens that each household in the team can raise is limited.

Ye Yu didn't care whether it was worth it or not. She didn't plan to hatch more eggs anyway, and it wouldn't hurt to try. "An egg is eight cents. Grandma, can you give me a few dozen more?"

The price here is one cent higher than that charged by the agricultural and sideline store in Pingquan Town, and a few cents cheaper than that sold by the supply and marketing cooperative. Taking the middle value, she can eat as many eggs as she wants. She doesn't have to use them all for hatching, she can also eat some herself.

"How can we have so many? Ask your aunt to give you a dozen to take back." Grandma Wang paused, giving a dose of precaution. "We gave you eggs for the auspicious occasion, but if you can't hatch them, or if the hatched chickens can't survive, it's not our fault."

"Grandma, I know."

Perhaps realizing her previous words were too formal, Grandma Wang wiped her eyes again and said in a different tone, "If it weren't for Grandma and Grandpa having to support a large family of twenty or so people, would you have taken these eggs home for free? Alas, life in the countryside is tough these days. There's hardly any income year-round."

Ye Yu agreed with the second half of this sentence.

Don’t think that Grandma Wang and her family are pretending to be poor. Maybe the Wang family’s conditions in Wangjiagou are indeed good, but poverty is the norm everywhere nowadays.

But Ye Yu was not enthusiastic enough to help people out of poverty, and she was not a poverty alleviation cadre.

If her grandmother's family was not dominated by the personality of Grandma Wang, but was very warm and thoughtful, she would not be used to it and would rather stay away, because it would be very troublesome and tiring to be attached to a whole family; if they were greedy and stupid and tried to climb up the pole like a snake, her leaving would make them understand that respecting elders never worked in her place.

It's just right now. Building bridges purely based on interests makes it easier to deal with smart people.

Grandma Wang was also very satisfied with her granddaughter's "understanding", and was even more satisfied that she had money to support herself. From this point of view, Wang Lai Di did not dislike her daughter. It was really possible that she was young and ignorant and just wanted to be radical. She was deceived into going to the countryside like the technicians who cut down trees and made steel in 1960.

If you ask her, how can the food in the countryside be as good as in the city where there is commercial grain every month?

So confused!

The elders had almost finished their conversation, but as for the younger generations, there were seven little ones in Wang Dahu and Wang Erhu's families. No matter which family they came from, they were ranked together before the family split up, seven boys and one girl, a typical situation of more males than females.

They stood in a row of different heights and came over impatiently.

Firstly, they were curious about the new guests, and also, this third cousin brought some delicious food. Although their grandmother quickly locked it in the cupboard, they could still eat it later.

Secondly, they had long heard of the reputation of this cousin. The adults in the village thought that children knew nothing, and many people did not avoid chatting with children. They had heard the rumors during the day. Aniu said that he saw it with his own eyes that his cousin kicked Wang Erlaizi a hundred meters away.

This is just as powerful as the cowherd boy Wang Xiaoer and one of the Five Tiger Generals Guan Erye in the comic books!

Unlike the adults, Ye Yu's exposed skills alone made the villagers admire him very much. Several children puffed out their chests and showed off to their friends in the village.

"This is my cousin!"

"And mine."

"mine."

Ye Yu saw that these rascals were not dressed cleanly, but at least they were warm, so they did not run around with snot hanging from their noses like some other kids in the village.

So I answered their question: "How is it possible for a person to be kicked a hundred meters? Do you believe in science?"

As he spoke, he brought the two most daring kids - Wang Hai and Wang Jiang, nicknamed Sanhaiwa and Sijiangwa, and a high-flying acrobat came.

By the way, once you reach the next level, the 100-meter sprint will be nothing, won’t that be easy?

The other little kids looked up with stars in their eyes: "Wow!" This aunt, theirs!

In a few decades, there will definitely be parents complaining that Ye Yu abused their children and had a poor sense of safety.

But now, not only Ye Yu, who came from the end of the world, did not think there was anything wrong, but the careless parents also just sighed in their hearts that the rumors in the village were not exaggerated. This girl of the Ye family had something special. She was stronger than a strong man in the countryside. She would not starve to death with her strength alone.

"Hahahaha, cousin, what you said is really interesting." A young female voice interrupted.

Ye Yu looked up and saw a young girl wearing an old dark blue cotton-padded jacket with small floral patterns. She had two long black braids with two red hairbands tied at the end.

In today's clothing colors that are mainly gray, blue and green, this kind of dress cannot be said to be unfashionable. It is not inferior to that in the city. However, at this moment, people in the city may not dare to dress like this for fear of being reported to GWH by pinkeye.

This is Ye Yu’s cousin, Wang Xiaomei, the only daughter of her uncle Wang Chuangen.

It can be seen that Wang Xiaomei, as the only girl of this generation, lives a good life at home. The same is true for Wang Ermao, the only girl of the next generation.

It may also be because Wang Xidi and Wang Laidi both married into the city, bringing benefits to the family.

This made Grandma Wang and Grandpa Wang keenly realize that the girl was not completely poured out, and there was also something to be gained. Not to mention the bride price, it would be nice to just treat them as ordinary relatives.

Especially the eldest daughter who married into the county town. It was with her help that the second daughter Wang Lai Di was able to marry into Yanjing, which brought many invisible benefits to their family.

Because of this, Wang Xiaomei and Wang Ermao are among the few girls in the village who are still studying. The former is in the second grade of junior high school in the town and is on her monthly leave these two days. The latter is in elementary school in the Hongqi Brigade and needs to walk an hour to go back and forth to school every day.

Of course, this also requires them to have excellent academic performance.

These days, there are final exams in school and education is not compulsory. Except for ten-year-old Wang Sanhai and two younger children who have not yet started school, the several boys who studied together in the family, including Wang Xiaomei's younger brother Jiang Xiaohu, have all dropped out of school due to poor grades.

It can be seen that not everyone can read.