Chapter 369 Rest
Zhao Yeqing took the notebook and checked it. It was indeed time. "Okay, you harvest rapeseed and I'll harvest wheat."
"You go pick the rapeseed. It won't scratch your hands or make your skin itchy. Or let me pick both. You can cut the sweet potato vines. Don't worry. I checked yesterday and there were no snake nests."
After harvesting the sweet potatoes last time, the two thought that once the piglets were born, they would have to increase the amount of pig food at home, so they started raising seedlings and then planting them after the harvest. Sweet potatoes grow fast, and now the sweet potato vines have covered the entire field.
Zhao Yeqing had no objection. The piglets at home had been weaned, and she could use the sweet potato vines to hang the piglets for fun again.
After all, the big pig is very strong now and can no longer be bullied. Every time I feed the pigs, I wish I could pull her in as well.
After weaning, the pigs have to be fed. When she approaches with a large bundle of sweet potato vines, she can see the hungry pigs' mouths growing big, their front hooves clinging to the fence, and their eyes shining.
After feeding a large bundle of sweet potato vines, they felt like they were only about 70% full.
Zhao Yeqing fed the sow an extra sweet potato as a snack. After finishing, he stood at the door of the pigpen with his hands on his hips. He felt dizzy when he saw the pigpen that had just been cleaned the day before but was dirty again today.
As there are more pigs, they eat more and poop more, so the straw, which has just been replaced, becomes very dirty again. There is not much straw left at home, and the weather is humid, so the hay straw bedding in the barn is prone to mold, so it has to be replaced frequently to ensure that the livestock do not get sick.
Looking outside, Mu Xi had already harvested one third of the wheat field. Zhao Yeqing sighed and went over to help.
Mu Xi saw her coming over and asked, "Didn't I tell you not to come? Don't wait until the evening when your neck and arms itch again."
"We don't have enough straw at home, and the pig pen needs to be replaced. I thought we could harvest it together and use it as bedding for the pigs. After the wheat harvest, if we don't plant anything in the short term, we will have to cut grass and dry it for bedding."
Zhao Yeqing said this weakly. It was easy to grow crops in this weather, but it was difficult to take care of the livestock. There were many mosquitoes and they were afraid of diseases.
Mu Xi said, "Didn't we say that when the grain is harvested, we will let the pigs graze on the meadow. If that works, they can poop outside most of the time, just like cattle and sheep. The pressure of cleaning will be reduced a lot, so don't be too anxious."
Zhao Yeqing nodded, and finally felt a little better.
Maybe it’s because my good days are coming soon, and I have to do a lot of work every day, so sometimes I suddenly feel like not wanting to do anything.
Mu Xi worked faster and harvested all the wheat in less than a day.
After returning home, I asked Zhao Yeqing to take a shower. I placed the harvested wheat in the field and covered it with plastic sheeting. While she was taking a shower, I made her a few small cakes.
It is the simplest cup cake. I turned on the small oven I collected from the tourist area. I haven’t used it since the polar night. When I bake something normally, I use a homemade oven in the backyard to save electricity.
When Zhao Yeqing came out of the shower, he found the entire brick wall was filled with the aroma of baked cake. He rubbed his hair with a towel and walked to the kitchen.
When Mu Xi saw her come in, he put the cake in front of her and said, "Try it."
He was not very good at making desserts, and even this simple little cake he learned by watching Zhao Yeqing make it several times.
Zhao Yeqing knew that he had noticed her mood changes. Before she even ate the cake, her emotions had already been calmed down.
"What else do you want to eat? I'll make it."
Zhao Yeqing finished a cake in a few bites, his mouth was full, and he thought of the pigs in the pigpen who ate and slept all day without any worries, "I want to eat roast suckling pig."
The roast suckling pig cannot be eaten now, so it has to be prepared in advance. Mu Xi thawed a piece of pork belly and made her a plate of Sichuan-style salt-fried meat.
Zhao Yeqing ate with relish. Compared to the bright red dishes in Sichuan cuisine, she preferred non-spicy Sichuan dishes like salt-fried pork, which were fragrant and went well with rice.
"Forget it, let's keep the pig. I want to eat pork tomorrow. Let's make some salty braised pork and steamed pork ribs with rice flour."
Steamed rice flour originated in Jiangxi Province, and Sichuan Province also makes it very well, with a slightly spicy taste. There is also the Shaobai with pickles, which makes me drool just thinking about it...
Zhao Yeqing added, "If you like sweet food, you can make it into sweet Shaobai."
The sweet pork belly is served with red bean paste. It sounds like a dark dish at first, but it melts in your mouth and is fatty but not greasy.
Zhao Yeqing doesn’t like sweets very much. He can eat several pieces, but not more than that.
"It's okay, I'll make both sweet and salty ones."
There were the most pork dishes. Mu Xi found different ways to make delicious food for Zhao Yeqing, and successfully helped her get through the few days of physical disorder and emotional instability comfortably.
Finally, there was a small space in the refrigerator. Zhao Yeqing picked a watermelon, squeezed it into juice, and then froze it into popsicles.
There has been a good harvest of watermelons recently. Three big ones ripened in succession, so I took one to make juice. It is impossible to feed watermelons to pigs, but feeding them with watermelon rinds is acceptable.
The pigs in the pig pen were almost fighting over the watermelon rinds, which made Zhao Yeqing, who had been a little sentimental recently, say to Mu Xi,
"You see, if you've never had good food, you're easily satisfied. If you feed them watermelons every day, there won't be any pigs to snatch the watermelon rinds. I remember when we first came to the grassland, we were so poor. If we wanted to eat some rice, we had to go down the mountain to find rice. At that time, I didn't think as much as I do now. Now that we have everything at home, I'm still sentimental. Don't you think I'm being too hypocritical?"
Mu Xi took her back to the kitchen, wiped the watermelon juice off her hands with a wet towel, and poured her a glass of watermelon juice.
"I'm not being pretentious. Every stage is hard. I had less and had fewer worries before. Now there are so many things to do at home. I'm busy every day. It's normal to be tired after a long time. Look, the weather doesn't look like it's going to get dark or cold. We have more than enough food at home. How about we take a rest in the first half of this year?"
That's fine.
Zhao Yeqing exhaled the anger that had been pent up in his chest. "That's right. After working diligently for several years, it's not too much to take a break for half a year."
Although there was nothing to do during the entire polar night, I couldn't go anywhere. I was under a lot of pressure and the weather was too cold. Staying in the house every day didn't count as rest at all. It was almost like being in prison.
Now the wheat and rapeseed have been harvested. In a dozen days, when the corn is harvested and the pigs are released to graze, the two of them can go for a walk on the meadow again.
Zhao Yeqing pointed in the direction of the tourist area and said, "Last time when we came back from the tourist area, I remembered that we had never been to the nearby forest. I now suspect that the elephants entered the meadow from the forest over there. I want to go and take a look."
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