80s Transmigration: The Young Widow's Hustle to Riches

Chapter 405 - 403: Buying Honey

"Mom, liking good food isn’t a flaw." Lin Lan smiled cheekily at her. "As the saying goes, life is all about food and clothes. We’re just ordinary people. We work so hard to earn money—isn’t it all so our family can eat and dress well?"

Wu Shufen looked at her with feigned annoyance. "You and your clever arguments."

Lin Lan coated the drained gardenia flowers with dry sweet potato starch, then dipped the coated flowers into the prepared batter, covering them completely.

She poured rapeseed oil into the wok and heated it until it was very hot. She dropped the battered gardenia flowers into the oil and fried them until golden brown, then lifted them out onto a steaming rack to drain the excess oil. The crispy, fragrant, and tender gardenia flowers were ready.

Wu Shufang watched and said with admiration, "There are so many gardenia flowers in the mountains, but we only ever picked them to dye homespun cloth. I had no idea you could fry them and eat them."

Wu Shufen said, "Even if we knew, we wouldn’t have been willing to. Just look at how much oil it uses!"

The three women brought the dishes to the table. Seeing this, the few children jumping rope in the courtyard dropped their ropes and ran to wash their hands.

Lin Changyou took a wine jug from his shoulder bag. "Come on, we don’t have anything to do tomorrow. Let’s have a good drink."

Old Li smiled and nodded. "Alright, let’s have a drink!"

Little Douzi said to Lin Changyou, "Grandpa, the doctor said Grandpa can’t drink alcohol."

Old Li winked at Little Douzi, then glanced guiltily at Li Xiangyang. "The doctor said Grandpa can have one small cup."

Little Douzi corrected him loudly, "Not one small cup per meal, one small cup per day!"

"Sigh!" Old Li sighed. "Tell me, how can a kid have such a good memory!"

Everyone looked at the old man and the little boy and burst out laughing.

Lin Changyou handed the wine jug to Li Xiangyang and said to Old Li with a smile, "If the doctor says to drink less, then you should drink less. It’s always right to listen to the doctor."

Li Xiangyang poured a small cup of wine and placed it in front of him. "See? Even Little Douzi remembers what the doctor said. No more sneaking drinks."

Old Li nodded with an apologetic smile. "Alright, no more sneaking drinks."

Lin Jun looked at the plate of mixed wild mushrooms and said with a smile, "Auntie, are these the mushrooms you foraged in the mountains?"

"Mhm! Just enough for one stir-fried dish." Lin Lan pointed to the fried gardenia flowers and said to everyone, "Try these. I just made them today."

Lin Jun nodded. "They look really nice. Let me try one and see if they’re any good."

Little Douzi picked one up and took a big bite. CRUNCH. "Everything my mom makes is delicious."

After everyone tried them, they all agreed they tasted great.

Lin Lan picked up some of the mixed mushrooms to taste. Perhaps because she had foraged them herself, she thought they tasted even better than the ones bought from the market.

There was also the mushroom stew made with a pullet, and she thought its texture was even better than when stewed with an old duck.

After the meal, Lin Lan and Wu Shufen went to wash the bowls and scrub the pot.

Zhou Shitou was quiet and sullen. So, Li Xiangyang went out with Lin Changyou and Old Li, taking the few children who had eaten themselves into a stupor, for a walk to aid their digestion.

A boy of about ten, dressed in clothes covered in patches upon patches, walked toward them carrying a bucket.

Li Xiangyang glanced at him and said quietly to Lin Changyou, "Dad, it looks like that boy is looking for you."

Lin Changyou nodded. "His name is Lin Shan. His father, Lin Jianguo, is from our clan. Lin Jianguo is a good man, just has a bit of a disability. I heard he fell while gathering honey in the mountains and broke his leg."

"He probably heard I was back and sent the boy to ask if I wanted to buy any honey. The honey I used to buy for Little Lan was from his family."

Lin Shan’s family was one of the most impoverished households in the Shilian Brigade. Lin Shan’s mother had her brain damaged by a fever when she was a child, leaving her with the intelligence of a young kid.

Because his father had six fingers, he couldn’t find a wife even in his thirties. As a last resort, he married Lin Shan’s mother. The good thing was that both of their children were very bright.

Lin Shan’s father had once studied for a while with a beekeeper. He had captured some wild bees and raised them in the forest, selling the honey to supplement their family’s income. Wild honey fetched a better price, so sometimes he would also go into the mountains to find wild honey to sell.

The boy had been sensible from a young age. When his father went into the mountains to tend to the bees, he had to take care of his mentally disabled mother and his younger brother at home.

After hearing this, Old Li sighed. "Sigh! It’s so hard for a family to have a good life without a capable woman."

Lin Jun ran up to him. Seeing the golden honey in the bucket and smelling the rich, sweet fragrance that wafted from it, he swallowed hard. He looked at the two large, red, swollen lumps on Lin Shan’s face from wild bee stings and said, "Brother Shan, did you go looking for wild bees with your dad again?"

Lin Shan nodded, then shook his head and said shyly, "My dad didn’t go. I went by myself. I wanted to ask if your grandpa would buy some honey."

Little Douzi and the other kids ran over and gathered around the bucket, looking at the honey inside. "It smells so good!"

Lin Gang said, "This is wild honey. It’s more fragrant than honey from domesticated bees."

"I’ll ask for you!" Lin Jun turned his head and called out to Lin Changyou, "Grandpa, Brother Shan is asking if you want to buy wild honey."

Lin Shan watched him nervously, worried that if he said no, he would have to take it all the way to Dashiqiao.

Lin Changyou smiled and nodded. "Yes, I’ll buy it. I was planning on finding your dad to buy some anyway!" He paused, then asked, "Little Shan, I heard your dad hurt his leg. Is he doing any better?"

Seeing that he agreed to buy it, Lin Shan’s expression relaxed a little. "Much better. He can get out of bed and walk now."

"Good, it’s good that he can walk." Lin Changyou looked at him. "I brought my steelyard scale to the city. Come home with me, and I’ll find a scale to weigh it."

Lin Shan nodded. "Mhm!"

Li Xiangyang helped carry the honey, and the group turned to walk back.

The sweet scent of honey wafted from the bucket in waves. The children sniffed the air. "It smells so good, like flowers!"

Lin Shan glanced at them. "I just got it from the mountains a little while ago. Wild honey’s fragrance never fades, no matter how long you keep it."

Old Li looked at the welts on his face. "How did you get stung so badly? Weren’t you wearing a beekeeper’s hat?"

Lin Shan said shyly, "My dad’s hat is a little too big for me. I didn’t tie it tight enough, and the wild bees got inside."

Only then did everyone notice that the back of his neck was also red and swollen.

Lin Changyou frowned. "Why is it so swollen? Did you pull out the stingers?"

Lin Shan scratched his head in embarrassment. "I get stung by wild bees so often I’m not afraid of them anymore. Every time, my dad pulls out the stingers for me and puts some herbal medicine on it. It’s fine after a couple of days."

Lin Changyou nodded. "The wildflowers in the mountains, the eucalyptus flowers, and the locust tree flowers have all bloomed recently. Your family’s native bees should be producing honey by now, right?"

His family raised native bees that had been domesticated from wild ones found in the mountains. The honey from native bees has a purer taste and is more nutritious than other types of honey.

Lin Shan: "Mhm! My dad’s leg is injured, so he hasn’t had a chance to take it to town to sell yet!"

Li Xiangyang picked up the conversation, "Little Shan, after we weigh this honey, how about you go back home, bring all the honey you have, and sell it to us?"

"Really?" Lin Shan looked at him, pleasantly surprised. "There are eighty or ninety jin. You want all of it?" His family raised more than ten hives of native bees. He had already carried some of the harvested honey on his back to Dashiqiao and sold it, but the rest he could only sell off slowly.

Li Xiangyang nodded. "All of it. I’ll take all the wild honey you gathered and all the honey your family raised."