Chapter 425 Duck Feet Vegetable

The roller device on the edge of the cliff is made of wood and is unpainted. It is now covered with a thin layer of moss, which feels a bit slippery to the touch.

Mu Xi took the rope and made preparations for the descent. Zhao Yeqing scraped the device with the blade of the sickle to clean the moss on the handle that would be held in a moment.

After Mu Xisuo descended, Zhao Yeqing walked a short distance to the right while waiting to observe the situation of the cliff on the other side of the landslide.

The originally collapsed sloping stone wall has now, after such a long period of sedimentation, had weeds growing on some of the soil that fell on it, and a lot of plants could be seen growing on the cut surface of the soil from a distance.

Zhao Yeqing was a little annoyed that he forgot to bring the telescope when he went out.

However, judging from the current situation, it seems to have stabilized and will not slide or collapse easily again. After all, nearly a year has passed, and it rained for a long time some time ago, but the condition of the slope still looks the same as when it first landslided.

Wait until the rice is planted before going over to take a look.

There had been no gasoline replenishment during this period, so Zhao Yeqing used both hands to crank the device to hoist up the gasoline. After getting all the gasoline up, his arms were so sore that he couldn't lift them.

As soon as Mu Xi came up, he rubbed her arms to relax her muscles, and said with some heartache:

"You don't dare go down the mountain. If you could go down, I could get gasoline up there, and you wouldn't have to work so hard."

Zhao Yeqing held Mu Xi's hand with one hand and unscrewed the kettle with the other hand. He took a sip before answering, "It's useless even if I dare to go down. It's not easy to climb up from the bottom of the cliff. It's better to stay at the top."

Even with a safety buckle, it is only an aid. To climb up, one still has to rely on arm strength. Although Zhao Yeqing is much stronger now, his endurance is still a little poor. In addition, he is afraid of heights, so it is not easy to do it and it is easy to be dangerous.

It took two trips to carry the barrels of gasoline to the electric car, and it was impossible to carry them all in one trip out of the woods by bike. Mu Xi made two trips to the outside of the woods before he took Zhao Yeqing out.

After going back and forth for a while, it was almost dark when we drove home.

When Zhao Yeqing was waiting for Mu Xi in the woods, she unexpectedly discovered the duckfoot grass she had been talking about for a long time by the swamp. This thing will grow in large patches wherever there is spring. Zhao Yeqing only picked less than a third of it and got two large handfuls.

It can be eaten for three or four days, and it tastes good whether stir-fried or served cold.

The duck's foot grass they eat here is the one with white stems, which looks a bit like coriander. In some places, it is also called duck celery. Among the wild vegetables, there is another wild vegetable that looks very similar to the white-stemmed duck's foot grass. When Zhao Yeqing was on a business trip, he saw that the Chaozhou people called it red mugwort because it has red stems.

These two wild vegetables not only have different stem colors, but also different aromas and leaf textures. The red stems are relatively rough, so they don't eat them. They prefer the more tender and soft white stems of the duck's foot vegetable.

(Picture here)

Zhao Yeqing was careful and dug out a few plants with their roots intact, planning to plant them outside in the yard after returning home. This was a habit he had developed after living in the mountains for a long time, and he always wanted to move whatever he found back home to plant.

There were too many cows, sheep and ducks in the front yard, and she was worried that they would be eaten, so she planted them outside the wall on the right side of the bamboo forest outside the backyard. This kind of wild vegetable does not require too much care and can grow wildly as long as it can survive.

Mu Xi parked the car, moved all the gasoline and put it into the house. Xiao Hei went out for a play and came back running back to the group of dogs proudly to show off.

Zhao Yeqing couldn't help but feel a headache when he saw a large group of livestock on the open space around the grain field.

Today Xiao Hei went out to take care of his personal hygiene before coming back, but the animals on the grassland have been eating, drinking, defecating and urinating there recently, and it is impossible to clean them together like in the barn. The sheep and horses are okay, but there are still a few big cows. If they are not cleaned for a long time, the smell will be really indescribable.

No wonder the cattle and sheep were not let out when it rained some time ago. The grassland was no longer grazed by cattle and sheep, but was filled with feces left behind. After the rain stopped, the weeds outside grew better this year than last year.

In previous years, we could pull some grass from the lawn at the door and cut it down to make hay. But this year that won’t be possible, as it will probably all be eaten by cattle and sheep. However, we also planted more rice and wheat this year, so there shouldn’t be a shortage of straw.

Straw is coarser than ordinary hay, so it needs to be chopped finer if mixed with feed.

The growth of pasture is good this year. Last year, we had to wait until after the Qingming Festival to cut the first crop of grass. This year, it is estimated that it can be cut half a month earlier. The silage made from corn straw has almost been consumed, and after the harvest, it can fill the empty silo.

Grain Rain had just passed, and the weather, which had been sunny for a few days, started to rain again as if to suit the weather.

The spring rain is about to appear during this period, and the beginning of summer will be here soon.

Time flies by, and ninety years of spring are only three months.

Zhao Yeqing looked at the rice and glutinous rice seedlings in the fields that had already sprouted, and harvested snails for tonight's snack from the rice fields where they had already appeared before the rice seedlings were planted.

Tonight I’m going to use a Guangxi recipe, stir-frying snails with perilla and pickled bamboo shoots, and adding two bright red pickled peppers.

This jar of pickled peppers was made last fall. Then it got colder, and I don’t know if it was because of the temperature or because the pepper seedlings had been alive for too long, but they gradually wilted and died.

The fruit and vegetable seedlings that were replanted this year were grown together with rice seeds, and are now almost ten centimeters tall.

The original planting basement is now used by Zhao Yeqing as a seedling room, which happens to have a plant growth lamp. He turns on the PC board during the day to let in natural light, and turns on the planting lamp at night to allow the seeds to receive light 24 hours a day.

The seedlings cannot withstand the erosion of rain, so it is most appropriate to grow them inside first.

The land for growing vegetables needs to be re-cultivated every once in a while. Zhao Yeqing pulled out and threw away the old plants last year, leaving a large piece of land free, which can be re-planned this year.

Eggplant, pepper, tomato, beans are vegetables that are grown every year. Selectively planted loofah, bitter gourd, etc. only require a small piece of land, and planting one or two trees is enough.

The soil in the vegetable field has become hardened after being washed and squeezed by rain for a year. We have to use a hoe to dig deep into the ground to dig up the mud and break it up, then mix it with manure before continuing to plant.

Vegetable fields are not like grain fields. In order to prevent pests and burn straw, we can only sprinkle some lime to kill bacteria and remove some insect eggs hidden in the soil. This is better than nothing.

Vegetables are most likely to be infested with insects. After preparing the soil in the vegetable garden and planting the pepper seedlings, Zhao Yeqing saw transparent insects the size of sesame seeds attached to the back of the leaves within two days when he turned over the pepper leaves.