Defeat natural disasters with farming

The group of people only rested for half an hour, and then continued to move forward. The things Ye Hai said were planted on a hillside, and there were yellowish winter jasmine flowers competing to bloom on the slope, and even bees and butterflies were attracted by the fragrance of the flowers. Busy pollination.

Ye Yu asked softly, "Is there a beehive here?"

"I don't know, but judging by the number of bees here, there should be some." Ye Hai looked at the flying bees and replied: "There may be more than one hive."

"You can look for it when you have time later, honey is quite useful."

After he finished speaking, he led Ye Yu around in a circle, bypassing the clump of winter jasmine flowers, and came to a place where wavy stems and leaves grew, and the leaves were indeed a bit like spinach.

Ye Yu frowned slightly. He took out the shovel from the back basket, and squatted down to dig the soil with his brother. Slowly, the smooth red roots under the soil appeared in front of them, like small round radishes.

Ye Yu was just curious at first, but as the roots gradually came into his eyes, his eyes became brighter and brighter.

Nowadays, there are two popular raw materials for sugar making, one is sugarcane, and the other is malt. Sugarcane grows in the south, and the north does not have the conditions for its growth, and the rate of malt sugar yield is low, so the price is expensive.

But he knows another raw material for sugar production, which is sugar beet. As far as he knows, beet sugar production has many advantages. It is highly disease-resistant, not easy to wither, and finally, it is easy to reproduce, and the seeds are easy to plant, so you don't need to worry too much.

Ye Yu pursed his lips slightly, wiped off the root, carefully cut off a piece and put it in his mouth, the sweet taste of abundant juice bloomed in his mouth, now he was finally sure that it was a beet.

"It tastes good. I thought it should be delicious when it was not cooked." Ye Hai also cut a piece and chewed it in his mouth. "It's good for the sweet mouth of the dolls."

Ye Yu didn't refute, just said: "It seems that they are all mature, let's dig them up and take them back."

The amount of beets in this piece was actually quite a lot, and they were all dug up to about twenty catties, filling the baskets on the backs of the six of them to the brim.

Ye Yu memorized less, but still not lightly, he had to wipe his sweat from time to time on the way back to the village.

Fortunately, nothing happened along the way, and the group arrived home safely.

As soon as she came back, Mother Ye took the things from Ye Yu's body, and greeted the others by the way: "Don't go back, just stay and eat. It just so happens that we have a lot of food today."

This is also the meaning of the old couple. After helping for so long, it is normal to ask for a meal.

Chu Xufeng thought about it, but didn't refuse, and said with a smile: "Aunt Ye, let's go back and wash it before coming back, or we'll be sweating all over."

"Okay, okay, there are braised pork ribs today, you can eat more." Mother Ye laughed so hard that she couldn't see her eyes.

When they left, the first thing Ye Yu did was to carry the basket to the vegetable bed in the backyard, and plant two tomato seedlings with his mother. He was a little worried, wondering if he could grow them alive.

But there are still some tomato seeds, which were planted in the field by them yesterday. One of them must be able to grow smoothly.

At this moment, Mother Ye interrupted his melancholy, "Hurry up and take a shower, and I'll make you a hot meal."

Hearing this, Ye Yu temporarily put his worries behind him, and went into the bathroom with clean clothes in his arms. After taking a bath, he applied some sunburn ointment on his body.

The box of centella asiatica ointment that Dr. Wu sent before has been used up long ago. Now he uses the one made by Dr. Xiao Hao. The effect is similar, but the main ingredients are different. This also caused Ye Yu to have a light fragrance when the weather gets hot.

He put on a light blue shirt and came out. Just as he was about to wash his clothes, he was stopped by his grandma, "Here I come, you hurry to eat, and what are these baskets? Eat directly ?"

"That's beet," Ye Yu said happily, "it can be used to make sugar."

"Sugar making?" Mrs. Ye was shocked immediately when she heard the words, and asked repeatedly: "Can you really make sugar?"

Ye Yu nodded firmly, "Yes, I can start after dinner, just watch!"

Granny Ye naturally believed in her little grandson, but sugar production was a big deal, so she couldn't help but not worry.

Ye Yu waited until Chu Xufeng and the others came over, and they had a belated lunch together. The white rice at home had already been eaten up, and the staple food now was only soft and sweet steamed buns, as long as they were dipped in a little sauce of braised pork ribs, it would be even more delicious Well, even Ye Yu, who has never had a big appetite, ate two steamed buns. You must know that the steamed buns made by their family are quite large, and Ye Yu usually can't hold on after eating one.

There may also be reasons for the large amount of exercise today.

After eating and drinking enough, Ye Yu was ready to start making sugar. He only used half of the beets and kept the rest for now.

Mrs. Ye took several daughter-in-laws to wash the beets, and the beet leaves were pulled out to feed the livestock. The beet roots were what they wanted.

Immediately afterwards, he shredded the beetroot with a kitchen knife. This was a big project. Ye Yu thought that if he could really make sugar later, he had to hurry up with the tools. Among other things, the shredded tools were very simple. He should be able to figure it out.

Ten catties of beetroots were cut by them all afternoon, and they finally finished cutting them, and they started to grind the beetroots again. This work was done by the men of the Ye family with Jia Yi and the others. A group of people chatted while doing it, and the time passed quickly. quite fast.

After the ground beetroot is filtered, a pot of sugar water will be obtained. Ye Yu immediately pours a bowl of lime water into it.

Seeing this, Boss Ye couldn't help but sigh with emotion: "I didn't expect lime to have so many uses. It can be used in cement, in making tofu, and now in sugar making."

"That's not true." Mrs. Ye narrowed her eyes with a smile, "It seems that what Brother Bao said about making sugar should be true."

...

While they were chatting, Ye Yu had already poured the sugar water into the pot and started to boil it. In fact, other methods were needed to purify the sugar water before this step, but for the time being, Ye Yu still hadn’t There is no way to do it.

The sugar water gradually turns into a viscous syrup under high temperature cooking. Unfortunately, because of the lack of several steps, the syrup cannot be crystallized and cannot be turned into granular white sugar.

But even so, the Ye family was seriously surprised. Put a little syrup into their mouths, and there was a strong sweetness in the air, which was similar to the white sugar that they often eat at home. That is to say, this thing can really replace white sugar.

Father Ye patted his thigh and said excitedly: "Our village still has some public fields, and if we plant a few acres of beets later, it will be enough sugar for the whole village for a year."

Some of the unowned fields in the village have already been planted with rice, and there are not many of them. Ye Yu just wanted to try planting this year first, and if he could really harvest something, he would pick some good seeds from the harvested rice and plant them in his own field next year. , it would be a good idea to set aside a few acres of beets from the rest of the field.

The two edible things that Ye Yu found out from the mountain quickly spread in the village, especially the sugar beets. Ever since they tasted the sweetness of syrup, every villager has been eagerly waiting to plant them in the village. The beets in the unowned fields are ripe, and it is easy to exchange points for some to eat.

Most of the pot of syrup made by the Ye family was distributed to the children in the village. Since Dilong turned over, they have never tasted pure sugar. Now everyone can get a small bowl of syrup, so eat It must be with relish.

For Ye Yu, the syrup tasted a little too sweet, but as long as it was neutralized with various sour fruit juices, it would become sweet and sour.

Especially wild peaches, peeled off the skin, and then crushed into small pieces of pulp, served with white water and syrup, very sweet and refreshing, if you can put a piece of ice in it, just take a sip to dissipate the heat.

Taking advantage of his free time, Ye Hai specially asked Jia Yi to go to the place where the beet grows. He found a beehive there, it was really a big beehive, full of buzzing bees everywhere.

He soon smoked the bees with the smoke from inadequate firewood and the burnt mugwort.

At this time, you can start collecting honey. You only need to cut the honeycomb with a knife, and honey will flow down the cut honeycomb, and a rich and sweet taste will gradually come out from it.

They collected a total of two jars of honey, one for each of them.

The jar that Ye Hai brought home was filtered through a strainer immediately at home to separate the honey from the fallen honeycomb, and keep the honey for drinking. The main ingredient of the honeycomb is beeswax. Ye Yu remembered that this thing can be mixed with medicinal herbs There are also oils mixed together to make lip balm, which is a very popular skin care product in modern times.

Time passed gradually during their busy collection process. It wasn't until Qin Muwen came over with a finished bamboo foil that Ye Yu slapped his head and realized that he had forgotten something.

The deep pit at the entrance of the village has now turned into a lake, and there are many small fish and shrimps swimming in from the Liu River. In order to prevent them from swimming away, Ye Yu asked Uncle Qin to make a bamboo foil according to the blueprint he drew. There are a lot of things to do during this period of time, and he really forgot about it.

Ye Yu originally wanted to give Qin Muwen the reward, but unexpectedly, he ran away directly, and said while running, "My father said that this is not a difficult thing, it doesn't take much effort, and it's not worth paying for it."

In the end, the reward was not given out, and in the end it was the old lady Ye who made the decision and asked Ye Yu to send a basket of raspberries to the Qin family. The raspberries were picked from the mountain, they were not expensive, and they were just right for sending out.

After returning home, Ye Yu saw Ye He holding three bamboo foils eager to try. Ye He's water skills are the best in the village. Adults may not be able to compare with him. He can hold his breath underwater for a long time, even the one who went to the lake before Also him.

"Brother Bao, let me go down and install the bamboo foil."

Ye Yu thought about it, and asked Ye Boss and his wife for their opinions. Seeing that they nodded in agreement, she agreed to let Ye He go down.

The author says:

Help, I'm tired and sleepy, I can only write 3k words today.