The next day, the three of them got up at daybreak. Zhou Yiding first went to the lumberyard in the north to ask Old Man Lin for help in digging agarwood stumps, while Zhou Huaian and Yang Chunyan went to the mountain cave where they had been yesterday.
Although it didn't rain in the woods in the early morning, it was foggy and the uppers of my rain boots were soon soaked by dew.
When they reached halfway up the slope, Zhou Huaian pointed out the red roots to Yang Chunyan, and the two planned to dig them up again when they went down the mountain.
They reached the top of the hill without any delay. Yang Chunyan looked at the narrow cave below, which was about two or three stories high, and felt that it looked like it was dug out by someone with a hoe.
Zhou Huaian patted Dahei and said, "Get down the mountain!"
Dahei turned around and ran downwards. The two men followed it, leaning on wooden sticks. With it running in front, they didn't have to worry about snakes or insects jumping out and scaring them.
When they got down, Zhou Huaian took Yang Chunyan and walked along the path they had walked yesterday. The wild grass in the valley was growing very lushly.
There are also chicken shit vine, sea sand, unknown vines with thorns, as well as sea buckthorn, myrtle, and schisandra that look like bunches of red grapes.
The Schisandra chinensis and Myrtle were ripe. Zhou Huaian used his medicine hoe to hook down a branch, picked a handful of fruits and handed them to Yang Chunyan. "I was in a hurry yesterday and didn't realize there were so many good things."
Yang Chunyan picked a bright red Schisandra chinensis fruit, put it in her mouth, and after biting through the skin, the sour taste rushed straight into her mouth, and when it touched the flesh, there was a spicy and sweet taste.
Zhou Huaian saw that her eyebrows were all furrowed together, "This thing tastes terrible, especially the taste after biting through the core, it tastes very strong, no wonder it is called Schisandra chinensis."
After hearing this, Yang Chunyan recalled the bitter and salty taste she had experienced after biting through the fruit core, and quickly spat out the core in her mouth. "I read in an old man's medicine book that the skin and flesh of Schisandra chinensis are sweet and sour, but after biting through the core, it tastes spicy, bitter, and salty."
"Brother Huang's restaurant uses this stuff to make wine, and quite a few people drink it. These shrubs weigh at most ten pounds. How about we pick them and dry them to make wine?"
Yang Chunyan nodded, "Sun-dried ones are not as good as shade-dried ones."
"You have the final say."
Zhou Huaian picked up the medicine hoe and hooked down the vines, and Yang Chunyan grabbed a bunch of fruits and put them in the backpack.
Schisandra genus of Schisandraceae is a deciduous woody vine with slender branches, reddish brown, and lenticels. The leaves are elliptical, obovate or ovate-lanceolate, and they bloom small yellow flowers.
The medicinal part is its dried mature fruit. Schisandra chinensis is divided into "northern schisandra chinensis" and "southern schisandra chinensis". The fruit of southern schisandra chinensis is slightly larger than that of northern schisandra chinensis, but other parts are similar.
Ancient medical books call it Xuanji, Huiji, and it was first listed as a top-grade Chinese medicine in Shennong's Herbal Classic. It can nourish and strengthen the body, has extremely high medicinal value, and has the effect of strengthening the body. It is used together with Qiongzhen Ganoderma to treat insomnia.
In some places it is also called mountain pepper, probably because your tongue feels numb after eating it, just like eating pepper!
Schisandra: warm, sour, sweet. It has the effects of astringing the lungs, nourishing the kidneys, promoting body fluid, stopping sweating, and astringing semen.
After hooking down all the shrubs with Schisandra berries hanging on them, I found quite a few hidden under the branches and leaves. After finding them all and picking them, I felt there were more than twenty pounds of them.
After picking the schisandra, they started picking myrtle and prickly pear. When they finished, their hands were scratched by the thorny vines, leaving red marks.
Zhou Huaian looked at the Schisandra chinensis in the basket and said, "Yan'er, these red fruits look pretty. How about we dig some and plant them in the back hill?"
Yang Chunyan picked up the basket and said, "It may be difficult to plant the seeds we dig up now, so we can save some of the fruits for seeds."
"Okay!" Zhou Huaian turned around, picked up the backpack, and called Dahei. The two of them and the dog continued to walk towards the place where Paris polyphylla and Polygonatum sibiricum were growing.
After pulling away the weeds and vines, I found some Fritillaria cirrhosae and some small seedlings growing here and there in the grass. It seems that these Fritillaria cirrhosae have been here for quite a few years.
There are also those Polygonatum sibiricums. I looked around nearby and found that they were all over the grass, big and small. If you didn’t know, you would think they were planted by someone!
Unfortunately, the seeds on the stems of the Polygonatum sibiricum are not yet mature.
"Yan'er, there are so many seeds. It would be a pity to dig them up now. How about we wait until the end of autumn when the seeds are ripe and ask Uncle Daqing to come and pick them before digging them up? What do you think?"
"Okay, tell Yiding." Yang Chunyan saw that some of the Paris polyphylla seedlings were ready for transplanting. "We need to tell Uncle Daqing about the Paris polyphylla seedlings here, and ask him to remember to dig some up in the spring and plant them in the yard."
"Yeah!" Zhou Huaian cleared the weeds around the Chonglou and started digging carefully.
At this time, Dahei, who was lying aside, stood up and wagged his tail happily. Soon Dahuang came running over, and Zhou Yiding also arrived.
"How much have you dug? How is it? Is it old?"
"We haven't started digging yet! We picked some myrtle, prickly pear and schisandra on the way, and we just started digging after looking around here."
"I'll help you dig." Zhou Yiding took out the medicine hoe from the backpack and started digging the Paris polyphylla that was exposed after Yang Chunyan had cleared away the weeds.
Zhou Huaian told him not to dig the Polygonatum for the time being, and asked him to remember to ask Zhou Daqing to pick the seeds in late autumn and to dig the Paris polyphylla seedlings in early spring.
"Okay! I told old man Lin about it, and he said the two big tree stumps were 40 to 50 centimeters thick, and the small one was more than 30 centimeters. It would take a lot of effort to dig them out. I gave him 30 yuan for each stump, and the old man was very happy. He said he would send them over after digging them up."
"Great!" When Zhou Huaian saw the rhizome of Paris polyphylla, he squatted down and carefully dug it with a medicine hoe, for fear of digging it up like last time.
After working carefully for more than ten or twenty minutes, a thick and long tuber of Paris polyphylla was finally dug out. Several spores had already sprouted on the tuber.
Zhou Huaian happily dug it up, cleaned off the dirt, weighed it a few times, and grinned, "Look, this piece is at least three pounds. It must be the largest parsley we have found since we started digging herbs!"
Zhou Yiding took it and weighed it a few times, "Almost. Look, there are a few more spores around!"
Yang Chunyan was also very happy, "Yes, this is not a wasted trip for us today."
The three of them were busy in the mountain cave for more than an hour and dug up more than 20 pieces of Fritillaria cirrhosa, which weighed about 20 kilograms in total, big and small.
There was no need to dig for Polygonatum, so the three of them packed up and went up the mountain to Zhou Yiding's mushroom nest to look for Ganoderma lucidum. When they got there, they saw several purple Ganoderma lucidum left by him. The largest one was as big as two bowls, the two smaller ones were only as big as rice bowls, and there were a few as big as spoons, so they left them.
Zhou Yiding said happily: "Let's continue to climb up, or go back to the ditch and take a look at the pine forest where they dig truffles. That's where my old man picked the matsutake mushrooms."
Zhou Huaian thought for a moment and said, "We can go there. It's very hot and stuffy in the forest. We can go from the ditch. It will be comfortable if we can catch a red deer or musk deer."
Yang Chunyan wanted to see the pearl on her head, but she couldn't go to the northwest ravine today. She wanted to see the golden thread vines in the ravine on this side, so she agreed to walk along the ravine.
After the three of them had discussed it, they took the dog to halfway up the slope to dig up the red roots, carried them down the mountain and returned to the forest farm to put the things away, then came out again and walked up along the ditch.
A lot of verbena had grown in the place where it had grown before. The three of them dug a pile of verbena and piled it there. They continued to walk upstream and then came to the place where they had dug Polygonatum sibiricum and Polygonatum odoratum before.
I found that a lot of them had grown out, but it was not time to harvest them yet. So I picked some Echeveria and carried them forward to the rock where the golden thread vine was growing.
The remaining seedlings have grown up and some have sprouted, but not many. Some have already formed flower buds and will bloom soon.
Yang Chunyan picked the ones with thick stems. The three of them picked only three handfuls in total, which weighed only about 8 or 9 taels in total. After drying, they weighed less than 1 tael.
Zhou Huaian took out a net bag and handed one to her. "These golden thread vines grow too slowly. It's been so long and only this much has grown."
Yang Chunyan smiled and said, "The wild golden thread lotus growing on the rocks absorbs the essence of heaven and earth to grow, otherwise why are wild herbs so expensive!"
Zhou Huaian gave her a thumbs up, turned to Zhou Yiding and said, "Did you hear that? Your sister-in-law brags even better than us!"
Zhou Yiding tilted his head and looked at the remaining golden thread vines on the rock. "I think what my sister-in-law said is right. There are not many nutrients on the rocks. Otherwise, how can it grow?"
Zhou Huaian suddenly felt that what Yang Chunyan said made sense. "Yeah, what did it eat to grow up?"
Zhou Yiding shrugged. "No matter what it eats to grow up, it will be eaten by people in the end."
"That's right!" Zhou Huaian hung the net bag on the backpack, lifted the basket and put it on his back, then strode forward.
At this time, the sun had risen, and the sunlight shone into the ravine through the dense trees on both sides of the ravine, and the water in the ravine reflected the sun's rays.
After walking for more than half an hour, Zhou Yiding pointed to a rock in front of him that was more than a meter high and said, "Youngest, let's go check out the nest of wild bees inside. If we walk in from there, we can also reach the pine forest."
Last year, when the two men shot a wild boar in the woods and brought it down the mountain, they found a large beehive in the woods and dug out five or six kilograms of old honey. The two men expanded the beehive and sealed it, and it has been a year since they last visited it.
"Great!" Zhou Huaian and Yang Chunyan followed him into the woods. Before they reached the mound, they saw wild bees flying.
Zhou Yiding put down his backpack and cleared the weeds in front of the hive. Zhou Huaian took a moxa stick, lit it and handed it to him, then inserted it into the entrance of the beehive. The three of them put on bee hats and stood aside waiting for the wild bees to come out.
After the little bees flew away, Zhou Yiding removed the stones at the entrance of the cave, revealing the nest neatly hanging inside the beehive. "The effect after the enlargement is not bad!"
"It's a nest of hardworking little bees." Zhou Huaian put on gloves and went forward to harvest the honey combs. One by one, the honey combs emitting the aroma of honey were put into urea bags by Zhou Yiding.
Except for the first two combs that were not capped honey, the next ten combs were all capped honey. Thinking that this nest of wild bees was large, I left the remaining four combs for them. (End of this chapter)
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