Chapter 290 Wouldn’t this make a lot of money?
The production of yogurt is very simple. Boil the milk three or four times and then filter it into a small basin. When the temperature drops to 37 or 38 degrees, pour the purchased old yogurt as a starter, then put it in the rice cooker and keep it warm for an hour. Turn off the power and ferment it naturally for a period of time, and the milk will become delicious yogurt.
In this process, you can also add some white sugar. The precaution is that all utensils must be sterilized at high temperature to prevent bacteria from contaminating the yogurt.
Compared with pure milk, yogurt is more friendly to people with lactose intolerance. After breakfast, Lin Heng made yogurt with the remaining part of the milk.
I wanted to do it last night, but I forgot to catch cicada monkeys.
When Lin Heng was making yogurt, Xiaoxia took the corn to the yard to feed the chicks. After half a month of growth, the chicks in the yard can be raised outside. They are no longer furry but have grown some real feathers.
Unfortunately, there are only eight of the ten chicks left, and two of them died of diarrhea. The survival rate of unvaccinated chicks after birth is relatively low.
Xiaoxia cried for a long time because the two chicks died, but what surprised Lin Heng was that even though the chicks had grown a lot, she could still tell which ones had been named.
Xiulan walked in with a basket of cowpeas she had just picked and said, "The cowpeas are very beautiful now, so I picked them and soaked them in a jar."
This thing tastes average when eaten normally, but it is a must to use it to stir-fry meat after being soaked in sour water.
"You can teach me this, I always soak bad cowpeas." Lin Heng said to his wife.
Xiulan nodded happily: "No problem."
The two put the cowpeas on the table and picked them clean, then washed them and put them in the sun to dry the water before putting them in the jar for pickling.
Lin Heng bought a jar for pickling sour cowpeas a few days ago, and only half of it has been pickled now.
After finishing this work, Xiulan took a book and leaned on the armchair to read. She was pregnant and couldn't go to the mountains. She was bored at home and gradually liked reading.
At first, it was a bit difficult to read, but gradually I got used to it and immersed in it, and practiced penmanship from time to time.
Xiaoxia was playing games with Yang Qing, Lin Tao, and his brother in the yard, jumping and jumping happily.
Lin Heng was not idle. He took a knife to the backyard and killed the turtles he had caught at the foot of Taibai Mountain. He killed the one-pound turtle and kept two in the bucket, one weighing more than two pounds and the other more than three pounds, all of which were wild.
After killing the turtle, chop it into pieces and blanch it in water, then put it into a casserole and add dried mushrooms and matsutake mushrooms to stew on low heat. He also killed a small winter melon and prepared to throw it in and stew it together when it was almost done.
The trick to stewing soup is not to add salt at the beginning, and season it after it is stewed, so that the nutrients in the meat can be easily stewed out.
"Wife, the lotus flowers in the backyard are blooming." Lin Heng stewed the turtle and touched Xiulan and said.
"I want to rest, let's see the lotus flowers later." Xiulan yawned and said.
"Then eat something before going to bed." Lin Heng brought her a cold bracken root powder.
After eating, Xiulan blinked and said, "It seems that she is not so sleepy anymore. Let's go and have a look."
"Okay." Lin Heng followed her to the backyard.
He cleared some of the lotus leaves in the pond. Now he could clearly see the bottom of the water. The water was clear and transparent. There were koi playing in the water and mandarin fish catching stream groupers. At night, he could still see the giant salamander.
At this time, the sun shone on the water. Small lotus flowers bloomed above the green lotus leaves. There were pink, purple, light green, and pink purple colors. They looked graceful and elegant.
Leaning on the railing waiting for the wind to blow, you can also smell a faint fragrance.
Xiulan looked for a while and went back to sleep. Lin Heng went to see the grapes. The red grapes grafted with wild grape roots grew too lushly. The branches were more than two meters long and had five bunches of fruit. Now they have begun to bloom.
This was beyond Lin Heng's expectation. It can only be attributed to the original wild grapes' ability to provide nutrients, which made the grafted red grapes bear fruit that year. Although there were only five bunches of grapes, it was also a pleasant surprise.
The grafted Kyoho seedlings planted in the same way only grew branches of 60 to 70 centimeters, and there was no sign of bearing fruit.
After taking a look at the situation here, he put on his water shoes and took a shovel to the back mountain to shovel manure for the cows and horses. He also made a composting pool on the back mountain. After shoveling out the manure, he threw it into the composting pool, and then covered it with film paper and waited for it to decompose naturally.
There are many benefits to doing this. The biggest benefit is that the odor will be greatly reduced, and so many mosquitoes will not breed.
Of course, this place is far away from Lin Heng's backyard, and the smell cannot be transmitted at all.
He took a break today and did not go to work on Hongfeng Mountain. He shoveled the animal manure and got water to give the cows and red dates a bath, and luxuriously brushed their fur with detergent.
The remaining livestock here are red-maned horses, red dates, milk-producing cows, large yellow cattle, and a pig bought by the eldest brother's family. The rest have all been moved to Hongfeng Mountain.
Basically, they are cleaned regularly, so there is not much odor.
After bathing the cows and horses, Lin Heng glanced at the fruit trees on the back mountain and turned back to the house.
As summer came, all these fruit trees began to grow wildly. The fertile soil on the back mountain plus the cow and sheep manure Lin Heng gave them made them full of growth power, and they were much more lush than the fruit trees planted in the field.
And the original tree stumps were all wrapped in black film paper by Lin Heng and killed.
He thought that these fruit trees could bear a small amount of fruit next year. Unlike the orchard here, which is just for his own people to eat, the earlier the fruit is, the earlier it can be eaten. It doesn't matter if the trunks are not raised, it's just two more years.
After returning to the house, he washed his face to cool down, then looked at the turtle soup in the casserole. When he opened it, he could smell the rich fragrance.
"You can eat it when Xiulan wakes up." Lin Heng nodded and added some water.
"Dad, we want to drink sugar water." Xiaoxia and her friends were tired from playing, and they lay on the mat in the main room to play with plasticine. When she saw Lin Heng coming, she acted like a spoiled child.
"Okay, I'll pour you honey water." Lin Heng said with a smile.
He took a small bowl and poured the cold tea made of honeysuckle, prunella vulgaris, and houttuynia cordata, then added a lot of honey, and after cooling and filtering, it became a sweet cold tea.
"Thank you, uncle (second father)!"
When several children took the cold tea to drink, they made a sizzling sound. That was the sound of water absorbing through the teeth. He also liked it when he was a child.
At one o'clock in the afternoon, Lin Heng started to make lunch. It was hot, so he prepared to make cold noodles. The noodle whistle and cucumber shreds were prepared first. After the water boiled, he went to call Xiulan to get up.
"Is the meal ready?" Xiulan washed her face and walked into the kitchen in surprise.
"You have turtle and winter melon soup. It's all dried for you. Eat this after you finish eating." Lin Heng said with a smile.
"Okay." Xiulan blinked, smiled and walked over to smell the soup.
"It smells so good." She was attracted by just one sniff. The rich aroma of winter melon and mushrooms made her drool.
Lin Heng smiled and said, "Then eat quickly. The temperature is probably just right now."
Xiulan scooped a bowl out to share with Xiaoxia. Lin Heng was preparing to eat it. Father Lin pushed open the door and walked in from outside, holding a basin in his hand: "I brought you something good."
"Grandpa, what is delicious? Is it cranberry?" Xiaoxia ran over excitedly and hugged her grandfather's thigh.
Father Lin touched her head and shook his head and said, "There are no raspberries now. I will pick other delicious things for you another day. What I brought here is the fairy tofu."
"Did my mother make it?" Lin Heng asked curiously. He and Xiulan had not had time to pick the fairy leaves this year, but he didn't expect that his father's side would eat them all.
"Yes, your mom made it this morning." Father Lin nodded with a smile.
"That's perfect, I'll make cold noodles, dad, sit down and eat together." Lin Heng nodded and said.
"Okay." Father Lin sat down with a smile.
Lin Heng mixed the fairy tofu with cold sauce, added a cold cucumber, and scooped some pickled bamboo shoots. Then put the noodles into the pot and cook them, then scooped them out to make cold noodles.
Although it is dried noodles, it tastes good when mixed with cold sauce, especially with garlic, patchouli and chili.
Lin Heng poured a glass of rice wine for his father, and the two ate and drank at the same time. The fairy tofu is smooth and refreshing, cool in nature with a slight bitter taste, and it tastes rich after being mixed with garlic, chili, soy sauce and aged vinegar. It is a pleasure to eat it in the hot summer.
However, this kind of thing not only requires skills to make, but also requires skills to mix it cold, otherwise it will taste a bit bland.
"I feel that your mixing is better, your mom's is a bit too bland." Father Lin took a bite and said with a smile.
"Then I'll go over and teach my mom how to mix it next time." Lin Heng said with a smile.
Father Lin nodded, drank a sip of rice wine and continued: "I asked someone to look for a good day this morning. They said that May 29th of the lunar calendar, which is June 28th of the solar calendar, is a good day for raising livestock."
"Five days later, then we won't build a composting pool for the time being, and we'll do it after we buy cattle and sheep." Lin Heng thought for a while and said.
This time is a bit short, and we are going to put shrimp in two days. The composting pool must be built after the foundation is dug and leveled, and it can't be done by ourselves in one or two days.
"That's fine." Father Lin nodded, and then asked, "Are you going to put shrimp fry these two days?"
"Yes, you can put shrimp fry after testing the water these two days." Lin Heng nodded.
"That's fine, I'm also going to go to the mountain to dig herbs, so I won't go these two days." Father Lin said.
After lunch, Lin Heng and his father went to Hongfeng Mountain to test the water. The so-called water test is also very simple, just use a bucket to get some pond water, and then throw the shrimp seedlings in to raise them for one or two days. If there is no problem, the shrimp seedlings can be released on a large scale.
After staying here for a while, Lin Heng returned to the house and looked at the yogurt made in the rice cooker.
He tasted it and shouted: "Xiu Lan, the yogurt is successful, you can come and eat it."
"I'm here, Daddy!!" Xiaoxia was the first to run over, tiptoeing like a little greedy cat.
Lin Heng fed her a bite, and she immediately shook her head happily, with big eyes curved.
"Dad, I want more!" She opened her mouth again.
"Take it and eat it yourself." Lin Heng gave her some, and gave the rest to Xiu Lan.
Xiu Lan tasted it and smiled: "It's delicious, it tastes very good."
"I'll make you one made with red date juice in a few days, and it tastes better." Lin Heng said with a smile, he especially liked the yogurt with red date flavor.
Xiulan smiled and said, "Apricots are almost ripe, you can make one that tastes like apricots first."
"No problem." Lin Heng waved his hand and asked, "I want to catch scorpions tonight, will you come?"
Xiulan nodded, "Sure, but I don't know how to catch them."
"That's okay, I'll teach you, I'll make the tools first." Lin Heng said, patting his chest.
He turned around and found a bamboo and cut it into a 30-centimeter-long bamboo strip that was wide in the middle and narrow at both ends. Then he used fire to roast it from the middle and bend it to make a clamp that can automatically rebound. It is better for catching scorpions than tweezers.
For shoes, use a plastic bottle, install a portable rope, and open a small hole on the top of the bottle that is just enough to hold the scorpion.
After finishing it, put it aside and wait for Caiyun to finish school and ask her to come over and help take care of Xiaoxia for a while.
After learning about the situation, Caiyun was shocked and said: "Second brother, you are taking your sister-in-law to catch scorpions when she is pregnant. If my mother finds out, I won't beat you to death."
Xiulan smiled and said, "My belly hasn't gotten bigger yet. I just walked around, nothing much."
"Okay, second brother, take good care of your sister-in-law." Caiyun warned her again. She couldn't stop her sister-in-law if she wanted to go.
Lin Heng waved her hand and said she didn't need to worry about this. After getting some food and eating, it was already dark. He said something to his sister and took Xiulan to catch scorpions.
When she reached the road, Xiulan asked out of curiosity: "Why don't we go up the mountain?"
Lin Heng explained with a smile: "Scorpions like that kind of stone ridge, but there aren't many in the forest. There are most of them in the gaps between the stone ridges of the terraces we built."
"Is that so?" Xiulan was a little curious.
They turned a corner along the road and left the center of the village before starting to search. Lin Heng turned on the ultraviolet light and shined a light on the stone ridge inside the road, and immediately saw several of them.
"So many! Wouldn't that make a fortune!" Xiulan exclaimed. Scorpions are not cheap. The price of live ones is the same as Ganoderma lucidum, thirty or forty yuan a pound.
It's just that this thing is too difficult to catch and difficult to catch in large quantities, so not many people do it. But it's different with the ultraviolet light. You can see it with just a light. It's so easy to catch.
"That's for sure, but I mainly catch them to eat." Lin Heng said with a smile. He wanted to catch scorpions last year, but unfortunately there was no ultraviolet lamp available in Taibai City.
This year I went to Ancheng and bought some, but he no longer lacked the money.
After saying this, Lin Heng picked up the scorpion with bamboo tweezers and threw it into a plastic bottle. They couldn't climb out of the smooth bottle.
"Let's take a look first. It looks like there are quite a few." Xiulan said.
She used a flashlight to look at the road, and Lin Heng used an ultraviolet light to look for scorpions. There was no need to go anywhere else. There were a lot of them on the stone walls on the road, and you could see a lot of them within a few steps.
After a while, Xiulan also learned how to catch it, and started catching it with the ultraviolet lamp.
The two of them started from seven o'clock and unknowingly caught it until ten o'clock. They grabbed it on the road and went to the stone ridge beside the terrace.
There are more stone ridges on the terraces than inside the roads. These stone ridges are full of small holes, which are perfect for scorpions to hide.
"Go back." At ten o'clock, Lin Heng looked at Xiulan and said, he was not tired but he was afraid that Xiulan would be.
Xiulan nodded, looked at a large number of light yellow scorpions in the bottle and said happily: "I guess I caught another half a catty."
"Almost." Lin Heng nodded. No one had ever caught the scorpions on the mountain. There were so many of them that they were easy to catch.
When they got home, Caiyun and Xiaoxia ran over as soon as they knocked on the door.
"Second brother and second sister-in-law, you are finally back. I thought you were lost." Caiyun said, looking at the two of them.
Xiaoxia ignored them and rushed towards the two of them. Lin Heng was so frightened that he quickly raised the plastic bottle. It would be terrible if it knocked her over.
"I was fascinated by it, but I didn't gain much today." Lin Heng said with a smile.
"Yes, it can be sold for a lot of money." Xiulan also said.
Back in the house, Lin Heng found a plastic bucket and poured the scorpions into it. Caiyun looked at the light yellow scorpions and couldn't help being shocked and said: "There are so many, how did you catch them?"
"It's very simple!" Xiulan turned on the ultraviolet light and demonstrated it, and Caiyun immediately understood.
Caiyun exclaimed: "No wonder we can catch so many, they can really be sold for a lot of money."
Lin Heng took it to the scale and weighed it. The net weight was eight taels.
Xiulan shook Lin Heng's arm and said in surprise: "We can definitely catch it and sell it. Even if we catch half a catty in one night, it will cost more than 20 yuan."
Lin Heng patted her: "Don't think about it for now, just grab it and play with it."
Xiulan defended: "If I don't arrest you, you can let dad and the others arrest you. They will definitely be happy, and most likely they will stay up all night long."
Caiyun also said: "Yes, second brother, if we really can catch so many every day, it will definitely be worthwhile. I want to catch them too."
"Okay, okay, let me find out where to collect it first," Lin Heng said.
Because it is difficult to catch scorpions in small quantities, the buying station does not accept them. You have to find a traditional Chinese medicine center or other channels and ask for them before catching them. Otherwise, if you catch them and cannot sell them, you will have to eat them yourself.
After chatting for a while, Lin Heng put the scorpion out of Xiaoxia's reach, and then mixed a cucumber, spinach, lettuce mixed cold dish as a late night snack.
I also boiled the unfinished milk twice in the morning, then added white sugar and old yogurt and put it in the rice cooker to make yogurt, so that I would have enough to eat when I woke up tomorrow morning.
Early the next morning, Lin Heng got up early and made breakfast. Caiyun Zhanguang ate the yogurt, and then brought a jar to share with his classmates.
After eating breakfast, Lin Heng began to handle the scorpions. Xiulan was surprised: "Did you really eat them?"
"It's the same as the cicada monkey, very good." Lin Heng said with a smile. To deal with the scorpion, you only need to cut off the tail.
Lin Heng added: "But pregnant women can't eat this, so you can only watch."
"I won't eat." Xiulan shook her head, indicating that she was not interested in this at all.
Lin Heng just clamped the scorpion and cut off the tail hook, and there was no need to deal with anything else.
In fact, the tail hook does not need to be cut, as high temperatures will make the scorpion venom inactive. He cut it out of habit, and the cut tail hooks can be soaked in wine. Scorpion venom has the effect of treating rheumatism. The soaked wine can be used to massage rheumatism areas and has a good effect.
After cutting the tail hook, scald the scorpion with boiling water and clean it. Heat oil in a pan and fry it. After frying it again, sprinkle it with fine salt and cumin chili powder and it will be delicious.
Lin Heng took it out and ate one first. It was crispy and fragrant in his mouth. He chewed it and smelled the protein aroma. He took one and looked at Xiulan and said, "You can eat one. It tastes better than the cicada monkey."
"Forget it, I'm scared." Xiulan was still a little scared of this thing.
"Dad, I dare to eat it." Xiaoxia was like a newborn calf who was not afraid of tigers. She ran over and took one from the plate and put it in her mouth, chewing it with a crunch.