Last year she didn't get to enjoy the deliciousness of crawfish, but this year she gets five or six every day, which makes her incredibly happy. The fragrant and crispy texture is simply wonderful. Her brothers can get two or three hundred, even four hundred every day. They don't sell them; they stir-fry them all, and each of them gets a big bowl. For dinner, they only need to make some soup, and then stir-fry them at midnight.
Because she was young, she received less, but for Xiao Jiu, it was already quite satisfactory.
If you go out to catch cicadas after a heavy rain, catching five or six hundred, or even seven or eight hundred a day is nothing. In the days when there were many trees and no pollution, even though people caught cicadas like this, they were still so noisy that people couldn't sleep.
If this were in later generations, the purchase price would be one dollar, and you could earn seven or eight hundred dollars a night!
Unfortunately, people in this era mostly ate it themselves and rarely sold it. The main reason is that this thing doesn't keep well; it peels off the next day. Without a refrigerator, even if it's soaked in salt water, it has to be placed in a deep well, otherwise it will spoil easily.
That's their situation. If they can't finish their food at night, they put it in a deep well to store and then cook it again the next day at noon. They can only eat it for one or two months a year.
City dwellers can also access it, so even if restaurants sell it, they still need to find a way to store it.
Even if they can be stored at home, they will still spoil during transportation, so after much consideration, the father decided not to sell them.
This was a boon for their young boys; each of them held an enamel bowl and ate meat with gusto, looking incredibly adorable.
Because they don't usually have the opportunity to feast like this, summer is the happiest time for the children every year. The fruits of their labor taste especially delicious.
Xiao Jiu wanted to go with her brothers, but she was too short, and her skin was delicate, so mosquitoes loved to bite her. Every evening when she went out, she would come back with a head full of bites. So her grandmother felt sorry for her and took her to search in the muddy ground in the yard. They could find twenty or thirty mosquitoes every day.
Don't underestimate your own yard. Under the trees, after a heavy rain, thin little holes will appear in the soil. Xiao Jiu takes a small stick and gently pokes it open. Then, looking down, he sees cicada nymphs wriggling. He digs open the small hole and pulls them all out.
To make it easier for them to find these things, their father bought batteries and flashlights for his brothers from the city. They never needed them when they could see, because sometimes there was moonlight at night, and the cicada nymphs could be seen from the side when they climbed the trees, making them easy to find.
Saving battery power is an instinctive action for them.
A flashlight with two batteries costs about 100,000 yuan, which is too expensive for my brothers and not worth it.
So in most cases, these flashlights are left idle because they can't afford to use them. After all, batteries don't last forever; they have a limited lifespan.
It's better to use it for emergencies or something. If you just use a flashlight to shine on cicada nymphs, the battery might run out in two nights.
Besides cicada nymphs, there's another delicious treat that eagerly emerges from the soil after a heavy rain: button mushrooms. These short, plump, white mushrooms are incredibly cute.
Once discovered, it's an entire area.
In plains areas, where there are no mountains but slopes and ample water, mushrooms can be found in forests, on field ridges, and on haystacks.
Moreover, they are all edible mushrooms; there are very few poisonous mushrooms here.
Unlike the south, the northeast, or the grasslands of Xinjiang, this place is not as rich in resources and has a wide variety of mushrooms. Because of the limited variety, not only mushrooms, but even snakes are almost all non-venomous.
Summer is children's favorite season, but it's also the most worrying season for adults. Every year during this season, children drown.
Fortunately, her family takes this matter seriously. Whenever her brothers go out, her grandmother leaves her with them, saying she wants to rest, but actually she's just taking her with her so her brothers don't dare to misbehave or go to places that adults usually don't allow them to go.
The eldest brother, Tao Zui, is an obedient child. He will never go to places that adults forbid. With him keeping his younger brothers in check, and with a little bit of alcohol that might get in the way, they can basically only play around nearby. They can't go to places as far away as the river.
If they really want to play, their father will take them to the river to play for a while after he comes back. In the summer, people go to the river to bathe. They are exposed to the sun all day, and the water is still warm at night, making it comfortable to bathe in. Their father knows where the water is deep and where it is shallow, so he and their grandfather go to look after the four boys so that their grandmother can feel at ease.
Coincidentally, Taoyuan Village is right by the river. Their village is only one or two kilometers away from the river. Every summer, they would go to the river to bathe. Cao Amei didn't take them because she was lazy, but Cuihua wasn't lazy, so she went with the women in the village. Everyone knew she was a sensible girl, so they all liked to take her along, since it was all shallow water anyway.
When asked again, Zhao Di shook her head vigorously, "Grandma, we're not going. We can just wash at home. It's just that we're a bit useless, haha."
“Didn’t you gather so much firewood during the day? Firewood is just for cooking, why waste water? Safety is the most important thing. It’s more comfortable to wash at home. Since none of them are home, you can just wash up and have some fun in the yard.”
Xiao Jiu was overjoyed when she heard she could play in the water, but it was a pity there was no water gun, otherwise she would have gone crazy with fun.
Her older sister bathes her every day, and today, not only her sister but also her grandmother did. She even rubbed her grandmother's back, which made the old lady giggle. It was so much fun for her.
Of course, summer also has its troubles, namely the abundance of mosquitoes. Every night before going to bed, even though her sisters would first use mugwort to fumigate the mosquitoes, there were still an unbelievable number of mosquitoes. She would cover herself with a blanket every day, and although the mosquitoes couldn't bite her, it was so hot. Once she kicked off the blanket, it was terrible; it felt like all the mosquitoes were swarming towards her.
The older sisters are probably busy during the day and can fall asleep as soon as they hit the bed at night. She takes a nap during the day, but gets bitten by mosquitoes at night and can't sleep at all.
Fortunately, she could still hide in the warehouse to sleep. If her sister woke up in the middle of the night, she would call her. When she heard the sound, she would come out of the warehouse and call to them from the ground, thus making them mistakenly believe that she had fallen off the bed. Every night before they went to sleep, they would put a thick layer of wheat straw under the bed and place a tattered quilt on top of the straw. This way, even if she fell, she could be caught steadily and would not get hurt.
These are such thoughtful older sisters.
So after this happened a lot, when the older sisters woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't see her, they wouldn't call her anymore; they would just turn over and go back to sleep.
On the contrary, she could always wake up on the haystack the next day.
She was also glad that the windows were small, the rooms were dark, and the light was insufficient in those days, otherwise she would have been able to see her no matter what.
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