Chapter 132 The Grapes by a Twist of Fate
"Don't rush to talk about that. Let's go to your room and see if there's anything you need to buy. Get it ready quickly. You've been traveling for so many days, you should have a good rest for a day."
Yuan Hongqu changed the subject. She had witnessed Lan Cong's skills, and according to Lan Cong, Lan Su's skills were even slightly better than his. These were all highly skilled martial arts masters, so she shouldn't try to teach them a lesson.
Lan Su smiled and nodded in agreement.
After the Laba Festival, the Lunar New Year is getting closer and closer.
On the tenth day of the month, Daiyu started clamoring to go to her maternal grandmother's house early in the morning.
On the day of Laba Festival, when Wang Xifeng came over, she said that the old lady had been feeling depressed and had lost her appetite because she had been taking care of Baoyu and things at home had not gone well.
Daiyu followed Yuan Hongqu in making some pastries, and also brought some fresh vegetables sent from the estate, as well as several kinds of fresh fruit, including Nan Guo pears, Ruyi fruits, Pinggu peaches, Yanlaihong (a type of fruit), and sweet pomegranates. These fruits are all common, but it's really hard to find such fresh fruit in the depths of winter without some effort.
There was only one kind of green grape that was about the size of a lychee and quite rare. The grapes were hard and looked unripe, but they were so sweet that they could make your teeth ache. They were grown in the greenhouse of the estate. After Daiyu had eaten them, she insisted that her grandmother try them.
Speaking of these grapes, they were actually grown by a twist of fate.
These are finished grape seedlings that Yuan Hongqu took out from her space and planted in a greenhouse. Because they are products of her space, they are inherently more resilient. In addition, they are planted in a greenhouse. However, these grapes should not bear fruit now.
But the farmer who guarded the greenhouse had no room in his house, so he slept next to the greenhouse at night. As soon as the weather started to get cooler, he started to light the heating wall of the greenhouse.
The greenhouse he was in charge of was the most remote one, and no one had noticed it until now.
Coincidentally, there was a beehive in his greenhouse, so the grapevines progressed remarkably smoothly from budding and branching to flowering, pollination, and fruiting. However, the grapes remained green and did not look ripe.
The farmers were suspicious and dared not taste the unripe grapes.
After the blizzard, Wu Tian led the villagers to clear the snow around the greenhouses. Several greenhouses had collapsed under the weight of the snow, but fortunately the damage was not serious. When they got to this greenhouse, they saw that it was intact and had not collapsed under the weight of the snow. Wu Tian registered it and was about to leave when the villagers guarding the greenhouse pulled him into the greenhouse.
Wu Tian was immediately stunned when he entered the greenhouse.
What season is this?! Those huge bunches of grapes, should they be appearing at this time of year?
The farmer stammered out what happened, explaining that he was terrified to have grown a whole shed of inedible grapes!
Wu Tian made a quick decision: he told a few people to stay and guard the shed, while he cut some grapes and took them with him to the farmer, telling him to go and explain to the owner himself.
Yuan Hongqu had sent someone to the estate a few days ago to check if there was any damage caused by the snow disaster, and also sent a snow sled so that they could go to the city in case of emergency.
Wu Tian rushed to the city gate, then hired a carriage to hurry to the Lin family's house.
Grapes that can grow in such heavy snow must be blessed by the gods, or is this an auspicious sign?
Wu Tian dared not speculate and could only go to Yuan Hongqu. After all, she was the one who had the grapevines delivered, and the greenhouse and land belonged to her.
When Yuan Hongqu saw the grapes, she was also surprised. Why were grapes growing in this season? Are the crops in the space so amazing outside?
However, after listening to the farmer's hesitant description, I learned that it wasn't that the space crops were miraculous, but rather that the grape vines were strong. When the original Red Lotus transplanted these grape vines, the roots brought some space soil with them, which was fertile enough. In addition, the temperature in the greenhouse was high, which led to this batch of off-season grapes.
However, since the grapevines have borne fruit this season, it's estimated that they won't bear fruit again until March or April next year.
Yuan Hongqu took the grapes and told Wu Tian how to tell if the grapes were ripe. She told him to go back and cut all the ripe grapes off the bunch, and put them in small baskets, one bunch per basket, just like when she sold broccoli.
In February, all the branches of the grapevines were pruned, leaving only the main trunk. Any new branches that grew afterward were also cut off. The grapevines were not allowed to bear fruit for the entire following year. They were allowed to grow naturally again in March or April of the year after that. This method was used to correct their production season.
Yuan Hongqu tasted the out-of-season grapes. The taste was only slightly inferior to those produced in her space, but the difference was negligible. If she hadn't become so picky about the fruits from her space, she really wouldn't have been able to taste this subtle difference.
Half a month after the snow disaster, Yuan's small shop opened, selling a type of green grape called Shine King. This grape is crisp, sweet, and has a rich floral aroma.
Grapes are not cheap; a box of grapes costs five taels of silver.
Wu Tian posted a red paper at the entrance of the shop, which read: "Qingwang grapes charity sale, all proceeds will be donated to the disaster area in Xicheng for post-disaster reconstruction."
Unsurprisingly, following broccoli and radish, Shine Muscat grapes have once again caused a sensation in Beijing.
The Prince Xian's Mansion and the Prince Zhong's Mansion approached her one after the other, but this time Yuan Hongqu did not intend to cooperate with either of them.
If they needed grapes, they could just buy them; like everyone else, each person was limited to one box. Since that was the case, the people from the two princely residences took turns queuing up. Luckily, they weren't required to register whose property it was, otherwise they really wouldn't have been able to buy so many.
That one vineyard, just one acre of land, could yield at most two thousand catties of grapes. Each bunch of grapes weighs a little over one catty, so that would only amount to about a thousand boxes. This was an unexpected find. Yuan Hongqu initially considered destroying them, but after tasting the grapes and finding them quite good, she felt it would be a waste to destroy them. So she decided to sell them and donate all the money to the disaster area.
Although the grapes are selling like hotcakes, the number of grapes that ripen each day is limited, and the store closes once they are sold out for the day.
Taking this opportunity, Yuan Hongqu had Wu Tian slowly sell off all the grain in the backyard of the shop and donate it all to Xicheng.
Wu Tian hadn't been to the shop for several months. He assumed that the owner had bought the grain from elsewhere and stored it there, and he had no other suspicions.
Yuan Hongqu never expected that the small granary would be emptied so soon. She hadn't thought the shop would open again because it was so famous. She had already planned to buy another shop elsewhere, but the unexpected appearance of the grapes disrupted her plans.
Inside Rongqing Hall, Daiyu personally presented grapes to Grandmother Jia.
"Grandma, you must try it. The people in the village say that grapes that grow in the dead of winter are a rare and auspicious sign. Eating these grapes will bring you divine protection and turn bad luck into good!"
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