Chapter 63 Beating Soybeans
Zhao Yeqing let go of his hand and looked at Mu Xi's height carefully.
If the bed is only 1.8 meters long, it seems a bit unfair.
She couldn't figure it out, so she just asked, "How tall are you?"
"One meter eighty-seven."
In order to avoid hitting the head, there must be a space of one or two centimeters between the head and the head of the bed. Add another seven centimeters and the bed is only 1.8 meters high, so Mu Xi's entire foot from the ankle down would have to be suspended in the air.
He didn't care much about it. "I often can't straighten my legs when I stay in a hotel, so this is not a big deal."
Staying in a hotel is definitely different from staying at home. If she were her husband, she would find it hard to accept sleeping in her bed at home and feeling cramped.
Besides, this is not something that will happen overnight. Who knows how long this temperature will last.
"Why not knock down the wall and expand it?"
If we don't expand the house, it will be too cramped. Not to mention that we won't be able to sleep well, it's almost time to harvest the potatoes and sweet potatoes. If we pile them in the cellar, it will be difficult to step into them. It's better to expand the house as soon as possible.
Seeing that she was getting too stubborn, Mu Xi reminded her, "Stupid, can't you dig another storage cellar?"
Zhao Yeqing slapped her forehead. She just wanted to start the expansion with a cellar, but she couldn't think of a solution immediately.
Dig a new cellar and you don’t have to sleep with potatoes and sweet potatoes.
Zhao Yeqing went home and started measuring the dimensions.
The original cellar was 4 meters above the ground and the height inside was 1.8 meters. The new expansion did not need to be too high to reduce the workload and complete it as soon as possible. She could go there to harvest the sweet potatoes in the next few days. The height would be enough for her to bend down and get in to get them.
She was unsure about the area and didn't know how much would be enough. This was also the first time she had planted so many sweet potatoes and potatoes.
If something cannot be solved right now, don’t solve it for now.
Let’s discuss it after Mu Xi comes back.
It was still dark at four o'clock, and she wanted to thresh the soybeans while the sun was not shining.
Due to the scorching sun these days, the soybean pods and stalks have long since dried out and turned light yellow, and the leaves crumble into pieces when squeezed.
Zhao Yeqing carried all the soybeans to the cement floor in the middle of the yard, spread them out a little, took a shoulder pole from the tool shed, squatted on the ground and began to beat the soybean stalks.
The bamboo shoulder pole hit the soybeans that had become dry and brittle, making a crisp cracking sound. The bean pods were cracked open and the soybeans inside rolled out one by one.
After beating for a while, she turned over the soybean stalks and continued beating to ensure that every bean pod inside was hit and not a single bean was wasted.
The process of turning over and pounding has to be continued several times. After a batch of soybeans is pounded, the stalks are piled aside and another batch is pounded.
The beaten soybean stalks are also stored and are very useful for starting a fire.
It took her an hour to finish typing all the words. She stood up and wiped the sweat off her face. The moon was no longer visible in the sky, and a faint white light began to appear in the eastern sky.
The soybeans on the ground were swept together with a broom and then scooped into a winnowing basket by hand. The soybeans scooped up in this way were inevitably mixed with a lot of broken stems and leaf residues.
She picked up the winnowing basket and tilted it slightly so that the soybeans and residue were gathered on one side. Then she exerted force with her hands to throw the soybeans and residue up and then down.
The soybeans are heavy and can fall back onto the winnowing basket steadily. The light residue will float away in the process of flying and be blown to the ground by the wind brought by the winnowing basket.
She changed her clothes specially. The waterproof and dust-proof fabric makes it so that the debris that falls on the clothes can be easily wiped off without getting into the gaps between the fibers of the clothes.
After the soybeans have been cleaned in this way, a final screening step is required.
You need to pick out the bad beans mixed in with the golden soybeans. The bad beans are black and easy to identify.
She picked them one by one, but before she finished, Mu Xi came back with the wooden board.
If you want to dig a new cellar, don't assemble the bed first, and try to dig a rough outline of the cellar before the sun rises.
The two discussed for a while and decided to first set the area inside at three square meters, and then decide if it was not enough later.
The land in the south is not like that in the north. The soil is relatively moist, and the probability of landslides is relatively higher.
So the new cellar was not dug in the small courtyard, but behind the house wall and between the wooden fence, right next to the rabbit pen.
It is definitely more convenient to dig in the small yard, but considering the foundation of the house and the frequency of people walking on it, it is safer to choose outside to avoid landslides.
This place has houses in front and mountains behind, so the sun is mostly blocked, making it much cooler.
Zhao Yeqing measured the approximate size with his feet, used a shovel to mark out the size of the storage cellar on the ground, and then marked the size of the cellar entrance on top of that.
Start digging the first shovel at the entrance of the cellar.
The two people took turns using a shovel to dig a square hole, and then started digging downwards from the hole.
They planned to dig the storage cellar only two meters deep. When they reached the point where they could no longer reach it from the ground, Mu Xi asked Zhao Yeqing to go back and rest for a while, and he jumped in to continue digging.
Zhao Yeqing nodded and said she would wait until she had rested enough before taking over the shift, letting Mu Xi go back.
The sun hadn't come out yet, but the temperature was there. Her sweat flowed from her head to her neck and into her clothes, leaving a large wet spot on her chest and back.
When Zhao Yeqing got home, he lit a fire, boiled a pot of water, and put the eggs in to boil.
The earliest batch of chicks have started laying eggs. Before, our family could produce about ten eggs every day. It has been too hot these two days, so the egg production has been halved, but there is still no shortage.
Zhao Yeqing boiled five eggs and soaked them in cold water.
I also grabbed a few handfuls of freshly harvested soybeans and soaked them in water.
She was worried that there was still moisture in the soybeans that had been dried with the pods attached, so she grabbed a few handfuls and placed the rest in a winnowing basket in the yard to dry.
She took two packets of coffee and made a quick coffee. She hadn't drunk it for a long time and said she wanted to find tea leaves to replace coffee, but she ended up finding nothing because she encountered a wild boar.
Add ice cubes to the coffee, and breakfast is boiled eggs with iced American coffee.
She finished her breakfast sitting in a chair, poured milk on the porridge and snow cakes, and threw a piece of wild boar jerky to them as a teething stick.
Before the rooster came out of the chicken coop and tried to crow, she threw a handful of feed in an attempt to block its mouth, but failed.
"Oh~oh~oh~~"
The crowing sounds seemed to awaken the silence of the forest. The chirping of insects that were originally exclusive to the night disappeared, replaced by the calls of birds that were awakened.
After the rooster finished crowing, he lowered his head to eat. The hen also walked out slowly with her chicks. Zhao Yeqing just turned his head and saw three chicks in the flock that looked a little different.
She turned back instantly.
Among a group of yellow furry creatures, there are three chicks with orange spots mixed in.
"Mu Xi! Come here quickly!"
The first time Zhao Yeqing saw a pheasant, she couldn’t tell what species it was.
When Mu Xi heard Zhao Yeqing's voice, he dropped the shovel, pushed himself out of the pit with his hands, and ran back to the yard, thinking that something had happened to her.
But I saw her squatting on the ground, carefully holding a little chick in her hand, holding it up like she was presenting a treasure, her eyes sparkling.
"Mu Xi, look!"
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