An old man and a young man went up the mountain to collect, dig and chop and made a big basket of messy things. Fortunately, this time the two men who went up the mountain came back with a complete old face. Yi Niang has been worried about Liang Chuan these days. The bumblebees are not a joke, and cow dung is not always life-saving. Many children in the village are greedy and go to kill the bumblebees, but they bring them back. It's getting cold now.
He Baozheng's wife, Mrs. Wang, also really hates that her husband is so cynical. He can't make any money. He just messes around every day. He didn't even get off the ground today, and he went up the mountain to dig something. , I couldn't help but want to glare at him. It made He Baozheng feel like there were thorns in his back and he felt restless. Fortunately, he went with Sanlang. He didn't look at the monk's face and looked at the Buddha's face. He had enough energy to swallow it in his stomach.
Liang Chuan was more thoughtful in doing things. First, he bribed several women with wild peaches, making them smile from ear to ear. He Baozheng, with empty hands and sweat stains on his face, could only watch Liang Chuan in embarrassment in embarrassment.
The chopped nan branches, camphor branches and mugwort must be exposed to the sun first. Because all the materials are almost mixed into mosquito coils in the form of powder, the moisture content in mugwort, nanmu, and camphor trees is too high, making it inconvenient to grind them into powder form.
There were not only bamboo poles drying in the yard, but also some wild vegetables. Everyone didn't understand why Liang Chuan was so obsessed with wild vegetables. Liang Chuan placed the dehydrated nan trees, mugwort, etc. in the yard, taking up a lot of space. It turned out that when the Liangchuan family used the yard by themselves, they thought it was quite empty. Later, when there were more people, the space gradually became insufficient.
These things need to be exposed to the sun for a while, and the kudzu root needs to be ground into starch. This process is more troublesome. The starch content in kudzu root is very high, almost more than 10%. It is considered a high-starch vegetable and can also be considered as a traditional Chinese medicine.
The starch of kudzu root plays the role of solidifying the wet material. It is not for burning. It is a powdery solid. Starch is needed to set the shape.
The sediment on the outside of the kudzu root must be washed first, otherwise after grinding, the sediment on the rhizome will be mixed into the powder, contaminating all materials and affecting combustion.
The washed kudzu root looks a bit like lotus root and is also gray and white. The rhizome of kudzu root was a bit thick and hard. Liang Chuan took a wooden clapper and smashed the kudzu root root by root. He Baozheng was dumbfounded when he saw it.
"Are you going to break these?"
"Yes, do you have any idea?"
"Just grind it on a stone mill. Are you going to beat it until next year?" He Bao looked at Liang Chuan's eyes and felt like he couldn't. It's so unreliable.
Liang Chuan had never used a stone mill before, so how could he know that there was such a convenient tool? He smiled and said, "I forgot..." He wanted to fool him.
He Baozheng's family happened to have a stone mill with an oxen frame on it. It seemed that it was pulled by animal power. This kind of stone grinder also has many benefits. You can grind some beans, wheat, etc. by turning it a few times and turn it into powder.
Liang Chuan put the kudzu root on the stone mill, and He Bao was about to lead his old green ox to grind it. Liang Chuan stopped him and told him to just push it a few times, so there was no need to use the ox's strength.
Liang Chuan's magical power was truly incredible. He held the stone mill, which was thicker than a bucket, with both hands, made a horse stance, swayed back and forth a few times, and then started pushing and pulling. It takes a lot of effort to start such a heavy object, and it just spins as soon as it moves. Besides, to Liang Chuan, a tiger weighing several hundred kilograms can still run if the road is easy, but a small stone mill is not like playing.
"If you open a mill in the future, you can work hard and make a lot of money." He Baozheng looked at Liang Chuan's magical power and was really envious and jealous.
"What kind of mill do you want to open? Isn't it easier to make money with your brains?" Liang Chuan replied.
"I don't have a brain as good as yours."
The kudzu root is very hard, but under the grinding of the stone mill, it is broken into pieces, and the milky white juice flows down. He Baozheng quickly took a bucket to collect the kudzu juice.
Get another piece of filter cloth, an ordinary coarse cloth is almost enough. The holes should not be too dense or too big. Put the kudzu root residue in, pour clean water into the filter cloth, filter the kudzu root residue several times, let the kudzu root water in the bucket stand for a while, and the starch will sink to the bottom of the bucket.
Tomorrow, drain the water from the top of the bucket, dig out the starch at the bottom of the bucket and dry it, and it will be the real kudzu powder. Liang Chuan actually learned this method from the sweet potato powder slices he made at home.
Sweet potatoes were not introduced during the Song Dynasty, but in later generations they were a precious food in difficult times. Industrious rural women also grind the sweet potatoes and filter out the sweet potato powder. After the sweet potato powder is dried, cut into slices and dried in the sun, it is pure sweet potato powder. Now there are fewer people making it in the countryside. I want to try it here. The taste also costs a lot of money.
Liang Chuan also thought about using kudzu root to make a fortune. If this product is really a nutritional and health care product that everyone likes in the future, and it is ground into powder and advertised for a few times, the sales volume will definitely exceed that of the brain platinum ant power god's deceptive medicine. But there are too many kudzu roots in this era, just like the wild vegetables on the roadside. No one eats the wild vegetables, and they don’t need to be processed. The series of processes for kudzu root are much more troublesome in comparison.
These are the main materials for making mosquito coils, and they are also the key to achieving the mosquito repellent effect. However, mosquito coils also have an important performance, which is that they must be long-lasting. If they only burn for a while, the mosquitoes will come back again after running away. A good mosquito-repellent incense needs to be burned for at least three or four hours. People in this era go to bed early at night, so four hours is considered a short period of time. However, after early morning, there are far fewer mosquitoes.
To sustainably burn mosquito coils, another important raw material is wood chips. There were no wood chippers or grinders in this era, and wood chips were hard to come by. But it's not impossible to get it. You can also get sawdust by hand, but it requires a lot of manpower. How many sawdust can a person get by sawing wood like crazy with a saw all day long? .
When he was off work in the evening, Liang Chuan went to ask Zhao Jinyu to see if he could get sawdust faster. Zhao Jinyu also shook his head. Although they did some carpentry work where they built their house, there were not many sawdust. However, he did tell Liang Chuan about a place where there might be a lot of sawdust, a wood shop in Xinghua, where carpenters work.
That's right, Liang Chuan didn't expect that sawdust would naturally be abundant in places with a lot of carpentry work. Liang Chuan looked at He Baozheng and asked with a sly smile: "Old He, you are familiar with it, why don't you go and see if those wood shops sell sawdust?"
When He Baozheng heard this, he knew that he had to run errands again, but this was done with Sanlang's good intentions. It happened that he didn't really want to be with those village women anymore, so he had to run even if he didn't want to. "You call me every day."
He Baozheng rarely comes to this wood workshop in Xinghua, mainly because he doesn't have any needs. The furniture at home can last for decades, and you can do simple repairs yourself without having to come here. He didn't know the people inside, and he was a little nervous when he entered. However, as soon as he entered, he saw earth crumbs all over the ground, which were swept aside and piled up like a hill.
The carpenters noticed He Baozheng coming in and asked, "Brother, can you do anything?"
He Baozheng was a little embarrassed and said with a smile: "I don't want to buy anything, but I want to buy some sawdust powder. Is it convenient for you guys?"
The carpenter's apprentice snorted coldly and said with a smile: "It's quite fresh. These things can only be fertilized. I didn't expect anyone to want them."
The carpenters are also very strange. There are too many sawdust. They have to saw dozens of square meters of wood every day. The floor of the entire workshop is covered with sawdust. The apprentices have to clean up after work every day. Now these sawdust are piled in the corner and are almost forming a hill. No one wants it anymore, so they can only bury it in the ground and use it as fertilizer.
"We have this. If you want it, just come and sweep it away yourself. There are too many in the workshop, and no one wants them." The master carpenter thought that it was good, and he also saved a lot of labor costs. Several apprentices arranged who would come every day. Sweeping sawdust is often not fun.
He Baozheng didn't expect it to be so easy, "Brother, how much does this cost?"
"If you don't charge money, it's just leftovers for composting."
He Baozheng hurriedly collected a few cloth bags and packed an entire oxcart of sawdust back. Before leaving, the young apprentice asked him if he would collect all the junk. He would save the rest of them from having to clean up so hard. He Baozheng patted his chest and said he would definitely come again. This was just the beginning, and there would be more sawdust to come.
There were more things in the yard. The yard of the ancestral hall was full of wood chips. Liang Chuan thought that he could only get a few kilograms at most, and he had to think of other things. Unexpectedly, He Baozheng got an ox cart.
These things were left to dry for two full days. On the third day, Liang Chuan began to experiment with mosquito coils.
The mosquito-repellent incense is coiled in a spiral shape, and a mold must be made so that the coiling of mosquito-repellent incense will be more efficient. Liang Chuan dug some clay from the fields and made a mold. He dug out the shape of mosquito-repellent incense in the mold, and then baked it over a fire to harden the clay mold so that it could be reused.
The kudzu root has been made into starch, and after two days of exposure, the particles are quite fine. Then saw some nan tree powder and camphor tree powder, the proportions are very small, far less than the amount of sawdust. The two herbs, Atractylodes lancea and dried mugwort, are then pounded into fine powder with a stone pound, and several main materials are basically formed.
Pueraria starch plays a role in setting the shape. Add some rosin into it. The best thing is rosin. The rosin contains rosin, but Liangchuan currently has no means of purifying it. Rosin can not only support combustion but also play a role in shaping. Add a little water and stir the several materials together. After thorough stirring, you will get the form of a thick paste. The largest amount of sawdust is used. Press it into the mold and place it in the mold. After drying it inside, slowly take out the mosquito-repellent incense. A plate of mosquito-repellent incense is enough.
"Sanlang, what is the proportion of the formula in this thing?"
"I'm not sure about this either. Let's try the effect tonight. I didn't add much of everything just now. Most of them are sawdust. These raw materials are difficult to obtain, so we can't waste too much. We must achieve the effect while saving money." Raw materials.”
In ancient times, some people also made mosquito-repellent incense. They added realgar powder and arsenic to the mosquito-repellent incense to use toxicity to kill mosquitoes. However, over time, people would be chronically poisoned. Killing a thousand mosquitoes would cost you eight hundred, but the gain would not be worth the loss. At present, the resistance of mosquitoes to mugwort and fragrant nan is still quite low. Using these materials should be able to repel mosquitoes.
Later, when pyrethrum was introduced into the country, the effect would be better and more environmentally friendly, but the wheel of history had not yet reached that point, and pyrethrum introduced from island countries did not appear until the late Qing Dynasty.
As night went on, the chorus around the ancestral hall became louder and louder, and various frogs and unknown calls in the field ridges could be heard endlessly. One sound was louder than the other, and it was both rhythmic and loud. But there will also be a lot of mosquitoes holding concerts, circling overwhelmingly above my head, and swooping down suddenly to stare at the flesh and suck a mouthful of blood.
Two old boys sacrificed their lives to feed the mosquitoes in the yard under the stars. Liang Chuan wanted to make up for the wood-cutting business that had been lost during the day. After the mosquito coils had been in the sun for a long time, the water had almost evaporated. After taking them out of the mold, Liang Chuan lit the mosquito coils with a fire.
He Baozheng was thinking about whether this thing could be successful. He was already a little anxious, and with the commotion of mosquitoes, he was even more restless. Liang Chuan lit the mosquito coil in his hand, and the fragrance of nan and camphor trees hit the door, with a hint of pine, which covered up the dry and choking smell of burning sawdust. The white smoke rose slowly upwards. The mosquitoes were far away from the white smoke, just like poison, and they didn't dare to touch it. The bites of the mosquitoes around them were instantly relieved, just by the amount of ingredients added. If that's not enough, mosquitoes will occasionally put themselves in danger and try their best to suck a mouthful of blood.
"Next time, if you add some of the powdered ingredients, this mosquito repellent incense will have a very good effect in repelling mosquitoes. Take this coil of incense to your room and put it there at night. Let me know how it works tomorrow!"
He Baozheng walked away happily holding the mosquito coils. Liang Chuan looked at his back and sighed, it would have been better if he had studied engineering. If he had made more things, he would have become rich long ago.
