Chapter 266 The vicious female partner escapes to farm (16)

The kitchen hasn't been built yet, and now it's just a sleeping room. Xu Yin doesn't plan to build a stove in the room, because it's too smoky.

So when she was laying the wall, she mixed more clay, built a baking kiln and a simple earthen stove next to the house.

 Hurry up and build a shelter for the kiln and earthen stove tomorrow, so you can cook outside for the time being.

Chicken soup is simmering on the earth stove, and sweet potatoes are roasting in the kiln.

After the chicken soup was cooked, she washed some rice in another earthen pot, scooped two spoons of chicken soup into it, put in a handful of chopped shiitake mushrooms, and cooked a pot of shiitake mushroom and chicken-flavored porridge.

 When the Erlang brothers and sisters came back, she washed their hands and drank a bowl of porridge each.

The porridge made with delicious chicken soup, served with wild mushrooms and pheasant meat is the most delicious meal the two children have eaten in the past few years.

Xu Yin saw them eating ravenously, and while urging them to eat more slowly, she thought: In such a large wasteland, some chickens can actually be raised.

 Just, where can I get a chicken?

 Xu Yin pondered this issue.

 When Erlang was full, Xu Yin asked him to bring the half-earth pot of chicken soup he had set aside to Shi Fengnian.

Unexpectedly, Shi Fengnian came back with him.

“Brother Hero, I didn’t expect that not only are you strong and smart, but you are also so good at cooking! My mother has had a bad appetite these days, so after drinking the chicken soup you stewed, hey, my appetite is back!”

Xu Yin laughed, gave him a roasted sweet potato, and asked if there was any way to buy chicken. If you don’t have chickens, hatching eggs or newly hatched chicks will do.

“You want to raise chickens? I want to raise chickens too! But where can I get chickens? How about I go to the village tomorrow and ask?”

Since he went to the village to ask, Xu Yin thought for a while and took out a small jar of ginger-yellow rock sugar.

 She has seen the candy here, which is darker in color than Tubingtang, but not as sweet as Tubingtang.

"You exchange it for chickens or eggs. You decide how much you want to exchange. No matter how much you exchange, I will share 20% of it with you."

 It's considered as errand fee for him.

Shi Fengnian was shocked: "This, this is candy?"

 “Yeah, you haven’t seen it?”

 “I’ve seen it, but I haven’t tasted it in many years.”

 Xu Yin: “…”

He broke off a small piece and gave it to him: "Try it?"

 “No, no, no! This is too expensive! It’s such a big piece, you might be able to exchange it for a chicken.”

Finally, he rubbed his index finger on the candy bar, then put it in his mouth and smashed it: "As expected of candy! It's so sweet!"

Xu Yin felt like sobbing.

Shi Fengnian hid the sugar bowl in his sleeve and walked home cautiously as if he had a piece of gold. Xu Yin heard Erlang sigh like a young adult:

“Sister-in-law, you should stop asking for dowries! My mother once said that dowries can only be taken when a woman is cornered, and they are more precious than ginseng!”

　　　…”

Having said that, Erlang and Sanmei went crazy with joy when they saw the three hens and a group of chicks brought over by Shi Fengnian the next day.

 “Wow! So many chickens, are they all ours?”

"Yes!" Shi Fengnian said cheerfully, and then said to Xu Yin, "Brother Hero, candy bars are indeed more popular than silver. Many women rushed to get them, so I picked the fattest ones and exchanged them for three. Look at the thin ones. I don’t want the thin and weak ones. The chickens are all healthy and there is nothing wrong with them. Count them, there are eighteen chickens in total.”

Xu Yin didn’t expect that such a small can of sugar could be exchanged for so many chickens.

 You can tell that a hen is a laying hen as soon as you touch it, and there may be eggs to eat tomorrow.

 She caught a hen and three chicken cubs and gave them to Shi Fengnian: "The errand fee was agreed upon."

Shi Fengnian was flattered: "No, no, no! I can't have it!" "Take it! You overfulfilled the task, you deserve it! If you don't accept it, I won't ask you for help next time if something happens."

So, Shi Fengnian carried a hen and three chicks and walked back home in vain.

 His father found out that it was a gift from Xu Yin, and beat his son: "How kind a hero is to you! You actually robbed him! You are worse than a beast!"

Shi Fengnian was in trouble and couldn't say anything: "Didn't we know each other at that time? Besides, I have sincerely regretted it. The heroic brothers have forgiven some of us. Why do you still beat me, dad?"

 “If I don’t beat you, you won’t have a long memory!”

　　　…”

Xu Yin didn't know how many chickens she gave away, which caused Shi Fengnian to be beaten by his father. She left the chickens to the two children to take care of and continued to work on opening up wasteland.

 There are a bunch of chickens at home, and Erlang and Sanmei have work to do.

 Get up early every day to pick up eggs from the chicken coop, and then send them to the wasteland to peck at grass and look for insects. The brother and sister took the opportunity to pull weeds and pick up pebbles.

Xu Yin asked them to pile the stones picked up from the wasteland behind the house so that they could use them to lay down the foundation when building the kitchen.

The brother and sister have picked up a lot of pebbles these days. I was busy until the sun got brighter, and then drove the chickens from the wasteland to the shade of the trees at the foot of the mountain, where there were many grass seeds that the chickens loved to eat.

 Drive the chickens home at night.

As a reward, Xu Yin makes them a meal of eggs every day, sometimes poached eggs, sometimes steamed egg custard, and sometimes stir-fried wild vegetables.

Shi Fengnian, Shi Feng, Chen Mancang and others would occasionally send some ingredients to her house.

Pheasants are not so good, but birds, eggs and small fish in the stream can be eaten in turn every three to five days.

When the food was served, Xu Yin noticed that the clothes of the two boys were getting shorter and shorter.

Especially Erlang, he is probably starting to lose his stripes. Long sleeves and long trousers look like shorts or shorts on him. The weather is hot right now, but how will I dress when the weather cools down?

I have to find an opportunity to go to the market and find a way to get some cloth.

 But she has been too busy recently. Less than two acres of the planned ten acres of wasteland have been cultivated. She has not had a chance to get out herbal seeds yet, so she can only plant some sweet potatoes first.

The cultivation cycle of medicinal materials is long. Don’t worry that by then the medicinal materials planted will not be there yet, and the family will run out of food. So plant some sweet potatoes and stock up on food.

The sweet potatoes brought from home have been eaten long ago, and the seeds are grown with relief grains allocated by the imperial court. Sweet potatoes, dried potatoes, and dried taro are all coarse grains.

This has disappointed many disaster victims.

Some people’s wives gave birth to babies on the road to escape from famine. The mother’s nutrition is not enough to produce milk, so a child as big as a cat has to eat coarse food with adults, which is difficult to tolerate.

Everyone was extremely looking forward to the imperial court sending out some fine grains such as rice and flour, but what they got were all coarse grains, not to mention old and moldy.

The energy that people finally felt lifted up has slumped again.

Xu Yin said to everyone: "Which of you has plenty of sweet potatoes and potatoes? Give them to me. I want to plant them. I can exchange them for rice!"

Her family has a lot of open land, and everyone didn’t think about it elsewhere.

Once he heard that whole grains could be exchanged for rice, many men came to Xu Yin's house carrying bags.

Erlang kept winking at her, extremely anxious.

It’s not like we don’t have enough food at home, why would we replace the rice with it?

Xu Yin threw a candy into his mouth soothingly and asked him to give one to his third sister.

Three sisters have been guarding the chickens, fearing that they would run away.

The wasteland is so big that it’s hard not to keep an eye on it.

 Erlang saw that she insisted on exchanging rice for coarse grains, and he was so angry that he stomped out and ran out.

 (End of this chapter)