Vegetables
Chapter 25: Vegetables
How can there be no problem? There is a big problem. Chu Huaibei had discovered before that the sugar they eat at home includes brown sugar and brown sugar, both of which are made from sugarcane. Sugarcane can only grow in the south, so sugar is more expensive in the north than in the south.
Sugar was not yet made from beets here, which was great news for her. Yes, the vegetable soup she ate was made from beets. If sugar could be produced by herself, maybe she could make Big Ivan and make the Mongolian cavalry have no chance of returning. Thinking that she would have to face the war in person in four years, Chu Huaibei had to do everything he could to survive.
"Mother, I want to use these vegetables to make sugar." Chu Huaibei's words caught the concubine off guard. The concubine repeated with uncertainty, "Make sugar?"
"Yes, mother, it's about making sugar, the brown sugar that the people eat. I'd like to trouble you to arrange a secluded farm. It would be best if the servants in the farm have signed indentures. This matter is of great importance and we must be cautious." Chu Huaibei originally wanted to let the injured soldiers participate, but judging from the current situation, he was not sure if there were any informants from the aristocratic families, so it would be better to be safe first.
The concubine saw that Chu Huaibei was not joking, but really wanted to use cabbage to make sugar. She never knew that cabbage could be used to make sugar. She only knew that sugarcane grown in the south could be used to make sugar. However, several aristocratic families in the south had united to monopolize the sugarcane planting and sugar-making process, making it difficult for outsiders to intervene.
If this thing can really succeed, then the sugar in the north will be in the hands of the palace, which is a good thing.
The concubine did not think for long before agreeing to the location. She would give it a try as long as there was a chance. Maybe it would succeed. As for how her son knew about it, she did not want to go into details.
The next day, the concubine began to make arrangements. She first checked all the farms she had. There were several remote farms. Considering that there would definitely be smells from sugar production, it would be best if there were no other people nearby. Finally, she chose a farm fifty miles outside Youyun City, which was rarely visited and close to the mountains and forests.
After deciding on a good place, she selected some of the servants who had signed life-in-law contracts from various farms and transferred them to the sugar factory. After the personnel were arranged in place, Chu Huaibei first had someone build a special kitchen according to her drawings.
The kitchen, twenty meters long and ten meters wide, faced south, with five large windows equally spaced on each side. Seven stoves, rising from east to west, were built against the north wall, while a row of two-meter-wide worktops lined the south wall. Two large vats were placed next to the second pot.
There was a deep well in the sugar mill, which was convenient for drawing water. Chu Huaibei had even personally explored the mountains, which stretched for hundreds of miles. He had originally brought the palace soldiers with him to clear the mountains of wild animals, so as to prevent the smell of sugar production from attracting wild animals and causing harm.
Unexpectedly, he got a pleasant surprise. In a valley, Chu Huaibei discovered exposed limestone, which is the raw material for burning quicklime. Originally, Chu Huaibei planned to send people to various places to purchase quicklime, taking multiple routes to return, so as to avoid being discovered that the palace purchased a large amount of quicklime.
Now that we have this unexpected surprise, this step can be ignored and the quicklime can be burned directly by ourselves, which is both secretive and saves a lot of costs.
Chu Huaibei sent people to garrison here and also dispatched a lot of manpower to his mother to clear out a flat area in the valley to build houses and kilns.
After half a month of intense work, all the preliminary preparations were finally completed.
Chu Huaibei ordered the people in the farm to dig out all the ripe vegetables and send them to the sugar factory, where the workers divided the work and cooperated to wash, peel and shred them.
Put all the chopped vegetable pieces into the first pot, add water until they are covered, and simmer for ten minutes to dissolve the sugar in the vegetables in the water. Take out the shredded vegetables and put them in a large vat on the side to cool. After they are cool, squeeze them again with gauze to squeeze out the sugar water and put it back into the pot to continue simmering.
Boil the sugar syrup until it begins to turn red. Pour it into another large vat, add the yellow mud water and lime water, and stir thoroughly. Let it sit for 30 minutes. Pour the supernatant liquid into a custom-made gauze tray, let the filtered water flow into the second pot, and continue boiling the sugar syrup.
After the color of the sugar water becomes darker, transfer this pot of sugar water to the third pot for boiling, and continue to boil the preliminarily filtered sugar water in the second pot.
In this way, when the color of the sugar water in the third pot becomes darker, switch to the fourth pot, and rotate in sequence until the seventh pot. At this time, the fire of this pot is the smallest, and it needs to be simmered slowly. When the sugar juice is thick and can solidify when dropped into cold water, it can be removed from the pot.
The boiled sugar water is poured directly onto a custom-made iron-wrapped workbench, and three people simultaneously stir and press the sugar water on the table until it solidifies and crushes into brown sugar.
The concubine was also present when sugar was first made. She saw with her own eyes that the vegetable was gradually transformed into brown sugar. She was extremely shocked and many thoughts slowly emerged in her mind. The concubine suppressed what she wanted to say and waited to return to the palace to discuss it with her son.
Chu Huaibei first made the brown sugar, then slowly researched how to decolorize it and make white sugar. Brown sugar contained too many impurities and couldn't be used as a raw material. She had researched it in her previous life, but the yellow mud and water spraying method described in Tiangong Kaiwu was ineffective, with no one having successfully replicated it. She thought activated carbon adsorption was more reliable.
To make activated carbon, you need a lot of bamboo, which is rare in the North, so we have to find other solutions. But right now, brown sugar is the most important thing, so we can put this aside for now.
Back at the palace that evening, the Concubine Dowager and Chu Huaibei discussed the matter in the study for nearly an hour. Chu Huaibei knew his mother had a caravan and was making considerable profits. After this in-depth discussion, he realized his mother was a true business genius. In just half a day, she had already considered every aspect of the brown sugar business. Chu Huaibei himself had already planned to grow large quantities of vegetables, produce sugar, and find unfamiliar partners to work with, using them to sell the brown sugar.
My mother had already thought of having the caravan sell brown sugar to the surrounding nomadic tribes in exchange for their excellent horses.
Besides the Mongol Khan, there were several smaller nomadic tribes roaming the prairie. They hid year-round, and if discovered by the Mongols, they would have to risk their lives to save their people. These tribes rarely came into contact with the northern border, so Chu Huaibei was completely surprised that his mother's caravan could actually find them.
Seeing her son looking at her with admiration, the concubine suddenly felt a sense of accomplishment in her heart. Her son was really considerate. Her husband never admired her so much. He would only say thank you for your hard work, madam. It’s not that he was bad. Her husband was naturally very good to her, but he didn’t care much about the details of business. He didn’t feel any sense of accomplishment after doing many things.
The encouragement she received from her son made the Concubine Dowager more motivated to do things, and she always felt that her son's transformation might be a preparation for some big event, or perhaps it was related to the future survival of the palace.
It has to be said that the concubine's intuition is very sharp. Chu Huaibei is indeed preparing for the battle for the survival of the palace. If he dies, history will repeat itself. Only by living can he break the already arranged ending.
Chu Huaibei assigned a squadron of imperial soldiers to each of the two new workshops. She also stationed the injured and retired personal soldiers inside the workshops. These soldiers were carefully selected and confirmed to be loyal and would not betray her. She needed to maintain a balance among the three parties within the workshop, so that if one party was bribed, she could detect it in time. It wasn't that she didn't trust them, but the environment she was in forced her to consider a layer of consideration.
The toffee placed the first batch of brown sugar in grocery stores in various northern states through the hands of northern and southern merchants. The price of this batch of brown sugar was 10% lower than that of the southern ones. Of course, people would choose the cheaper ones when buying sugar. In less than half a month, this batch of brown sugar was sold out.
Soon the ten acres of vegetables in the palace were used up. After Chu Huaibei discussed with the concubine, they decided to purchase vegetables grown by the people in the north in the name of a caravan, and ostensibly transport them to the south for sale.
People in the north will grow radish in their own yards or set aside a part of the land, and make dried vegetables or store them in cellars to eat in winter. The winter in the north is too cold, and there are basically no fresh vegetables to eat. Besides radish, there is cabbage, which is Chinese cabbage. Because every household grows it, no one buys radish in the north.
The caravans entered the remote villages of each state and bought vegetables at the price of three cents for ten catties. The local people sold pieces of vegetables from their homes to the caravans. The vegetables were large in size. Usually, only pig farmers would buy a small amount from the villagers after they had eaten their own vegetables. The price was only one cent for ten catties. Even with this one cent, many villagers rushed to sell them.
With prices now tripled, many villagers have sold all their vegetables for copper coins, which they use to buy winter supplies. They might even buy an extra piece of linen to make thick, reed-feather blankets for their children. Many impoverished children stay in bed during the winter, without thick cotton-padded jackets. If they were to get out of bed in temperatures exceeding -10 degrees Celsius, they would freeze to death.
Therefore, every time the caravan arrived at a village, it would return with a full load. A steady stream of vegetables would be sent to the sugar mill, and the aroma of sugar water could be smelled within a mile of the sugar mill. Thanks to its remote location, it was not easy to be discovered.
The concubine had the farm doubled in size and built a pigsty in the farthest place from the sugar factory. She raised about a hundred piglets, who ate the shredded vegetables that had been pressed. After being boiled for ten minutes, the cooked shredded vegetables were edible after the water was pressed out. However, the taste was too bad. It would be inappropriate to feed it to the workers, but it would be a pity to throw it away. So she simply raised pigs and killed them when they grew fat and strong to serve as a snack for the workers.
The concubine declared from the outset that the pigs would not be sold, but would be consumed by the sugar mill workers when they grew up. The workers, delighted, beamed with joy, working and caring for the piglets without a single complaint. After all, ordinary people only carve up a piece of meat for friends and family or during the Lunar New Year; they wouldn't spend the money on it on other days.
Once the pigs were big enough, slaughtering one would provide enough food for several days. Killing one a month was enough for them. Aside from being unable to leave the farm, life here was quite comfortable for them. Furthermore, the monthly wages from the palace were quite generous, which they could keep or send directly home. Thinking of how their families would live well thanks to this income, the workers would not slack off, fearing they would be secretly reported and lose their jobs.
The living conditions at the lime workshop are more difficult, so the workers there have better food and drink. Chu Huaibei doesn't want to be the boss of an illegal coal mine, as that would be a lack of virtue.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
