After getting this improved bird gun, Gao Mingcheng's first thought was to go hunting in the mountains and try his shooting skills.
However, Grandma Xi reminded him to take the tea seeds and squeeze the oil, and there was not much lard in the house.
So Gao Mingcheng resisted his inner impulse and decided to squeeze the tea seeds for oil first.
He picked up too many tea seeds. After shelling, there were still four big bags, weighing about five to six hundred kilograms. It was impossible for him to do it with his own manpower. If he called a tractor, it would be more expensive.
So he asked someone to borrow a flatbed truck, put the tea seeds on the flatbed truck, and pushed the truck toward the town.
There is an oil pressing mill in the town, which can press rapeseed oil, soybean oil and tea seed oil.
Now is the harvest season for tea seed oil, so all that comes to squeeze is tea seed oil. Before he even got close, Gao Mingcheng smelled the strong scent of tea oil.
Outside the oil pressing mill, there is a large grinding plate. A donkey is tied to the edge of the grinding plate. The donkey's pulling power is being used to rotate and grind the oil.
To squeeze tea seed oil, the first step is to dry it 100%. This step has been accomplished at home. The second step is to put the tea oil seeds on the grinding plate and grind them into powder.
Then, grind the camellia seeds into powder, then pour it into a steamer and steam it. This process takes about an hour. After steaming, the oil can be squeezed out, and the camellia oleifera powder will be particularly soft, making it easier to squeeze out the oil.
Gao Mingcheng moved the tea seeds off the flatbed truck, placed them beside the grinding machine, and then negotiated with the owner of the oil mill.
There are two ways to charge for this oil pressing shop. The first is that the oil pressing shop leaves behind tea leaves, and you can leave directly with the tea oil.
The second is that you want the tea dried, and then give the oil press a certain amount of wages.
Gao Mingcheng had already thought about this, so he chose the second option, and the people in the oil press began to weigh the tea seeds.
Moreover, experienced oil pressing masters will also check the dryness of the tea seeds you bring. If they are not dry enough, they will not be pressed.
Because such tea seeds have a lot of water, the quality of the extracted oil is not very good and the weight is small.
There is an approximate figure for how much oil can be produced from one hundred pounds of tea seeds. If there is less oil, there will be disputes.
After weighing, you can wait for the tea seeds to be ground into powder.
During this process, Gao Mingcheng wandered around the oil pressing shop. Although this oil pressing shop looked simple and had no modern machinery, it had existed for many years.
Some people are responsible for crushing the tea seeds, some are responsible for steaming the tea seed powder, and others are responsible for filling the steamed tea seed powder into a round bamboo strips with a straw bottom to make tea oil cakes.
Don’t underestimate this step. If the thickness of the tea oil cake is uneven, it will affect the oil yield. However, an experienced master can use an iron spoon to scoop up an appropriate amount of tea seed powder for packaging based on feeling, and the packaging technique is equivalent. Familiar and fast.
After making the oil tea cake, the next step is the last step - pressing the oil!
Gao Mingcheng stood in front of the oil bed and looked at the time-honored oil bed.
The oil bed is made of a single piece of wood. This is a camphor tree that is over a hundred years old. It is the 'main engine' of the entire oil pressing mill. An oil bed 2 meters long and 0.4 meters wide is cut out in the center of the tree, and the tea oil cakes are filled in the oil bed. After the tea oil cakes are loaded, they can be pressed.
Pressing is the most labor-intensive part of the entire oil-pressing process. Because there is no machinery, the most traditional extrusion method is used. The masters drive long, short, and unevenly thick wooden stakes into the seams of the oil bed to squeeze. After a while, Thin wisps of tea oil slowly dripped down from the oil bed, and then the entire oil pressing workshop was filled with a refreshing fragrance.
Gao Mingcheng spent nearly five hours in the oil pressing workshop to squeeze all the tea seeds he brought. When doing the last step, Gao Mingcheng thought that the oil pressing master was not strong enough, so he went up to drive the wooden stakes himself. The oil bed, thanks to his efforts, at least has a few more kilograms of camellia oil!
Gao Mingcheng was proud of this.
Even the masters at the oil mill gave Gao Mingcheng a thumbs up and praised him for his strength.
After loading the camellia oil, he removed the tea leaves from the oil bed and piled them together on a flatbed truck. After paying the wages, Gao Mingcheng pushed the flatbed truck towards Gaojiacun.
These tea leaves are a good thing. They can be used as natural shampoo, and they can also be used to fertilize crops. Using this kind of fertilizer can increase fat, kill insects and sweeten crops.
It's better than ordinary manure.
Otherwise, why would the oil press be willing to keep Cha Ku? Just to sell it for money.
Since it was a good thing, Gao Mingcheng himself was willing to stay. He has cultivated two acres of land next to his new house. The family has a small population and does not raise poultry, so they are short of fertilizer for farming.
In addition to these two acres of land, he is also planning to cultivate several more acres of land. Of course, not all of this land will be used to grow vegetables, but some fruits.
Such as watermelon, melon, grape, peach, persimmon, etc.
He planned to go to the market to buy fruit seedlings after the Spring Festival, and then arrange all his favorite foods.
When Gao Mingcheng returned home, it was almost dark.
Grandma Xi was cooking in the kitchen. When she saw him coming back, she immediately asked him with concern how much tea oil he had squeezed out.
Gao Mingcheng first drank a bowl of tea, and then said: "One hundred pounds of dry tea seeds, squeezed out twenty pounds of tea oil."
The young lady sighed and said, "That's not bad. I heard someone say that from one hundred kilograms of dried tea seeds, you can only squeeze out about eighteen kilograms. If you can squeeze out twenty kilograms, that's pretty good." "
Gao Mingcheng smiled slightly. The traditional squeezing method had a relatively low oil yield. If he hadn't exerted a little force in the end, it would have been only nineteen pounds at most.
Gao Mingcheng put the camellia oil into the house, piled the tea leaves next to the wall, and then returned the flatbed truck.
After returning home, seeing that there was still some time before dinner, Gao Mingcheng simply took out a hammer and began to crush the tea leaves.
The tea leaves after the oil has been extracted are like a hard cake made of cement. Ordinary people can't break it off constantly. They need to use a hammer to break it bit by bit.
Whether it is used to wash hair or make fertilizer, it must be crushed first, otherwise it will be useless for you to use it as a big piece of hard tea drying.
In the kitchen, the sound of cooking spatulas resounded, and under the eaves, hammers hammered frequently. The two sounds interacted together, weaving into the most ordinary sounds of life.
As half a ladle of water was poured into the iron pot, making a sizzling sound, the young lady shouted: "It's time to eat!"
"Hey." Gao Mingcheng stood up and walked towards the kitchen.
Gao Zhuang was lighting the fire, and was about to take out the large firewood that had not been completely burned in the stove, bury it in the ashes below, and let it extinguish little by little.
(End of chapter)
