Affection for Sidaogou during the Famine

It is said that human beings have the strongest ability to imitate. Once someone follows others and sees the money, they will taste the sweetness.

Later, people in the capital city said that people coming out of Shuijing Hutong were all good at business and knew how to find ways to make money, and word spread.

Of course, this is all a story for later times, it was in the 1980s.

However, in the winter of 1957, there were a few smart families in Shuijing Hutong who made a small fortune by selling fish.

Although it was not much, only a dozen or twenty yuan, it really opened up the economic veins of the people in Shuijing Hutong!

Grandma Han, knowing that her granddaughter had gone out in the wind and snow to catch wild animals and fish in order to increase her nutrition, refused to let her bring her meals no matter what.

The old lady also cheered herself up again, tried hard to cheer herself up, work hard and live seriously.

Han Zhaozhao couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief as she watched her grandmother walking steadily. Her strong-willed grandmother finally made it!

Her grandmother was fine now, and she no longer wanted to go out in the severe cold to climb on the ice and lie in the snow to catch fish and wild animals. The crops in the space were all ripe, and she had to start harvesting them.

There is no rush to harvest sweet potatoes, but sesame seeds are.

Sesame is really a magical plant. The fruits at the bottom will burst open and will explode in the ground if they are harvested too late.

The top is still growing, with buds and flowers, and the white trumpet flowers are really beautiful.

There is an agricultural proverb: Plant sesame in Grain in Ear, plant beans in summer, and plant early mung beans in Grain Full!

There is another saying: Eighteen days after the beginning of autumn, every blade of grass will bear seeds!

These two sentences both mean that planting crops should closely follow the solar terms. The growth and harvest of crops are closely related to the solar terms.

However, Han Zhaozhao's space is contrary to the four seasons of nature.

If sesame seeds are grown outside, they will basically stop growing upwards when they reach the beginning of autumn, and will stop forming buds and blooming.

The nutrients of the plant begin to be supplied to the pods, the pods swell, and the sesame seeds begin to produce oil.

Once the sesame leaves turn yellow, you can harvest the sesame.

But the space is not affected by the solar terms. The soil is fertile and the sesame plants keep growing upwards. They will soon be one and a half meters tall and the growth continues.

There was no other way, Han Zhaozhao could only top the sesame seeds to control their height, force them to stop growing, and supply the nutrients mainly to the pods.

Fortunately, the problem was discovered in time and the measures were appropriate. Han Zhaozhao planted one and a half acres of sesame, and each plant was tall and strong, with dense pods.

When Han Zhaozhao was in charge of the management, he observed that there were three or four varieties of sesame in this field.

Just from the appearance of the plant, there are leaf arrangements of alternate, opposite, mixed three leaves and whorled three leaves.

Among them, the three-leaf sesame has high yield, dense inflorescence, pods squeezed into lumps, and the pods all have eight ridges.

The sesame stalks are also thicker than other varieties, but unfortunately, the sesame seeds of this variety are a little less.

When Han Zhaozhao was harvesting, he specifically sorted the plants with dense pods and high yields and put them aside.

After harvesting all the sesame seeds in the sesame field, only twenty-seven eight-cornered sesame plants were obtained.

There are enough of these to keep as seeds, which can be dried and replanted, and can produce another one or two acres of land next year.

After harvesting the sesame seeds, Han Zhaozhao began to tie them into small bundles and placed them upside down in a circle around the yard fence to dry.

Sesame seeds cannot be hung horizontally to dry in the sun, otherwise the sesame pods will burst when exposed to the sun, and the tiny sesame seeds will scatter everywhere, making it impossible to pick them up.

Sesame is the most delicate oil variety. After drying it in the sun, there are also some requirements for beating it.

You cannot press the sesame seeds in the yard like you do with wheat and rice. Instead, you have to spread a tarpaulin or plastic sheet in the yard, place the sesame bundles upside down on it, and beat them with wooden sticks to shake the sesame seeds out of the pods.

The first crop of sesame seeds covered a total of one and a half acres of land. Because the amount of seeds obtained was limited, Han Zhaozhao planted them sparsely.

But the soil in this space is strong, so the sesame seeds are growing well.

Finally, Han Zhaozhao weighed the seeds and found that he had harvested a total of 307 kilograms of sesame seeds.

Among them, there are one pound and two ounces of eight-ribbed sesame seeds. After removing the incomplete and shriveled seeds, the ones that can be used as seeds should weigh about one pound.

One pound of seeds can plant at least two acres of land. If done well, it may be possible to plant three acres.

Han Zhaozhao was very happy. The yield of eight-angled sesame is much higher than that of ordinary sesame, at least increasing by half.

In other words, the next time sesame is planted, at least 400 kilograms can be harvested per acre.

This output is incredible and is definitely considered high in later generations.

As the saying goes, one pound of sesame seeds equals four ounces of oil!

Han Zhaozhao decided that out of the more than 300 kilograms of sesame seeds harvested in the first crop, she would use 200 kilograms to make sesame oil.

At least 70 to 80 kilograms of sesame oil and dozens of kilograms of sesame cakes can be produced.

Sesame cakes are also good things. People in later generations used them as feed for livestock and as high-quality fertilizer for farming.

But in this era, sesame cakes are also the best food, and ordinary people can’t get them without strong connections.

After harvesting sesame, she began to harvest soybeans, peanuts, millet, rice, wheat, sorghum, and corn. Every three days, she would pick cotton!

Sweet potatoes are harvested last because Han Zhaozhao is not afraid of them being overripe and shedding grains, which will reduce yield.

Her space is not like the fairy treasures in other people's novels, which have the supernatural function of collecting things with one click of consciousness.

Her space is just a clumsy, defective product. Whether it is planting or harvesting, her owner has to do it herself and work hard.

For the first crop, she planted more than ten acres of land, and it was all up to her, a seven or eight-year-old child, to harvest the plants one by one.

In her previous life, the space was relatively small, only eighteen acres in total. She planted many fruit trees, which took up three or four acres, planted several kinds of precious medicinal herbs, which took up three acres, and planted tea trees and flowers, which took up more than one acre.

She planted grain, vegetables, melons and fruits on four acres of land. In the remaining four or five acres, she dug a few large ponds and built a few wooden houses. She also left an acre of open space in the middle, which was just enough to store her fishing boat and temporarily store some miscellaneous items.

But now, the space has become larger, and the area has more than doubled.

The fruit trees haven’t grown up yet, only two ponds have been dug, and less than two acres of Salvia miltiorrhiza have been planted.

There were still more than 30 mu of land in the space. Of these 30 mu, she had only planted less than half of the crops, and already had more than 10 mu.

Such a large piece of farmland is growing very well. When planting, I plant one acre today and six mu tomorrow. I planted it slowly for more than a month but there was no sign of effort, but I just kept planting.

But when it came to harvest, Han Zhaozhao couldn't smile anymore when he saw the large fields of crops growing so well.

Her grandmother was sick these days, and the crops had already matured, but she hadn't had time to harvest them.

She comes in once every midnight, and picking red beans, mung beans and broad beans is enough to keep her busy. She also has to pick cotton every three days.

Now that we have accumulated enough food, if we don't harvest it quickly, the crops will occupy the land in vain. Although they will sprout and rot on the plants, it will delay the planting of the next crop.

It took Han Zhaozhao two days to cut sesame seeds. She almost broke her slender waist from bending over for so long.

Finally the sesame seeds have been harvested and threshed, the next step is to harvest the soybeans and peanuts.

It’s not good to harvest the peanuts too late because the soil is too fertile. Han Zhaozhao is afraid that the ripe peanuts will sprout directly in the ground.

Although sprouted peanuts are plump, crispy and tender, and delicious when stir-fried, they cannot be taken out!

It's okay to have a snack in the space occasionally, but she goes out less in winter, so she can't have a snack in the space every day, right?

If she keeps eating the food without changing it, she will get bored no matter how delicious it is.

There are several common varieties of sesame. Guess which one has opposite, alternate and whorled leaves? Which one has eight-angled fruit pods?