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

There are not many vegetables left in the field, including cabbage, spinach, peas and garlic sprouts. These vegetables can be kept. If the heavy snow continues, they will be frozen. Before that, there is no need to rush to harvest them and you can eat them fresh.

The sweet potatoes in the two fields must be harvested quickly to avoid freezing.

Xia Qingyue turned around and went back to the utility room to get a hoe and a sack. Just as she turned around and was about to go out, Heihei came out of the room trotting.

"Heihei, you should sleep for a while. I will come back and make breakfast for you when I am done."

Heihei called out softly twice and walked beside her, meaning that he wanted to go with her.

Afraid that Heihei would catch a cold in the rain, she went to get a smaller raincoat and put it on Heihei.

"Let's go."

It took a long time to dig the sweet potatoes from the two plots. The sweet potatoes were wet, so they were spread out on the open space next to the stove. Large pieces of firewood were burned in the stove. The sweet potatoes were carried into the cellar after their surface dried.

We harvested a lot of sweet potatoes, probably more than 200 kilograms.

I grabbed the leaves of the sweet potato vines and cut them with a sickle. The branches that touched the ground were frozen by a thin layer of ice. I couldn't hold on for a while before one of my hands became stiff and numb from the cold. The cold air penetrated into my limbs through my skin.

After cutting for a while, her hands and feet were so cold that she almost lost all feeling. It was no use trying to cut with both hands. She cut two-thirds of the grass, put it in a backpack and took it back to the poultry house, where she chopped it up and fed it to the chickens, ducks and rabbits.

The rest of the vines were simply left in the ground, and if too many were cut, they would not be kept for long.

She sat by the stove for a while, warmed herself by the fire, and took sips of a cup of hot water, which warmed her whole body a little.

Steam the sweet potatoes and eggs in the pot, eat them for breakfast, and then take ropes, dry straw, wolf skins, badger skins and rabbit furs to cover the fruit trees with warm clothes.

The fruit trees, which have been growing for half a year, are about one meter tall. As autumn has arrived, some of the leaves have fallen off, and the trees look bare, and the trunks are relatively thin.

A layer of fur and two layers of straw were wrapped and tied to the tree trunk.

During the process, the snow fell heavier and faster, and the flying snowflakes looked like pieces of duck down.

After finishing her work, she ran back with her neck shrunk, took off her black hat and raincoat, shook off the snow, hung them on the bamboo pole beside the cave entrance, rubbed her hands, and went to the stove to warm herself by the fire.

"It's really cold." She opened her mouth and white air floated out. She sniffed her red nose and looked sideways at the poultry house. "Fortunately, the house was built before the snow started."

Otherwise, we would have to drive the poultry into the main room of the cave and keep them there like we did last year.

"I'll go see how the poultry are doing."

A few days ago, she took Xia Dasong and the original owner's old reed plush clothes to make nests for the poultry. She didn't know if they could survive the snow now that it was snowing.

She lit a candle, holding it with her hand to prevent it from being blown out, and entered the poultry room. Her first impression was that it was quite quiet inside. She closed the door, put the candle in place, and went to see the chickens and ducks.

The chickens and ducks huddled together in their nests for warmth, and most of them dozed off with their eyes closed.

The same goes for rabbits, they lie down and sleep close together.

She went in and saw a few little rabbits, their bodies were warm and still alive.

Their nests are all made with a thick layer of dry straw on the bottom, and then covered with reed plush clothes.

The food and water in the stone trough were almost gone, so she chopped some cabbage and pumpkin, added warm water, and finally swept out the feces.

It was snowing and the temperature dropped even lower. She wanted to renovate the main room so that they could eat outside in the cold wind. The food would get cold before they could even eat it.

All the dining table and chairs were moved into the main room. The earthen stove was fixed there and could not be moved. She decided to make a small stove like the honeycomb coal stove in her previous life, which would be easy to carry and could burn charcoal directly.

Since the beginning of winter, water in bamboo cups gets cold after a short while. After a sip, the cold goes down the throat and into the stomach. This problem can be improved by setting up a small stove. Water can be boiled in a ceramic pot on the stove, so you can drink hot water at any time.

More importantly, by cooking in a small kitchen, you don’t have to be exposed to cold wind outside. You can cook in the main room and have hotpot.

"Since we are going to cook for ourselves, let's make a double-boiled pot as well."

She was ready to fight, as she still had the clay she had found some time ago, as well as some earthen bricks.

First, make a small stove. This does not require firing. Just like building a house, build it layer by layer with earthen bricks and clay into a cylindrical shape. The middle is hollow, and you can put charcoal in it and burn it dry. Make a few small gaps in the hollow bottom. During the burning process, the ashes fall down and can be scooped out with tongs.

She made a small stove next to the kitchen stove, burning the fire to dry things faster.

The water in the vat was icy cold, so she added some hot water to it. The water was neither hot nor cold, and she used it to mix the clay, just like kneading dough, to make it neither too dry nor too thin.

She manually pressed the kneaded clay into the desired shape. Her last failure allowed her to sum up some experience, so she found a piece of wood to help her today.

Scraping the clay with a piece of wood can help her better control the thickness and shape. With its help, she could do it much more smoothly.

The first shuangxiang hotpot was ready. It looked similar in appearance, but there were some problems with the details. She did not get discouraged and continued making it.

The more she made, the more skillful she became. While she was in high spirits, she concentrated her energy and made three pots in one go.

These three pots are the most perfect. She thinks they are very good and have no flaws.

The finished pot is placed next to the stove to dry out the moisture, and then put into the small cave for firing.

After firing for a night, I opened the kiln the next morning. One pot was cracked, one had a minor crack that did not affect its use, and the last one was fine without any problems.

"Yeah, it's a success, a success!" She held the best pot and turned around in excitement.

After turning twice, she stopped. If she continued turning, she would feel dizzy and it would be too uneconomical to fall down and break the pot.

With the shuangxiang pot, the hot pot base must also be prepared.

Take some dried chilies of various kinds, wash them and put them into boiling water to cook until soft.

Nowadays, drinking water is boiled from snow. A few days ago, the water in the ponds and wells was frozen hard.

Take out the cooked peppers and put them into a stone mortar and pound them until the pepper paste becomes sticky. This is the prototype of the Ciba peppers.

Heat lard in a pan until smoking, add glutinous rice cake chili peppers and stir-fry over low heat until red oil comes out, then add onion roots, dried Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, and cinnamon soaked in white wine, and stir-fry until there is no water and fragrance. De-anneal, add appropriate amount of salt, pine mushroom and fresh apple sugar liquid, and a little white wine.

The simple hot pot base was so fragrant that it made her drool.

That afternoon, she killed two chickens and a rabbit.

Half of a hen is boiled into clear soup with dried bamboo fungus and shiitake mushrooms, and the other half is stir-fried and added to hot pot base.

The other one was boiled in water and given to Heihei to eat.

Slice the rabbit meat and marinate it. Wash the chicken offal, cut the chicken intestines into long sections, cut the chicken gizzards into flowers, and cut the chicken liver into thin slices.

The vegetables include fresh cabbage, pea tips, radish slices, soaked bamboo shoots, mushrooms and dried gourds.

After the dishes were prepared and the pot was steaming, she chopped the green onions and garlic, added chili powder and pepper powder, poured hot peanut oil, mixed the seasonings, and prepared the dipping sauce.

There was a crack in the door of the main room for ventilation. Although it was snowing and icy outside, there was warm air inside the room. Xia Qingyue finally got to eat the hot pot she had been longing for.