An orphan girl from a farming family: Everyday farming in the mountains during natural disasters

Chapter 130 Collecting herbs in the mountains (2)

It was getting dark, and the villagers who had gone up the mountain to collect herbs and wild vegetables hurried down the mountain before dark. There was no one on the mountain, and no bandits. The only thing they had to worry about was ferocious beasts. With Heihei guarding nearby and able to give early warning, she felt more at ease.

Before she knew it, a year had passed since she traveled to the other world. It was a rare moment of relaxation like this. She was addicted and delighted to catching crabs, but it was a pity that they were not as big as last year.

But this did not affect her good mood.

"Good, good, good, that's great, we caught another one, hahahaha..."

What matters is not how much you gain, but how much you enjoy the process.

"Are there any river clams? Let me take a look."

I looked around, but there was no sign of the clams.

She hoped to find river clams and try her luck to get pearls, but she was not that obsessed. If she couldn't find any, she would just think of other ways to make money.

After catching more than a dozen crabs, she went back to check the vegetable basket.

There was a small black shadow in the first basket. She lifted the basket at lightning speed, and water quickly flowed down through the gaps, leaving behind the small fish, river shrimps and a few small crickets she had caught.

She picked out the small cicadas and threw them back into the water.

The black shadow in the second basket was obviously larger. She lifted it up suddenly and found that there were about ten slightly larger river shrimps.

Compared with the size of river shrimps before the drought last year, they are a little smaller, but not bad either.

"It would be nice if we could catch more shrimps so we can make some shrimp chips."

Shrimp chips are similar to potato chips. When I was a child in my previous life, my family was poor and we had no snacks to eat. During the Chinese New Year and other festivals, my grandmother would buy a kind of colorful, thin, round shrimp chips and fry them in a pan. They would expand and become bigger, and taste fragrant and crispy.

"Come back later, shrimps, work harder and grow up a little bit!"

She put the fish and shrimp into a wooden barrel and took the goodies back to the tiankeng.

When you pass by a place where mugwort is stored, take it out and carry it on your back.

After walking a long way, they arrived at the place where the fish cages were placed. Heihei jumped up and turned around, signaling her not to forget to take the fish cage.

"Heihei, I know, I remember it." She smiled and went into the stream to collect the fish cage.

There were so many things that she took them back in two trips.

Only two fish cages were put out today, and the harvest was half less than yesterday, with only a little more than four pounds of river fish.

cuckoo-

quack--

The chickens and ducks, which had not eaten fresh river food for many months, heard that she was back and cried excitedly, like cats smelling fish.

Xia Qingyue hurriedly took out some of the river fish, chopped some wild vegetables, mixed them together, and fed them to the poultry.

Next, the poultry are fed a mixture of rice bran, wild grass, vegetables and river fish. This is how they were fed before the drought last year. The chickens and ducks all grow meat and lay many eggs.

She lit a fire in the stove and cooked the fish, chicken and duck eggs for Heihei to eat. During this time, she scrubbed and cleaned the crabs, washed the river shrimps and threw them into the pot to cook together with Heihei's.

There were clams and snails in the stream, but they were a bit small, so she didn't catch them and would wait until later.

After the black portion is cooked, take it out, peel the eggs, let them cool to the right temperature, and pour them into its bowl. It starts to eat with big gulps.

Pour peanut oil into the pot and heat it until it smokes, then add the crabs in and fry them. River shrimps are small and easy to cook, so add them last.

Take out the fried red ones, leave some oil in the pan, add ginger, scallion roots, chili segments and Sichuan peppercorns and stir-fry until fragrant, then add the river fish and stir-fry.

Her dinner consisted of a spicy river dish and a plate of stir-fried bok choy.

The bok choy is tender and juicy.

After working all day, she was already very hungry, so she concentrated on eating. No matter how hungry she was, she chewed slowly, as eating too fast was bad for the body.

-

After a night's rest, Xia Qingyue went out early to collect herbs just like she did yesterday. This time, she went straight to the forest upstream of the stream.

After searching for a whole morning, she didn't find much. She met several groups of people. Some of them saw that she was alone and came forward to ask questions. Every time this happened, Heihei would rush forward, baring his teeth and roaring, scaring those people away in panic.

At noon, the sky was gloomy. She went to the place where she found the camellia last year, found some dry firewood to make a fire, and roasted the fish and crabs she caught from the stream.

She will vomit if she eats boiled eggs again.

There's no way she can like eggs cooked this way.

The fish was not big and was cooked in about ten minutes of roasting. She followed Han Zhibai's example and made a seasoning with matsutake, fresh salt and chili powder, and put it in a small bamboo tube to carry with her.

Sprinkle the seasoning on the grilled fish and the aroma will instantly emerge.

She ate more than ten grilled fish and four crabs, which were so simply cooked.

After eating, I sat for a while and continued to look for and collect herbs.

I walked quite a distance in the afternoon and gained quite a lot, finding more than a dozen kinds of medicinal herbs.

In the evening, she came out of the woods and passed by the stream. She saw watercress and water celery growing again, and her eyes immediately lit up.

"Great, my favorite dishes are available again."

Pick some more watercress and plant it beside the canal.

Last year, we had finished eating the dried water celery made from water celery, but we still had several kilograms of pickled mustard greens left.

Water celery is the freshest in spring and is most delicious when used to make sauerkraut.

Thinking about this, she started to crave for the sauerkraut pork dumplings.

However, there was no flour, let alone fresh pork.

She picked a lot of watercress, but didn't pick the water celery. Even if she picked it, she wouldn't have time to do it, so she'd better wait a few days before doing it.

It rained that night and Xia Qingyue slept soundly. When she got up in the morning, she clearly felt a damp chill.

"It's raining!"

She ran out. The sky was gray at this time. When she ran to the bottom of the pit, she could see that it was drizzling.

He raised his hand, palm facing up, "Don't make it rain too much."

After making breakfast and feeding the poultry, the rain was still falling.

She sat in front of the stove, looking at the pit mouth from afar, where drizzle continued.

"Will there be fewer people on the mountain on rainy days, so we can find more medicinal herbs?"

Thinking about this, she went to the utility room to find a straw hat and raincoat, put them on herself, and put on the raincoat and a straw hat.

A man and a dog went out in the rain.

Facts have proved that imagination is beautiful but reality is cruel. Even though it was raining, the number of people going up the mountain did not decrease.

She didn't find many herbs that day.

In the evening, she collected the fish cages and went home early.

The rain lasted for three days without stopping, but Xia Qingyue did not slack off and insisted on going out every day.

However, as she searched everywhere she could around, the medicinal herbs she could find became fewer and fewer.

She didn't dare go to places farther away on rainy days.

The rain continued to fall, and it got heavier in the middle of the night until it started to pour heavily, while during the day it was a continuous drizzle.

The next day, she did not go out to look for herbs again. She got ready and went to the Li family's shelter with Heihei. She wondered if they had gone up the mountain.

There were very few medicinal herbs in the places on the mountain that she often went to. It would only be a waste of time to look for them further. She wanted to go to the dense forest with the Li family to look for them.