Old Zhou scratched his head and said, "So you mean you want to make bayberry wine? Do you know how to make it?"
Zhou Sanfu glanced at his father and said, "It's not that I know how to brew it, it's a secret recipe, a recipe that's worth a thousand pieces of gold, you know? If we can brew bayberry wine, we can earn a lot of money."
So please take this seriously and don't act like it has nothing to do with you, as if it's just his business. This is a crucial moment for the whole family to get rich.
“But we don’t know how to sell the wine we brew. We don’t want to do business. We just want to farm properly. People can’t live without food. We’ll only feel at ease if we store a few thousand kilograms of grain in the cellar.”
In Zhou Laoda's heart, nothing is more important than food. He absolutely cannot let the land go to waste; he must reclaim as much wasteland as possible. In case of another natural disaster, food is the only thing that can save lives.
What's so important about brewing wine?
“Brewing wine and farming don’t conflict. Dad, we just need to brew the wine and leave the selling to Auntie. We can rent a shop in town and open a tavern. This bayberry wine doesn’t require any grain to brew. Now the government allows people to brew and sell privately. We just need to pay some taxes. In short, we’re sure to make money.” Zhou Sanfu had already planned everything out.
Zhou Dafu chimed in, "Father, Mother, Third Brother is right. I think this is feasible. This secret recipe is a great opportunity for our family."
He told Zhou Laoda and his wife about how they had gone up the mountain to dig for bamboo slips that day and found that all the bamboo slips had turned to ash, so that they would know how precious and rare this secret recipe was.
"Is that so? If only we had brought back more bamboo slips back then. It's just that we thought the bamboo slips were too heavy, and since none of us can read, we ended up losing a whole box of treasures." Zhao Guihua now understood the importance of the secret recipe and felt a pang of heartache.
"Now is not the time to be sentimental about those secret recipes. Let's hurry up and brew this bayberry wine," Zhou Sanfu urged everyone.
"Then tell me what you need to prepare to make this bayberry wine." Zhao Guihua was quite reliable. Although she had never made wine before, she knew that you need tools to make anything.
Zhou Sanfu read aloud from the bamboo slips: "Wine jar, bayberries, rock sugar, spring water..."
After listening, Zhao Guihua frowned and said, "The other things are easy to find, but what is rock candy? Where can I buy it? I've never heard of it before."
Zhou Sanfu immediately chimed in, "Don't worry, there's a recipe for making iced grains on this bamboo slip, and we still have sugar at home, right?"
"Yes, I bought a pound last time, it cost quite a bit of money." Zhao Guihua answered quickly. What she didn't say was that these candies were all for Xingxing, otherwise, why would she buy a pound at once?
However, for the seven baskets of bayberries, one pound of sugar is not enough to make rock sugar, so they have to buy more.
"This sugar is so expensive! How much silver would it cost to buy so much? We haven't even started selling wine yet, and we're already losing so much silver."
Zhao Guihua kept muttering to herself, her heart aching at the thought of having to buy more than ten kilograms of sugar, and the tools like wine jars. Oh dear, how much money would that cost?
In the end, it was Zhou Laoda who made the final decision: "Alright, it's just a dozen or so taels of silver to start with. We're not short of money right now. Others might want to do it but can't. Since there's a way to make big money, let's take a gamble. If Dafu and Sanfu want to take the imperial examinations in the future, we won't think we have too much silver."
Zhao Guihua paused for a moment, then changed the subject, saying, "It's not that I'm worried about the dozen or so taels of silver. I just think that since we've obtained the secret recipe, we definitely can't let outsiders know about it. So even if we open a tavern, it's best not to rent a shop. It's safer to buy a shop, so that if we become rich one day, people will be envious and use the shop to make things difficult for us."
However, buying a shop is much more expensive than living in a house. Before, it was only a short time after the disaster, so house prices were generally low. Now that things have recovered in the past six months, house prices have risen.
Although the family still had 1,073 taels of silver, buying a shop would require at least 200 taels, and possibly even more. After buying the shop, there would be renovations, furnishings, and many other unpredictable expenses. Zhao Guihua felt heartbroken at the thought of losing so much silver at once.
This money is to be saved for the children's education, their future marriages, and also for Xingxing's dowry.
Oh dear, this will cost a lot of money no matter how I do it, there's no other way.
However, thinking that the fermented wine could be sold for money and that it was a long-term business, even if a natural disaster occurred in the future and we were forced to flee again, with this skill, we wouldn't be afraid of not being able to make a living in the future.
"Okay, I've thought it through. Let's get started." The silver was buried in the cellar under the bed in Zhou Laoda and his wife's room.
You know, wealth shouldn't be flaunted, so when the Zhou couple were home alone, they secretly dug a small cellar under their bed.
There were three chests in the small cellar, one containing silver, another gold, and the last jade. This was all the family's wealth, but they weren't in a hurry to take the money out.
Zhao Guihua took the only pound of sugar in the house to the kitchen, washed the pot clean, then put the sugar in the pot, added water to dissolve it, then removed impurities, clarified the juice, and evaporated it.
The final step is crystallization, where the cooked sugar syrup is poured into earthenware jars. This crystallization process takes seven days to complete, so all these bayberries that have been picked cannot be used to make bayberry wine for the time being.
“It’s alright, we’ll dry the bayberries tomorrow. By the time we come back from our next vacation, all the bayberries will be ripe. There are plenty of bayberries on the mountain, so we won’t have trouble picking them,” Zhou Sanfu said with an optimistic smile.
The bayberries are too sour, not everyone likes to eat them, and one tree can produce a lot. The people of Yegou Village can't finish picking them even if they pick them every day. This stuff makes you hungrier the more you eat, so nobody likes to eat it every day. Of course, the most important thing is that there are bayberry trees everywhere on the mountains of Yegou Village, so there is no shortage of bayberries.
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