The paddy fields had been plowed, and the rice seedlings had already grown longer than a palm. The seeds planted earlier were sprouting one after another.
Xia Qingyue mixed five kilograms of wood ash with twenty-five kilograms of water and let it soak for twenty-four hours.
She filtered the liquid and sprayed it on the rice seedlings and vegetable sprouts. This method could effectively prevent aphids.
She sliced the sweet potatoes and placed them in a dark area to encourage sprouting. After a few days, once the buds emerged, they could be planted.
The sweet potato field had been turned over but not yet planted. She made planting holes and sowed peanuts, soybeans, and mung beans.
Soybeans and mung beans could be sprouted into bean sprouts. Personally, she preferred eating mung bean sprouts.
Moreover, soybeans could be processed into soy products such as tofu, soy milk, dried bean curd, and tofu skin.
In summer, mung beans were best used to cook sweet soup, which was refreshing and good for dispelling heat.
After finishing all this, the spring farming work temporarily came to an end.
The meat had been curing for several days and was ready. She poked small holes into the meat, threaded them together with twisted straw rope, tied them securely, and hung them in a well-ventilated place to air-dry.
When she bought the meat, she had felt it was too little. Now that it was hung up in rows, there actually seemed to be quite a lot.
Next, she planned to seize the tail end of spring and go out to gather more mountain produce, such as bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and wild vegetables. Anything that could be dried would be dried and stored, so it could be eaten into the next year.
Early that morning, Xia Qingyue took a fish trap baited with pork cracklings, carried a backpack basket on her back, and held a vegetable basket as she went out.
She first went to set the fish trap, then headed to the bamboo forest to break off bamboo shoots.
It had been some time since she last came to the bamboo forest. Many shoots had grown out, and some were already too mature. She carefully picked only the tender ones.
As she was picking, she noticed a white, net-like growth on the damp, yellowed forest floor. It looked as if it were wearing a fluffy skirt, with a cap on top resembling the cap of a morel mushroom.
“This… could this be bamboo fungus?”
She excitedly brushed aside the surrounding bamboo leaves, carefully pinched one, and examined it closely. Bringing it to her nose, she could smell a faint fragrance.
“It really is bamboo fungus!”
She looked around, and wherever her eyes reached, there were white figures everywhere.
Bamboo shoots were crisp and fresh when stewed in soup, and they absorbed broth extremely well in hotpot. In her previous life, there was a hotpot dish called bamboo shoots with shrimp paste that she especially loved.
So Xia Qingyue picked bamboo shoots while also harvesting bamboo fungus.
It took her the entire morning, making repeated trips back and forth, before she finally collected all the bamboo shoots and bamboo fungus from this bamboo forest and brought them back to the sinkhole.
There were at least over three hundred jin of bamboo shoots and forty to fifty jin of bamboo fungus. It looked like a lot now, but once dried, there wouldn’t be much left.
She spread the bamboo shoots and bamboo fungus evenly on large bamboo trays and set them out in the sun to dry.
At noon, she returned to the sinkhole and hastily ate lunch. Without taking a nap, she put on a straw hat and went with Heihei to the stream where she had previously found oyster mushrooms and wood ear.
New oyster mushrooms and wood ear had grown on those fallen logs. This time, she also found shiitake mushrooms. Their aroma was rich, and she especially liked shiitake. She loved shiitake stir-fried with meat or stewed with chicken.
In her previous life, shiitake, oyster mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, and other cultivated mushrooms were said to be soaked in chemical solutions to keep them fresh.
Once, she bought a bag of seafood mushrooms that accidentally fell into a corner. When she found them more than half a month later, they were still fine and hadn’t gone bad. After that, she no longer dared to buy market mushrooms unless she was really craving them.
What she was picking now were all purely natural, wild, additive-free mushrooms.
She walked and stopped along the way, picking all the edible mushrooms she could see in the area, filling more than half of her basket.
Her hands were dirty, so she went to the stream to wash them. As she glanced at the green plants by the bank, her eyes suddenly lit up.
The plant looked very familiar. She casually picked one, and a fragrance even stronger than celery rushed to her nose.
“Water celery!”
Looking around, she saw that a large patch of water celery grew along the bank, stretching as far as the eye could see.
Water celery was delicious stir-fried with cured meat, fragrant and crispy. It could also be pickled into sour vegetables, made into kimchi, or dried into preserved vegetables.
When it was time to eat, soaking it in water, cutting it into sections, and stir-frying it with pork fat and dried chili would make a simple yet delicious dish to go with rice.
Xia Qingyue picked up her sickle and excitedly began cutting. Each cut yielded a large bundle. The crisp sound of the blade slicing through the water celery was pleasant and stress-relieving.
Before long, both her backpack basket and the vegetable basket she brought were filled with water celery. She had no choice but to carry them back and then return to cut more.
After running back and forth three times, she harvested over a hundred jin of water celery.
Feeling tired, she stopped. You couldn’t rush things anyway. There was plenty along the bank, and she could slowly come back to harvest more later.
It was around three in the afternoon. The time was neither early nor late. The sun hid behind the clouds, and the sky turned gloomy.
Xia Qingyue looked up and muttered, “Is it going to rain?”
She retrieved one fish trap, sorted out the small fish and shrimp to use as bait, then took the basket and headed to the reed marsh.
After a few days, the reeds decorating the basket had already turned yellow, so she replaced them with fresh ones, set up the trap, and hid in a dark spot.
If possible, she wanted to catch more wild chickens and ducks. Raising dozens of them would not only ensure a steady supply of meat and eggs, but also solve the problem of fertilizer for farming.
Even the down feathers from ducks could be saved to make clothes and quilts in winter.
After waiting quietly for more than ten minutes, two wild ducks quacked as they walked toward the trap. Smelling the fishy scent, they stretched their heads to peck at the bait and gradually walked under the basket.
She pulled the rope, and the two wild ducks were caught.
Xia Qingyue happily put the ducks into her backpack basket and covered them. Carrying the basket, she changed to a new spot and squatted down to wait again.
This time, she didn’t wait long. A rustling sound came from ahead, and the next second, a white shadow flashed past her eyes.
Her heart leaped to her throat. She thought it was a wild chicken or duck, but it turned out to be a big white dog.
The dog ran to the trap and sniffed around. After sniffing, it raised its head and sharply scanned toward Xia Qingyue’s hiding place. Its eyes were deep and calm as water. Step by step, it advanced toward her.
Xia Qingyue widened her eyes. Where did this dog come from? Its white fur was sleek and glossy, its body clean, and its limbs well-proportioned. At a glance, it was obvious that it wasn’t a stray wandering alone in the wild, but a dog raised by someone.
Was there someone nearby?
Her thoughts were in chaos. After panicking briefly, she quickly calmed down.
Heihei had gone off to play in the reed marsh and was nowhere nearby. Right now, she had only a sickle in her hand for self-defense. She stared straight at the white dog without looking away, quietly moving her hand to grip the handle of the sickle.
The white dog stopped a few steps in front of her.
Suddenly, a clear whistle sounded, seeming both near and far. It rang only once. The white dog’s ears perked up, and it immediately turned around and ran off.
Only after the dog completely disappeared did Xia Qingyue let out several breaths. The hand gripping the sickle trembled slightly.
Although the immediate danger was gone, the tension in her heart only tightened further.
There really were other people on the mountain besides her.
She had actually thought about this before. In the past, Xia Dasong had told the original owner that on the other side of the mountain there was a bandit den, where mountain bandits lived who committed all kinds of evil, killing and robbing.
Considering safety, he never allowed the original owner and her mother to go out alone.
Cheep, cheep, cheep.
The chirping of chicks pulled Xia Qingyue back to her senses. She turned her head and saw five chicks and one wild chicken heading toward the basket.
Clang. The basket fell.
Xia Qingyue quickly came out of hiding and put the five chicks and the wild chicken she had caught into her backpack basket. The reed shoots used to feed the chickens and ducks were gone, so she bent down to look for more and loaded them into the basket.
“Huff, huff, huff.”
A strange sound came from nearby. Already on edge, Xia Qingyue’s warning bells rang loudly in her mind. She tightened her grip on the sickle, ready to strike, only to realize it was Heihei returning.
A false alarm.
“Let’s go, Heihei. We’re going back quickly!”
She had to set up some defensive measures.