Zhou's mother laughed and said, "During the two years of the great famine, everyone went everywhere for food. They ate everything they could find, but in the end, they didn't go down there. Several people in the village went to see it but couldn't find a way to go down there.
Your old man, Daqing, Datian and others were planning to tie a rope around their bodies and go down to have a look. Later, they found that they could go down there. They dug up a lot of yam, sweet potato and kudzu root and shared them and hid them to eat. That’s why no one in the family starved to death.”
"Oh! I thought no one had ever been down there! If we go down now, we will surely be able to dig up a lot of yams and sweet potatoes, right?"
"There should be more. When the house is not busy, ask your eldest brother and the others to go down and take a look."
Zhou's mother put the selected spinach into a colander and said, "Go wash it and mix it with the salad. I'll go pick out the peas and sieve them. We'll start frying them later."
"Okay." Yang Chunyan took the spinach to the well, scooped some water from the jar to wash the spinach, then went back to blanch it and mix it with cold water.
Zhou's mother came in with the bag in her hand, "There are probably more than 40 kilograms of this. Light up the big pot inside. You need to cook it in three pots to make sure it is evenly cooked."
"Yes." Yang Chunyan put the cold spinach next to the stove and went to the stove to light the fire.
After the pot became scalding, Zhou's mother washed it twice with cold water. After the water in the pot dried up, she scooped some food with a gourd ladle and poured it into the pot, then started stir-frying.
The two of them fried a pot of peas, and then waited until all the peas in the basket were fried and poured them into a bucket to soak. Only then did Zhou Huaian and the old man walk into the yard.
Three of them had baskets filled with Bletilla striata, and one of the baskets had a sack tied to it.
Zhou Huaian waited for Zhou Huairong to help put down the backpack and wiped his sweat, "My sister-in-law and the others almost didn't bring the mountain back."
Zhao Huifang said happily: "We should have asked you to come along today. After the rain, the forest over there was full of mushrooms. We picked up a lot of red mushrooms and a few pounds of morels."
Li Qiuyue continued, "We picked mushrooms in the morning, and went to dig white hyacinths in the afternoon. It took us a long time to go back, otherwise we would have returned long ago."
Yang Chunyan: "Have all the white hyacinths under the ditch been dug up?"
Li Qiuyue: "I left 20 to 30 nests for breeding, and dug them up again after two years."
Yang Chunyan: "When Huai'an and I went up the mountain, we didn't see a single mushroom. They must have been picked up by Aunt San and the others."
Mother Zhou pointed at two baskets in the corner and said, "They just delivered them before you came back. Your third aunt's family sent more than 30 kilograms, and the eldest wife's family also sent about 30 kilograms."
The old man was also very happy after hearing this, "Hurry up and eat, and then clean up the mushrooms and herbs to prevent them from getting spoiled."
"Yeah! Time to eat."
Yang Chunyan and Zhou's mother put a bowl of pork belly, pork bones and winter melon, a bowl of cold spinach, and a bowl of roasted chili peppers on the table, and they heard the sound of several people swallowing their saliva.
Zhou Huaishan said with a smile: "Roasted chili peppers are still the best. I always eat an extra bowl of rice every time."
Zhou Huaian took a look and said, "It's delicious, but it's best to eat less, otherwise you'll know what it means to have a bad taste in your mouth and a painful butt tomorrow morning."
Zhou Huaishan nodded repeatedly, "That's right, I can't control my mouth every time, the next day..."
"Third brother!" The old man interrupted him and looked at the two brothers with disdain, "It's not civilized to say these things while eating."
"Hey hey!" Zhou Huaian hurried forward, "Grandpa, have you finished your cigarette? Can I wrap it for you?"
The old man rolled his eyes at him and said, "Wait until you remember to wrap leaf cigarettes for me. The daylilies are cold. Jiaming wrapped them for me."
Zhou Huaian said with a smile: "Oh! The one your great-grandson wrapped for you tastes even better."
"Lazy people have many excuses." The old man picked up the bowl, "It's time to eat, but after eating, there is still work to do."
Everyone started to pick their dishes and eat. Yang Chunyan ate two bowls of rice and drank a bowl of pork tripe, bone and winter melon soup. She felt that the food these days still tasted authentic.
Suddenly I remembered those pieces of Gastrodia elata, "Mom, Gastrodia elata stewed with old duck is the best for curing headaches. When can we kill an old duck and stew it with Gastrodia elata?"
Zhang Xiuxiang: "When Chunyan dug up the Gastrodia elata, she said that stewing it with duck is good for the eyes, so she kept it and didn't sell it."
After hearing this, the old man hurriedly said, "No, keep it and sell it for money. Doctor Wang gave me a few injections of silver needles and changed a few prescriptions for me. I'm much better now."
Mother Zhou smiled and said, "Old man, I've only heard that Gastrodia elata is good for eating before, but I've never eaten it! Chunyan and the others are thinking of saving some to stew, so let's stew it and eat it once."
Yang Chunyan: "Yes, Grandpa, other people buy it to eat, but we find it ourselves and it doesn't cost anything."
The old man smiled and nodded after hearing this, "Okay, let's stew it and try it too."
After dinner, Zhou Huaishan took out the money from selling herbs and distributed it to several people. "The price of those fresh white hyacinths is quite good, 60 cents per catty! We selected 46 catties and sold them for 27.6 yuan, and those ganoderma lucidum also sold for 20 yuan."
Li Qiuyue looked at him in surprise, "The price of Bletilla striata is so good! We picked so many yesterday to plant, it's not worth it!"
Zhou Huaishan rolled his eyes at him and said, "You are so short-sighted. Have you ever calculated how much you can harvest from those white hyacinths in a few years?"
"You have a long-term vision!" Li Qiuyue sneered at him and ignored him. She turned her head and looked at Yang Chunyan, "How much can you harvest per acre?"
Yang Chunyan remembered that the white hyacinth in Wang Zhen’s medicinal field used to yield two to three thousand kilograms per acre if it was planted well, but she couldn’t tell them that.
"I have never planted it so I don't know, but when we dug up Bletilla striata, we found that it has a strong reproductive capacity. If we plant it well, we should be able to harvest one or two thousand kilograms of Bletilla striata per mu."
Zhou Huaian took over the conversation, "If we calculate based on the yield of 1,000 catties per mu, 60 cents per catty per mu would be enough to earn several hundred yuan."
Yang Chunyan smiled and said, "Huaian, we can't harvest it next year. We have to wait three or four years after planting it before we can harvest it!" She felt that there would be fewer and fewer wild ones in the future, and the price would go up a bit.
Li Qiuyue was happy after hearing this. "We know that you said last night that it would take three or four years to harvest. But even if it takes three or four years, it's still more profitable than growing crops. We didn't have to pay agricultural taxes for the first few years of the barren hills we rented!"
Zhao Huifang also smiled and nodded, "Tomorrow morning we will go to the back mountain and dig up what we saw last time."
Li Qiuyue: "Yes, we will go there tomorrow morning."
Zhou Huaian said: "Chunyan and I will go to the forest farm tomorrow morning to dig up the Paris polyphylla we left behind last time and collect the seeds."
Zhou Huairong: "Yes, you can go there. We will help you grow the white hyacinth."
Zhou Huaishan distributed the money to several people, "Go pick up the red mushrooms first, the old man and grandpa have been working for a while."
Zhou's mother said cheerfully, "We harvested a batch of dried red mushrooms today. The third child will take them to Ning'an to sell tomorrow."
"I understand."
Zhou Huaian prepared some leftover rice and soup for the dog and asked Zhou Huairong to take it to the new house to feed the dog.
Yang Chunyan and a few others sat around a basket and began to pick red mushrooms.
Except for a few children, all the adults worked hard for more than an hour to pick out all the red mushrooms, hang them in the sieve and winnowing basket, string the morels together with bamboo threads and hang them on bamboo poles, and then pick the white hyacinth. (End of this chapter)
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