An orphan girl from a farming family: Everyday farming in the mountains during natural disasters

When Xia Qingyue arrived in the town, she found that patrolling soldiers appeared in the streets more frequently than the day before. They came and went in a hurry with serious expressions.

She was just like every other passerby. Once she saw them, she immediately lowered her head and stepped back.

She went to the grocery store where she bought salt yesterday. The owner saw that she bought a lot of things and gave her some pumpkin seeds as a gift. He was quite generous, so she came again.

Xia Qingyue walked into the shop and almost bumped into the shopkeeper who was holding the door bolt.

"Hey, bro, it's you. Why are you here? I was just about to close the business."

"I want to buy some more rice and flour today."

The shopkeeper glanced outside for a few times, then stepped aside and said, "You come in first."

"I need five dou of brown rice, three dou of coarse white flour, two dou of millet, and I think I should have two dou of glutinous rice as well."

Jiangmi is also known as glutinous rice. It can be ground into powder and used as glutinous rice flour to make pumpkin cakes, glutinous rice balls and rice cakes.

The prices of these staple foods were the same, eight cents per liter and eighty cents per bucket, totaling nine hundred and sixty cents.

"Half a bushel of each of peanuts, soybeans, mung beans, peas, and red beans."

Beans cost sixty cents a dou, and I spent one hundred and fifty cents.

"More seeds, wheat, millet, sorghum, millet, loofah, gourd, cabbage, grapes, plums, pears..."

I bought seeds for staple foods and common fruits and vegetables, which cost four hundred coins.

She also ordered some brown sugar, ginger, garlic and dried chili peppers, spending two hundred and eighty coins.

The shopkeeper generously gave her some soapberry tea seed powder today.

After leaving the grocery store, she went to a stall outside and bought two wooden barrels. The ones at home were a bit worn out and not enough.

I originally wanted to buy a wooden basin, but I couldn't carry it, so I went to the pork stall I went to yesterday and bought the remaining ten pounds of pork fat, three pig's trotters and five pounds of front leg meat, spending a total of four hundred and one coins.

I spent two taels and one hundred and ninety-one coins today, and have two taels and one hundred and fifty-six coins left.

I've bought enough things, I can't carry any more.

On the way up the mountain, Xia Qingyue climbed the mountain as usual with the help of a stick, resting as he walked.

Unconsciously, she walked to the place where she met the woman yesterday. She stopped to look for a moment, and when she turned around to leave, she caught a glimpse of the plants over there that looked familiar.

She turned around and took a closer look with her eyes wide open. Oh my god, it was cassava.

That small patch of land, including the upper slope, was covered with scattered cassava plants.

For a moment, Xia Qingyue was anxious and wanted to dig cassava, but she was carrying a lot of things with her and had no time to spare.

There was no other way, so she had to leave reluctantly and prepare to come back tomorrow.

At noon, Xia Qingyue and Heihei stopped to eat boiled eggs and raspberries to fill their stomachs, and did not return to the tiankeng until the afternoon.

After coming back and sitting down to drink some water and rest for more than ten minutes, she poured the brown rice she bought today into the rice jar, and the deep jar was immediately filled.

All the brown rice weighs eight dou, about one hundred kilograms, which is enough for her and Heihei to eat for a while. Later, she will go find some yam to mix it with the other rice and cook it together.

Together with flour, millet can be made into porridge, and these staple foods can last until the rice harvest this summer.

All the glutinous rice, millet, beans and other things were placed in the wooden cabinet next to the kitchen.

Cut the pork fat into pieces. Because she doesn't like to eat fatty meat except the pork belly which is not that fatty, she removed the fat from the front leg meat and rendered the oil together.

This time of oil refining, the lard jar was filled up, and some of the extra was put into the large bowl, totaling one bowl.

The five pig's trotters and lean pork livers bought yesterday and today were all coated with salt and marinated.

She wanted to make some bacon, for example, if a war broke out in the future and she couldn't go down the mountain to buy meat whenever she wanted, eating bacon occasionally would improve the diet.

The disadvantage is that it consumes a lot of salt.

After the meat is marinated, it should be covered and placed in a cool place. It will take a few days to marinate. She will go buy some more meat tomorrow.

Then she washed the rice and cooked it. The yam was eaten up, so she cooked a little more rice in the evening.

She used wood ash to rub the intestines repeatedly to wash them. In fact, it would be faster to wash them using salt, starch, flour, etc., but the conditions did not allow it.

After washing the large intestine, scrape off the excess fat, put it into the pot and blanch it with ginger. Cook it for half an hour. The large intestine has shrunk after being boiled. It originally weighed five pounds, but now it may only weigh two pounds.

Cut the blanched pig intestines into sections and set aside. Cut the ginger into shreds and cut the wild onions and dried chilies into sections.

Pour lard into the bottom of the pot and heat it until smoking, add onions, dried chilies and shredded ginger and stir-fry until fragrant, then pour the pork intestines into the pot and stir-fry, add a circle of water along the edge of the pot, cover and simmer.

While the fish were cooking, she went to pour out the fish from the fish cage. Today, one pot could not hold all the fish, and there were two silver carps weighing nearly three pounds.

"Wow, such a big fish!"

Xia Qingyue was pleasantly surprised. She picked out the two silver carps and the fish as long as chopsticks and put them in a wooden basin to keep and eat tomorrow.

The small fish and shrimp were eaten by Heihei, the chickens and ducks.

Recently, the chickens and ducks can basically eat fish and shrimp once a day. Xia Qingyue carried the wooden basin into the pen, and the chickens and ducks came to her one after another. They were much bolder than before, especially the chickens and ducklings, who circled around her.

After feeding them some fish and shrimp and adding water, she turned around and saw a few round eggs on the pile of straw where the chickens and ducks in the pen were sleeping, two chicken eggs and three duck eggs.

She picked up the egg and her eyes narrowed with smile.

Very good, very good. If you keep going like this, you will soon be able to achieve freedom in eating meat, eggs, chicken and duck.

The pig intestines were cooked for more than ten minutes and the aroma was wafting in the air. Xia Qingyue opened the lid of the pot and saw smoke and a scent of chili accompanied by the unique flavor of pig intestines. She was so greedy that she kept drooling.

Add some wild onion leaves and stir-fry before serving.

The pork intestines cooked in this way are soft, chewy, spicy and tasty, and go especially well with rice. She ate a bowl and a half of rice with the dish.

After dinner, when it was just getting dark, she went to take a look at the vegetable garden and walked around to digest the food. The rice seedlings, which had been soaked to germinate, were the first to break through the soil, with clusters of small green sprouts. The other seeds had not yet sprouted.

She gave them some water.

Then I went back to get some hot water for a shower, changed my dirty clothes, felt relaxed after the shower, and lay down on the bed, feeling refreshed.

Fatigue and sleepiness came over her and Xia Qingyue almost fell asleep the moment she lay down.

-

The next morning, Xia Qingyue rushed to the town at dawn and bought 20 jin of pork fat for 200 wen, six pig's trotters for 270 wen, two pig's heads for 180 wen, 15 jin of lean meat for 225 wen, and 30 jin of pork belly for 600 wen.

It cost more than one or two hundred coins to buy meat.

Seeing that she was a regular customer and bought a lot, the pork stall owner generously gave her eight or nine kilograms of pork liver, large intestines, and a pig stomach.

With more than 600 coins left, she went to the grocery store. The store she had visited before had closed down, so she went to another store and bought some soy sauce, rice wine, white wine and camellia oil.

Peanut and rapeseed oil are also available, but I only bought camellia seed oil because it has a wide range of uses. It can be used for cooking and can also be used for beauty care.

Seeing spices like star anise and cinnamon, she asked about them, but was discouraged by the high prices. She simply went to a shop selling farm tools and bought a shovel. All in all, she spent exactly five hundred coins.

Sapindus mukorossi is needed for washing clothes and hair, but she couldn't find any soapberries in the forest, and they can only be picked in September and October, so she went to buy some for fifty cents.

She didn't plan to spend all of the remaining thirty cents, so it would be safer to keep some in her hand.

After leaving the town, Xia Qingyue quickened her pace and headed up the mountain, walking to Xiushui Village and taking a secluded path.

The gate of a house in the village opened from the inside, and a woman came out carrying a basin of dirty clothes. She was about to go to the river to wash clothes when she saw a thin man hurriedly walking by in the alley on the left carrying something on his back. Her profile disappeared in a flash.

"Oh, Qingyue, it's Qingyue!"

The woman exclaimed in surprise, her face full of excited smiles. She took a few steps forward and wanted to chase him, then she remembered something and hurried home.

When she came out again, the woman was carrying a large backpack.

Over there, Xia Qingyue arrived at the place where the cassava was found. She hid the backpack full of things, took out the sack she brought and started digging.

Heihei was watching from the side, and with him around, Xia Qingyue felt a lot more at ease.

After digging hard, she dug out the first cassava. The cassava was as thick as her arm and had three cassava strands on it. The yield was quite high.

The three of them weigh at least seven or eight kilograms.

Although cassava is toxic, if it is properly processed and the toxicity is removed, it can be used as a staple food like sweet potatoes and yams, or its starch can be extracted.

Cassava starch has a wider range of uses and can be made into desserts such as jelly vermicelli.

Thinking about this, Xia Qingyue became more and more motivated as she dug.

"Wang Wang Wang!"

Heihei started barking in a certain direction without any warning.