When Tang Jiao saw what Gu Yu had already started picking, joy instantly bloomed in her heart. She hurried over to help.
It turned out to be a large patch of wild pumpkins. Hidden deep in tall grass, with their vines and leaves already completely withered, they were extremely easy to miss.
Luckily, the wind was blowing today—and An’an had stood up in the basket on Gu Yu’s back—so they were finally able to spot them.
Pumpkins are annual trailing plants, extremely common and easy to grow in rural areas. Tang Jiao’s family planted them every year back home.
As long as the soil is fertile and there’s enough space for the vines to sprawl freely, a single pumpkin plant can spread across a large area. That’s why people usually plant them along courtyard walls, field ridges, or in a corner of the vegetable garden. Just three or four plants are enough to provide pumpkins from summer all the way through winter.
Pumpkins are incredibly productive. You can start eating them in summer, continue through autumn, and if they’re stored well, even make them last until the Lunar New Year.
And it’s not just the fruit—the pumpkin shoots and flowers are edible too.
Tender pumpkin shoots, blanched and then stir-fried with garlic, have a unique and delicious flavor. Pumpkin flowers can be dipped in egg batter and deep-fried, turning crispy and fragrant with a light floral aroma. They can also be cooked into soup with a bit of pumpkin shoot—clear, sweet, and refreshing. No matter how they’re prepared, pumpkin dishes are loved by all ages.
In summer, pumpkins are still tender. Stir-fried with chili peppers, or shredded and mixed with eggs, flour, and seasonings to pan-fry into savory pancakes, they’re absolutely delicious. Tang Jiao especially loved the pancakes—savory with a hint of sweetness.
By autumn, pumpkins mature and become sweeter and creamier. At that stage, simply steaming them is enough, or cooking them into pumpkin porridge—soft, sweet, and comforting, especially popular with children and the elderly.
Pumpkins are also rich in beta-carotene, which helps protect eyesight and maintain healthy vision. They contain plenty of dietary fiber as well, promoting digestion and easing constipation. Eating more pumpkin is genuinely good for the body.
The wild pumpkin patch in front of them contained at least twenty plants. Unlike the long, club-shaped pumpkins from Tang Jiao’s hometown, these were nearly round—plump and adorable.
Following Gu Yu’s method, Tang Jiao traced the vines to find the pumpkins, and sure enough, she found one almost every time.
She couldn’t help thinking, So this is what “following the vine to find the gourd” really means. The ancients truly knew what they were talking about.
The pumpkins were already past their peak ripening period, which was why the vines and leaves had withered. Fortunately, pumpkin rinds are thick and store well, allowing many of them to survive.
Even so, more than half were no longer edible—some had been gnawed on by small animals, clearly serving as their food source, while others had simply rotted.
After carefully searching the entire patch and picking through what remained, Tang Jiao and Gu Yu gathered more than forty intact pumpkins of various sizes. The largest were thirty to forty centimeters in diameter, while even the smallest were over ten centimeters. Altogether, they weighed well over a hundred kilograms—an absolute bumper harvest.
And they had only been out for two hours.
Gu Yu piled all the pumpkins together. Just looking at the heap—over forty bright yellow pumpkins stacked up—was an impressive sight.
Staring at the golden pile, Tang Jiao’s mind instantly filled with images of soft, sweet steamed pumpkin; savory pumpkin pancakes with a hint of sweetness; clear and comforting pumpkin porridge; fluffy roasted pumpkin; and gooey, stretchy glutinous rice–cheese pumpkin cakes. She even started mentally calculating which dishes she could make with the ingredients they already had.
By the time she finished thinking, she was practically drooling.
In the end, the two of them stood by the pile of pumpkins and discussed whether they should carry them back now or leave them there and continue exploring. After all, they had already come this far, and there was no one around—no risk of the pumpkins being stolen. They could always finish exploring first and come back to transport them later.
They quickly reached a unanimous decision: keep moving forward.
Who knew what other food they might discover next? It would be more efficient to mark everything down and haul it all back in one go later.
The weather was fairly pleasant that day. Though the wind was brisk, the sun was out. The family sat on nearby rocks, soaking up the sunlight, rested for a bit, and drank some hot water before setting off again.
Not far after crossing the wild pumpkin slope, they entered another stretch of forest. The woods were much harder to traverse—overgrown with weeds, shrubs, and thorny bushes. If they weren’t careful, branches would snag their hair or catch on their clothes.
By now, they had gained plenty of experience moving through dense undergrowth. Before setting out, they had deliberately put old clothes on over their regular ones. Their necks, heads, and faces were wrapped in scarves, pant legs and sleeves tightly tied, and gloves pulled on—greatly reducing scratches and snags.
Fortunately, the colder weather meant far fewer venomous insects and snakes. Otherwise, if Tang Jiao had run into a snake without any mental preparation, she might well have been scared into a heart attack.
Speaking of Tang Jiao and snakes, her fear traced back to a nightmare.
As a child, she hadn’t been afraid of snakes at all. Growing up in the countryside, climbing mountains and wading through rivers, she had seen plenty of them.
But sometime around her early twenties, she had a nightmare filled with snakes. In the dream, snakes covered the bed, the floor, the tables and chairs—everywhere. There wasn’t even a place to put her foot down. She woke up in sheer terror.
After that, she had several similar dreams. The settings changed, but the snakes remained—always just as many. From then on, she became intensely afraid of snakes. Even looking at pictures of them would send goosebumps racing across her skin.
That was why, when they had first prepared to move into the mountains, she had stocked up on realgar powder, soaked realgar wine, and bought large amounts of mosquito repellent and insect spray—all in hopes of easing her fear.
She could only hope they would actually help.
As usual, Gu Yu walked in front, clearing the way—cutting aside obstructing branches and carving marks into tree trunks from time to time to guide their return.
Tang Jiao followed behind with the makeshift spear in hand, occasionally using it to part the grass and scan the area. She hoped to spot something edible—or maybe even a wild chicken nest. But that was easier said than done. They had seen plenty of wild chickens and rabbits so far, yet not a single chicken nest.
She still couldn’t stop thinking about the wild eggs that might be hidden in one of those nests. For now, though, it seemed wild eggs simply weren’t in their fate.
The eggs they had at home came from their own free-range chickens—true farm eggs, many of which were likely fertilized.
During one of their supply runs, Tang Jiao had suddenly remembered this while chatting with An’an and immediately made sure the eggs were carefully transported back to the cave first.
Gu Yu knew how to tell fertilized eggs from unfertilized ones, and Tang Jiao did too—at least in theory.
Her method came from novels: take the egg into a dark place and shine a light through it. If a small dark spot appeared inside, it meant the egg was fertilized; if not, it was just a regular egg.
That said, Tang Jiao had zero practical experience—she had no idea whether it actually worked or not.