Travel to the mountains and make a fortune in silence

Zhou then said to Mu Xiao, "Tomorrow, go to the porcelain shop in town and buy some porcelain vases for your sister-in-law. They should have lids and be airtight!"

Mu Xiao replied, "Understood, Grandma!"

Wang Qing'er quickly thanked Zhou Shi, "Thank you, Grandma!"

Wang Cuiying also said, "Qing'er, I'll go pick peach blossoms for you this afternoon!"

"Mother, there are only a few trees left to pick this afternoon. Muqin and I can pick them. We can't pluck them all. We should save some for later." Wang Qing'er thought that there weren't many peach trees left, so there was no need to use so many people.

"Okay, I'll go mushroom picking this afternoon. There are quite a lot of mushrooms in that area."

"By the way, those wild goats were sold. Manager Li gave us twenty coins per catty, so we got 1,660 coins. Plus the pig offal, bamboo shoots, and mushrooms, we got a little over two taels of silver in total." As he spoke, Old Man Mu took out his money bag, poured out the silver, and handed it to Zhou Shi.

After taking a big gulp of noodle soup, Mu Xiao said, "Manager Li also said that we can send over any more wild goats in the future. We also bought four sets of pig offal today, and we'll send four sets every day from now on."

Zhou asked, "Can two restaurants deliver this much?"

Old Man Mu replied, "Manager Li said that we didn't have enough to sell in the past few days, and we'll probably have to increase the quantity in a while."

Wang Qing'er, remembering the he shou wu she had dug up, looked at Mu Nan and asked, "Brother Mu Nan, how do you plan to sell the he shou wu you dug up this morning?"

"What? You've found some He Shou Wu?" Mu Xiao asked excitedly.

"Yes, your sister-in-law found more than a dozen of them, all over a hundred years old."

"What? Each one is over a hundred years old? This is going to be a fortune! Where is it? I want to see it." Mu Xiao suddenly felt that the noodles didn't taste so good anymore, and couldn't wait to see the He Shou Wu (Polygonum multiflorum).

Mu Nan pointed to the basket on her back and said, "Inside, there are mushrooms on top and he shou wu (Polygonum multiflorum) on the bottom."

Mu Xiao hurriedly put down his bowl and chopsticks, walked to the basket on his back, carefully took out the mushrooms and placed them aside. What appeared in front of him were he shou wu (Polygonum multiflorum) that looked like chubby babies. "Wow! These are huge! Each one weighs more than a pound when wet."

Wang Qing'er didn't know the price of He Shou Wu in this era, so she leaned over and asked Mu Xiao, "How much does He Shou Wu cost per kilogram in pharmacies?"

"Sister-in-law, this has never been sold before, so it must be expensive. We need to take it to a pharmacy where someone knowledgeable can examine it before we can set a price."

"Oh!" Wang Qing'er thought to herself, "So you didn't know either? Seeing how excited you were, I thought you knew! Tch!"

After finishing her meal, Wang Qing'er remembered that her goat milk fruit hadn't been dried yet. She hurriedly went out of the dining room, picked up the bamboo basket containing the goat milk fruit, washed it clean by the well, poured it into a bamboo sieve, and placed it in the yard to dry.

Only then did I return to the backyard to check on the peach blossom hydrosol. There was still some in the bowl, but no more hydrosol had dripped from the distillation barrel.

She picked up the bowl and smelled it; it still had a faint, refreshing fragrance, like peach blossom petals, which made her feel relaxed and happy.

She carefully poured the hydrosol into a porcelain bottle and sealed it. Then she filled a basin with clean water, washed her face, and applied the hydrosol evenly to her face, gently patting it to help it be absorbed by her skin more quickly.

In one afternoon, the Mu family father and his two sons finished cutting all the sugarcane and carried it home, and then went to pick bamboo shoots.

In the afternoon, Wang Qing'er and Mu Qin picked two full baskets and a backpack full of peach blossoms. They went down the mountain early to collect hydrosol.

She didn't use all the peach blossoms she picked in the afternoon to extract hydrosol. Instead, she washed them, dried them, and used them to make tea.

Wang Qing'er was busy extracting hydrosol and stewing mutton, running back and forth between the front and back yards.

She stewed the whole sheep, filling a huge pot.

Wang Qing'er saw a jar of soybean oil in the cupboard. She had casually asked Wang Cuiying about the price of soybean oil that day, and she didn't expect that she would actually have Mu Xiao buy a pound of it. This mother-in-law is too good!

She pounded some dried chili peppers into powder using a small mortar and pestle, made some chili oil, and put it into a small jar, which she could use to make cold dishes later.

She prepared a dipping sauce, which, although it only contained chili oil, minced ginger, minced garlic, and soy sauce, still smelled very fragrant and was perfect for dipping lamb.

Wang Qing'er took some time to dig up some shepherd's purse, and also found a large patch of water celery by the stream behind the mountain. Thinking that there was too much to eat, she picked some to feed the sheep and rabbits.

The sheep seemed to enjoy eating it, but the rabbit only ate a few leaves before running away, so it seems it didn't really like celery.

But the sheep liked to eat it, so they took Muqin to pick a basketful to feed the sheep and threw a small handful into the duck shed. The ducklings all scrambled to eat it.

There were a few potatoes left in the corner of the kitchen. She had originally planned to save them to make potato chips for the children, but then she thought about how expensive soybean oil was and gave up on that idea.

Peel the potatoes, slice them thinly, and soak them in water.

The Mu family ate dinner around the stove, and everyone was spitting out spicy food from the dipping sauce that Wang Qing'er had prepared. It was a bittersweet experience.

The family ate about four or five catties of cooked mutton. Wang Cuiying said while slurping, "This meal tonight must have cost over a hundred coins!"

Zhou said, "We're working so hard every day, we should eat something good to nourish ourselves. Once we've processed those He Shou Wu (Polygonum multiflorum) herbs and sold them, we should be able to pay off some of our debts."

“Now, selling braised offal and those vegetables brings in a few taels of silver every day. If we calculate it this way, we can pay off all the debts in no time.” As expected of the housekeeper, Madam Zhou had a clear understanding of the accounts.

Wang Qing'er ate while thinking, "If only we didn't have to sell He Shou Wu! Given the current situation with the Mu family, she can't ask them to stop selling it. It's so annoying!"

As I thought about it, the mutton in my bowl suddenly seemed tasteless.

For the next few days, Wang Qing'er took Mu Qin to pick goat milk fruit and dry it in the peach grove.

She also encountered several peach trees, and gradually extracted more than a dozen bottles of peach blossom hydrosol and dried some peach blossoms.

As the weather gradually warmed up, Mu Nan found another small patch of sugarcane in addition to the large one she had before, and cut it all down and piled it up under the eaves.

It had been drizzling for several days, but the Mu family continued to deliver braised meat and fresh bamboo shoots to the restaurant every day.

The bamboo shoots were all picked by Old Man Mu and his two sons when the rain stopped.

It's just that we can't pick mushrooms anymore. Picking mushrooms takes time, unlike bamboo shoots which can be picked quickly and in large quantities.

The rain was light, and those wearing straw hats and raincoats didn't get wet. However, after several days of rain, the mountain roads were difficult to travel, so the Mu family father and son had to take the main road.

Taking the main road requires getting up even earlier, so these past few days the father and his two sons have been going to town together.

These past few days, Wang Qing'er has been sleeping until her stomach growls with hunger before getting up. On two separate occasions, Mu Nan had already returned from town when she woke up.

Mu Nan finished making the simple juicer the day before it rained, and Wang Qing'er took advantage of the rain to boil all the sugar, boiling a total of more than 400 catties of brown sugar.

They also kept more than 500 kilograms of sugarcane as seeds, which were stored in the sweet potato cellar.

When the bamboo shoots were put into the cellar, the sweet potatoes had to be brought out. Wang Qing'er was surprised to find that there were more than a thousand catties of sweet potatoes in the Mu family's cellar, and they were all well preserved and showed no signs of rotting.