You are unlucky and I am tough

Looking at these things in the yard, Cheng Shuang felt that all the weirdos in Chengjia Village were indeed occupied by her and Wei Qinglang's family, and the remaining villagers were mostly normal people, so she was willing to provide help so that the villagers could live a good life.

The family started to pack up and threw the chickens and ducks into the shed in the backyard. Among them, there was an old hen that could be kept to lay eggs, because the chickens and ducks raised before were not yet ready to lay eggs.

The food was placed in the kitchen cupboard, including some dried vegetables and dried mushrooms.

Live off the mountain, there are many mushrooms on the nearby mountains. The villagers pick the ones they recognize, and now every household has a lot of dried mushrooms.

Their family has even more. Cheng Pan and his two cousins ​​go to pick wild mushrooms from Yunxi Mountain whenever they have time. They wash them and dry them. Now they have stockpiled a large box and have given a lot of them to the workers.

Cheng Guqiu asked, "How do we prepare so much meat?"

This half of pork weighs about 100 pounds, including pork, ribs, pork belly, tenderloin, pig's trotter, and pork leg.

After discussion, they decided to send the pig's head to the workers at the foot of the mountain as a snack, and keep two pounds of fresh ribs, and make the rest into cured meat.

Last winter, Cheng Shuang taught Cheng Guqiu how to make cured bacon, and everyone in the family liked it very much.

The family was short of ingredients, so Wei Qinglang called Wei Nanxing over and gave him a purse. "Drive your carriage to the county and buy four pounds of liquor, one pound of Sichuan peppercorns, two hundred grams each of star anise, cinnamon, and bay leaves, and five pounds of soy sauce."

Cheng Shuang looked at the basket of about seventy or eighty duck eggs and decided to make them all into preserved eggs. She then said, "Nanxing, bring me five pounds of quicklime and one pound of coarse tea leaves."

He gestured with his hands and said, "Buy another jar about this tall and this big."

Wei Nanxing nodded, "Okay, I'll take note of it."

Lunch in the kitchen was about to be ready, so Wei Nanxing went shopping after lunch.

Cheng Shuang also wanted to make some spicy pickled bacon, so she took some dried chilies, fried them in a pan until they were dry, and then mashed them into chili powder. When pickling, there are two flavors: the spicy flavor is sprinkled with chili powder.

After preparing the chili powder, the task of curing the bacon can be handed over to Cheng Guqiu and Aunt Wu and others, while Cheng Shuang and Wei Qinglang will be responsible for making the preserved eggs.

We have rice bran at home, and we can get some sifted wood ash from the workshop. The only missing materials are cypress leaves and dry straw.

Platycladus orientalis is a common tree in the mountains and can be found everywhere. Wei Qinglang took a backpack and went up the mountain to pick them.

There is no dry straw in the village. The whole village has only moved here for more than two months and has not yet harvested any grain.

Qiuyan and Dongyun went to Taohua Village in front and brought back a load of dry straw.

Not long after, Wei Qinglang came down from the mountain and brought back a basket of arborvitae leaves. Wei Nanxing also came back and brought back everything they needed.

Cheng Guqiu, along with Aunt Peng and Wu Junniang, cut all the pork into strips, chopped the pig's feet in half, cut the ribs together without cutting them off, and then evenly coated them with white wine.

Cheng Shuang and the others boiled water in a pot, added arborvitae leaves, coarse tea leaves, and peppercorns, and simmered them for fifteen minutes. After boiling, they filtered the water and took it to the yard to cool.

Then pour the tea brine into quicklime, add a certain proportion of salt, and then pour in the sieved wood ash and stir evenly into a slurry.

"I'll go first." Cheng Shuang picked up a duck egg, put it into the prepared batter, rolled it around to evenly coat it with a layer of batter, and then rolled it around in the rice bran.

"Is this all right? Sister-in-law, I want to try it too."

Wei Xinyi squatted beside her curiously. She didn't know what preserved eggs were, but they looked interesting.

"That won't do." Cheng Shuang put the preserved egg wrapped in rice bran aside and shook her head. "There's lime in it, and the scratches on your hands from the wrestling two days ago haven't healed yet."

Wei Xinyi pouted and could only continue squatting on the side and watching.

"I'll do it. I don't have any injuries on my hands."

"I can help too."

Cheng Pan and her two cousins ​​were also eager to try.

"Then you guys come on, just do it the same way I just did." Cheng Shuang made two more and gave up his position.

She originally wanted her sisters to learn how to make preserved eggs, so she let them watch the whole process.

Wei Qinglang moved the jar he bought over, put a layer of dry straw inside, and then put the preserved eggs in one by one.

There were eighty duck eggs, and there was still a little liquid left, so I took out more than ten chicken eggs and put them in together.

Finally, spread a layer of straw on top and tie the mouth of the jar tightly with a piece of cloth.

"Alright." Wei Qinglang tied the rope tightly and stood up. "Just pickle it for another month."

Then the jars were moved into the warehouse and stored.

After washing her hands, Cheng Shuang asked her two cousins, "How are preserved eggs made? Do you remember?"

Qiuyan and Dongyun looked at each other and nodded, "I've roughly memorized all the steps."

"It doesn't matter if you don't remember it. I'll write it down later and you can learn it slowly."

Cheng Shuang looked at the two of them and said, "Next time, I'll let you do the whole process, and I'll watch from the side. But before you learn, collect duck eggs first. In a couple of days, you can go to other villages and collect a batch of duck eggs."

"Duck eggs are three cents each at the market. Ask the villagers in other villages if they'll sell them for five cents each. Bring back as many as you can. Then have Nanxing drive the donkey cart and go with you."

Dongyun nodded vigorously, "Don't worry, cousin. We've been collecting snails and soybeans and rice bran before, and we're familiar with all the villages nearby. We'll definitely get it done."

Qiuyan also said, "I see that many families in other villages raise ducks, so there must be a lot of duck eggs."

The two sisters happily agreed to the task. Ever since they bought someone into the family, Aunt Wu and the others have taken care of almost all the housework. They can't sit idle, so they feel more at ease when there is something for them to do.

After finishing her work, Cheng Shuang did some calculations in the room and felt that it would be more cost-effective to raise ducks at home to make preserved eggs. She talked about this with Wei Qinglang. She said that there was no need to raise too many ducks, just enough to supply her own restaurant.

Wei Qinglang naturally had no objection. He had originally planned to raise chickens and ducks when he bought Yunxi Mountain, but there were too many things to do and the workers were busy clearing the land and planting vegetables, so they forgot about it for a while.

Although there are still 100 acres of land left to be cultivated, there is no rush. We will first develop the breeding area on the mountain.

Circle an area, clear away some overly dense bushes to provide space for chickens and ducks to move around, and cut down some trees to increase light.

Free-range farming does not require the construction of chicken coops, duck houses and other breeding facilities like large-scale farming. All you need to do is build some wind and rain shelters in the mountains, and then put up fences to prevent chickens and ducks from getting lost.

There are also abundant natural feed resources on the mountain, including grass, insects, earthworms, grass seeds, etc. Chickens and ducks can eat freely, reducing the feed costs of artificial feeding.

It took Cheng Guqiu an entire afternoon to marinate nearly 80 kilograms of meat. After marinating for two days and then drying it in the sun for seven or eight days, it was done.

While I was cleaning the used wooden basin, the village head came.

Cheng Guqiu called out the two people in the room.

Cheng Lizheng came to discuss tomorrow's banquet. As soon as he sat down, he said to Wei Qinglang, "Tomorrow's banquet will be divided into two parts. The villagers will have a buffet in the threshing ground. The classmates and friends invited by Mingli and the other children will go to the old scholar's house."

"The county magistrate will be there, so I'm here to tell you that you should go to the old scholar's house tomorrow to keep him company and entertain the county magistrate."

Upon hearing this, Wei Qinglang looked at the people beside him. Cheng Shuang was puzzled. "Why are you looking at me? They are all men here, so it's not appropriate for me to go there."

She was not interested at all. What was the point of having a banquet with a bunch of nerds? It would be more lively with the villagers. She heard that the villagers were gossiping about the marriage of four new scholars these days.

Isn't this more interesting than dealing with officials and listening to the flowery chatter of scholars?