Chapter 265 The vicious female partner escapes to farm (16)
The kitchen hasn't been built yet, and now it's just a sleeping room. Xu Yin doesn't plan to build a stove in the room, because it will be too smoky.
So when she was laying the wall, she mixed some more clay, built a baking kiln next to the house, and built a simple earthen stove.
I'll build a shelter for the kiln and earthen stove tomorrow, so I can cook outside for the time being.
Chicken soup is simmering on the earthen stove, and sweet potatoes are roasting in the kiln.
After the chicken soup was cooked, she washed some rice in another earthen pot, scooped two spoons of chicken soup into it, added a handful of chopped shiitake mushrooms, and cooked a pot of shiitake mushroom and chicken-flavored porridge.
When the Erlang brother and sister came back, she washed their hands and drank a bowl of porridge each.
The porridge made with delicious chicken soup, served with wild mushrooms and pheasant meat, is the most delicious meal the two children have eaten in the past few years.
Seeing them wolfing down the food, Xu Yin advised them to eat more slowly while thinking: In such a large wasteland, some chickens can actually be raised.
But, where can I get chicken?
Xu Yin pondered this issue.
When Erlang was full, Xu Yin asked him to take the half-earth jar of chicken soup he had set aside to Shi Fengnian.
Unexpectedly, Shi Fengnian came back with him.
"Brother Hero, I didn't expect that you are not only strong, but also smart, and you can also cook so deliciously! My mother has had a bad appetite these days, so after drinking the chicken soup you stewed, hey, my appetite is back!"
Xu Yin laughed, gave him a baked sweet potato, and asked if there was any way to buy chickens. If there were no chickens, hatching eggs or newly hatched chicks would do.
"You want to raise chickens? I want to raise chickens too! But where can I get chickens? How about I go to the village tomorrow and ask?"
After going to the village to ask, Xu Yin thought for a moment and took out a small jar of ginger-yellow rock sugar.
She has seen the candy here, which is darker in color than rock candy, but not as sweet as rock candy.
"You exchange it for chickens or eggs. You decide how much you want to exchange. No matter how much you exchange, I will share 20% of it with you."
It's considered as payment for his errands.
Shi Fengnian was shocked: "This, is this candy?"
"Yeah, you haven't seen it?"
"I've seen it, but I haven't tasted it in years."
Xu Yin: "..."
I broke off a small piece and gave it to him: "Try it?"
"No, no, no! This is too expensive! Such a big piece can probably be exchanged for a chicken."
Finally, he rubbed his index finger on the candy bar, then put it in his mouth and smashed it: "As expected of candy! It's so sweet!"
Xu Yin felt like sobbing.
Shi Fengnian hid the sugar bowl in his sleeve and walked home cautiously as if he had a piece of gold. Xu Yin heard Erlang sigh like a young adult:
"Sister-in-law, you should stop asking for dowries! My mother once said that dowries can only be taken when a woman is cornered. They are more precious than ginseng!"
"..."
Having said that, the next day when they saw the three hens and a group of chickens brought over by Shi Fengnian, Erlang and Sanmei went crazy with joy.
"Wow! All these chickens belong to our family?"
"Yes!" Shi Fengnian said cheerfully, and then said to Xu Yin, "Brother Hero, candy bars are indeed more popular than silver. Many women rushed to get them, so I picked the fattest ones and exchanged them for three. They looked thin.
I don’t want the skinny ones. The chickens are all healthy and there is nothing wrong with them. Count them, there are eighteen chickens in total.”
Xu Yin didn't expect that such a small can of sugar could be exchanged for so many chickens.
As soon as you touch a hen, you will know it is a laying hen, and there may be eggs to eat tomorrow.
She caught a hen and three chickens and gave them to Shi Fengnian: "The agreed-upon errand fee."
Shi Fengnian was flattered: "No, no, no! I can't have it!"
"Take it! You overfulfilled the task and you deserve it! If you don't accept it, I won't ask you for help next time something happens."
So, Shi Fengnian carried a hen and three chicks back home in vain.
When his father found out that it was a gift from Xu Yin, he beat his son: "How kind a hero is to you! You actually robbed him! You are worse than a beast!"
Shi Fengnian was in trouble and couldn't say anything: "Didn't we know each other at that time? Besides, I have sincerely regretted it. The heroic brothers have forgiven us. Why do you still beat me, dad?"
"If I don't beat you, I won't remember it!"
"..."
Xu Yin didn't know how many chickens she gave away, which caused Shi Fengnian to be beaten by his father. She left the chickens to the two children to take care of and continued to work hard to open up wasteland.
There are a bunch of chickens in the house, and Erlang and Sanmei have something to do.
Every morning they get up early to collect eggs from the chicken coop, and then send them to the wasteland to peck at grass and look for insects. The brother and sister also pull weeds and pick up pebbles.
Xu Yin asked them to pile the stones picked up from the wasteland behind the house so that they could use them to lay down the foundation when building the kitchen.
The brother and sister have picked up a lot of pebbles these days. They have been busy until the sun gets brighter, and then drive the chickens from the wasteland to the shade of the trees at the foot of the mountain, where there are many grass seeds that the chickens like to eat.
Drive the chickens home at night.
As a reward, Xu Yin makes them a meal of eggs every day, sometimes poached eggs, sometimes steamed egg custard, sometimes stir-fried wild vegetables.
Shi Fengnian, Shi Feng, Chen Mancang and others would occasionally send some ingredients to her house.
Pheasants are not so good, but birds, eggs and small fish in the stream can be eaten in turn every three to five days.
When the food was served, Xu Yin noticed that the clothes of the two boys were getting shorter and shorter.
Especially Erlang, he is probably starting to lose his stripes. Long sleeves and long trousers look like shorts and shorts on him. It's okay now that it's hot, but how will he wear it when the weather gets cooler.
I have to find an opportunity to go to the market and find a way to get some cloth.
But she has been too busy recently. Less than two acres of the planned ten acres of wasteland have been planted. She has not had a chance to get out herbal seeds yet, so she can only plant some sweet potatoes first.
It takes a long time to cultivate medicinal materials. Don’t worry that the medicinal materials you planted will not be there yet, and your family will run out of food. So plant some sweet potatoes and stock up on food.
The sweet potatoes brought from home have been eaten long ago, and the seeds are grown with relief grains allocated by the imperial court. Sweet potatoes, potatoes, and dried taro are all coarse grains.
This has disappointed many victims.
Some people's wives gave birth to babies while fleeing from famine. The mother's nutrition was not enough to produce milk, so a child as big as a cat would have to eat whole grains with adults. How could it be tolerated?
Everyone was extremely looking forward to the imperial court distributing some fine grains such as rice and noodles, but what they got were all coarse grains, not to mention old and moldy.
This made people's energy, which had finally risen, become sluggish again.
Xu Yin said to everyone: "Which of you has a lot of sweet potatoes? Give me the potatoes evenly. I want to plant them. I can trade them with you for rice!"
Her family's wasteland was open a lot, and no one thought about it elsewhere.
Upon hearing that whole grains could be exchanged for rice, many men came to Xu Yin's house carrying bags.
Erlang kept winking at her, extremely anxious.
It’s not like we don’t have enough food at home, so why bother replacing the rice!
Xu Yin threw a candy into his mouth soothingly and asked him to give one to his third sister.
The third sister kept guarding the chickens, fearing that they would run away.
The wasteland is so big that it’s hard not to keep an eye on it.
When Erlang saw that she insisted on exchanging rice for coarse grains, he was so angry that he stomped out and ran out.