Shui Bingyue poured water into the vegetable basin, washed the shepherd's purse she picked, and waited for Brother Qi to come back, then mixed it with batter and made shepherd's purse pancakes.
As for the yams, I found two relatively short ones, cleaned them, inserted one end with chopsticks to fix them, peeled them off, and put them in a basin for later use.
When Xiao Qi came back from school, he saw that his sister had prepared things for him. For dinner, we cooked pheasant stewed with potatoes, fried shepherd's purse pancakes, and cooked yam porridge.
My parents and eldest brother came back from work and were very happy to see the sumptuous dinner. The family sits together to eat.
"Thank you, Xiaoqi and Bingyue. How did you get this yam?" Shui Shangqing asked the two youngsters.
Shui Bingyue pointed to the kitchen: "I dug wild vegetables with Sister Jiaojiao this afternoon. She found yam beans, so we followed the roots and dug up yams. There are many more on the kitchen floor."
"You are lucky. This is a great source of good stuff. If everyone hadn't been busy harvesting now, there wouldn't have been much good stuff left on the mountain." Liu Xuemei said with a smile.
"The wild things on the mountain are gifts from nature. Whoever digs them belongs to whoever digs them. But it's too hard to dig them up. Bingyue should not bother herself next time." Shui Jianguo gave advice.
"I'm very strong and I'm not afraid of exerting myself, but I hate having nothing to do. It's so boring to be in a daze every day. I might as well go up the mountain to find something to eat and drink."
Shui Jianguo had dinner and left by bike. After all, he had to go back to the county town to work. Liu Xuemei brought him a can of lard and two half-meter-long yams.
The eldest daughter-in-law and grandson are both in the city, and I have good things to think about them. After all, he is the first of his grandchildren.
Before Shui Bingyue went to bed, she took the ginseng wrapped in a handkerchief and went to her parents' room and handed the things in her hands to her father.
"I dug this today."
Shui Shangqing opened the veil and saw that it was a wild ginseng. Looking at the youngest daughter: "Does Li Jiaojiao know that you dug wild ginseng?"
"The two of us were relatively far away at the time, and we were both focused on digging yams. She probably didn't see it."
"What do you want to do with it? Sell it to a drug store for money, or concoct it and keep it for later use?"
"Dad, let's make it. Grandma is getting older. I will give it to her as a birthday gift next year on her birthday."
Liu Xuemei put her daughter on the kang, held her in her arms, and said with emotion: "It's hard for you to be so filial."
"Dad and brothers have already said that without grandma braving the wind and snow to deliver the baby, my mother and I don't know what would have happened. Naturally, I have to honor grandma."
Shui Shangqing nodded in agreement: "Then I'll do what you said, dad concocted it. Do you want to sleep with us today?"
"No, I'm already so old, I should sleep by myself." Shui Bingyue came out of her mother's arms, jumped off the kang, and went back to her room.
"This girl is not clingy. When she was little, she didn't like being held except when she was breastfeeding. She has grown so big in the blink of an eye." Liu Xuemei was filled with emotion.
Shui Shangqing put the ginseng and lay down on the kang: "Bingyue is good at everything, but she is too generous to her brothers. So we need to prepare more good things for her."
"Who says it's not the case. Except for the eldest brother, he went to the county seat on his own. The second and third eldest children, Bingyue, had a lot to worry about.
Speaking of the third child, I haven’t seen a letter for so long, and I don’t know what’s going on. It seems that the management is stricter than that in the second army. "
"Flying a plane is no joke, it's naturally very strict. Maybe all the time is spent on studying and training. Didn't it say so in the child's first letter?"
After more than a year of training and study, Sanshui Jianjun, as the couple calls him, successfully passed the pilot's flying license exam.
When he paid his first month's salary, he took it all home. After all, in an airline company, you have to take care of food and accommodation every month, so there is nothing to spend money on.
Shui Shangqing, who had some time off from farming, received a letter and withdrawal order from Lao San. Seeing the amount on it, Zhihe said to his wife, "Jianjun doesn't even mention leaving some for himself."
Liu Xuemei urged her husband: "Open the letter quickly and see what the third child said?"
"Okay, okay, don't worry." When the envelope was torn open, in addition to the letter and Shui Jianjun's photo, he looked much calmer.
The couple got together to read the letter. Shui Jianjun talked about things in school very well and his current workplace was also very good. Food and accommodation are included, and there is a net drop in wages.
But since I live in a dormitory, I hope my parents can save it for me. This is safer.
After reading the letter, Shui Shangqing smiled: "This child, when he was a child, he liked to sew and mend. He thought he would be a tailor in the future, but he didn't expect to become a pilot. Now he has the highest salary among all the children."
"It's also luck. I heard that recruitment doesn't happen every year. Later, the fourth child and the fifth child both said that people in the school were afraid that we, the third child, would be selected and wanted to do something."
"Hey, human nature is like this. You don't want others to be better than you. If a tree is beautiful in the forest, the wind will destroy it. The third child also has his own mind, and he won't show too much whether he is happy or not."
Shui Bingyue, who ran out to play with her good friends, returned home and heard that her third brother had written a letter. She was extremely happy. She took the letter and read it over and over again.
"Mom, what do you think you can send to third brother? He lives in the dormitory and shouldn't be able to cook for himself, so let's send him dried meat."
"Then you need to make more meat for your father to cook more for him. Your second brother is also far away, so he has to give it away."
Shui Bingyue said seriously: "I will go with you then."
Shui Shangqing patted his daughter's little head: "With me and your brothers, you just stay at home. Looking at the weather this year, it is estimated that it will snow before November."
"I want to go. I haven't been to a faraway place for a long time. I have thick clothes and I'm not afraid of the cold."
The plan couldn't keep up with the change. Just a few days later, it really snowed in Qingshui Village. Several brothers are busy with final exams and don't have much time.
Until December, several brothers were on vacation and the snow on the mountains melted. Shui Shangqing took his four sons and one daughter to the mountains for hunting.
Shui Bingyue was wearing a woolen hat and a sheepskin jacket. Everyone was well equipped, and they shot a lot of pheasants and hares on the way, all of which were packed in animal skin bags.
Everyone carries a big basket on their backs, so if they really hit a big guy, they can be broken apart and everyone can work together to bring it back.
Once again, we came to the creek in the mountains. After all, where there is water, large prey can easily appear.
A few people hid in the woods and observed the animals that came to drink water. Seeing small animals such as rabbits and pheasants is not worth touching.
The first big prey that appeared was a deer. Before the Shui family could take aim, a very fat wild boar came quietly from a distance.
