When Gao Mingcheng finished picking the tangerines and went down the mountain, Chen Duofu had indeed helped him catch two chickens. The two chickens had their feet tied with straw and were placed in the shed.

After seeing Gao Mingcheng, Chen Duofu immediately asked: "Mingcheng, are you going to the county with a live chicken or are you going to the county after slaughtering it?"

It is best to slaughter chickens and ducks in the countryside so as not to dirty the new home in the county town. So Gao Mingcheng said: "Slaughter a chicken here and take a live chicken to the county."

Put the live chicken in the corner of the yard and keep it for a few days. It would be even better to stew a chicken tonight and then stew another chicken a few days later.

Chen Duofu said: "Then I will kill him."

He picked up a chicken and walked towards Gao Mingcheng's home. He had been staying at Gao Mingcheng's home for a while and was already very familiar with it.

Gao Mingcheng didn't say any nonsense like "no, no" or anything like that. He put the tangerines on the side of the road and prepared to drive over. Although with his strength it wouldn't be difficult to move the tangerines directly to the car, there was no need for that!

Why do you buy a car? Just for convenience!

Not long after, Gao Mingcheng drove the car over, backed it up, then stopped the car and loaded several boxes of tangerines into the truck bed.

After packing the tangerines, Gao Mingcheng went to take a look at the chicken coop. Sometimes when he picked up eggs, he would put them in the room where Chen Dasong stayed overnight. When he had accumulated a lot of them, he would move them to Gao Mingcheng's home to make it convenient to deliver them to Gao Mingcheng.

The room where Chen Dasong stayed overnight was locked, but the key was hidden by the window because the lock was not for protection from family members but for protection from outsiders.

Gao Mingcheng opened the door and saw a basket of eggs on the ground. Since he was back, he might as well take them away.

Since the kindergarten opened, there is no need to set up a stall to sell eggs. They can be placed directly in the kindergarten. Every now and then, I use the eggs to make a dish for the children, such as egg and seaweed soup, steamed eggs, etc.

Because there are many people eating, a lot of eggs can be used up at one time.

As the temperature gradually dropped, the chickens stopped laying eggs, unlike in April and May when there were many eggs. At that time, the kindergarten had not yet opened, and Gao Mingcheng had to make salted eggs from the eggs that could not be sold.

After Gao Mingcheng had cleaned up everything, Chen Duofu had already helped him slaughter a chicken.

Killing a chicken is actually quite easy. Grab the chicken's wings with your hands, then tilt the chicken's neck back and control it with your hands. At this time, the chicken will find it difficult to break free. Find the right place to cut the chicken and pluck some of the chicken feathers there with your hands to make it easier to cut.

Then the knife came down and blood splashed into the bowl.

After the chicken bled to death, it was thrown into a basin and its feathers were scalded with hot water.

However, using hot water to scald the hair is a technical job and it cannot be done for too long. Once the skin is cooked through, the hair will come off with the skin when you pluck it.

You can't under-scald it either, otherwise it will be very difficult to pluck the hair.

Plucking chicken feathers is easier than plucking duck feathers. A skilled hand only needs one or two minutes to pluck all the feathers from a chicken.

Duck feathers are more troublesome, especially for ducks in the molting period, which have a lot of fine hairs and are difficult to pluck.

"Duofu, you made this chicken very clean!" Gao Mingcheng said with appreciation when he saw the chicken prepared by Chen Duofu.

Chen Duofu smiled modestly.

At this time, Chen Duoxi ran over and said loudly: "Brother Mingcheng, my sister-in-law asked me to come to you and said that the food will be ready soon, and asked you to go to her second sister's house for dinner."

Gao Mingcheng looked at his watch and was very surprised. It was not even twelve o'clock yet, and the Yu family had already started eating?

There is no way this lunch could have been prepared by Duo Yu!

Of course it wasn’t done by Xuanyue, she is still in confinement after giving birth!

"Okay, I understand." Gao Mingcheng nodded, drove the car directly to the roadside of Xuanyu's house, and parked under a camphor tree.

There are many camphor trees in the village, some of which are hundreds of years old. You can find dozens of them if you look around.

"Brother, are you back for dinner too?" When Gao Mingcheng walked over, he happened to see Zhang Chengyuan also coming back from the field carrying a hoe. There was still some mud on his shoes and pants.

Hearing Gao Mingcheng's greeting, Zhang Chengyuan responded honestly.

The two brothers-in-law climbed up the hill one after the other, and then they arrived at the Yu family's courtyard.

There is a vacant lot in front of her house, but there is no wall built around it. After all, bricks are quite expensive, and it takes a lot of bricks to build a wall.

As soon as he walked over here, Gao Mingcheng smelled the aroma of chicken soup. It seems that many members of the Yu family are also eating chicken this year!

Under the eaves, there were some bright feathers piled up. From the feathers, one could tell that they had slaughtered a rooster, most likely the rooster that Gao Huoyi's family had compensated.

"Ming Cheng, brother, you're back! The food will take a while, you should wash your hands and take a rest first." Xuanyuemei saw them coming back and half of her body stuck out from the kitchen.

Today Xuandu Jin is the chef, Xuandu Mei is helping out and watching over Xiao Shitou.

As for Xuanyue Jin's youngest son, he was placed on Xuanyue Yu's bed, so that he could play with his newly born sister, while Xuanyue Yu took care of him.

The three sisters divided the work and cooperated with each other, so they were able to have the meal so early.

Zhang Chengyuan couldn't sit still. Seeing that there was not much water left in the kitchen tank, he picked up a shoulder pole and bucket and prepared to fetch water.

He went to Gao Ming Cheng's well to fetch water. The water from that well was of good quality and tasted sweet and clear.

Before Gao Mingcheng dug a well, he fetched water at the foot of a distant mountain where there was also a natural spring from which water continuously flowed. The excess water would flow along the ditch all the way to the fields and merge with the water in other ditches.

However, the spring water is in the open air, and sometimes the water quality will be polluted, such as when leaves fall into the water in autumn or small animals die in the water.

After Zhang Chengyuan brought back two buckets of well water, they could officially have lunch.

There were six dishes on the table, one was fried pork with chili peppers, one was fried winter melon, one was fried pumpkin, there were also fried dried gourds, fried dried eggplants, and a big bowl of chicken soup.

However, if you look closely, you will find that there are only some bad parts of the chicken in the chicken soup, such as chicken legs, chicken wings, etc., which are not here.

Xuanyuemei noticed that Gao Mingcheng was looking at the bowl of chicken soup, so she explained, "We left the chicken legs and wings for our second sister. She's in confinement after childbirth, so she needs to eat something better."

Gao Mingcheng didn't want to eat this piece of meat, so he said, "It's my duty."

Everybody sat down to eat. Xu Xuanjin's cooking skills were neither good nor bad, just the standard of an ordinary farm meal.

After dinner, everyone gathered together and chatted for a while. Around two o'clock, Xuanyuemei took the initiative to ask Gao Mingcheng to send her elder sister Xuanyuejin home.

"Okay!" Gao Mingcheng stood up and prepared to drive.

But Xuanmei and Xuanjin were not in a hurry to go to the car. Instead, they went to Xuanyu's kitchen again. When they came out again, they were holding some winter melons and pumpkins in their hands.

Winter melon and pumpkin are both large vegetables. When they are ripe, if you keep them in a cool place, they can be preserved for a long time. However, once they are cut, they will easily go bad and need to be eaten as soon as possible.

When my family was poor and we only had food to eat, we didn’t care about anything else. But as living conditions gradually improved, eating the same meal every day became a little hard to accept.

So the villagers formed the habit of giving winter melon and pumpkin to each other.

For example, when my family harvested a large winter melon, we ate some of it ourselves and cut the rest into several pieces and gave them away door to door.

When other families cut the winter melon and eat it, they will send it back to you.

It’s better to say that it’s temporarily stored with someone else than to say it’s a gift.

In addition to winter melon and pumpkin, the same is true for tofu. It is best to make more tofu at one time, but if you make too much, it will not be easy to preserve. Therefore, some will be given to relatives and friends, and they will return it later.

This way it is convenient for everyone and no food will be wasted.

Xuanyue's family harvested winter melon and pumpkin today, so they asked their sisters to take some away. Xuanyuemei was holding a piece of round winter melon in her hand. The skin of the winter melon was covered with white frost and small thorns, and it would hurt when you touched it with your hand.

Gao Mingcheng took the winter melon and pumpkin from her hands. The winter melon weighed about three pounds, and the pumpkin was lighter, probably two pounds at most.

The pumpkin was a grinding wheel pumpkin, which was not in circles when cut open, but in petals. Because it was an old pumpkin, the rind was very dark in color, and there were a lot of flocs in the flesh, and some plump pumpkin seeds were hidden in these flocs.

Pumpkin seeds are good things. Few people grow sunflower seeds here, so if you want to eat pumpkin seeds, you have to spend money to buy them. Therefore, when entertaining guests during festivals, the villagers will choose to use pumpkin seeds.

Pick out the pumpkin seeds, wash them, dry them, and then you can fry them and eat them. The fried pumpkin seeds are fragrant and are no worse than sunflower seeds.

And in later generations, the price of fried pumpkin seeds was even higher than that of fried sunflower seeds.

Gao Mingcheng helped load all the things into the car, then got into the driver's seat. Looking back, he saw Xuanyuemei and Xuanyuejin had already gotten in the car and were about to close the door.

Xuandu Jin's little son was in her arms, already fast asleep.

Next, Gao Mingcheng sent a lot of gold to Shangfeng Village.

Today, the eldest brother-in-law is still not at home, and the eldest nephew is not at home either. Only the youngest nephew is at home. When he saw Gao Mingcheng and the others coming back, the youngest nephew immediately dropped the stick in his hand and ran over happily.

"Mom! Aunt! Uncle-in-law!" the little guy called sweetly, and then said, "My dad went to work in the fields. He is fertilizing the vegetables."

"Mom, there are some eels, loaches and other fish in the kitchen bucket. Dad put them in a cage and said he was giving them to my aunt and her family to eat."

Although my nephew is young, he is very good at conveying messages and there is nothing wrong with him.

Shangfeng Village and Gaojia Village share the largest reservoir, but Shangfeng Village is right next to the reservoir, while the old village of Gaojia Village is actually some distance away from the reservoir.

Therefore, it is relatively easy for people in Shangfeng Village to catch fish.

When Xuanyu Jin heard that there were miscellaneous fish in the kitchen, she knew that her husband had specially brought them from the reservoir to thank her younger sister and her husband.

Her family doesn't have much money, and even if she gave money to her younger sister and her husband, she was afraid they would not want to take it. For example, when she went to the hospital to get an IUD inserted yesterday when she went to the hospital to register, Gao Mingcheng was ready to pay for her. When she saw it, she refused to let him go and insisted on paying for it herself.

Many people feel that they have to work hard to pick up Gao Mingcheng, spend two days of work, and spend money on gas, so they insist on the principle of paying for their own health because they feel a little guilty about it.

But the husband prepared some miscellaneous fish for his younger sister and her husband, and Xuanxuanjin thought that was a good thing because his younger sister and her husband would definitely accept them.

Sure enough, when Duoxuanjin handed the things to Gao Mingcheng, Gao Mingcheng looked down and saw seven or eight loaches, two eels, three yellow mullets and five small crucian carps the size of his palm in the bucket.

There isn’t much, and it’s all mixed up, but after cleaning it up, I can make a mixed fish stew and that’s fine.

Gao Mingcheng accepted the food and decided to eat at his own home in the evening. He would stew a chicken for Meimei, stew some mixed fish, and stir-fry some chili peppers and eggs, which would be very appetizing.

After sending a lot of gold home, there wasn't much to talk about.

Xuanyue gave a bag of candy to her little nephew and told him to share it with his brother.

"Aunt, I get it. I will share it with my brother. I will hide the candy now and we will eat it together when my brother comes back from school!" said the little nephew cleverly.

Xuanyuemei touched his little head with a smile on her face.

Xuanyuemei looked at Xuanyuejin and said, "You must have a lot of things to do when you return home, so don't bother Mingcheng and me. We'll leave now. I'll come to visit you again when I'm free."

Xuanyuejin hurriedly said that he should go to visit Xuanyuemei because her health had gradually improved, but Xuanyuemei was pregnant.

Xuanyi Jin continued, "When there is no work in the fields in winter, I will go to the county to see you."

Many beauties were touched, but still advised the elder sister not to come. It was not that they did not welcome the elder sister, but they were worried that it would be inconvenient for her to go out.

It’s really not easy to go to the county from Shangfeng Village!

There is not a single tractor in the entire Shangfeng village, and there are only three or four bicycles. It is quite inconvenient to borrow one.

You have to walk all the way to the roadside of Junling, and then you can wait for the bus. If you are lucky, you can wait for the bus quickly. If you are unlucky, you have to wait for one or two hours.

It would take an hour and a half for an adult man to walk all the way to Junling if he walked fast. Add the time for the bus and the time for the return trip, and the whole day would be gone!

Xuanyuemei said, "I'm in good health, and this isn't my first pregnancy, so don't worry. Okay, big sister, you go ahead, Mingcheng and I are leaving first."

After saying that, she walked towards the car. Gao Mingcheng naturally cooperated by driving. He first turned around with difficulty before he was able to barely drive the car out.

The houses in Shangfeng Village are densely packed and there are no roads yet, so driving is not easy.

"Duomei, Mingcheng, take care!" Xuanyun Jin held his little son, stood on the roadside, watched the car go away, and then walked towards home.

The second child in the family had already run away and disappeared. Xu Xuanjin had no choice but to put the third child in his arms on the bed and then go about his work.

She had only been away from home for one day, but she already felt like there was a lot more work to do at home!

First, I have to sweep the floor and put the dirty clothes on the floor into the laundry bucket. Then I have to go to the kitchen to see what to eat tonight.

She took winter melon and pumpkin from many Yu families. She couldn't keep them all, so she just ate them tonight.

Thoughts flashed through his mind frequently, and many people concentrated on their work. (End of this chapter)