After several consecutive autumn rains, the weather has entered the cold winter.
Fortunately, thanks to the mountain goddess's blessing, food can still be found in Daqing Mountain even in winter. The ponds are teeming with fish fry, seemingly endless. Wild vegetables are scarce, but lichens blanket the mountains. The trees are sparsely populated with fruit, but kudzu roots can be found occasionally in the soil. These roots are so large that a single one is enough for a full meal.
Maodan was lucky that day. He was playful and followed a little monkey in and out of the woods. Somehow, he came to a ravine he had never been to before. There were more than a dozen large pumpkins lying in the ravine, and the pumpkin vines were a little shriveled.
Maodan was overjoyed. These pumpkins were so large that he could barely hold them in his arms. If he ate a few pumpkins this big, one would be enough for the whole family to eat for several days. And there were more than a dozen!
I'm saved! Maodan jumped up and down excitedly.
After calming down, he realized a problem. How could he get all these pumpkins back? He must be deep in the mountains and forests, otherwise so many pumpkins wouldn't have gone unnoticed.
The best thing to do was to tell his dad. But with so many pumpkins, what if he left and was discovered?
Maodan hesitated for a long time, and finally decided to call his father.
"Maodan, Maodan, where are you?"
Not far away, Lu Fengshou's voice sounded like the sound of nature.
"Dad! Dad!" Maodan jumped up excitedly, "I'm here! Here! Come quickly! There are so many pumpkins! So many!"
A moment later, Lu Fengshou came over following a monkey.
"You little brat, how could you run around in the mountains by yourself? Do you think this is a village? There are bears and wolves in the mountains!" Lu Fengshou scolded Maodan.
Maodan's eyes lit up and he didn't take Lu Fengshou's words to heart at all. He pulled Lu Fengshou towards the pumpkin vines.
"Dad! Look! Look! So many pumpkins! So big! One is enough for us to eat for multiple meals!"
Lu Fengshou looked in the direction of Maodan's finger and was so shocked by the sight that his mouth dropped open. In the mountain stream lay a dozen huge, golden pumpkins!
He was stunned for a long moment before he asked his son, who was beside him and was overjoyed: "Son, hurry up, pinch me! This can't be real, right? There are so many! Such big pumpkins!"
Maodan bit his arm, leaving two rows of teeth marks on his arm.
Lu Fengshou grinned: "Really! Really!"
Before he finished speaking, he flew over, hugged this pumpkin and touched that pumpkin.
"We're saved, we're saved! There are so many pumpkins! We're saved!" As he spoke, tears flowed from his eyes and fell on the pumpkins.
Lu Fengshou wiped away his tears so that his son wouldn't see.
Everyone in the family was counting on Lu Fengming to send them food coupons, but he was the only one who knew that Lu Fengming hadn't received any this year. In the second half of the year, Lu Fengming was demoted due to work-related issues, and his food quota and subsidies were significantly reduced.
He was the only one in the family who knew about this. He didn't dare to tell anyone, so he could only do whatever he could to find food for his family. If he didn't tell anyone, there was still hope for his family. If he did, there would be no hope.
"Dad, how do we transport it back?" Maodan looked at him with sparkling eyes.
This pumpkin weighs at least two or three hundred pounds, so transporting it is indeed a problem.
The best way is to stand the pumpkin up and roll it down. But the problem is that you can't take away many pumpkins at a time, and the rest may belong to others.
However, wasting time here was not a solution. Lu Fengshou finally gritted his teeth and made up his mind.
He pinched off the vine that was as thick as his arm, stood the pumpkin upright with great effort, and rolled it down the hill little by little.
When they rolled to the middle of the mountain, Lu Fengshou made sure that Maodan would not get lost, then he hid behind a big tree and let Maodan go down the mountain to find Old Lady Feng.
"Tell Mrs. Feng that we found a dozen large pumpkins, each weighing several hundred pounds. Ask her to find a few more people to transport them all back at once."
"Okay!" Maodan ran down the mountain.
There were several people at Old Lady Feng's house who were seeing a doctor. Maodan didn't dare to say it in front of outsiders, and he scratched his head anxiously.
As soon as Jiaojiao saw Maodan's expression, she knew what had happened. She grabbed a handful of candied peanuts from her pocket and said to Maodan, "Brother, eat peanuts!"
Shuixiu is a good cook, and she makes candied peanuts perfectly, with an even coating and crispy peanuts. Every time they come out of the pot, Jiaojiao will put them into her space and eat them slowly.
Now that everyone had nothing to eat, sugar-coated peanuts were a very luxurious snack. Maodan's mouth was drooling rapidly, and he turned his eyes away from the sugar-coated peanuts in Jiaojiao's hand.
"Sister Jiaojiao, you eat it! I don't want to eat it! I just ate a lot of fruit on the mountain!"
Jiaojiao sighed in her heart, children from poor families have to grow up early, and they are sensible and capable!
The patient quickly got the medicine and left. Maodan hurried over and whispered to Old Lady Feng, "Old Lady, I found a lot of giant pumpkins on the mountain! They're so huge! My dad told me to tell you to find a few more people to carry them back. Each one weighs hundreds of pounds!"
As soon as Mrs. Feng heard it, she knew it was Jiaojiao who did it. She looked at Jiaojiao, who threw the last few peanuts into her mouth and patted the sugar grains on her hands. She looked ignorant of the world and kept her achievements and fame hidden.
Dabai carried Jiaojiao on his back, and Maodan led the way. A dozen young people from Wangjia Village followed behind, to see a giant pumpkin weighing hundreds of kilograms.
Lu Fengshou breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Maodan and Dabai from afar.
Maodan and Dabai Jiaojiao stayed behind to watch the pumpkin, while Lu Fengshou followed the people from Wangjia Village into the mountains. Half an hour later, a group of people came out of the mountains pushing the big pumpkin like performing acrobatics.
The lichen-picking people on the mountain were astonished. There were pumpkins this big! How many people could this one pumpkin feed? Everyone was beating their chests and stamping their feet, lamenting that they had missed such a great opportunity.
The young people in Wangjia Village were so excited that they whistled and rolled the big pumpkin down the hill, past Feng's yard, and finally to the brigade canteen.
The three large pumpkins given to Lu Fengshou were also temporarily stored in the Wangjia Village Brigade canteen.
Lu Fengshou was afraid that the pumpkin would be too conspicuous on the road and cause unnecessary trouble, so he discussed with the people of Wangjia Village and decided to cut the pumpkin into eight pieces in the canteen of the Wangjia Village Brigade.
A single pumpkin has thousands of seeds, each plump and large. Save a few dozen for seeds and stir-fry the rest for a Chinese New Year snack.
The pumpkin was cut into more than eighty pieces, and the blades of the kitchen knives in Wangjia Village were all blunt. Fortunately, Lu Fengshou had a sharp eye and quickly took a whetstone and started sharpening the knives.
Chopping pumpkins is a strenuous job. Lu Fengshou ran out of strength after just two chops. Goudan's father claimed to be the strongest, so he took over the kitchen knife and chopped the remaining pumpkins with a bang.
The pumpkins were difficult to preserve after being cut, so Old Lady Feng took the lead and asked Lu Feng to exchange them for sweet potatoes, which were then taken back on a cart.
The remaining two large pumpkins were temporarily stored in the Wangjia Village canteen. However, he did not expect that these two pumpkins would not end up in the stomachs of the Lu family.
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