Chapter 967 The school sweetheart’s first love who took a check and went abroad (6)
Gold panning in the summer is not a hard job, but it is more painful in the winter. That is why stowaways or homeless people from overseas soak their feet in the seawater to pan for gold all year round in order to make a living.
Local young men who want to make extra money usually choose to work part-time in the summer, work for two or three months, and then come back in autumn.
Anyway, summer work is relatively simple——
The weather is sunny and the pasture is abundant. In the morning, the sheep are let out to let them have fun and have enough to eat. In the evening, they rush back to the sheepfold to sleep.
Because they are outside during the day, the sheep pen does not get dirty that quickly. It only needs to be cleaned every few days.
Unlike autumn and winter, because you need to light a fireplace, you need to store more charcoal and dry firewood than in summer, and you need to store as much hay as possible to strengthen the sheepfold; when the rainy season comes, you have to prevent the sheep from being bored in the sheepfold and fighting;
Being crowded into a sheepfold makes cleaning difficult; not to mention the heavy task of shearing sheep in late winter and early spring.
Therefore, young people can't stay in the summer and want to take leave to try their luck in the south. The kind-hearted Hunters always allow them to take leave.
At this time in previous years, sheep herding was Old George's job. This year, when Xu Yin came, he took a back seat and stayed in the farm to dry and sort the sheep.
Freshly sheared wool has a heavy moisture content and a foul smell, so it needs to be dried in the sun for several days to eliminate the foul smell and sterilize the wool. Only then can such wool be sold at a high price.
Old George liked drying wool. After drying, he could sit in the shade of a tree and smoke his pipe and rest for a while. It was not like herding, where he had to keep following the sheep. If a sheep misbehaved, he would have to chase after it.
rush.
But Xu Yin enjoys the daily life of grazing——
Under the blue sky and white clouds, she wore a refreshing fishbone braid and a wide-brimmed straw hat to protect her from the sun. She was carrying a small satchel that the cook had given her with water and dry food, and she was slowly walking across the vast expanse while driving her sheep.
on the grass.
I went out after breakfast and didn't come back until evening.
The sheep ate while walking, and she picked wild vegetables and flowers as she walked. If she was lucky, she could also dig up wild medicinal herbs.
The pastures include wild grasses and grasses grown from grass seeds spread by ranchers in spring.
The grass seeds you buy are mainly ryegrass and alfalfa, but there are also some other types of grass seeds mixed in. You won't know what they are until they grow out, but they are not poisonous or harmful to weeds anyway.
Xu Yin had a great time following the sheep.
Dandelions and wild daisies are the most common herbs, which can be harvested and dried to make tea.
Occasionally, I am very lucky, and I can dig out Adenophora ginseng along the strings of purple flowers that look like hanging bells, and I even dug up a bush of Atractylodes atractylodes.
Ever since she lit up the "Illustrated Book of Chinese Herbal Medicine", she has found this type of herbal medicine at her fingertips.
She had thought about it, and when her colleagues who went to the south to pan for gold came back to work, she would take a few days off to go to the Southern Alps across the front, where there would be more abundant wild vegetables, fruits and medicinal herbs.
Right now, we can dig as much as we can.
I also picked a lot of red alfalfa flowers that are naturally sweet, and this mixed vegetable salad tastes very good.
I grabbed a lot of wild onions and took them home to fry the fish. The barbecue was particularly fragrant.
There are also mustard, mint, and basil leaves. Pick them while they are fresh. They are all good partners for seafood dishes.
Although Cook Town is far from the sea, the seafood sold in the town, except for shellfish, is relatively rare. Salmon and cod are all frozen. Although shallow-water fish and crabs are not frozen, they are also chilled, whitebait, and seawater.
Shrimp is mostly dried food. She doesn't like chilled or frozen seafood. It's not like there is no seafood stocked in the system warehouse. If you want to eat it, you can eat it as fresh as it is caught. Fortunately, she will live here for several years.
There is always a chance to visit coastal towns.
Xu Yin also discovered a bush of wild peas. Young peas are a complementary food that sheep flocks prefer to eat. Some pea seeds are scattered on the pasture every year, but no one takes care of them. Over time, they turn into wild peas.
They were still seedlings at the moment, so she pinched a handful of the tenderest pea shoots and took them back to blanch them for cold dishes.
After enjoying her massage skills, these sheep listened to her very much and did not need her to wave the sheep whip. If she told them to go, the sheep would not stay; if she said stop, the sheep would not dare to have fun.
At noon, the sheep used to go to a shallow stream to drink water, and Xu Yin had lunch on a backlit stone.
This stream originates from the snowy mountaintops of the Southern Alps, gurgling along the terrain, flowing through this grassy slope, joining the river outside Christchurch, and finally flowing to the sea.
The more Xu Yin saw, the more she liked this place. Unfortunately, there was no free land nearby. This pasture belonged to the Hunter family, next door to the William family, and near the foot of the mountain to another rancher.
But the strange thing is that the house neither raises sheep nor cattle, it is just deserted, with wild pastures swaying in the wind, giving a sense of grandeur as if the wind blows the grass and you can see the cattle and sheep.
It is said that Cook Town has a small population, but the land area owned by each household is quite large. The per capita area is actually measured in hectares.
Xu Yin is so envious.
It's a pity that she doesn't have much money saved now. Even if there is land for her to buy, she won't be able to buy much.
There is no shortage of gold bars and bricks on hand, but there is no shop in town that buys gold and silver. If you want to sell it, go to Christchurch.
She is a single girl, and her money is just a thick piece of gold bars and bricks. If she is targeted by someone, she will be uneasy in the future.
It's better to save money slowly, since I haven't found a suitable place now anyway.
In this way, she drove the sheep out in the morning and drove the sheep back in the evening. During the day, she walked with the sheep on dozens of hectares of pasture. In the morning, she dug wild herbs and picked wild flowers. In the afternoon, she found a shady place where the sheep could rest.
Also take a rest and think about the hair remover.
She spent some energy points and asked the system store to buy a set of the most advanced electric hair clippers. She studied the drawings that came with it, went back to find parts, and tried to improve the current electric hair clippers.
In short, there is a lot of gain every day.
Stockpile half of the wild vegetables and medicinal materials collected and bring back half.
Several seasonal wild vegetables gradually appeared on the Hunter family's dining table: cold pea shoots, red alfalfa flowers mixed with potato salad, and stir-fried watercress.
There are more and more dandelions and wild daisies drying on the windowsill. Make tea and add a mint leaf, which is particularly refreshing in summer.
Although these things are not valuable, no one usually picks them.
Some of them didn’t know each other, and some didn’t know how to cook and eat them after picking them up. Xu Yin not only knew them, but also knew how to eat them, which made Mrs. Hunter extremely happy.
Every night before going to bed, she would praise Xu Yin to Mr. Hunter:
"Sean, this kid, knows so much! Since she came to our ranch, she has not only improved everyone's work efficiency, but also the dining table has become more and more abundant. I really like her so much!"
"The wild flowers she dried taste good when brewed into tea. It is said that her hometown also uses them to treat diseases. I had a urinary tract infection not long ago. I drank dandelion tea for a few days and I feel much better. It seems really good.
It works!”
"Is it time for you to give Sean a salary increase? She has saved our family a lot of money."