Chapter 356 A Rich Harvest
As soon as the tractor stopped on the side of the road at Niuweiling, two big dogs quickly came towards it.
The dog was close to its owner and kept circling around Gao Mingcheng.
Gao Mingcheng rubbed them twice and strode towards the house.
It was a little past ten in the morning and the sun was a little strong, but Xuanyuemei was still wearing a straw hat and working in the vegetable garden in front of the house.
This is the time when all kinds of vegetables grow vigorously. On the cucumber racks, the vines are growing well, and the green cucumbers are hidden under the broad leaves.
The cowpea rack next to it is also growing very well, and the cowpeas are already blooming. The long cowpeas hang down like the black hair of a girl in green.
Cowpeas grow a lot and fast. If you plant too many, you won’t be able to eat them all. Most of the time, you have to eat cowpeas with every meal. Otherwise, if you leave them in the field for two more days, the cowpeas will become old.
Xuanyuemei was taking care of the vegetables and pulling out the newly grown weeds, but she was pregnant and worked very slowly.
"Duomei, don't work while squatting. The sun is so bright and it's so hot. Go back to the house quickly!" Gao Mingcheng walked over quickly and told Duomei to go back to the house to rest.
Xuanyuemei stood up slowly and said with a smile: "I just came out not long ago, and planned to pick some vegetables to eat. I saw some weeds, so I just pulled them out."
In the days without herbicides, farmers often had to deal with weeds when farming. As the poem goes: Wildfires cannot burn them all; they will grow again with the spring breeze.
This is enough to prove how tenacious the vitality of weeds is. If you don't weed a carefully cultivated field for two or three days, you can see weeds popping up in the ground.
Weeds will rob crops of fertilizer and water, so they cannot be left for long.
"You go and have a rest, I'll do this." Gao Mingcheng said, picked up the hoe beside him, and weeded easily. With one hoe, the weeds were turned up along with the roots and soil.
"You can pile these grasses together to dry them. After they are dried, you can use them to cover the watermelons. The weather is getting hotter and hotter, and it is not good for watermelons to be exposed to the sun for too long. I went to the watermelon field today and saw that quite a few small watermelons have grown." Xuanyuemei said.
They could have used straw to cover the watermelons to provide some shade, but their family had too little land, so the little straw was not enough.
"Okay." Gao Mingcheng responded, and while working, he talked about Xiao Yuanyuan's situation, and finally mentioned that he was going out to drive a sports car.
"Duomei, I may be delayed for a few days on the road this time. Will you stay in the village or go to the county? If you stay in the village, I will not be so reassured."
Gao Mingcheng hopes that Xuanyuemei will go to the county. It would be fine if she lived in the old village where there are neighbors around her, but his house is built in Niuweiling, which is some distance away from the old village. Xuanyuemei is pregnant now. If something happens, no one will help her if she wants to ask for help.
Xuanyuemei also considered this, so she said, "I'll go back to the county. You can go out and do your work without worry. I'm fine. Do you plan to go back to the county this afternoon or tomorrow morning?"
Gao Mingcheng said, "Tomorrow morning, I have to go into the mountains to shake the honey. Last time I saw the honey was full, so it's time to shake it."
"Okay, I'll go cook now. In the evening, I'll pick some vegetables and take them to the county to eat tomorrow." Manyu had a plan in mind and swept his eyes across a large vegetable field.
There are a lot of edible vegetables in the vegetable garden now, including cucumbers, cowpeas, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, loofahs, bitter gourds, sweet potato leaves and sweet potato stems, etc., all of which can be eaten.
If you go to the slope to look for it, you can also pick tender pumpkins to eat. Winter melons are also growing vigorously, and in time, they can grow into giants weighing dozens of kilograms.
The couple divided the work. Xuanyuemei went back to the house to cook, while Gao Mingcheng stayed in the vegetable garden to work. While weeding, he observed the growth of the vegetables to see if they were lacking water or fertilizer.
Then we strolled all the way to the watermelon field.
Watermelons cannot be planted continuously, so they have to change the land every year. Fortunately, the watermelons they grow are mainly for their own consumption, so they only plant one acre of land at a time, or only eight mu of land to be precise, because two mu of land is used to grow pear melons.
Pear melon is what they call it here, and people in other places also call it cantaloupe.
This melon tastes very good, but you can’t eat too much of it, as it will cause diarrhea. Therefore, most people don’t grow many of them, and they are often grown together with watermelons.
In the melon field, not only small watermelons grew, but also small pear melons. Under the broad green leaves, small fruits grew on the vines.
Here, Gao Mingcheng's eyesight came into play. He had to look all the way along the vine. It was best to leave only one or two watermelons on a vine. If there were more, the vine would not supply enough nutrients and the watermelons would not grow big enough or be sweet enough.
As the saying goes, you can't chew too much, this kind of melon and fruit also needs to be thinned out to achieve perfection.
After Gao Mingcheng had thinned out the watermelons on an acre of land, he returned to the house. As soon as he entered the kitchen, he gulped down a bucket of well water.
The well water in summer is cool and delicious, and has a sweet taste.
You can’t drink raw water from the mountains casually, but people in the countryside usually drink well water directly, especially in summer. The freshly drawn well water is cool and delicious. Who can resist taking a sip?
Xuanyimei was already cooking, so Gao Mingcheng went to help light the fire, but Xuanyimei had good fire-making skills, so there was no need to add more firewood for the time being.
Seeing that the sweet potato leaves in the pot were almost cooked, Gao Mingcheng went to do other things.
After each honey shaking, you need to clean the honey shaker, drain the water, and cover it with a large plastic cloth to prevent dust from entering.
When you use it next time, it will be clean and dry inside.
Now he moved the things out of the corner of the warehouse and placed them under the eaves for ventilation. After lunch, he would go to the mountains to shake honey.
The lunch was quite ordinary, including one dish of stir-fried green peppers, one dish of steamed eggplant, and one dish of mashed sweet potato leaves with garlic. Gao Mingcheng shook his head as soon as he saw it, thinking that the food was too plain.
Just as I was about to say something more beautiful, Xuanyuemei brought over another bowl of steamed eggs.
This egg is steamed on rice. After steaming, it is golden in color and melts in the mouth. It is a dish that is loved by both the elderly and children.
There is a key skill in steaming eggs, which is to add warm water to the egg liquid. If it is cold water, the steamed eggs will not be so tender and refreshing, and there will be a lot of honeycomb shapes.
"I ate too much greasy food yesterday, so I want to eat something light today." Xuanyimei said first.
The world is big, and the pregnant woman is the biggest. Gao Mingcheng naturally shut up and started eating in big mouthfuls. He ate very fast and finished two bowls of rice in a short time.
Putting down the bowl and chopsticks, Gao Mingcheng said, "I'm going to the mountains to shake honey. You can wash the honey bottle and filter the water later."
"Got it." Xuanyuemei responded, and prepared to wash the bottles after washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen.
You don't know whether the plastic bottles you bought are clean or not, so it's best to wash them yourself and then turn them upside down on a wooden board to drain the water inside.
This kind of bottle is used to store honey, so you can eat it with peace of mind.
Gao Mingcheng went into the mountains carrying the honey extractor, and the two dogs, who had eaten a vegetarian meal, followed him closely.
Country people are more casual about raising dogs. Ordinary local dogs eat leftovers at home and can only chew some bones during festivals.
Gao Mingcheng raised Black Tiger and Elves. Although he prepared special meals for them from time to time, most of the time, they ate leftovers. Especially when Gao Mingcheng was not at home, their meals were provided by Zhang Chengyuan, and the food they ate was even worse.
But they have some skills, and if they are lucky, they can catch rabbits and voles, which can be considered a snack.
We walked into the mountains and soon arrived at the place where the beehives were placed.
There are six honeycombs in a beehive, and each honeycomb holds more than three thousand bees. In addition to those busy collecting honey outside, there are still many bees inside the beehive. If you look carefully, you can tell which are worker bees, which are drones, and which are newly hatched or unhatched bee eggs.
Because worker bees do not live long, the queen bee often lays eggs. By the size and distribution of those eggs, we can know in advance what species of bee are in these eggs.
If you do not want to keep a new queen bee, you can artificially prevent the new queen bee from hatching.
Gao Mingcheng checked the honeycomb and found that the color of the honey inside was darker, which looked good. He could have shaken the honey a few days later, but he didn't know how long he would be delayed in Guangzhou this time, so he shook the honey first to make people feel more at ease.
He used a soft brush he carried with him to brush off the bees that were resting on the honeycomb, then took out a long knife and gently cut off the beehive. After cutting it off, the honey sealed inside would flow out. When it was put into the honey shaker, through continuous rotation, under the action of centrifugal force, the honey would gather at the bottom of the honey shaker.
Gao Mingcheng kept turning the handle of the honey shaker. As an experienced person, he knew how long to turn it before he could shake out all the honey in the beehive.
He kept shaking honey in the mountains. The unique fragrance of honey filled the air, attracting uninvited guests - wasps.
In addition to wasps, Gao Mingcheng also found several bumblebees. Bumblebees are chubby and look cute. They are capable and can eat a lot. There are basically no left at the end of the year, so no one is willing to raise them.
Gao Mingcheng was concentrating on shaking the honey, but if a wasp flew in front of him, he would not show mercy and would raise his stick and hit it, killing the wasp instantly.
There is too much honey in the summer. After Gao Mingcheng shook a few beehives, there was a lot of honey in the honey shaker and he could not continue shaking the honey. He had no choice but to go down the mountain and pour the honey in the honey shaker into a large, clean ceramic jar that was free of water and oil, and then continue to go into the mountains to shake the honey.
After the honey in the pottery jar has settled, the honey on the upper layer can be taken and canned. This step is the responsibility of many bees.
After three hours of hard work, Gao Mingcheng finally shook all the honey. He took the heavy honey shaker home and saw that it was already filled with a lot of honey.
After taking a look at the remaining plastic bottles, he took out the canning bottles at home. After the cans were eaten, the bottles were washed and drained. They had many uses afterwards, but most of the time they were used to store chili powder.
"This is a lot of honey. You can put the rest in cans and give some to my parents. Send a pound to your second sister's family as well."
"Yes." Xuanyuemei agreed with a smile. Seeing that he was about to go out again, she asked, "Where are you going?"
"I'm going to the mountains to see how the Poria cocos is growing." As soon as he finished speaking, Gao Mingcheng's back could no longer be seen.
Gao Mingcheng led the two dogs into the mountains again, this time heading straight for the Poria cocos field.
The weather was good in the first half of this year. The Poria cocos planted a month ago has sprouted, but they still look relatively small.
Gao Mingcheng inspected each slope, pulled out some dead Poria cocos seedlings, and also observed whether there were any insects or ants in the places where Poria cocos was planted.
Insects and ants can cause great damage to Poria cocos, so when planting Poria cocos, you must use insect repellents, but sometimes the medicine is not so effective. Even if you use the medicine, there may still be insects and ants.
But Gao Mingcheng was lucky. He looked all the way and didn't find any insects or ants.
He planted a batch last year and another batch this year, so that the Poria cocos in the mountains can be developed sustainably.
However, after digging out the grown Poria cocos, you can no longer plant Poria cocos in that place and have to move to another place to plant it.
Niuweiling is a long mountain range, and Gao Mingcheng is not afraid of the high mountains and long roads. Even if there are steep peaks, he can climb up, so this is not a problem.
After taking care of the Poria cocos field, the sky in the west was already filled with clouds.
The clouds roll and the rays of light give the mountains and forests a golden luster, making them sparkle brightly. Every place here is a scene, but in the eyes of the villagers who are used to it, this scene is not worth a second look.
Gao Mingcheng was leaving again tomorrow, so he decided to prepare some delicious food for Black Tiger and the Elf.
"Let's go hunting. You are responsible for driving the prey out." Gao Mingcheng took out the flying knife from his waist and decided that the two dogs would be in the light while he would be in the dark.
Make up the enemy secretly.
The two dogs had hunting experience, and after receiving the order, they instantly became excited. The silly dog Elf even turned around in circles, as if he wanted to bite his own tail to celebrate.
It's just that it's already evening, which is not the time for birds and animals to be active. Wild rabbits and pheasants have long since returned to their safe shelters. The bird nests on the treetops have also welcomed the tired returning birds, who are waiting to wake up tomorrow morning to look for insects.
However, the black tiger and the elf had a keen sense of smell. After searching in the mountains for a while, they ran towards one place, and Gao Mingcheng naturally followed closely behind.
But soon, there was dense bushes blocking the way ahead.
Relying on their agility, the two dogs passed directly through the bottom of the bushes, leaving only a rustling sound.
Gao Mingcheng had no choice but to take a detour and followed the two dogs for a while. He heard the sound of a pheasant trying to escape in panic.
But chickens are creatures that cannot see at night, so when it gets dark, they return to a safe place to spend the night.
If you raise your own chickens and plan to kill them for food tomorrow, it is best to catch them at night and tie them up with a rope so that they will not run away the next day.
Otherwise, it would take a lot of effort to catch chickens during the day.
Relying on their excellent sense of smell, the two dogs accurately found a nest of pheasants. Eventually a few of them escaped, one of which was bitten to death by each dog, and one was stabbed by Gao Mingcheng with a flying knife.
In addition to the harvest of three chickens, Gao Mingcheng also picked up a nest of pheasant eggs.
Wuhu, a fruitful harvest!
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com