Chapter 290 Autumn Sweet Potato Harvest
Mu Xi was busy cooking pig food in the kitchen. There was a fire in the kitchen and the temperature was much higher than outside, so the numbers on the meter were not accurate.
Zhao Yeqing put his watch on the windowsill outside and only picked it up to look at the numbers after he had eaten.
8 degrees Celsius.
The temperature is dropping really fast.
After feeding the livestock, the two men went down to the fields with iron rakes and hoes.
There is also a way to harvest sweet potatoes. First dig them up and then hold the sweet potato vines and shake them off. After shaking off the mud on the sweet potato fruits, put them in a winnowing basket.
You have to be extra careful when using the hoe so as not to break the sweet potatoes or damage the skin.
Once the skin of the sweet potato is broken, it will become moldy and rot. It can only be stored for a long time if the skin is intact.
This is the food for the hungry wild boars in the house for the entire winter. If it gets moldy, they will starve.
The weather is good for farm work now as long as you don't touch water.
After bending over and working in the field for half an hour, my body warmed up and I felt neither cold nor sweaty.
It is impossible to harvest all the sweet potatoes in a large field in one day. Dig up half of them and harvest them first, and then dig up the other half the next day to avoid digging up all the sweet potatoes and not being able to harvest them all. In the morning, there will be mountain fog and dew, which will easily make the fields damp and moldy.
The harvested sweet potatoes need to be dried in the sun to dry the skin before being stored in the cellar, which can extend the shelf life of the sweet potatoes.
Zhao Yeqing took the complete guide to rural planting for poverty alleviation and read out the precautions about sweet potatoes. Then both of them had a clear idea in their minds.
The sweet potatoes would definitely not have room to be stored in the original cellar, but if they were placed in the breeding basement, the temperature environment would be unstable and they would easily become moldy.
The original plan was to store the fish in wooden boxes and place them in the breeding basement. The wooden boxes could ensure that the temperature and humidity inside would not change too much, but unexpectedly the yield was much higher than expected.
After all the sweet potatoes were harvested, there was not enough space to spread them out in the yard to dry. So the next day, they were spread out directly on the fields to dry, and they were all harvested in the evening.
A rough estimate is about three thousand kilograms.
Zhao Yeqing never thought that he could grow so many sweet potatoes in his lifetime. His eyes widened as he looked at the vast sea of sweet potatoes in front of him.
“Where should I put so many?”
After discussing for a long time, the two men finally had to dig out the space next to the pigpen in the basement to use as a storage room.
At that time, a separate door will be made for the storage room, which will be closed to ensure a stable environment.
It is just used to stack sweet potatoes, so it doesn't need to be too fine. A full soil structure will do, which is more suitable for the storage environment of sweet potatoes.
"This should be enough for them to eat, right?" Zhao Yeqing was still a little worried. After all, pigs do eat a lot.
An adult pig needs to consume about five kilograms of food a day, which is mixed with rice bran and leftovers. These three thousand kilograms of sweet potatoes should be able to sustain it for half a year.
Anyway, in a month, we will have to kill a pig first, and then kill another one when this batch of pigs grows to 150 kilograms to reduce the burden.
Finally, four pigs will be left for breeding, and then we can relax about the feed.
Zhao Yeqing took two big sweet potatoes. Of course, he had to taste them while they were still fresh after being dug out.
The weather is cold now, and there is hot water on the stove in the kitchen at home 24 hours a day. Before I go to bed at night, I use the red charcoal left over from burning firewood to warm the hot water in the fire pit.
Mu Xi took the sweet potato, washed off the dirt on it, and buried it directly in the ashes under the fire.
Wood ash is very clean, but the soil needs to be washed clean, after all, it is the soil that has been fertilized with manure.
It takes some skills and experience to bake the sweet potatoes directly in wood ash. If you put them too close to the fire, they will burn before they are cooked. If you put them too far away, they will not be cooked even after a long time.
The two have been roasting sweet potatoes since they were young, and are quite confident in controlling the heat.
Sweet potatoes buried in wood ash will not emit any fragrance, and knowing when they are baked well depends entirely on experience.
When Zhao Yeqing felt it was almost done, he used tongs to dig away the ash and pick out the hot sweet potatoes underneath.
Blow air on the sweet potato and press it lightly with your fingers. When it becomes soft all around, it is done.
After picking up two big sweet potatoes, Zhao Yeqing blew air on them with his mouth and gently tore open the sweet potato skins with his hands, enduring the heat.
White hot steam suddenly came out from the sweet potato skin, followed by a sweet sweet potato aroma.
The sweet potatoes were sweet and soft, with a hint of chestnut aroma and the sweetness of pumpkin. Zhao Yeqing ate them with a satisfied look on his face, and his hands were covered with black marks from the slightly carbonized sweet potato skin.
Sure enough, no one can resist the first roasted sweet potato in early winter.
After eating, Mu Xi went to get some hot water. The two rubbed the black marks on their hands in the basin. Mu Xi said, "This batch of sweet potatoes seems to be sweeter than the previous batch. Let's use the ones in the cellar to feed the pigs and keep some of this batch for ourselves."
Zhao Yeqing agreed very much. "The weather has been good recently. Although it's cold, the sun is shining every day. It's good to make some dried sweet potatoes and keep them as snacks."
Now, except for the vegetables in the vegetable garden that have not been harvested yet, the grain fields have all been cleared. Before winter comes, the two only need to harvest the radishes, onions, cabbages and other vegetables in the vegetable garden. The winter vegetables they stockpile will be enough for three or four months.
We certainly can't eat cabbage, radishes and onions every day, so Zhao Yeqing also started planting some slightly cold-resistant vegetables in the basement.
It is said that radishes after the Frost Descent are as good as cabbages at the Beginning of Winter. This means that radishes should be harvested after the Frost Descent to avoid the weather being too cold, which will cause the water in the radishes to crystallize and become dehydrated, causing them to wilt.
But the weather now is different from before. The frost has passed, but judging from the temperature, it is about time to harvest the radishes in the next few days.
Cabbage is slightly more frost-resistant than radish, and cabbage that has been hit by frost will be sweeter and can be harvested after a while.
Zhao Yeqing had been harvesting sweet potatoes for two days. As the weather was getting colder, it was extremely difficult to get up in the morning. Mu Xi also rarely stayed in bed until nine o'clock.
If it weren't for the fact that the livestock at home needed to be fed, he would definitely choose to sleep for another half an hour in bed with his girlfriend in his arms.
I got up and finished my morning work. Since it hasn't snowed yet and the temperature outside is relatively stable, I opened the door and let the livestock out to get some fresh air.
The cattle and sheep were taken away by Dahuang's family to graze, and the chickens wandered around in the backyard catching insects.
Xiaohong went out to play by herself and will probably be back in the afternoon. Today, the three leopards are lying in the yard. They are not afraid of other animals coming to attack them, so they leave the door open with peace of mind.
Mu Xi prepared breakfast and dragged his girlfriend, who was curled up in the quilt watching videos, up to eat.
There is no fireplace in the room. I had originally planned to install floor heating, but I have been so busy with things and work lately that I have not been able to get busy with that at all.
Now all the sweet potatoes in the yard have to be harvested quickly, and the storage cellar must be dug first.
Zhao Yeqing had a full meal and finally woke up after being lazy all morning. He put away his phone and said:
"Let's dig together. Once we're done, we can get the floor heating."
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