The fight for water has been settled for the time being, but the weather is still hot, with clear skies, light white clouds, and no sign of rain.
The faces of the villagers are still full of sadness, because they know that if it doesn't rain, there will definitely be a reduction in production this year.
From a nationwide perspective, there is no shortage of food now. As long as you are willing to spend money, you can buy rice and vegetables.
But for people in the village, money is very precious. Therefore, as soon as Gao Mingcheng came back from the county, the man who had been hired to cut down the trees came to ask Gao Mingcheng if he could continue cutting down the trees.
They desperately want to make money.
Gao Mingcheng naturally agreed and let them start working.
Three hundred acres of mountain is not a big one, but it will take a lot of effort to sort it out.
Cutting down the tree is only the first step. Next, you have to dig out the tree roots from the soil, otherwise you won't be able to plant fruit trees.
After these tree roots are dried, they can also be used to make fires, and one root can burn for a long time, making it a favorite fuel for many people.
In addition to the workers who were cutting down the trees, other villagers also came up to ask Gao Mingcheng if he could collect medicinal materials.
Different medicinal materials have different harvesting times. It is now the end of August, and the Poria cocos and Ganoderma lucidum in the mountains can be harvested. As for the yellow gardenia and Hedyotis diffusa, this has to wait.
These two medicinal materials can only be harvested from September to October. After harvesting, Hedyotis diffusa only needs to remove impurities and soil and then dry it in the sun. Yellow gardenia is more troublesome. It needs to be steamed and dried, and then dried.
Gao Mingcheng let the word go, saying that he could collect it, and asked everyone to just go into the mountains to collect herbs. He could even tell relatives and friends that he could collect goods from several nearby villages.
There is no need to carry medicinal materials to squeeze into the train this year. With Xiao Jinfeng's truck, the more goods, the better.
After Gao Mingcheng arrived, the women and children in the village got busy first. As for the men, some of them were cutting down trees for Gao Mingcheng, and some of them were doing work in their own fields.
In fact, women are better at collecting herbs. They are more careful and tenacious.
Gao Mingcheng also went into the mountains to collect herbs. Just like last year, he went straight to the mountains to collect herbs. As for the herbs at the foot of the mountain, he gave them to the villagers.
He brought his digging tools and two bags, one for Ganoderma lucidum and one for Poria cocos.
When the body of Ganoderma lucidum no longer increases in size, changes in color from light yellow to reddish brown, the cap and stipe are the same color, changes from soft to hard, and spore powder is ejected, it indicates that the body of the Ganoderma lucidum is mature and ready for harvesting.
Ganoderma lucidum is also a kind of fungus with no root system. You can break it off with your hands. This is what Gao Mingcheng did last year.
But later at the medicine fair, he relied on his sharp tongue to make friends with some people, and learned from their mouths that when harvesting Ganoderma lucidum, you need to use a sharp knife to cut the Ganoderma lucidum from the base of the stipe!
Because by doing this, you can leave 0.5 cm to 1 cm of the pedicle, allowing the incision to heal slowly, and then form the cap primordium, which will then grow into a new fruiting body. Depending on the volume of the growing wood, it can be harvested continuously for 2 days -3 years.
After learning this, Gao Mingcheng felt regretful that he had made a mistake!
This year he brought a knife and scanned the forest with his eyes. He quickly found the place where Ganoderma lucidum grew. As long as it was mature Ganoderma lucidum, he would cut it off with one knife.
Ganoderma lucidum is an annual, and it is useless to keep it longer because it will eventually become lignified and lose its medicinal properties.
He often walks around in the mountains and has also specifically searched for the growth points of Ganoderma lucidum and Poria cocos, so now he only needs to go to the places he remembered before to gain something.
At this time, the Ganoderma lucidum is basically mature, but the same cannot be said for the Poria cocos.
First of all, the Poria cocos he planted must not be mature yet. He planted it in May and it usually takes about ten months to grow. Then this batch of Poria cocos can be harvested next spring.
As for wild Poria cocos, you need to observe whether it is mature. Poria cocos can be harvested when its skin is yellow-brown. If the skin is yellow-white, it is not mature. If it is black, it means it is over-ripe.
Harvesting wild Poria cocos is more complicated because they are better hidden.
At this time, you need to observe the growth status of the pine trees and the ground conditions around the tree stumps in the pine forest. After finding the growth point of the Poria cocos, use an iron cone-shaped probe to probe, search and dig.
Insert an iron cone probe into the ground and feel for lumps at a depth of 10-20 cm. When you pull it out, you will see white Poria cocos powder, then you can dig and harvest it.
As the saying goes, if a worker wants to do his job well, he must first sharpen his tools. After Gao Mingcheng learned this method, he asked a blacksmith to make an iron awl tool, and now it is quite easy to use.
He brought a special small hoe, which can also be called a medicine hoe, which is easy to carry and dig. With this small hoe, he quickly dug out a few Poria cocos, which looked like black lumps.
This is fresh Poria cocos. After that, it has to undergo a series of processing and processing to make dried Poria cocos into lumps. This is the finished product.
Wild Poria cocos is smaller in size and has firm flesh, while artificially grown ones are larger and have less firm flesh. In the market, the price of wild Poria cocos is higher than that of artificially grown ones.
Gao Mingcheng walked and dug all the way. It didn't take long for the bag containing Poria cocos to be filled first, while the bag containing Ganoderma lucidum was only half a bag, which looked light and fluffy.
Hmm, it looks like I’ll have to bring more bags next time, he can afford it anyway!
After running all the way down the mountain, after returning home, I first poured the Ganoderma lucidum into a bamboo sieve to dry. This is easy to handle. After removing the rotten wood and soil, you can dry it in the sun.
Poria cocos is much more complicated. There are two ways to prepare it, one is raw and the other is cooked.
Before drying, you need to wash the Poria cocos, and then pile them in a sheltered place indoors. Cover them tightly with straw or sacks to allow them to sweat and release moisture. Then spread them out to dry and then pile them up repeatedly until the skin shrinks and turns brown. Use a knife to peel off the black skin on the outside, choose a sunny day, cut the Poria cocos into small pieces, and spread the cut white and red pieces on a bamboo sieve to dry in the sun.
Cooking and drying involves cutting off the skin of fresh Poria cocos, placing it in a steamer, steaming it through water, then cutting it into slices with a knife, then into strips, and finally into cubes, and then drying in the sun.
For these two methods, the general dryness rate is about 50%, that is, one pound of fresh product can get half a pound of dry product. The quality of the product should be enough to dry, remove the skin, and form into square pieces with uniform thickness. The white ones are high quality.
But when cutting, there are always some unshaped corners. In order to sell at a higher price, it is best to dry these parts separately. Then you can sell them at a lower price, or you can keep them for your own consumption.
Poria cocos is a medicinal material with mild properties that can be eaten every day. It has the effect of diluting water, expelling dampness, strengthening the spleen and calming the nerves, and is suitable for most people to take.
Rather than sell it at a lower price, Gao Mingcheng prefers to keep it for his own use.
As for the processing method of Poria cocos, Gao Mingcheng chose to dry it raw.
Although raw drying is time-consuming, it is actually more convenient if the amount is large.
Because the Poria cocos must be steamed before it is cooked, but once the quantity is large, the Poria cocos must be steamed every day. The family has firewood, but it is not a friendly thing to make a fire on a hot day.
After disposing of the Poria cocos in the bag, he took a few more bags and entered the mountains again.
Relying on his strong physical fitness, he enters the mountains just like searching for objects. As long as he is willing to spend time and energy, he can bring out the treasures in the mountains bit by bit.
There are many masson pine and red pine in the mountains, and Poria cocos and Ganoderma lucidum both like to grow in this kind of forest.
In the next few days, according to Gao Mingcheng's plan, he searched through the mountains and forests, and gained rich harvests every day.
When he was busy in the mountains, Duomei contracted the work in the family's fields. If someone came to sell goods, she would also inspect and receive the goods.
After the villagers got busy, they saw the hope of making money, so even if there was a drought, the food production in the fields would decrease, and their sadness would gradually disappear.
After the news about Gao Mingcheng's collection of medicinal materials spread, villagers from other villages also went to the mountains to collect medicinal materials. Last year, the people in these villages were quite envious of the people in Gaojia Village. Now it is their turn to sell medicine.
On this day, Gao Mingcheng came down from the mountain carrying two large bags of Poria cocos, and at a glance he saw several plastic bags piled in the corner.
These are the medicinal materials received these days.
Many beauties are turning over the dried Ganoderma lucidum in front of the bamboo sieve. This batch of Ganoderma lucidum has been dried very well and can be packed in bags.
Seeing Gao Mingcheng coming back, she said: "Mingcheng, the skin of the first batch of Poria cocos has shrunk and turned brown. Go and take a look to see if it can be cut into pieces tomorrow."
Gao Mingcheng responded, came to the empty room, lifted up the straw covering, and observed the Poria cocos underneath. Sure enough, it had shrunk and turned brown.
Seeing that the house was full, Gao Mingcheng couldn't help but regret it. It seemed that when he built the house, it was still too small!
His backyard is enclosed and there is still some space. He plans to build another room.
Many people would raise pigs in the backyard and build a row of pig pens, but Gao Mingcheng had no intention of raising pigs, and the cattle pens were also on the side of the kitchen, not at the back.
I had planned this in my mind, but because of the lack of water, I planned to find time to build it after next spring.
Building a house also requires a lot of water. There is still water in his well, but it cannot be abused.
Duo Mei has never dealt with Poria cocos, so Gao Mingcheng plans to stay at home tomorrow to teach Duo Mei how to handle it.
As for choosing a sunny day to cut into pieces and dry, there is no need to worry about that. It has been sunny every day recently. If it rains, the people in the village will be very happy.
"It can be cut into pieces tomorrow." Gao Mingcheng came out and said, and saw many beauties holding a small bag of cassia seeds in their hands.
Cassia seed is a commonly used medicine, which has the functions of clearing the liver, improving eyesight and laxative. It is also a species with extremely strong vitality. The seeds can still germinate after being soaked in boiling water. It is widely distributed in the provinces south of the Yangtze River, and they naturally have it here.
However, their villages are relatively small, so these cassia seeds must not be collected from the village.
Seeing Gao Mingcheng looking over, Duomei said: "This cassia seed was sent by someone from Dongjia Village. She asked me if I would accept it. I heard from her that there are many cassia seeds growing beside the village, on the roadside and in the wilderness. This kind of thing.”
Gao Mingcheng said: "This thing is easy to sell. Next time she comes back, tell her that I will harvest a lot! In addition, you can pick some seeds with full kernels and keep them. I plan to sprinkle them on the wasteland at the foot of the mountain next year and plant them myself." shipment."
Cassia seeds are easy to sell and grow, and there are a lot of open spaces in the mountains, so they can be planted in orchards.
When the fruit trees are seedlings, they are far apart from each other, leaving a large open space. You can plant a small piece of cassia in the middle to increase your income.
Please give me some votes, mainly because there were only ten recommendation votes yesterday, and I contributed four of them myself...
(End of chapter)
