Jiang Zhi was only stunned for a moment before she quickly stopped Xiao Manye, who was about to throw the wild yam down the hillside: "Uncle Chang Geng, you've made a mistake! This herb isn't poisonous!"
Grandpa Xiaoman shook his hand nervously, signaling Xiaoman to quickly throw away the wild yam: "It's poisonous, it's poisonous."
Xiaoman didn't move, but looked at Jiang Zhi: He and Aunt Jiang worked so hard to dig this, could it be that they dug the wrong thing and wasted their efforts?
Jiang Zhi told Xiaoman not to throw it away, and said with a wry smile, "Uncle Changgeng, take a closer look, maybe you've mistaken me for someone else!"
Seeing Jiang Zhi's confident expression, Xiao Manye also became somewhat uncertain: "Admit your mistake? Impossible."
He carefully picked up the wild yam and examined it closely. After looking at it for a while, he frowned and asked, "It's the same! You really can't eat this. Some of us used to look at it like a sweet potato, so we dug it up, washed it, and cooked it."
But it was so bitter that I couldn't eat it at all. Even the porridge tasted so bitter it stuck in my throat. In the end, the whole pot of porridge was fed to the pigs.
"Did that pig die?" Jiang Zhi shook her head and laughed.
Grandpa Xiaoman thought for a moment: "He didn't die, but he had diarrhea all over the place and lost more than ten pounds."
If you can't bear to waste that pot of porridge that was used to feed the pigs, the pigs won't mind, but they'll still suffer the consequences.
It takes a month of feeding them good grains and fine bran for them to grow to over ten pounds of meat; it's such a waste.
"It tastes bitter like wild yam? You must have dug up the wrong one! There is a kind of medicine called Huangdu, which does look very similar to wild yam. If the people digging it are careless, they will make a mistake. Huangdu is poisonous."
Jiang Zhi was certain that the bitter wild yam that Xiaoman's grandfather mentioned was the very similar-looking Huangdu (Dioscorea bulbifera). Huangdu is also a medicine, usually used externally and rarely taken internally.
Excessive or prolonged use of Huangdu (a type of herb) can cause gastrointestinal reactions such as vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea, and can also damage liver function.
So, Xiaoman said that pigs get diarrhea after eating porridge.
"Poisonous? No wonder it was so bitter that I vomited even after drinking the soup. It almost killed someone!" Grandpa Xiaoman was terrified.
He couldn't bring himself to admit that he was the one who recklessly dug up medicinal herbs, suffered so much from the bitterness that he drank a bucket of water and poured a pot of porridge on the ground to feed the pigs, causing them to suffer as well.
Beside him, Xiaoman, who was originally full of confidence in his ability to gather herbs, was suddenly dumbfounded. He thought he had already learned how, but there was another herb that looked exactly the same, and it was poisonous!
From now on, I should just learn from Aunt Jiang!
Jiang Zhi explained the uses of wild yam to Xiao Manye, and also told him about the differences between it and Huangdu.
After comparing the wild yams repeatedly and even tasting them himself, Xiaoman finally believed that he had dug up the wrong ones.
Jiang Zhi only talked about herbs at the bottom of the cliff, without mentioning anything about the village.
She knew that even if she didn't mention it, Grandpa Xiaoman and Grandma Xiaoman knew what had happened.
Xiaoman will tell them those things at a suitable time; it would be scary if she spoke about them so seriously now.
Besides herbs, Jiang Zhi and Xiao Man also found a lot of dried tung seeds, which they shared between the two families.
Because of the lack of rain in winter, although the outer shell of these tung oil fruits, which ripen in October, rots, the seeds inside are preserved.
Tung trees are also the most common trees in Southwest China. Tung oil extracted from tung seeds has always been a hard currency, and in modern times it is even known as soft gold.
Tung oil is an excellent drying vegetable oil with properties such as fast drying, light weight, good gloss, strong adhesion, heat resistance, acid resistance, alkali resistance, corrosion resistance, rust prevention, and non-conductivity, making it widely used.
In ancient times, it was also a major raw material for manufacturing paints and inks, used for waterproofing and anti-corrosion of wooden buildings, weapons, vehicles and ships, and could be used to make oilcloth and oil paper, which were closely related to daily life.
Jiang Zhi also knew that tung oil could be used to make soap, pesticides, and insecticides.
However, at this point, the tung seeds can only be used for their most primitive purpose: the seeds with their hard shells removed are strung together with thin skewers and lit for illumination.
The fire was huge and the smoke was billowing; one lighting would blacken a large area of the roof.
If you burn tung oil indoors, it will leave several people with blackened faces overnight. Therefore, tung oil is also a good material for making ink sticks and extracting soot.
Back at her home, Jiang Zhi handed the tung seeds that her family had been allocated to Qiao Yun, who came to greet her, and told her to peel them whenever she had time.
After arriving on the mountain, in order to save lamp oil, we burned a pile of firewood for warmth and lighting at night.
With tung seeds, you can use them outdoors in emergencies without fear of wind and rain.
After handing over the tung seeds, Jiang Zhi didn't even drink any water. She quickly laid out the two kinds of herbs she had just picked to dry on the ground, not daring to let them spoil or waste this rare good sunshine.
The rain stopped for two days, but the ground is still a bit damp. It seems we need to hurry up and build a wooden frame and a shed to make it easier to dry the medicine later.
Jiang Zhi had just returned when Xu Errui also came over from the terraced fields. Today, instead of chopping firewood or digging kudzu roots, he was building embankments.
"Mom, the wheat has grown taller again!" Xu Errui said happily.
From the moment the wheat seeds were sown, he checked on them every day, because this was the family's food supply for a year, and he couldn't afford to make a mistake.
At first, it was raining, and the wheat didn't seem to be growing. But these past two days, as soon as the rain stopped and the sun came out and the temperature rose, the wheat seedlings seemed to receive some kind of signal and sprouted up overnight, already growing two leaves.
In a normal year, wheat at this time of year would absorb enough rainwater and grow wildly.
It's no exaggeration to say that an old farmer sitting by the field can hear the wheat seedlings growing.
The seeds have taken root in the soil, and people's hearts have been put to the test.
When seeds sprout and grow into seedlings, people have hope.
Every morning, the first thing Xiaoman Grandpa does after getting up is to hunch over and check on the crops, and then casually pull up a few bundles of grass to take home and feed the rabbits.
After watching it, I was in a particularly good mood all day, and when you're in a good mood, everything goes smoothly.
The next day, knowing that Jiang Zhi was going to dry herbs, Xiao Manye, who had some carpentry skills, "casually" built a wooden frame and shed for her.
He was afraid that others would look down on him and think he was a burden, so he tried his best to show his value.
Next, Errui and Xiaoman spent their days digging for kudzu roots and wild yams on various mountains, searching for some oak berries that hadn't been soaked by rain and were barely edible, and also looking for ginseng.
Jiang Zhi then boiled the herbs in water and stewed the meat, which was then shared between the two families.
It's not just Xu Dazhu's body that needs conditioning; everyone here needs nourishment.
Each time, a piece of dried meat is placed in the pot, along with medicinal ingredients. Drinking the soup and taking the medicine gives it a slightly meaty flavor.
Moreover, kudzu root is very juicy after rain, and becomes even softer and more delicious after stewing, and it can also fill you up.
The two families on the cliff continued to help each other through the spring famine.
After the continuous rain stopped, the days with sunshine became more frequent, and the temperature rose day by day.
The ground was damp and steaming, and the mountains were shrouded in morning mist. Old Cloud Cliff seemed to be floating in the clouds, and the mist would not completely dissipate until noon.
Whether it's a natural disaster or a man-made one, nothing can stop the cycle of seasons; what's late and what's bound to come will eventually arrive.
Various disasters are just temporary shutdowns for the Earth to repair itself. Now, not only is the grass lush and green everywhere, but even the branches of trees burned by wildfires are sprouting new leaves.
Almost overnight, the once barren slopes were covered with grass.
Those short-lived little flowers couldn't wait to reproduce, pink and blue, appearing and disappearing among the low grass.
The peach blossoms, wild pear blossoms, bitter plum blossoms, and sour apricot blossoms are blooming in the woods.
These wild fruit trees in the mountains grow wildly, scattered here and there.
The pink and white flowers shimmered brightly amidst the lush green leaves, marking their location for the hungry bees and butterflies.
prickly vine
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