Chapter 35 Chapter 35 Do You Want to
The whole family got something, which was exactly what they wanted, and they were very happy.
Father Fan immediately opened the jar and smelled the aroma of the wine. He felt as if he had become an immortal and was about to pour a bowl to taste it.
When the two girls got the box, their eyes lit up: "We've only seen a box like this once before, at Sister Xiangxiu's place. Sister Xiangxiu is so precious! Now we have one too!"
Qiao'er hugged the box tightly, feeling that the outside of the box was full of fragrance. She had only envied it before and never dared to think that she could have one herself.
Zhen'er also liked it and whispered to Kanghe, "Thank you, brother-in-law."
Kang He said, "The things in the box are all inferior goods. You two can pick up the ones you like and use them. When Brother Gefu makes money in the future, he will buy you better ones."
"What Brother Gefu buys these days is the best. No one else's brothers and sisters are as good as ours!"
Qiao'er said cleverly: "When my brother and his wife have children, I will help raise them to repay them!"
Everyone in the room laughed at the little girl's words.
After talking for a while, the two maids took the box back to the house to try the perfume and powder.
"Just buy some things for your father and the two girls, but why buy anything for mother? You're wasting money. I have cloth."
Chen said this, but she loved the new cloth so much. She touched it carefully with her hands. What woman doesn't love cloth?
"It's almost spring, Mom, make me some new clothes so we can wear them to the temple fair when the weather gets warmer."
Chen felt deeply touched, but she couldn't help but worry about Kang He and Fan Jing.
She patted Kang He's hand and said, "Sanlang, if you two have money, save some and buy an animal later. This will save you some effort when you go up and down the mountain."
Chen was still worried about the fact that she didn't borrow money to buy livestock last time.
Kang He knew that Chen was also thinking about them. He said, "This time, the whole family helped to make vermicelli. Now that we can make some money, we can also teach the whole family to eat and spend better. If we always work hard and don't enjoy the good things we can enjoy, then life will be too hard.
But I have taken my mother's words to heart, and I will save the money I earn later to buy livestock."
"Well, I hope you guys listened to me."
In early February, Kang He and Fan Jing saw that the weather had become much clearer, so they didn't stay at home for long. They packed up their things and went back into the mountains.
It's still chilly in spring, and some trees on the hillside have sprouted buds the size of little fingers. The wild rape flowers, however, are not afraid of the cold and are blooming profusely, one patch of bright yellow after another.
Then there are occasionally one or two fruit trees with white flowers that have already bloomed, falling among the old green forests.
The muddy roads are slippery in early spring, and the grass has grown again on the roads where few people go into the mountains for a month or two.
Fan Jing walked ahead and cut a path to make it easier to get into the mountain and also to get down the mountain later.
He stepped over a big step, glanced behind him, and stretched out a hand.
Seeing this, Kang He hurriedly grabbed Fan Jing's hand and climbed up the slope with his help.
Once he grabbed my hand, he wouldn't let go.
Fan Jing glanced at him, and seeing that he wouldn't let go, he said nothing. The two of them then held hands, as if they were having a secret meeting. Their palms were sweating, but they didn't let go, and they walked all the way to the wooden house.
Kang He sniffed the cool, refreshing scent of the mountains, which was surprisingly familiar.
He spent as much time in the wooden house on the mountain as he did at the foot of the mountain. He had the illusion that this was his and Fan Jing's home.
"Finally I'm back!"
I unlocked the door and went into the house. There hadn't been a fire in the house for a long time, and there was a damp and rotten smell.
The thing that was most abundant in the mountains was firewood, so Kang He lit the stove immediately.
Another round of cleaning.
He touched the mattress. Although it had been washed, folded and placed in a dry place before he left, it seemed to be damp after not being used for a long time. He set up a pole and warmed it in front of the stove.
Fan Jing took a sip of hot soup and helped Kang He turn over the mattress. For the first time, he did not rush out to circumambulate the mountain.
The two of them tidied up the wooden house so that it was habitable, had lunch inside, and then went out to circumambulate the mountain together.
Before going down the mountain, Fan Jing removed all the traps and cages he had set up earlier, for fear that after they left, prey would fall into the traps again. If no one found them, the prey would either die from food poisoning in the traps or freeze to death or starve to death after being in the cages for too long.
Since it is impossible to check and remove the trap in time, there is no need to keep the trap to catch living things and torture them.
Going up the mountain now takes some effort to put the cages and traps back together.
After a winter, a lot of fallen leaves and branches piled up in the trap pit after the bamboo and wooden stakes were removed.
Fan Jing and Kang He used a rake to dig out the rotten leaves and dead branches, then densely inserted the newly made sharp stakes at the bottom.
This is a slightly shallower trap, used to hunt goats, deer, and wild boars. The trap was set deep from the beginning, and Fan Jing also filled it with mud or cut branches himself. Now it is more troublesome to clean up than a shallow trap.
After setting a few traps, it was already late.
Kang He and Fan Jing went to take a look at the beehives placed there.
"It's likely there's stock!"
Kang He had just reached the other end of the wild fruit forest when he heard a buzzing sound from a distance. He quickened his pace and ran over.
I saw bees entering and exiting the beehive door of a box.
Kang He felt that the bees in this box had not escaped, so he ignored it and quickly went to check the other box.
There were no bees entering or leaving the hive door, so he carefully opened a hole in the top of the hive to take a look.
Honeycombs had already been built on the several beehives that had been placed there, and the bees were gathered on the honeycombs. He was delighted and waved to Fan Jing quickly.
Seeing this, Fan Jing also came over to take a look.
He saw the densely packed bees huddled together in the box, and felt an inexplicable discomfort in his body. He frowned and turned his head away.
Seeing that he didn't seem to be interested, Kang He counted the number of honeycombs and found there were four, then quickly sealed the top of the box again.
"Don't be afraid. It won't sting you unless you touch it."
Fan Jing said nothing. He was not afraid of poisonous snakes, insects and beasts, let alone tiny bees.
He just didn't like the sight of so many tiny insects huddled together, the caterpillars eating together on the tender leaves in spring, the ants building nests in clusters in the sand. Just looking at them made his scalp tingle.
"What's the other one like?"
Upon hearing this, Kang He hurried to look at the other box.
"This box is even better! There are five full frames of honeycomb, and you can even see honey on the comb!"
When Fan Jing heard that there was honey, he was curious and endured the discomfort and went to take another look.
Kang He did not lie to him. When the bees entered the box, sticky honey could be seen on the honeycombs built by their secretions. However, it was not the season for flowers to bloom, so not much honey was produced.
Kang He pulled him in a little and said to him, "Look at that bee inside with a long abdomen, the largest body, and short wings. That's the queen bee. It's her egg-laying season now, so her abdomen is especially long and large. She can lay at least 800 eggs a day."
"The little bees surrounding it, with black and yellow stripes, are called worker bees. They're the ones that collect the nectar. They have little baskets on their hind legs that they use to carry pollen. Even though they're the smallest, they have a lot to do, like building the nest, collecting nectar, and feeding the birds."
"The remaining big-eyed bees are drones, and aside from mating with the queen bee, they have no other use."
Fan Jing had never raised bees and didn't know there were so many differences.
He asked, "When can we get the honey?"
"If the flowers were in full bloom, during the nectar flow period, we could collect nectar every ten days or so. But here, not many flowers are in bloom at this time, so the nectar is not collected very quickly."
After hearing this, Fan Jing thought that he could get some honey when spring came.
After looking at this side, the two of them turned and went back to the edge of the cliff.
Before going down the mountain, one of the boxes already had bees. Compared to the forest, the cliff edge has no tall trees to provide shade and is much more sunny, so there are many more mountain flowers blooming here than on the other side of the forest.
Kang He first looked at the box with bees. Half of the winter had passed, and fortunately the bees had not moved their nest and had not frozen to death.
The queen bee has a good reproductive capacity and already has eight frames of honeycomb, which is a strong colony. We have also collected early spring mountain flower honey here and now have a lot of honey.
Kang He saw that many of the honey cells on the honeycomb had their lids sealed, which showed that the honey was ripe and could be harvested.
But this time he didn't dare to act rashly. He planned to go back and get everything ready before coming back to collect honey. He still remembered the feeling of being stung last time.
There was still a box left on this side of the cliff. Kang He went to check it out, but unfortunately there was no bee in the box.
Kang He opened the box and checked it, and found that the beeswax inside was gone. He wondered if it had been cleared out by ants.
He planned to take the empty box back, apply beeswax on it again, and attract the bees to a different place.
When the two of them left, it was getting dark.
At night, Kang He didn't have to prepare any meals. The dry food he brought from home was always enough to last him two or three days in the mountains.
After eating and washing my feet, I have done enough work for the day, so there is no need to rush to do any work at night.
There was nothing else to do in the mountains and the weather was still cold, so the two went to bed early.
The bedding that had been heated during the day had absorbed enough heat and dryness to warm the body in no time.
Kang He saw that the person sleeping next to him was lying with his back to him. He narrowed his eyes and put his hand into Fan Jing's clothes from behind his head in a dishonest manner.
He had sex on the day of his wedding, and he had been thinking about it ever since.
It was strange. No matter how much work he did during the day, no matter how many things he did, or how tired he was, as long as he lay down on the bed with Fan Jing, he would immediately feel energetic again.
Even though his wrists were so sore from those days of masturbation that he could hardly move them, he could still squeeze out some strength to do it with Fan Jing twice.
Being at home, living under the same roof, there are still some concerns.
They were afraid of making too much noise and people might hear them, so they kept quiet. Afterward, their bodies were covered in sweat and other things, and it was uncomfortable to be sticky without washing. But if they had to get water to wash, their family would know what they had done, which was a bit embarrassing. Otherwise, they had to go out and fetch water like a thief.
Therefore, during the more than twenty days at home after their marriage, even though Kang He wanted to do it every night, the two did not do it too often.
Kang He teased Fan Jing for a while, and seeing that he was clearly not asleep, he did not respond to him.
He moved his body a little, pressed his chest against Fan Jing's back, and leaned forward, whispering in his ear: "Don't you want to?"
Now that they were in the mountains, they were the only two people within a few miles. Even if the bed collapsed, they were not afraid of anyone knowing.
At this age, when he is full of ability and freshness, how can he endure it?
Fan Jing had been rubbing Kang He's body until he was distracted. When he heard him ask, he said, "I don't want you to take your hands away?"
"It's been five or six days already. Don't you really want to miss it?"
The tendons on Fan Jing's waist, abdomen and chest were well-proportioned and flexible. Kang He was reluctant to take his hands away: "In this room, you can do whatever you want. Don't worry about anything."
Fan Jing turned over, his old gray-white undergarment had been messed up by Kang He, and his collarbone was clearly half exposed.
The two of them were reluctant to take the red dress they had made for their wedding into the mountains to wear.
He raised his foot and lightly kicked Kang He's calf: "I haven't seen you care about anything at home."
Kang He met Fan Jing's eyes and said, "Of course I didn't care. Every time I went to fetch water, I felt like a thief. Once, my father even caught me when he got up at night. He didn't even bother to talk to me and told me to go to bed early."
Fan Jingque didn't know all this. After he finished, he would wait in the house for Kanghe to bring in water to wash him.
At first he washed himself, but Kang He always helped him. No one could stop him, but once he got used to it, he would do it like this.
"The night is so long, how can you sleep if you don't find something to do?"
Fan Jing didn't say anything.
Kang He felt that if he wanted to get started directly, Fan Jing would definitely teach him. However, teaching him in this way seemed completely one-sided and would inevitably make it less interesting.
He would only feel more motivated if Fan Jing, who seemed to have no interest in the matter, agreed to it.
"Good brother~"
Kang He circled his fingers under Fan Jing's collar a few times.
Fan Jing was tickled by him: "I'm on top."
Upon hearing this, Kang He hugged Fan Jing, which was exactly what he wanted.
"It's up to you, but you must not give up for a while."
Fan Jing thought to himself, after all the struggles, he always ended up in the end...
The next day, they left the village and slept until noon, unable to hear the roosters crowing.
It was only when his stomach growled with hunger that he woke up.
Fan Jing felt dizzy from sleeping for too long. When he got up after putting on his clothes and was about to put on his pants, he hesitated for a moment and put on his pants with a frown.
He thought that this matter would not win him any good reputation from his superiors, so he might as well do it the same as before next time, at least it would not require much effort.
Kanghe is in great spirits.
After breakfast, he tidied up the beehive he brought back yesterday, made a new beehive, and carried the old one together to the wild rapeseed field he saw when he went up the mountain.
The early spring breeze blows gently, swaying the cauliflowers. From a distance, the open land looks like rolling golden waves.
Wild rapeseed is small and does not bloom as luxuriantly as domestic flowers, but it grows all over the mountains and provides a good source of nectar for bees.
There are cauliflowers and locust flowers within five or six miles, which is a good place for beekeeping.
Kang He placed the beehive in a dry place where water would not easily accumulate, and collected some branches and grass to cover it to protect the beehive.
When he was selling things in the county before, he went to the sugar shop to buy malt sugar and sand sugar, and he saw honey being sold there.
When he was paying the bill, he asked the waiter about the price. The waiter was a little impatient and just said that a pound of multi-flower honey would cost more than 300 yuan. He didn't tell him the exact price, and he didn't ask whether he wanted to buy it or not.
I guess the guy was used to seeing ordinary people unable to afford it, so he just responded with a few words.
Kang He had not decided to ask clearly before. He was only concerned about raising bees and making honey for Fan Jing, and had never thought of selling it in the city.
But I didn't expect that I would get three groups of bees this time when I went up the mountain. If I take good care of them, they will produce a lot of honey in the spring when the flowers are in full bloom, and I can sell some of it.
If we calculate it at 300 coins per catty, the price is indeed quite high. If you collect a few catties and sell them, you can make a lot of money.
With such expectations in mind, Kang He finished fixing the beehive and went back to the cliff to get the box of honey.
This time he learned his lesson and wore a tightly tied veil and used gloves.
I shook off the bees and took out a piece of honeycomb from the box. The honeycomb was full of honey, and it did not flow out even if I pressed it lightly, which showed that it was really ripe.
This kind of honey does not contain much water and is not easy to spoil.
The heavy nest skin is cut open with a knife, and the honey juice is crystal clear, oily, and has a fresh fragrance that makes people want to take a bite of the honeycomb.
The flowers were not in full bloom at that time of year, so Kang He only took 70% of the honey and left the rest in the box, fearing that if all the honey was taken at once, the bees would starve to death.
He estimated that the honey he took out with the honeycomb skin weighed more than three pounds, but if he filtered out the pure honey, it would only weigh about two pounds.
Go home and chop the honeycomb into pieces to make a mixture of honey residue and then filter it slowly and repeatedly with gauze.
Filtering honey is not much easier than filtering starch, and both require patience.
When Fan Jing came back with the two stupid birds, he smelled the scent of honey as soon as he entered the house.
He put down the stupid bird, took out six wild duck eggs from his pocket and put them in the rice jar, then turned to watch Kang He filtering the honey.
I saw Kanghe made three net bags with gauze, stacked one on top of the other and fixed them on a bamboo pole. He poured the honeycomb into them from the top, and the honey mixed with the residue slowly seeped through the gauze net bag and flowed into the second...the third, and so on, and then the container at the bottom.
Since Kang He knew that he liked sweets, Fan Jing no longer hid it.
He took a spoon and reached into the bottom jar to pick up some honey and put it into his mouth.
The taste of honey is sweet and rich, but not cloying. The lingering fragrance in the mouth is incomparable to that of sand sugar and malt sugar.
Seeing how much he liked it, Kang He smiled and said, "I just diluted it with water for you. It's pure honey without any adulteration. Your throat will feel numb if you eat it alone."
Fan Jing said, "Don't eat it yourself. Save the honey and take it to the county. Buy some livestock soon."
Kang He didn't expect that he was also concerned about this matter, and said: "I won't give such things away. I can save some and sell them, and I can still have some for myself."
Fan Jing shook his head, and after that, he said he didn't want to eat it.
Seeing how determined he was, Kang He started saving money more honestly.
That day, Kang He went to the city with Fan Jing to sell mountain products. He went around all the sugar shops in the city and roughly inquired about the price of honey.
Nowadays, the price of a pound of honey in the city ranges from 360 to 500 wen, but most of the time it is sold for more than 300 to 400 wen.
Selling at such exorbitant prices is a business that only the luxurious shops in the city can do. The goods may still be the same, but what is being sold is the reputation of the shop.
Naturally, I had to ask about the price. I went to different shops and the highest price offered was three hundred coins, and the lowest was two hundred and eighty coins, but they dared to offer such a price.
Some shops are very arrogant and will not pay attention to you unless you buy anything. They say they want to see the goods first before arguing the price, and they simply won't give you a price.
When Kang He was shopping in a shop, he met an old man who was selling honey. He had a dark and yellow face and looked very honest.
He took the treasured sugar cane to the shop for inspection and taught a young clerk to cheat the shopkeeper.
He scooped a spoonful to taste it, smacked it for a long time, and frowned: "Your honey doesn't seem to be very good. I don't think it tastes right. I have to ask our manager to taste it."
After saying that, he called the person in charge and brought another spoon.
The honey, which was already scarce and precious, was tasted by three or four people in the room.
The old man guessed that it was wild honey. Seeing it tasted like this, he felt very upset. He kept saying that it was not enough. But the shopkeepers were too arrogant. If he didn't taste it, how could he know whether it was adulterated or not, and whether it was good or bad stuff.
Kang He kept shaking his head as he watched. He didn't know whether this was what it looked like to harvest honey, or if he was just treating each person differently.
In short, looking at the current situation, if you want to find a shop like the Ge family's, you'll probably have to rely on luck.
Well, the two of them went back home.
Kang He found two more konjac heads in the mountains and wanted to bring them back to teach Chen how to process them.
Chen was delighted to see it and said she would get it and sell it in the city.
Kang He was thinking the same thing. He said, "If we want to do business long-term, people will forget about us if we don't show up in the city for a while. So no matter how much, we have to sell it and let our regular customers know about it. I'll also bring back any konjac I find in the mountains, no matter if it's just one or two, for my mother to take home."
Chen nodded and said yes. She looked at the konjac in the field before burying it. There was no movement for a long time, and she didn't know when there would be any movement. She tossed and turned in bed at night and couldn't sleep.
With Kang He around, she could talk to him about all her worries. Kang He was sensible and could always come up with ideas and comfort her. Unlike Fan Dad, who drank a few mouthfuls of horse urine before going to bed and slept like a pig in the pen.
"I'm also afraid that the old ladies I met while selling konjac and tofu every day during the New Year will forget me. I haven't been there for a long time, and I always miss them."
Kang He said, "Since mother has such a wish, I have also thought of a sect. Although I can find one or two ramie heads on the mountain, after all, there are only two of us, and our strength is small, not as strong as that of a large number of people.
"If you want to have konjac and tofu to sell regularly, why not spread the word that we're buying konjac? If more people know about it, maybe women and men who want to trade konjac for a little money will give it to us. What do you think?"
Chen said, "Then we have to pay for the konjac."
"Kuangtou has to be processed into tofu to sell for a good price. If it's just a black lump, it's worthless. Besides, in business, there's no such thing as not investing money. It's all about making money for free."
Kang He patiently said to her, "As long as we can still make a profit, even if we can't make as much as we did when we got it from the top of the mountain, we can still make a profit."
After listening to Kang He's account, Chen Sanfang felt that it made sense, so he asked, "Then how much is a reasonable price to pay for other people sending kudzu?"
"In the city, a bunch of konjac weighing seven or eight pounds only costs five coins. They charge by the pound for convenience. Now that we're short on konjac, we'll charge by the pound, one coin per pound. I think those who want to sell konjac will be more willing to sell it here."
Kang He said, "When the konjac we grow grows up, we won't be short of it anymore. If others send us some, we'll buy them individually, just like people in the city."
Chen Sanfang thought about it for a moment and said, "Okay, Mom will listen to you."
Kang He continued, "Mother, you are a kind person and good at talking. You will soon get to know some people in the city. In the future, you can get along with those old ladies and young husbands and tell them that we have honey on hand and can deliver it to them if they want to buy some."
He had seen the faces of the candy shops in the city when they collected things, and thought that if he could sell the things himself, he could make more money and would not have to be so humble to them. If that didn't work, he could try this route if he needed money urgently.
After hearing this, Chen Sanfang opened his eyes wide and asked, "Where can we get honey?!"
"I've got a few beehives in the mountains. Now that I have bees, the weather's warmer, and the flowers are blooming, I think I'll be able to produce some honey."
Chen Sanfang was delighted to hear this, and he and Kang He agreed.
Kang He then told her about the price of honey he had inquired about in the city, and told her every detail, so that if someone wanted to buy their honey, she would have an idea of the price.
Chen Sanfang listened carefully and kept all the words in mind.
But she had never done business before, so she couldn't help feeling a little uneasy, fearing that she would have no backbone. She suggested that Yang Kanghe come back the next time he went down the mountain with Dajing to sell live things so that she could discuss business matters with him.
Needless to say, Chen Sanfang said that Kang He would also come back to take care of him.
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