Flowers in full bloom

Chapter 285 Harvest

Of course, for those guests who don’t eat spicy food, Hualei also prepared ordinary minced meat and sauerkraut vermicelli. Similarly, the taste is also good and very soft, sticky and smooth.

Of course, the sweet potato vermicelli was also sent to Mobei and Xijiang, and Hualei brought the cooking method of hot and sour vermicelli directly to them. Unexpectedly, the sales of their own peppers increased invisibly, which was also a pleasant surprise. Even Jiang Yunqi, who had not been here for a long time, bought a batch of sweet potato vermicelli and sent it to Liaodong Prefecture when he came to buy toothbrushes and soap.

In addition to sweet potato vermicelli, Hualei also made a batch of sweet potato starch for her own use. After grinding the sweet potatoes into pulp, prepare clean white gauze, pour the sweet potato pulp into the white gauze, filter out the sweet potato liquid, and squeeze out as much water as possible.

After filtering, add clean water to the sweet potato residue and rub it again to wash out the starch. Pour the filtered sweet potato liquid into a wooden basin and let it settle overnight. The starch will all settle to the bottom of the basin. Pour out the clean water on top and leave the starch at the bottom.

In order to make the starch purer, you can add clean water, stir and precipitate it again. Shovel out the precipitated starch, put it in a clean bamboo plate, crush it and spread it evenly. Cover it with a layer of gauze and dry it in the sun until the starch becomes very hard and has no moisture. The sweet potato starch is ready. The dried sweet potato starch can be stored in a sealed container. It can be used when cooking.

The sweet potatoes have not been dug up yet, but the cotton on the farm has already started to produce cotton bolls, and some of it can be picked. Taking advantage of the fine weather, Hua Lei wants to pick a batch of cotton that has already produced cotton bolls first. So, the villagers who were digging sweet potatoes put down their rakes and started to help pick the cotton.

Because picking cotton has high requirements for weather, if the mature cotton wool is not picked in time, if it rains, the pigments of the cotton shells and leaves will contaminate the cotton, causing the cotton to rot and deteriorate. Therefore, it is necessary to avoid picking cotton on rainy days. These days, the weather is fine, just right for picking cotton.

However, picking cotton still requires villagers with a certain level of experience, because the cotton boll opening period is very long. Picking too early will cause the cotton fibers to not be fully mature, affecting the yield and quality of the cotton; picking too late will cause the cotton bolls to be exposed to wind and sun for too long, reducing the fiber tensile strength and color, and affecting the quality of the cotton.

When picking cotton, good flowers, dead petals and fallen cotton need to be picked separately. Therefore, the pickers need to learn how to identify and pick them carefully at the right time. Therefore, Hualei selected a group of experienced villagers to help pick cotton, while the inexperienced people continued to help dig sweet potatoes to make dried sweet potatoes.

The picked cotton had to be dried and stored separately according to the quality of the cotton. For a while, Hualei was very busy. Because of the new cotton, Hualei also made a few new cotton quilts for herself, Uncle Fu and Aunt Song.

In addition, sleeping bags on the farm can be mass-produced again. Ever since sending enough sleeping bags to Lord Pei of Mobei, Hualei has not made sleeping bags for a long time. Because there is no cotton at home, if you want to make sleeping bags, you have to go to Yongjia Prefecture and Jiangnan Prefecture to buy it, which is very inconvenient, so Hualei directly stopped making sleeping bags.

Now that the new cotton has been harvested, we can start making sleeping bags again. Maybe next time when Uncle Zhou Ziren comes, he will need to buy sleeping bags. It is necessary to prepare some goods in the warehouse to avoid losing business.

The digging of sweet potatoes and the picking of cotton kept everyone busy. Fortunately, Uncle Miao and Uncle Dajiu from Huaying Village were very experienced in farming. Sweet potatoes and cotton were also planted in Dasheng Dynasty, so although they were busy, nothing went wrong. The most important thing was the corn that was about to mature in Baihua Village.

The flower buds have been checked. These corns will take about seven or eight days to mature. Because I want to save more seeds, I can't bear to break off the fresh corn buds and sell them. Even for myself, I only break off a dozen to taste when I can steam the tender corn. I also sent a dozen to Madam Pei, and I was reluctant to send flower buds to other rooms in the Marquis' Mansion.

What she didn't know was that a few days after she picked more than twenty corns and steamed them to taste, a dozen corns had unknowingly disappeared from her own cornfield and ended up in the steamer in the imperial kitchen.

Ever since he ate the fresh corn, Emperor Shengwu had been feeling itchy inside. After enduring it again and again, and finally being unable to endure it any longer, on a certain day off, he changed into casual clothes with his two shadow guards, and rode out of the palace in an ordinary carriage.

The first place they went to was the puddles in the south of the city. Emperor Shengwu sat in the carriage and opened the curtain. What came into view was that the fields that were originally covered with weeds were now planted with all kinds of vegetables, eggplants, cucumbers, long beans, winter melons, tall and short, in different colors, and although the arrangement was a bit messy, it was full of vitality.

The puddles that originally smelled bad were planted with a variety of aquatic crops, such as wild rice, lotus roots, and water chestnuts, which were also thriving. Some puddles even had duckweed and water hyacinth thrown into them, which also grew lushly.

From time to time, there are chickens and ducks competing for food, making bursts of cries. In the vegetable fields, farmers are busy turning the soil, carrying water, or planting and picking. The occasional conversations are also full of the joy of harvest.

The swamps that had been transformed into farmland were no longer in their former state of decay. Farmers were turning the soil with cattle, digging ditches and burying fertilizers in preparation for the new planting season. "The people are happy because of the good harvest of grains," Emperor Shengwu unknowingly recited this poem.

Finally, when passing by Yuanying Manor, Emperor Shengwu couldn't help but pursed his lips again when he saw several disabled soldiers without hands or feet who could only lie or sit there at the exchange stall in front of the manor.

After riding in a carriage around the puddle, Emperor Shengwu's second stop was Huayingzhuang.

Emperor Shengwu was very curious about the place where so many strange and weird products were made. He also wanted to see how soap was made and why some soaps had a nice floral scent. He also wanted to know how these sausages and meat floss were made and how they could be preserved for such a long time and sent to various borders of the Great Sheng Dynasty to be supplied to his soldiers.

Unfortunately, when he arrived at the gate of Huaying Manor, he was stopped by a retired soldier with a broken right hand, who said that the workshop on the manor was not allowed to enter. To be honest, when has Emperor Shengwu ever been stopped by anyone? The shadow guard behind him clenched his fists, and Emperor Shengwu shook his hand behind his back. Then he really turned around and left politely.