After working until dark, the family sat together and ate delicious dishes such as pheasant stewed with mushrooms, mushrooms fried with bacon, mixed mushrooms fried with green and red peppers, and chicken mushroom soup.
Zhou Huaian scooped up a bowl of chicken soup, took a sip, and sighed: "Comfortable and comfortable!"
Zhou Huaishan said with a smile: "It would be strange if mushroom stewed pheasant is not delicious!"
"It's delicious!" Zhou Jiakang gnawed the chicken feet with his teeth bared, "But I think the chickens raised at home are still better when stewed. The meat is tender and chewy!"
Zhang Xiuxiang hit him twice, "You've eaten too much chicken chin, you're everywhere!"
“…”
Zhou Xiaoqian added, "Mom, he's too talkative now, we need to discipline him!"
Zhou Jiakang rubbed his forehead, "Sister..."
Zhou Xiaoqian glared at him, "Who told you to talk so much? Look at my brother, Xiaowen, and Xiaoru, they are not like you! You talkative old woman!"
Zhou's mother also said: "Jiakang should reflect on himself. Look at your mother, your husband and your father. They get up before dawn to work. It's not easy to earn a little money.
Now you have good food and drink at home, yet you still complain about this and that! Go to the village and see your peers, what do they eat at home? "
"Grandma, I'll remember this. I won't do it again next time!" Zhou Jiakang nodded in agreement upon seeing this.
After the family had finished their meal, Yang Chunyan cleaned up the dishes, heated up the pig food, washed her son's butt and changed his diaper for the night. After coaxing him to sleep, she put him in the cradle, covered him with the small mosquito net she had made, and went on to wash the red mushrooms.
Jiang Yu and a few others who had gone home for dinner also came. More than a dozen people worked together and by eleven o'clock they had finally cleaned all the red mushrooms and sent them to the drying room.
Zhao Huifang and others were also busy going home to do housework.
Father Zhou used a cart to push vegetables, chickens, ducks, and eggs that were to be delivered tomorrow morning into the yard and asked, "Who will deliver the goods to Ning'an tomorrow?"
Zhou Huaian turned around and said, "Brother San, we are going to Baicaoping to collect mushrooms."
Zhou Huairong: "Youngest, what time are we going to Baicaoping tomorrow?"
Zhou Huaian thought for a moment, "It's getting light now, we should set off on time at 4:30!"
Zhou Huaishan: "Okay, then I'll push the vegetables over to my house."
At this time, Zhou Huaijun and the old man came out of the oven. "Youngest, there are still four baskets of red mushrooms. The oven can no longer hold them. Light up the oven and set the timer!"
"Hey!" Zhou Huaian shoveled some charcoal into the oven, waited for the temperature to rise, took a few large red mushrooms and put them on the baking tray, and took a pen to write down the temperature of the oven when he put them on the baking tray.
Then I looked at the alarm clock and measured the time it would take to dry the big red mushrooms. Then I put the small red mushrooms in, measured the time and recorded it. I then stuck it on the oven and others would bake according to the time.
The old man looked at the time on the oven and said, "Youngest, it's already twelve o'clock. We have to get up early tomorrow. You guys go to bed first. I'll stay here!"
Father Zhou thought that he could only sleep for three or four hours in the first half of the night, so he hurriedly said, "Old man, you go to bed first, I'll keep watch for the first half of the night!"
Zhou Huaian also said: "Yes, Grandpa, you didn't take a nap during the day today, go and get some sleep."
"Then I'll go to sleep first and let you, old man, take over!" The old man tiredly drew some hot water and went to the side to wash up.
Yang Chunyan said to Zhou Huaian: "Put these mushrooms in the wine cellar first. I will wash and dry them tomorrow morning."
Zhou Huaian looked at the basket and slapped his head, "There are still fungus underneath, we have to pour it out and dry it in the sun."
Yang Chunyan poured the mushrooms from the basket into the bamboo basket. Sure enough, there were a lot of black fungus at the bottom of the basket. "You can send the mushrooms to the wine cellar and go to sleep. I'll wash the black fungus!"
"Yeah!" Zhou Huaian came back from sending the backpack to the wine cellar. After washing up, he picked up his son who was sleeping soundly in the cradle and walked towards the room tiredly.
Yang Chunyan hung the fungus upstairs to dry. After washing up and returning to the room, she saw through the mosquito net that the father and son were lying side by side, sleeping soundly with their bellies bulging.
After taking out the account book and calculating today's accounts, I looked at my son's diaper and saw that it had been changed before going to bed.
She fed the baby again while half asleep. It seemed that before she fell asleep, the alarm clock rang. She quickly turned it off and patted Zhou Huaian, "Wake up."
"Hmm!" Zhou Huaian turned over and squinted for a while before sitting up, "Yan'er, tell mom to hire two more cleaners. It's too uncomfortable to stay up late."
"Okay! Tell her when it's daybreak." Yang Chunyan responded drowsily, and fell asleep again while hugging her son.
Zhou Huaian went out and saw that the yard was wet. Only then did he realize that it had rained again last night.
When I walked to the kitchen, I saw that the old man had already placed porridge, salted vegetables, and eggs on the table. "Eat quickly. Take the eggs on the table with you on the way."
Zhou Huaian washed his face and asked, "Grandpa, what time did you get up?"
The old man exhaled a puff of tobacco and said, "It's half past three. Your husband just went to bed not long ago."
Zhou Huaian looked at him gratefully, "We have more goods today, so we'll take turns guarding the oven tonight."
"It's okay. You leave early every morning. The weather is hot now, and the mushrooms can't be stored without truffles. The ones that are washed must be sent to the drying room as soon as possible."
The old man paused and said, "I think we can dry out the red mushrooms in the drying room and spread them out in the drying dam and upstairs for a day. This way we don't have to worry about them getting spoiled."
Zhou Huaian thought for a moment and nodded, "Okay! I'll do as you say!"
He felt that collecting mushrooms in large quantities was much more troublesome than collecting truffles, and that a little force when washing might damage the mushrooms.
Mushrooms are easy to spoil, and they cannot be kept in bad weather. If they go bad, we will lose money. The good thing is that my brothers have dug a wine cellar, so when there are too many, we can store them in the cellar and keep them for one more night.
After he finished his meal, he drove out on the tractor with eggs and a kettle. Zhou Huairong and others were already waiting outside.
The tractor bed was filled with bamboo baskets, leaving no room to step. Zhao Huifang and Zhang Xiuxiang stacked the bamboo baskets together before climbing on top and sitting down.
At around eight o'clock, the tractor arrived at Baicaoping. As soon as it climbed the steep slope, it saw that the drying dam and both sides of the road were already full of villagers waiting to sell red mushrooms.
When everyone saw the tractor coming, they excitedly lined up and put their backpacks and bamboo baskets aside.
Zhang Laoer looked at his three backpacks and felt excited thinking that he could sell all the mushrooms this season so that he could send his child to the provincial capital for medical treatment.
After Zhou Huaian parked the tractor, he took people to help move the bamboo baskets out of the truck bed. Zhao Huifang and others moved the scale down and put it away, then they began to lay out straw mats to sort the red mushrooms.
Zhang Laoer's family was lucky as they did not pick out any poisonous red mushrooms. However, the ones sent by the villagers behind them contained about three or four kilograms of poisonous red mushrooms.
When Zhou Huaian saw this, he hurriedly picked up the two kinds of red mushrooms and asked those households to identify them carefully before picking them up. After looking at them, those households thought that their children had made a mistake and promised to look carefully before picking them up next time.
We arrived at a little after eight o'clock, and were busy until after eleven o'clock before we collected all the red mushrooms that were delivered. The bamboo baskets we brought were filled to the brim, but there were less than three thousand kilograms of red mushrooms in total, and the amount we collected was not as much as the truffles.
Zhao Huifang took out the lunch box and took out the pancakes she had fried that morning. "I imitated Chunyan's cooking. After frying them, I cut them open and put a fried egg, salted vegetables, and cold shredded radish in them. They tasted pretty good."
Zhang Xiuxiang took it with a smile, "The food made by my sister-in-law and Chunyan is delicious, but Jiakang and Xiaoqian hate the food I make."
Zhou Huaijun took a bite and found that it tasted good. "It's comfortable to eat this in hot weather. Two of them will fill you up."
Zhou Huaian took a few bites and said, "It's delicious. The rice balls I've eaten these days are also delicious. I'll ask Chunyan to make some tomorrow."
After eating and drinking, the few people started the tractor and started to go back. Not long after they drove out, they heard someone running and shouting, "Wait, wait a minute..."
"Youngest, brake!" Zhao Huifang hurriedly shouted to Zhou Huaian in front of her.
Zhou Huairong waited for the tractor to stop and jumped down, "Brother, what do you want?"
The middle-aged man caught up with him, panting, "Hmph~~~I still have mushrooms at home, hmph~~~herbs to sell, hmph~~~" He felt his lungs were leaking as he opened his mouth to say a word.
Zhou Huairong felt his throat dry as he watched, and said hurriedly, "We have all stopped, please continue talking slowly."
Zhou Huaian and Zhou Huaijun also got off the tractor. Seeing two middle-aged men pushing a chicken cart coming towards them, they hurriedly moved the scale and straw mat down.
"Brother, come earlier next time, or you'll have to take those mushrooms home and dry them."
The man, who finally recovered his breath, nodded and said, "Okay, I'll come earlier next time. My chicken bus is still over there, I'll push it over." After he said that, he turned around and walked back the way he came.
The other two men also came over with their chicken carts, "Boss Zhou, do you want to buy Huang Jing?"
"Collect!" Brother Zhou Huaian stepped forward to help lift the red mushrooms off the wheel rack, and saw that the bamboo baskets on both sides of the chicken bus were full of Polygonatum, "Fuck ~ so much!"
"We found this yesterday when we were picking mushrooms. There are so many of them in the caves." The man took a piece out of the bamboo basket. "This piece has more than 30 bulbs. There are others with more bulbs than this. They are all good things that are several decades old."
"This kind of thing costs 40 cents per pound. Just put it on the scale and weigh it!" Zhou Huaian thought about the sale of this kind last year, which was 50 cents per pound. It's enough for him to make 10 cents per pound for something delivered to his door.
"Okay!" The man happily lifted the Polygonatum odoratum onto the scale. A basket of 112 pounds weighed 105 pounds after removing the skin. The three of them sold a total of 570 pounds of Polygonatum odoratum.
There were 260 kilograms of first-grade red mushrooms and 180 kilograms of second-grade ones. They happily took the money and pushed the chicken bus away.
Zhou Huaijun picked up a piece of Polygonatum that was at least one meter long and said, "Youngest brother, it will take decades for the Polygonatum we planted to grow this big?"
"Hmm! One node represents one year. This one has thirty-six bulbs, which means it has been growing for more than thirty years."
"Fuck!" Zhou Huaijun curled his lips. "By the time it grows this big, I'll be as old as my grandfather. I've been growing it for more than 30 years and only got this much money from it. It's not worth it!"
Zhou Huairong said with a smile: "Second brother, I think your head is a bit square. It is impossible that you still spend so much money per pound after more than 30 years!"
Zhang Xiuxiang said slowly: "We don't need the money yet, why are you in such a hurry? Just let it grow slowly in the field, and when we are old, we can dig it up and sell it for money!"
"Yes, there are also Magnolia officinalis and Eucommia ulmoides. We planted dozens more this year. When they grow up, the forest will be full of things that can be sold. How peaceful it will be!"
Zhou Huaian nodded repeatedly, "It's so relaxing just thinking about it!" (End of this chapter)
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