Xia Yu picked a bunch of oyster mushrooms by hand and planned to make garlic fried oyster mushrooms for lunch.
I heard from Uncle Tai that the kitchen has its own ground tofu, and if you cook it with freshly picked baby cabbage, it will be a pot of baby cabbage and tofu soup that will surely taste delicious.
Both of these are vegetarian dishes. Uncle Tai suggested killing a chicken to welcome Xia Yu, but looking at the calm lake in the distance, he asked if there were any fish in the water.
"Yes, of course there are plenty of grass carp and crucian carp. There are at least tens of thousands of kilograms of fish in our lake. They are usually eaten by ducks and water birds."
Uncle Tai gestured and said.
The number of tens of thousands of kilograms may sound like a lot, but it is not much compared to the more than 50 acres of water area on the farm.
Farmers contract fish ponds to raise fish. Generally, the yield per mu of mixed farming is about 1,800 to 2,000 jin. The fish raised are all feed-eating fish. The natural water area can probably carry the number that Uncle Tai mentioned.
"Then let's grill some fish!"
The fish is fat and ripe. I ate a lot of meat yesterday, and now Xia Yu wants to eat fish.
"Okay, let's take a break. I'll go check the traps I set this morning. There should be fish in them."
Uncle Tai can help Xia Yu get anything that is available on the farm.
Following Uncle Tai to the living area of the farm, Xia Yu saw many houses.
"This side is the thatched cottage, that's the carpenter's room, next to it are two warehouses, and the innermost one is the living house. Boss Wang renovated it two years ago. If you want to live here, just clean it up. After a while, I'll give you a set of all the keys to the farm."
Uncle Tai said whatever he thought of, and Xia Yu nodded as he listened.
It is not an easy task to manage such a large farm, but the situation of Chaolu Farm is a bit special.
As a private ecological farm, apart from taking care of some vegetable plots and mushroom houses, the livestock are almost all free-range, and even the orchard is not specially pruned or fertilized.
With Uncle Tai, an old man like him, Xia Yu doesn't need to spend any more time worrying about anything.
"Boss, look, those two are Big Flower and Little Flower!"
Uncle Tai suddenly pointed in a direction and said, Xia Yu looked closely and saw two cows, one big and one small.
The dairy cows on the farm are also free-range. They basically return to the shed on their own when it gets dark and have good self-management abilities.
“Do they produce a lot of milk?”
Xia Yu asked curiously. He had seen many buffaloes and oxen in the countryside, but this was the first time he had seen a dairy cow.
"Boss, only cows that have been pregnant and given birth to calves can produce milk. Our Dahua cows eat less concentrated feed and don't use hormones. Even if the cows are of good quality, their milk production won't be as high as that of the dairy factory."
It turns out that only cows that have given birth to calves can produce milk. This is the first time that Xia Yu knows this little-known fact. In the past, he thought that any cow could produce milk!
"Only about 20 kilograms a day."
"So much? Even if you drink it as water every day, you won't be able to finish it!"
Xia Yu was surprised when he got the exact number.
"Boss, you're joking. This fresh milk is only good for one or two cups at most. Any more and you'll get diarrhea. The rest is just like chicken and duck eggs. People come to collect them every day, and they sell for about four yuan a kilogram."
Milk costs more than four yuan per kilogram, and with the sale of eggs, duck eggs, mushrooms, and vegetables, the farm's gross income on paper per day is about five hundred yuan.
Fifteen thousand a month may not seem like a lot, but it's enough to cover the farm expenses, so it's pretty good.
"Boss, if you want some milk, there's some in the fridge, but you have to boil it before you can drink it."
"I'm not drinking it now, I just want to take some back!"
Since he has his own dairy cows, he can save money on buying milk at the supermarket. But the gas cost of driving back and forth to get the milk seems to be more expensive than the milk itself?
Forget it, it’s just the cost of gas. Xia Yu doesn’t care about it as long as he can drink freshly squeezed milk.
“Woof~Woof woof~”
Finally, we arrived at the kitchen and a big black dog without a chain came out.
This should be the dog manager on the farm. Judging from the breed, it is a local dog, but its pure black fur is shiny. It must have good food on a daily basis.
"Don't shout, Xiao Hei, this is our new boss,"
Uncle Tai put down the food in his hand and slapped the dog on the face. The playful Xiao Hei instantly calmed down.
"Boss, this is Xiao Hei from our farm. He's very loyal and even helped catch a thief two years ago."
"That's a truly loyal minister. It's a pity that I left in such a hurry that I didn't bring any sausage or anything."
Xia Yu also came up and rubbed Xiao Hei's head. Maybe Uncle Tai's words worked, Xiao Hei did not resist him, and whimpered with an expression of enjoyment.
Well, it's a good dog!
Seeing that Xiao Hei agreed with Xia Yu, Uncle Tai hurried to the lake to collect the traps, leaving him alone to look at the entire kitchen.
The kitchen is very large, with a row of iron pots hanging on the wall. They are black and without any rust. When you get close, you can smell the smell of lard. It seems that they are all well maintained by Uncle Tai.
There are two stoves, one is a high-fire gas stove, and the other is a country earth stove. One wall is filled with dried branches picked up from the forest, and salted fish and bacon are neatly hung on the beams of the kitchen.
There is a hint of order in the simplicity, which is a good thing. It seems that Uncle Tai is also a patient with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Xia Yu took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and began to wash and pick vegetables. When he finished, Uncle Tai came back with a grass carp weighing more than three pounds and several small crucian carp.
Uncle Tai had already gutted and cleaned these fish by the lake, and now he can come back and give them to Xia Yu directly.
Xia Yu's eyes lit up when he saw the crucian carp. Baby cabbage stewed with tofu is just a vegetarian soup, but adding a few small crucian carps will make it an even more delicious fish soup.
They got down to work right away, lighting the pot and the fire, with Uncle Tai helping to light the fire behind the earthen stove.
Xia Yu chopped the grass carp into pieces to make braised fish; marinated the crucian carp with salt, cooking wine and shredded ginger, and then fried it in a pan.
Only fried fish can make the whitest soup. Although Xia Yu doesn't cook fish much, he is well versed in this.
After all the dishes were ready, Uncle Tai couldn't help but praise Xia Yu's cooking skills, and he gave him a thumbs up after taking a bite.
Is it really that delicious?
Because the cooking buff he had obtained previously was only valid for one day, Xia Yu's cooking skills had only improved to a limited extent, so he had such doubts. But when he scooped up a spoonful of fish pond and drank it, all his doubts disappeared.
The tofu and baby cabbage extracted all the essence of the fish into the soup. The fresh fragrance rushed straight into Xia Yu's brain, making him feel happy.
tasty!
The reason why it tastes so good is not because of Xia Yu’s cooking skills, but because he makes the best use of the deliciousness of the ingredients themselves.
The lake is rich in aquatic plants, and these fish have never eaten a single grain of feed from birth to the time they are put into the pot. They are truly natural and organic, so it is no wonder that they taste so good.
Thinking of this, Xia Yu felt more and more that he had found a treasure trove.
If he had read every document in the file bag carefully, he would have known that the entire Chaolu Farm had invested tens of millions of dollars over the past twenty years to become what it is today.
This is a true paradise that does not seek profit, and it is more reassuring than the pigeon coops made of steel and concrete in the city.
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