The guard smiled and said, "Bai Jiu, are you coming to my house for dinner today?"
He almost blurted out, "You want to take it back?"
Bai Jiu: "Is your home on the hillside?"
"Hahaha, wherever there's a military camp, that's my home."
Soldiers consider the barracks their home, that's perfectly normal.
Bai Jiu: "Oh, I see. Consider it me coming to your house for dinner, but I'm not freeloading. The food is cooked by my young lady."
"Welcome, welcome! We'll come to your house next time, just don't be upset."
Bai Jiu,…….
Bai Shuang ignored their jokes and continued helping to tidy up the food.
When Lu Yu and his group arrived, they brought steamed sausages, hot and sour noodles, spiced edamame (grown on the hillside), and fried cured fish, all prepared by the military camp cooks, as a holiday meal for the soldiers here.
Actually, Bai Shuang and the others always eat here to join in the fun. They spread a canvas on the ground, sit around it, holding their rice bowls, just like camping, and chat.
Most soldiers are straightforward and don't hold grudges. If they disagree on something, they'll argue, and if they get angry, they might even fight.
But they didn't hold grudges and made up again in no time. Coupled with the yellow and green crops around them, it seemed like the idyllic rural scene before the disaster.
This stands in stark contrast to the city, which has been completely transformed. Even the snow leopards get incredibly excited every time they come here.
There may never be another opportunity like this.
After the Spring Festival, everyone started digging potatoes. Bai Shuang also dug up the potatoes on her own balcony, as well as those on Bai Jiu's balcony.
Bai Jiu pulled up the potato vines, while Bai Chang and Bai Shuang dug them up with iron shovels.
The soil is semi-moist, making it easy to dig. Sometimes, when you pull up the vines, you can bring out the potatoes along with them.
Bai Jiu said, "Now I finally understand why Miss watered the potato pot last night."
Bai Chang: "Why?"
"Once the soil is moistened by watering, the potatoes are easier to dig up."
I was thinking at the time that the lady was watering the potatoes so they could stay comfortably in the pot for one last night.
Bai Chang: "You've finally shown some intelligence for once."
"Me, smart this once? I'm incredibly smart, smarter than you, you chicken-brain."
Bai Chang raised his hand to strike, but Bai Jiu said, "A gentleman uses words, not fists."
"I won't act like a gentleman with you."
These potatoes benefited from both sunlight and the natural frost during their growth, resulting in a high yield.
Bai Shuang dug up more than 100 jin of potatoes from her own balcony, and Bai Jiu and the others also dug up nearly 100 jin from their balconies. The potatoes were about the size of a fist, and they were all uniform in size. They were really good.
Others were also digging potatoes. Because of the abundant sunlight on the rooftop, the potatoes grew particularly well, with some as big as a fist.
Bai Shuang herself had enough to eat, so she didn't fight with the others for rooftop space.
On their own balconies, and on the balconies below the 10th floor, after the water receded, everyone planted on the exposed balconies.
The potatoes on the balcony are a bit smaller due to insufficient sunlight, but they're still quite good; even small potatoes are edible.
Everyone turned the soil in the pots several times to make sure that the smallest potatoes were harvested before they stopped.
In this way, each household can dig up several hundred kilograms of potatoes.
At this point, those who hadn't listened to the government and had eaten the distributed potato seeds were green with envy.
On the second day of the Spring Festival, Lu Yu's military camp began to concentrate its efforts on digging potatoes, picking corn, harvesting soybeans, and collecting medicinal herbs.
Because the hillside area was quite large, and we had to collect and transport the produce, the collection process took a full half month.
During that time, Bai Shuang and the other two visited several times, took pictures of their lively work, and sometimes helped them dig and cook potatoes together.
Before starting work, the potatoes were buried in the ashes, and then everyone went to work together.
After waiting for two or three hours, during the break in between, I happened to be hungry, so I went to dig it out.
Peel off the skin, and it's incredibly sweet. Some people prefer stronger flavors; the white frost contains chili powder, salt, pepper, and cumin, so sprinkling it on makes it especially delicious.
During that time, the snow leopard developed a liking for roasted potatoes. Every time it went up the hillside, it would wag its tail at the soldiers who were cooking, and the soldiers liked it very much.
For several days, Bai Jiu wanted to go up the hillside every day to see that silly soldier, who would say, "Want to eat our roasted potatoes again?"
Sometimes, if a soldier missed a visit by a day, he would say, "Why didn't you come yesterday? We missed you all."
Anyway, he always has something to say.
After the harvest, I returned double the amount of corn, soybeans, and other seeds that I had previously owed Huang Niu (Baishuang) as agreed.
The medicinal herbs were collected in advance, and Bai Shuang was asked to help with the preparation. The payment was deducted from the finished medicine.
The large area on the hillside, coupled with a bumper harvest of crops such as potatoes and corn, can alleviate the military's food problem for a long time.
After the harvest was finished on the hillside, the soldiers left. Then everyone went in groups to pick up the small potatoes that had been left in the soil.
Potatoes grow in the ground, and no matter how thoroughly the soldiers dug them up, some were missed.
People from Building C also went. Liu Zhongyi led them, and they went to grab territory very early every day and didn't come back until evening. Each person could collect three to five kilograms.
Bai Shuang had seen the potatoes they picked; they were about the size of grapes, and occasionally a little bigger, about the size of an apricot. Any bigger ones wouldn't be left behind, since food was so scarce.
They didn't stop until they had turned the ground over several times and couldn't find it anymore, even sweeping away the vegetable roots and weeds on the slope.
The government notified everyone five days in advance of a significant temperature drop, so please take precautions.
A soldier sailed a boat with a loudspeaker and announced the news for three days in a row. Most people believed him, regardless of whether it was true or not, because being prepared was always a good idea.
But there are always those who are self-righteous and say, "Nonsense, if it's not cold in winter, how could it be cold in spring?"
When the people in Building C saw Bai Shuang and the others preparing things to keep warm, they also started making their own preparations.
The house in Baishuang is easy to manage. Before we moved in, we had the workers convert it to a self-heating system, which can be connected to natural gas or electricity. With a small electric heater or an electric radiator, it should be able to cope.
It was Bai Jiu and his team who needed special modifications. Fortunately, Bai Jiu was quite skilled in mechanics, and Bai Shuang picked out a small boiler from the things that the people downstairs had collected.
There were other available accessories, and Bai Jiu and Bai Chang devised a self-heating device themselves.
The small boiler is placed in a room, with a stove underneath; it can burn either coal or firewood.
Because coal stoves cannot be placed directly in the bedroom, as they can easily cause carbon monoxide poisoning. If the window is left slightly open, how can one withstand the freezing temperatures of tens of degrees below zero outside?
We also brought out a space heater, a small electric heater, an electric heater, and an electric blanket for Bai Jiu and the others, and prepared two high-capacity batteries for them to use in rotation.
The items included a thermostatic garment, cotton-padded clothes, thermal underwear, thermal shoes, a mink coat, and a military cotton hat given by Lu Yu.
Everything is ready, I can finally breathe a sigh of relief.
On March 1st, the extreme cold did not arrive, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. However, Bai Shuang became increasingly nervous because the cold was likely to come, just like the storm before, and would strike suddenly at night.
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