Chapter 123 Digging Sweet Potatoes
Today is another sunny and bright day. The sun has been very kind this autumn and there has been little rain, which basically ensures that the crops can be harvested and dried.
Ma Youcai and four others came back after buying grain seeds. Li Haoran also came back after helping the production team harvest rice, and brought back wheat seeds. Now not only do they have enough seeds for themselves, but Li Youcai and his team also have seeds and no longer need to go out and look for seeds anxiously.
Today the big wild buffalo at the cattle farm was led to the sweet potato field. Li Haoran and Du Qingcang used the buffalo to plow the field. The sweet potatoes rolled out with the plowed soil. Yike and Du Jiankang picked up the sweet potatoes from the back.
The sweet potatoes are lying naked on the ground. Some may be shy, with half of their bodies hidden in the soil and refusing to come out. At this time, you have to step on them with your feet, and the sweet potatoes are helplessly exposed to the sun. Yi Ke picked it up and threw it into the backpack without any hesitation, but of course he didn't dare to treat it roughly. If it is disfigured or broken into pieces, it will become disabled and cannot be preserved.
Sweet potatoes are still very productive. Each sweet potato vine has multiple babies. The least is three or four, and usually there are six or seven, which is considered a high yield in this era.
Sweet potatoes are not small in size. Some are only as big as a child's fist, while most are as big as two adult fists. The sweet potato flesh is white and oval in shape. This kind of sweet potato is not very delicious when eaten raw, but it is delicious when boiled, steamed or baked. Moreover, this kind of sweet potato starch is particularly abundant. It can be ground into powder and mixed with flour to make delicious pancakes. Sweet potato powder can also be used to make sweet potato vermicelli. In short, except that it is a little worse when eaten raw, it tastes good no matter how you eat it.
"Yike, you go and take a rest, I'll pick them up." After Zhang Yuling finished cutting the sweet potato vines, she came over to replace Yike.
"Okay, Mom, I'll go roast some sweet potatoes for everyone to eat later." After saying that, Yi Ke ran to find an open space to roast the sweet potatoes.
"Yike, what are you doing?" Wang Feng picked up a woven bag of sweet potatoes and went to the roadside. He put the sweet potatoes on a cart and asked.
"Baked sweet potatoes, do you want some?"
"Yes, yes, please bake more. Do you want me to bring you more?"
"Okay, five per person."
Yi Ke first dug a shallow pit, lit a fire with dry grass, and put some shrubs to burn. The shrubs had small sticks, and the charcoal ash after burning kept warm for a long time. Dry grass won’t work, as the ashes will quickly lose their temperature after burning. Tree sticks are too large and difficult to burn, so shrubs are most appropriate.
After the core fire is ready, spread the sweet potatoes one by one on the charcoal ash around the core fire, and cover them with a thin layer of dry leaves and shrubs. After burning, turn the sweet potatoes over and continue to burn. After burning again, the moisture on the surface of the sweet potatoes is dry. At this time, bury the sweet potatoes with wood ash and stew them.
In order to ensure the temperature of the wood ash, you can cover the surface of the wood ash with a layer of broken shrubs and then sprinkle a layer of mud and sand on it. In order to cook it quickly, you can continue to burn fire on the mud and sand. After more than ten minutes, Yi Ke dug out the sweet potatoes. One by one, the sweet potatoes had a black skin. After peeling off the black skin on the surface, the flesh inside turned from white to golden yellow. Taking a bite, it had the fragrance of soil.
"Brother Ziyi, call everyone to eat sweet potatoes." Yike shouted loudly.
"Coming, coming." Before Ziyi could answer, Ma Youcai answered first.
"Wow! Sister Yike, you baked it really well. The inside is not burnt at all." Ma Youcai picked up a sweet potato and peeled it, then praised in his heart as he looked at the golden sweet potato.
"Hey, Ma Youcai, eat slowly. Don't eat all ours." Liu Bing carried the sweet potatoes onto the wooden cart and hurried over.
"Humph! That's not necessarily true. If you eat fast, you eat more. If you eat slowly, you eat less." Ma Youcai said confidently.
"That won't do. Everyone knows that you are a foodie. How can anyone beat you? Yike, how much do you prepare for one person?"
"Five."
"Then I'll give you five pieces each, and you're not allowed to take other people's after you finish eating."
"You're the only one who's always bothering me, huh!" Seeing that he couldn't eat more, Ma Youcai quickly pulled the biggest ones in front of him, "These are mine, don't touch them."
"Hey, that's wrong. Why did you choose all the big ones? You should choose a mix of big and small ones." Dong Guoqing came over and quickly grabbed a big sweet potato from Ma Youcai and ran away, peeling and eating it while running.
"I'm going to beat you to death, you robber!" Ma Youcai stood up and chased after him. So the two of them chased each other, and Dong Guoqing occasionally threw sweet potato peels at Ma Youcai behind him, making Ma Youcai scream in anger.
"Hahahahahaha!" Liu Bing and Wang Feng watched and laughed. After Liu Bing divided the roasted sweet potatoes, he took a woven bag and sat on the ground. The others also sat on the woven bags and ate the roasted sweet potatoes.
"Don't run away, come and eat. After you're done eating, share yours among everyone." Yi Ke shouted maliciously.
"Ahhh, don't eat my sweet potatoes. Ma Youcai, let's make peace. Don't chase me. I'll exchange your roasted sweet potatoes with them later." Dong Guoqing turned and ran towards his roasted sweet potatoes, and Ma Youcai also quickly ran back to his roasted sweet potatoes.
"Brothers, eat slowly. I will help you after you finish eating." The foodie Ma Youcai wolfed down his food and spoke incoherently.
"Yike, eat slowly. Don't worry, he won't dare to snatch your food. Otherwise, I will let him know why the flowers are so red." Ziyi said as he helped Yike peel the sweet potato.
"Brother, please don't do this. How dare I steal sister Yi Ke's food?" Ma Youcai said immediately, "Sister Yi Ke, is it enough for you? If not, I'll give you one."
"That's enough, that's enough. If you still want to eat, I can continue roasting. The fire can still be used." Yi Ke looked at everyone who were eating happily and felt that he had not roasted enough.
"Bake it after you finish eating, and you can take it back home when you go home." Li Haoran said.
"Brother Ziyi, you eat too. I'm full." Yike was full after eating three, so he helped Ziyi peel the roasted sweet potatoes.
"Yike, there are so many sweet potato leaves, do you have any way to preserve them?" Wang Cuihua asked.
"Sure, sweet potato leaves and vines can be preserved and fed to pigs and cows in winter. They can also be eaten by chickens and ducks. But I need to think about the specific method." Yike began to search for the memories of his past life in his brain. "Yes, there are two ways to preserve sweet potato vines. One is to put them in plastic bags. First, remove the old stems of the sweet potato vines, then chop them up with a knife, add a little salt and mix well, put them in a plastic bag, and step on them tightly while putting them in. Only by stepping on the air inside as little as possible can the storage effect be better, so step on it tightly. When sealing the bag with a rope, be sure to squeeze the air inside as much as possible to the outside to reduce the air in the bag. The sweet potato vines preserved in this way do not need to be cooked in winter, and can be directly mixed with corn flour to feed pigs."
In fact, in the past there were vacuum cleaners that could suck out all the air, which would have a better preservation effect, but in this era there are none, so we can only squeeze out the air manually.
"What is a plastic bag?" Zhang Yuling asked.
"Ah, there are no plastic bags." Yi Ke really didn't know whether there were plastic bags at this time.
"Yes, there are. They are very expensive." Ziyi said. Looking at Yike, he became even more suspicious, because plastic was not sold in their province yet. He didn't know how Yike knew about it, and he had never seen it himself. But after Yike told him, he actually had an impression.
"In that case, we have to dry them in the sun. How about we chop some off and dry them in the sun first? If there is no place to dry them for the time being, we can straighten out the sweet potato vines, tie them into small bunches, and spread them on the ground to dry. Then they won't be too heavy to move back. After moving them back, you can chop them into pieces and dry them in the sun, or dry them in the sun and then crush them." Yi Ke said after thinking for a while.
"Then chop some of it up and dry it in the sun first. For those that can't be dried on the drying mat, do as Yi Ke said and tie them into small bunches to dry." Li Haoran rearranged the plan and said, "Later, my brother Du and I will use the oxen to plow the fields and turn over the sweet potatoes. Ziyi will use the oxen to pull the cart to transport the sweet potatoes back. Ma Youcai will also go back to help move them into the cave. Just put them inside the cave entrance first, and then move them into the hidden cave together for storage after everyone returns. Dong Guoqing and Liu Bing will carry the sweet potatoes, Yi Ke, Du Jiankang and Wang Feng will pick the sweet potatoes, and Yuling and my sister-in-law will tie the sweet potato vines."
The cows dug the sweet potatoes really quickly, and they were all done in less than three days. On the contrary, picking the sweet potatoes was slower, and it took four days for everyone to help pick them up. After picking the sweet potatoes, the women spent another three days tying and drying the sweet potato vines.
After picking the sweet potatoes, the men began to plant wheat. When the wheat was almost planted and all the sweet potato vines could be harvested, the sun suddenly got very angry at noon for some reason.
The wind was blowing hard and heavy rain was falling from the sky. Everyone was rushing to harvest the sweet potato vines. These half-dried vines had been dried in the sun and could not be exposed to the rain. Fortunately, there were enough people and enough carts, so they made another one later, making a total of three, one for each ox. The sweet potato vines that were harvested were piled up in the cave, and the heavy rain outside could no longer affect them.
We can’t work on rainy days, so we eat delicious food. The men prepared meat, including rabbit, chicken, and a python weighing more than 100 pounds that they had hunted that morning. No one knew where this python came from. It was originally going to steal chicks from a chicken farm, but it had the misfortune to run into Ziyi and Liu Bing who were checking the traps to see if there were any prey. So the two of them killed the python without even saying hello. Now that Yi Ke is no longer afraid of snakes, Ziyi dares to drag the python back, otherwise he would have to release it outside. After dragging the python back, we placed it in the cave. We planned to come back at night to deal with it. Now it's raining and we can't work, so we just processed it and ate the meat.
"Ziyi, get me some snake meat, and chop up the chicken for me. I want to make dragon and phoenix soup. Do you have any tiger meat? Bones are fine too. Put them together to make soup, and it will make a dragon, tiger, and phoenix. How beautiful!" Yike recalled that in his previous life, someone mistook a snake for a dragon, a cat for a tiger, and a chicken for a phoenix. Putting the three animals together to make soup was called dragon and tiger soup, a very nourishing soup.
"The tiger meat is gone, but the bones are still there. I'll get them for you." Ziyi went to the ice storage to get the tiger bones.
…
At night, while eating delicious snake meat and drinking dragon, tiger and phoenix soup, the men also took out some wine to drink. Thinking of the sweet potatoes piled up like a mountain in the cave, they all got drunk. Du Jiankang couldn't drink, so he had to eat and chat with Yi Ke and the three women.
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