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

Xia Qingyue raised her hand and wiped the sweat from her eyes and face with her sleeve. She picked two cucumbers, a handful of long green cowpeas, and some peppers and eggplants, put them in the basket, picked it up in her hand, picked up the hoe and walked back to the cave.

There is another major hidden danger when the weather gets hot, which is that snakes, rats, insects and ants will appear.

She mixed realgar powder with wine and sprayed every corner inside and outside the cave once every half a month.

If a snake appeared, she would probably be terrified and would have to live in fear from then on.

But fortunately, Heihei is there, so she feels more at ease.

As she felt lighter, her appetite returned. A few days ago, she was thinking about making fried chicken with basil sauce and was very craving for it.

She picked the perilla from the field in the morning and washed it. Now it has been dried and cut into thin strips for later use. It fills up half a colander.

It seems that if you wait a little longer, it will shrink.

The method of making perilla sauce is somewhat similar to that of mountain pepper sauce. Ginger, garlic and chili pepper are also needed in the preparation.

Since there were no fresh chilies, she used dried chilies instead.

Put the dried chili peppers in a pot without oil or water and cook them. When they cool down and are crispy when squeezed, put them in a stone mortar and crush them into chili powder.

To make perilla sauce, you still use camellia seed oil. When the last bit is used up, heat the oil to 60% to 70% hot. Add ginger and garlic first and stir-fry to bring out the aroma and water vapor. Then add perilla and chili powder and stir-fry to bring out the fragrant red oil. When the water vapor dries up and the perilla is dry, you can anneal it.

Add salted pine mushrooms while it’s still hot, and finally a little white wine.

The spicy perilla sauce is ready. It is great for stir-frying chicken, duck, fish, or making snails and river seafood.

If she goes out to catch river fish, she will definitely make a pot of river fish with perilla, but if there is no fresh river fish, she will kill a chicken and make it.

I chopped the chicken into large pieces, took out two handfuls and boiled them separately, added two more duck eggs, and cooked them for Heihei.

After getting the delicious food, his dark face was smiling and he looked visibly happy.

"Eat more." Xia Qingyue smiled and touched the dark head.

The chicken itself has fat, so you can just stir-fry it without adding any oil. There is no need to use seasonings such as ginger and garlic. Just scoop three full spoons of basil sauce into the chicken. The moment it meets the hot oil, the aroma of the sauce comes out.

She swallowed her saliva while stirring the food, poured two scoops of water into the pot and simmered it for more than half an hour.

This is a pheasant that runs in the mountains. It is hard to bite if it is not cooked for a long time. It is unlike the tender chickens in the market in the previous life that were raised for a short time and fed with feed.

Tender chicken becomes soft after cooking for about twenty minutes, but this kind of chicken is not delicious, the meat is not good, and it has no chicken flavor.

When the soup is almost dried up, open the lid and add appropriate amount of salt, stir-fry until there is no soup and the chicken becomes dry.

She stir-fried some chicken and made some cucumbers into a cold dish.

There are so many cucumbers, eggplants and green peppers growing in the field that I can’t eat them all.

The same goes for pumpkin, loofah and gourd. A lot of young melons have grown. She plans to eat some and save some seeds for planting next year.

For example, you need to keep more old pumpkins. Old pumpkins are easy to store and can be used to feed chickens, ducks and rabbits besides eating them yourself.

After eating the food she had been longing for, Xia Qingyue stamped her feet happily.

The chicken is not stewed till soft like usual, but dry and fragrant. The meat is cooked till soft and chewy, and the surface with skin is chewy.

In addition to the rich taste, the flavor is also amazing, and the special aroma of the basil is completely cooked into the chicken.

It’s so fragrant and delicious!

After lunch, she cleaned up, washed up and went to bed for a nap.

It's too hot outside. If you stand outside for half an hour, you will definitely get heatstroke.

If you can't work, then just sleep and get enough rest.

She hasn't done much work these days. She eats and drinks well every day and is in a good mood. She feels like she has gained a little weight, but her complexion has obviously improved.

She slept until two or three in the afternoon. Her head was groggy and her mouth was dry and bitter. She picked up the water cup on the bedside table and gulped down the water.

After drinking, she leaned on the bed in a daze.

Heihei is not in the room. He must have gone out to play.

"No no no!"

Heihei jumped in, opened his mouth, and looked very excited.

She came back to her senses and smiled, "Heihei, why aren't you sleeping? Where did you go to play? Be careful not to get a heat stroke."

"Mmmm!" Heihei raised his head and looked outside the room, as if he wanted her to go out.

Xia Qingyue didn't understand why, but she still got out of bed, changed her dirty clothes, and put on her shoes.

If there was an invasion by outsiders or the arrival of ferocious beasts or other dangerous things, Heihei would not be so calm. Judging from its reaction, something must have happened inside the tiankeng.

Is it raining?

Did what she had been looking forward to finally happen?

Xia Qingyue ran out without having time to think about it.

I ran to the utility room and saw that it was bright outside the cave entrance. A yellow halo of light shone on the earth, and waves of heat came, making people feel stuffy and uncomfortable.

My excited heart suddenly sank.

"It's not raining!" His tone was full of disappointment.

Heihei ran out of the cave and raised his head towards her.

"Okay, Heihei, you go ahead and I'll follow you."

Xia Qingyue followed Heihei to the outside of the chicken, duck and rabbit enclosure. Heihei raised his front paws, lay on the fence, and stared inside.

"What's wrong? Do you want to eat meat?"

Just as she finished speaking, she heard a soft chirping sound coming from the rabbit.

"Is there no grass or water?" She opened the fence and before she could go in, Heihei ran ahead of her.

"Heihei, why are you in such a hurry?"

She went in and saw grass and water. She felt strange and thought of something. Her face changed and she turned to look at the rabbit.

I saw Heihei standing in front of a few rabbits. There was some hay on the ground, which was the bed she made specially for the rabbits. At this moment, there was a glaring spot of blood on it.

Xia Qingyue's heart skipped a beat and she ran over to see what was going on.

After seeing clearly, she patted her chest and gasped. It turned out that a female rabbit had given birth to six cute little rabbits.

Newly born rabbits don’t have hair yet, but the hair will grow slowly later, and it will take ten days for the hair to become noticeable.

The little rabbits were lying in the arms of their mother rabbit, the blood on their bodies had dried up, leaving bloodstains all over their bodies.

Mother Rabbit closed her eyes and looked very tired.

She squatted down and touched Mother Rabbit's head, "Thank you for your hard work!"

Now that the rabbits are well-trained, they are no longer afraid of her.

Heihei kept guarding the baby rabbits and sniffing at them.

Seeing this beautiful and warm scene, Xia Qingyue smiled.

"By the way, where's the other pregnant bunny?"

She found the female rabbit and touched its belly, wondering when this one would give birth.

Rabbits reproduce quickly. If both rabbits give birth, there should be more than ten rabbits, provided they can be fed and kept alive.

Therefore, in order for the mother rabbit to maintain good health and produce more milk, and have the energy to take care of the baby rabbits, Xia Qingyue went to work preparing nutritious postpartum meals for the mother rabbit.

The nutritious meal contains chopped green grass and soybean powder, and it would be even better if it contained goat milk.

Mix the two ingredients together, add warm water to make a paste, and you're done.

She put the nutritious meal in front of the mother rabbit. When it smelled the fragrance, it suddenly opened its eyes, raised its body and started eating, enjoying it very much.