Chapter 74: A female mate chooses to farm (23)

Yan Kejin raised his eyebrows when he heard his subordinates report the words and deeds of the exiled prisoners.

 The princess sent melons once, and there was such an unexpected gain?

He has read through the lives of those exiles, and found that many of them had talents, aspirations, and counselors that were qualified for the job.

It can be exiled for three thousand miles, survived, losing confidence in life, and now it has been aroused by a sliced ​​melon.

 It seems that the princess must be well rewarded.

In that compartment, Xu Yin asked someone to bring back a basket of melons from the palace, distributed a few to the servants as welfare, and stored the rest in the cellar to eat slowly.

 She also asked Uncle Wang to cut two pieces for the tenant farmers to taste, but found that there were not many, and the total was only half an acre of land. If it tastes good, keep some seeds and plant more next year.

 Uncle Wang responded one by one.

 The seeds brought by the princess are not available locally. They are not that stupid. They are greedy for every bite and eat the seeds of high-yielding and high-quality products.

 When all the melons and fruits were harvested, Wang Bo came to ask Xu Yin's opinion on what to plant next.

“Don’t worry, plowing and fertilizing the fields will take time. During this period, I will think about it and decide what to plant. I will send someone to tell you.”

Even if she grows another season of melons, she doesn’t plan to plant all kinds of melons like before. Watermelon and melon are good, you can keep them. Also, ask Yan Kejin what kind of melon he likes to eat.

However, before Yan Kejin could choose the fruits he liked, a team led by the patriarch’s son from Chenjiazhuang at the foot of the strange mountain arrived pushing a cart of sugar cane.

 At the end of spring plowing, they formed a team and went into the mountains to search for sugar cane with the sugar cane map left by the nobleman.

The miasma in the mountains was so heavy that they did not dare to stay there for a long time. Every time they went there, they squeezed the time and tried their best to enter the deep forest when the miasma was at its weakest and exit as soon as the miasma started to spread.

 Fortunately, the nobleman left them a few boxes of mosquito repellent incense (mosquito incense) and lit a torch, but nothing happened.

 It’s just that the sweet potatoes that the nobles left for them to plant on the hillsides and at the foot of the mountains are growing very well, but the sugar cane has never been found.

All they can repay is a handful of effort, but now they can't even find a crop, which inevitably makes them a little discouraged.

 On this day, after finishing the morning's farm work, we organized the team to go up the mountain as usual.

It felt like it was going to rain, and the miasma in the mountains was heavier than usual. For safety reasons, the group did not go deeper. Instead, they searched carefully along the valley that they had searched two months ago and picked up some fungi.

 Suddenly, someone shouted: "Look at that! Is that what the noble man is looking for?"

The patriarch's son looked up and saw that against the cliff of the valley, a cluster of green and yellow plants stood proudly, five meters high with roots and heads.

 Because there are weeds and shrubs as tall as a human being growing near it, if you don’t look carefully, you might think it is bamboo.

Grown towards the sun, there is a gurgling clear spring nearby. When I cut it down, I found that the flesh was white. When I tasted it again, it was sweet and juicy. I guess it was the sugar cane that the noble man said.

After the patriarch's son told the story of the discovery of sugar cane, he felt annoyed: "If we had been more careful, we should have discovered it two months ago. Why did it take until now to deliver it to the noble man?"

Xu Yin smiled and shook her head: "Two months ago, maybe they were still green seedlings. They were obscured by shrubs and weeds and were difficult to detect. It was normal."

She also didn't expect that the sugar cane at this time was actually green and yellow, and the plant was five meters high. At first glance, it did look like bamboo, which was different from what she painted.

  No wonder the people sent out by the prince have not found sugar cane so far. It seems that they have been misled by her and fell into a fixed mindset.

 With sugarcane, the experimental fields have new planting content.

 The patriarch’s son brought a cart full of sugar cane.

 With real objects for comparison, it will be much faster to find them.

 In addition to the clump in the valley, they found several more clumps from other places before going down the mountain.

 Xu Yin’s original words were to let them try to see if they found it, and if they found it, they would pull it over and she would harvest it.

 But the patriarch thought for a while and asked his son to send him over first.

I came here to bring some new mountain products in the spring to the noble lady, and thanked her for the grain seeds and seasonings she left behind at that time, which helped them survive the difficult days of drought. Secondly, I want the noble lady to see if what she found is the sugar cane she wanted. What if you find the wrong one? If you plant it, it will be white.

Xu Yin readily accepted the cart of sugarcane and gave the patriarch's son ten pieces of silver.

Of course a cart of sugar cane is not that expensive, and it also includes the discovery prize.

The patriarch’s son refused to harvest anything at first, so Xu Yin said it was a deposit for the next batch of sugar cane, so that they could plant it without worries. It didn’t matter if they mobilized more people to plant it. She would harvest as much as they planted.

The patriarch’s son accepted it with great gratitude.

Xu Yin didn’t pay for the mountain goods that were delivered, but he gave corresponding gifts in return.

 I know what is most lacking in Chenjiazhuang. Apart from food, they are cloth and seasonings.

She asked her nanny to lead the people to Chunlan to collect the money, and then called a carriage to take them back.

 After the patriarch’s son and his party left, Xu Yin began to process the sugar cane.

The heads were left open for seedlings, and two sugarcane stems without insect holes were picked out, peeled and cut into small sections for everyone to taste.

 “How does it taste?” Xu Yin asked with a smile.

 Chunlan: “Sweet as honey!”

Xia Zhu: "It tastes better than honey! It's sweet but not greasy, and it doesn't stick to your teeth."

Qiu Shuang: “I didn’t expect that this thing doesn’t look good but tastes so good!”

Dongxue: "It's delicious! It's so delicious! I really want to take a bite every day."

Mammy covered her loose teeth and wrinkled her old face: "Oh! It's just a bit troublesome. People with bad teeth may not be so lucky."

Xu Yin laughed loudly.

Seeing each of the maids holding a piece of sugar cane and chewing it happily, Xu Yin smiled and did not say that the purpose of sugar cane is not just to hold it as fruit and chew it.

 When brown sugar and white sugar are produced, give them a big surprise.

Xu Yin asked people to peel all the sugar cane on the cart and cut off the heads and roots.

 Keep the head and plant it back in the experimental field.

 The roots were dried and used as firewood.

 The sugarcane peels are kept first and will be sent to the farm together with the sugarcane bagasse for retting.

 Cut the sugarcane meat into small pieces and use a stone grinder to squeeze the juice.

 Strain the squeezed juice through gauze, and then boil it over a stove fire.

 It needs to be simmered over low heat for several hours, stirring constantly to allow the water to slowly evaporate.

As the concentration of sugar increases, the color of the syrup becomes darker and darker until you can smell a slight caramel smell, indicating that it is ready.

Xu Yin asked people to immediately remove the heat and pour it into the mold to cool. After solidification, the lumpy coarse sugar became the ancient brown sugar brick.

The ready-made mold is used by the imperial chef to make pastries and snacks. The mold mouth is a bit large, so it is okay to borrow it for temporary use.

However, Xu Yin thought that if he opened a workshop to make sugar in the future, the sugar would be sold to various places in Nanman and even the Central Plains, so such a large model would not be suitable.

 Fortunately, there is a carpenter in the house. Usually there is not much carpentry work, so I let the old carpenter and a few clever boys carve the mold together. After the work is completed, he will be rewarded with silver.

 (End of this chapter)