An orphan girl from a farming family: Everyday farming in the mountains during natural disasters

Chapter 129 Collecting herbs in the mountains (1)

Block the pond, leaving a hole, drain water from the well into the pond, get some fish and shrimp from the stream outside, and then go to the river to catch some aquatic plants and other things.

"I hope the weather will be more normal this year and there won't be another drought."

I washed the ground lettuce repeatedly, I don’t know how many times, but it was finally clean. I poured the washing water into a wooden barrel and used it to rinse the vegetables.

Since the drought, she has developed a good habit of saving water.

It was getting dark, and sweet potato rice was cooked in a pot. The rice soup was collected and placed in the back stove, and an iron pan was placed in the front stove to fry vegetables.

Put the cleaned fish into the oil pan and fry until both sides are golden brown. Add shredded ginger and stir-fry until fragrant. Pour hot water and simmer slowly. When it is done, add a handful of newly grown Chinese cabbage.

Heat the lard in the pan until it smokes, add some scallion roots and stir-fry until fragrant, then add the ground algae and stir-fry, when it is almost cooked, add salt, fresh pine mushrooms and a spoonful of chili powder.

One dish and one soup are ready.

The fish soup is milky white and the Chinese cabbage is green, which makes people's appetite increase.

She first poured a bowl of soup, which was delicious, refreshing and especially good to drink. After finishing the bowl, she ate rice and vegetables.

The ground ear vegetable tastes smooth and tender. She personally thinks it tastes better than fried black fungus. She adds a little chili powder and it tastes spicy and goes well with rice.

There were still a lot of washed ground vegetables in the basket. After dinner, she spread them out in the large winnowing basket in the shade, and would take them out to the sun the next day to dry and preserve them.

She couldn't drink the rice soup, so she gave it to the black chickens, ducks and rabbits.

After finishing my work, I washed up early and went to bed. Before going to bed, I planned the route to find medicine tomorrow.

At present, the most important goal is to find medicinal herbs to exchange for money and go down the mountain to buy supplies. The secondary goal is to find mountain products for hunting.

From the end of last year to April this year, for several months, she stayed in the tiankeng and used the supplies she had stockpiled before. After such a long time, there was not much food left, and she had to replenish it as soon as possible, otherwise she would always feel uneasy and insecure.

Knowing that more people were going up the mountain to look for medicinal herbs, Xia Qingyue, feeling a sense of urgency, got up before dawn the next day, cooked porridge, fried two dishes, ate them hurriedly, and took her things with her to go out.

It was still dark when she came out. She and Heihei went to the place where they found raspberries last year, which was also the place where they had agreed to deliver water to the Li family.

She found a lot of medicinal herbs there last year.

She went there with the mentality of giving it a try, and the first thing she found was a large patch of mugwort. She cut it with a sickle, put it in a backpack, compacted it, and then filled another sack with it.

There are two plants of Bletilla striata next to the mugwort field. I dug them out with a shovel. The roots are used as medicine. They are quite large and have the effects of astringing, stopping bleeding, reducing swelling and promoting tissue regeneration.

The price of Bletilla striata is higher than other medicinal herbs, so she started looking for it nearby, hoping it might still be available.

After searching for more than ten minutes, I found two Bletilla striata and several licorice plants, and dug them out and put them away.

Licorice is a good medicinal material. It has the effect of alleviating the properties of drugs and often plays the role of "medicine lead" in traditional Chinese medicine compounds.

After searching the surrounding area and finding no other herbs, she took her things and walked forward, finding some plantain and yew grass here and there on the way.

When she was almost at the raspberry bush, she saw what looked like astragalus in the overgrown weeds. She used a stick to push aside the weeds and went in to take a closer look. It was indeed astragalus, but there was only one plant.

Dig it out carefully.

She had been out for two hours and had not found many herbs. She was very thirsty, so she decided to check the raspberries, but unfortunately they were still in bloom and had not produced any fruit.

We walked further away, but didn't find any medicinal herbs. Instead, we met two groups of people. Judging from their attire, they should be villagers from the foot of the mountain. They were looking for wild vegetables and medicinal herbs.

Neither side wanted to cause trouble, so they just glanced at each other and left quickly.

Since no one had set foot here, the chances of finding medicinal herbs were low, so she returned the same way and went to the pine forest in the middle and upper reaches of the stream, where she had found ginseng before.

When she reached the familiar stream, she hid the cut mugwort in the tall grass and turned into the woods.

Every time you walk a distance, you will see footprints on the forest floor. As you go deeper into the forest, the footprints gradually decrease.

As she walked and looked, she saw green everywhere, which made her eyes dazzled.

She hadn't had lunch yet. She had brought some chicken and duck eggs that she had cooked in the morning. She stopped and sat on a tree stump to rest, peeling the eggshells with her hands.

As her line of sight changed, an arc-shaped object on the tree stump diagonally opposite caught her attention.

Because the thing was growing on the other side of the tree stump, she could only see its silhouette from her angle and couldn't see it clearly.

“Is it a mushroom?”

She was so tired at the moment and didn't want to move. She peeled the eggs and gave three to Heihei, and ate two egg whites herself. While eating, she looked up at the sky to relieve the eye fatigue.

After sitting for a while, I got up and set off.

"No no no!"

Heihei ran to the tree stump and called out to Xia Qingyue.

"Oh yeah, I forgot to see what that was."

She walked closer and closer, and gradually saw its appearance clearly. "It turns out to be a tree tongue."

Tree tongue is a thing that grows on living trees or dead trees and looks like Ganoderma lucidum. People who don’t know it often mistake it for Ganoderma lucidum.

"Is there a purple tree tongue?" She became interested, walked closer, squatted down, stretched out her fingers and touched it. The lines on the purple surface were clearly visible, and there was a handle under the small umbrella-like cover.

"Hey, no, this is Ganoderma lucidum, and it's purple Ganoderma lucidum!"

Xia Qingyue was ecstatic.

She used two fingers to gently pinch off the Ganoderma lucidum that was smaller than her palm.

"Wow, that's great. Lingzhi should have been valuable in ancient times, right?"

In the previous life, as far as she knew, Ganoderma lucidum could be cultivated artificially.

But it didn’t exist in ancient times. Scarcity makes things valuable, and she thinks Ganoderma lucidum is valuable.

"Heihei, you're awesome!"

If Heihei hadn't called her, she would have left long ago.

With the joy of harvest in mind, I set out on the journey again, stopping and looking along the way, and finally arrived at the pine forest.

Last year she found Matsutake here, and this year she wanted to find more. However, after searching for a long time, she only saw some scattered chanterelles, morels and porcini, but no Matsutake.

She picked all the fungi she saw.

She walked and stopped here and there, picked up a full basket of mushrooms, and came to the place where she had found ginseng before. She did not give up and expanded the search range nearby.

Apart from finding a Panax notoginseng, two Codonopsis pilosula, and a piece of Ophiopogon japonicus, I didn't see anything else.

She dug up the patch of Ophiopogon japonicus with great effort and pulled the fruits off from under the rhizomes.

After digging, it was getting late, so she went back from the woods to the stream, which was in the middle reaches and the water was deeper.

She was so craving for the fresh river food that she rolled up her trouser legs and sleeves and went down to the stream.

She threw some sweet potato kernels prepared before leaving the sinkhole into two vegetable baskets to use as a trap to attract river shrimps and fish. There was no need to watch over them, and she went to move big stones to catch crabs.

Heihei happily ran to the downstream of the stream and floated and played in the water.

The afterglow of the setting sun shines on the earth, making the outlines of the undulating mountains in the distance seem even steeper, while also covering it and the lush greenery on the mountains with a layer of bright golden gauze.

The golden light made the stream sparkle, and the water surface moved slightly, like a mirror. Xia Qingyue's beautiful face, smiling as she caught a crab, was reflected on the water.

She caught several crabs and felt very satisfied.