Chapter 1018 Special Talent
"That's easy. Isn't Brother Xiao Fu at home?"
Hu Zhiyuan said with a smile:
"I'll take you two there. You guys can deal with this bug later, and I can do other things without any conflicts."
Lu Miao nodded and said yes.
Since they were all family, Lu Miao didn't bother to exchange pleasantries with Hu Zhiyuan.
She let people come in and sit wherever they wanted, and she quickly started preparing lunch with Tian Guihua.
In the afternoon, Lu Miao put on a straw hat and carried a small backpack.
After thinking about it, he put another small can into the backpack.
Finally, Fu Jingyou rode his bike with her on it and set off behind Hu Zhiyuan.
No one in the village grows cacti seriously. Wherever there are cacti, they are mostly in small patches here and there.
Hu Zhiyuan recalled what he had seen before and took Fu Jingyou and Lu Miao to visit several places.
When Lu Miao got off his bike and started walking through the cacti, Hu Zhiyuan said hello and left.
On the way, I met someone who asked who Lu Miao and Fu Jingyou were and what they were doing there.
Hu Zhiyuan explained with a smile that in the past few years, many people from the village had passed the college entrance examination, and one of them was the mother of the top scorer.
As for what Lu Miao was doing with cochineal, Hu Zhiyuan couldn't explain it clearly for a while, so he stammered and explained that he was there to do research.
The villagers found it strange.
Considering that college students have a high level of education, the things they do are also quite strange.
Many people came over to watch out of curiosity, but they just looked and no one interfered.
Lu Miao shuttled among the cacti of different sizes.
In addition to harvesting a few more pieces of cactus with fresh cochineal insects, she held a glass canning bottle in one hand and a short branch in the other.
We also harvested a lot of cochineal bodies.
There are far more scabs on a cactus than live cochineal beetles.
However, some of them are very old and are obviously rotten and unusable.
Lu Miao picked out the shriveled and less severe scabs and collected them.
Fu Jingyou helped her.
She plucked a piece of banana leaf and collected the scabs on the leaf first. When the leaf could no longer hold any more, she poured it all into her bottle.
After two hours of hard work, the two men's faces were flushed, and the 800ml round-bellied can was only 70% full.
The number is considerable.
After carefully going around the cactus pile several times and making sure that most of them had been collected, Lu Miao screwed the lid on and prepared to go back with Fu Jingyou.
Summer pants were thin, and Lu Miao's legs were pricked many times while moving around among the cacti.
She squatted down and scratched her calf. Fu Jingyou got on the bicycle first, and she followed him and sat on the back seat.
"Zaohua said there's a whole patch of cacti in front of the house of one of the sisters-in-law on the team. Should we go check it out? Maybe we can find some there too?"
Fu Jingyou turned around and looked at her flushed face, trying to dissuade her:
"These should be enough, right? If they are, I won't go anymore."
Lu Miao pouted and punched him on the back:
"No! Cochineal is expensive and rare. If all of these can be used, wouldn't it be a shame to miss out?"
Of course, the main reason is that these are not available in the north at this stage.
If it is subsequently processed and confirmed to be usable, how many chances do they have to come back given the long distance involved?
It’s better to take advantage of the free time now and do everything you can.
Besides, it would be fine to let the live cochineals continue to reproduce naturally.
If we don't get those scabs back, won't they be wasted after being exposed to wind and rain again?
Lu Miao had a righteous idea and was determined to join the team.
Fu Jingyou could only obey her.
Tianzao was attending classes at the team's school and had no free time. When her mother-in-law saw Lu Miao and the others coming over and heard the reason, she took the initiative to take Lu Miao and the others to the place where there were cacti.
You know what, Lu Miao guessed it right!
There were not many living cochineal insects, but there were quite a few black-brown scabs.
However, the cactus grows on a sloping slope, and the upper middle part is really difficult to collect.
As a last resort, Lu Miao had to give up.
Seeing her unwilling look, Fu Jingyou took the can from her hand and climbed up the slope as if he could fly over eaves and walls.
It was dangerous for a person to stand on the slope, and Lu Miao saw that his long legs were almost touching the cactus and moved, so he quickly said:
"No, no! The bottles are almost full, this is enough, come down quickly!"
"These nests are dense, I'll scrape them off first."
"Hey, hurry up!"
Lu Miao stood at the bottom of the slope, jumping anxiously:
“They’re all going to be stabbed to death!”
Fu Jingyou laughed. Seeing that the can was really full, he used a branch to press the scabs down a little, and stayed on the slope to collect them for a while before going down.
Lu Miao picked up the backpack and helped him to be careful not to crush the live cochineal insects as much as possible. After putting the bottle away, he glared at him and nagged:
"I told you to come down for so long, you're a pig skin, you're not afraid of being pricked!"
Fu Jingyou just smiled indulgently and did not refute.
It’s almost time for school to be over.
Fu Jingyou and Lu Miao went to the team's school.
After waiting outside for a while, the school teacher knocked on the broken tin can hanging under the eaves, and the children rushed out.
Lu Miao and Fu Jingyou picked up Minjie and Minrui.
Let Minjie sit on the horizontal bar in the front, and Lu Miao hold Minrui and sit in the back seat.
The four of them, two adults and two children, staggered back home.
I am afraid that there is still moisture left in the cochineal scabs, which will cause a chain of mildew if stored in the bottle.
Lu Miao went home and cut a large piece of oil paper. After spreading it on a bamboo sieve, he poured out the insect scabs in the bottle and spread them evenly to dry.
As for the pieces of cactus with fresh cochineal insects, she pierced holes in them, threaded ropes through them, and hung them under the eaves.
Keep it for now.
Lu Miao planned to bring it back to Jingbei.
The conditions for cochineal to survive outdoors in northern Beijing are insufficient, but the conditions can be created.
As long as we can successfully bring these "seed insects" back, everything else is possible.
Lu Miao spends his daily life fiddling with his silk fan and turning over cochineal scabs.
Fu Jingyou knew that cochineal was hard to come by, and since his wife really wanted it, he would go out early in the morning with cans of cochineal.
When he came back in the morning, he brought back another bottle, and every time he brought back some cochineal scabs.
The thorns of the cactus are difficult to deal with. Lu Miao guessed that he must have gotten them on the slope where the running team went, so he would always nag him not to go there again.
He has a way to deal with it.
He walked out of the house wearing his rain boots. When Lu Miao saw him, he didn't say anything and just let him go.
Around this time, high-level leadership meetings in northern Beijing were constantly taking place.
At another meeting, Minister Zhan overturned the Party cadre guidelines and pointedly stated:
According to relevant regulations, even if people with outstanding abilities are involved in business, they can be introduced and recruited as "special talents" based on their professional characteristics and expertise.
Minister Zhan always believed that Lu Miao's ability ceiling was very high.
Even if the process is cumbersome and troublesome, it is worth opening a separate channel to properly arrange and handle this matter.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com