The squeeze season is better said to be the fatal season.
Several wives in the family were intimidated by Zhan Ji, but Liang Chuan felt that it was nothing more than that. When he actually took charge of the family's affairs, he wished he could kill himself, so that he could be done with it.
So tired!
The first wave of women cutting sugar cane from the mountains went to the fields and immediately brought back the first bundle of sugar cane.
He Baozheng has already taken the initiative to help. Every winter is the off-season for his mosquito coils. At this time, all the mosquitoes are gone. Making mosquito coils is not easy. The skin on your hands can easily get chapped. It is better to wait until spring comes later in the year before starting again. Make new mosquito coils.
It is the off-season for mosquito repellent incense, but it is the peak season for sugar cane harvest. He, his wife Wang and their daughter would come to Wangxiang House to help out at this time every year. The women in the family are really too busy.
A bundle of sugar cane arrived. Li Chuyi brought over some oxen from the academy, put a yoke on the oxen's back, and began to spin around the sugar reel.
Familiar scenes and familiar operations.
Liang Chuan, who has been away from home all year round, was surprised to find that several ladies were more skilled than him. When sugar cane was put into the sugar press, the sweet and fragrant sugar cane juice flowed out. A bundle of sugar cane was squeezed several times and only one juice was squeezed out. Buckets of cane juice.
He Baozheng settled outside the sugar mill, handing over the money in one hand and the cane in the other. After receiving the money, he sent the sugar cane to the sugar mill for crushing.
Li Chuyi was lighting a fire in the sugar mill. The chain stove was already on and the sugar water was poured in. The first pot of sugarcane juice rolled into the pot.
Liang Chuan thought to himself, this process has not changed, it was done back then, it's no big deal.
At the end of the day, Liang Chuan almost hid in Yi Niang's bed and cried loudly.
Where is the time to sleep? The sugarcane from the sugarcane field was carried bundle after bundle to the entrance of the sugar mill. Not to mention Liang Chuan, even He Baozheng, who was doing the settlement at the entrance, had no time to sleep. Thousands of people, even if one person uses the effort of a cup of tea, it is completely impossible to cope with it!
It is said that from this day on, the fire in the chain stove will never be extinguished. It will continue to burn until all the more than 8,000 acres of sugar cane land are cut down. Liang Chuan went to the fields this year and took a sneak peek. The sugarcane fields were still endless as far as the eye could see, as if they had not been touched at all!
Now several women are pressing sugar outside the sugar house, and Liang Chuan and Li Chuyi are boiling sugar inside. The sugar house has continued to expand over the years. The chain pot has several pots in one set, and five sets of chain pots have been built side by side.
In other words, the efficiency is now five times that of before, but the people are still the same as before. Counting Yang Xiu, Li Erhua, Ye Xiaochai and others, even if they have three heads and six arms, they cannot finish everything in one day.
The big spoon used to boil sugar, Liang Chuan, was like a boatman. He scooped it all day long. At the end of the day, Liang Chuan felt that his arms were thicker, and the muscle lines on them were a little obvious. The sugar juice became thicker and thicker when the pot was connected. It’s really unreasonable for a woman to ask them to scoop it up!
At midnight, when the sky was getting dark, there were still people in the sugarcane fields pulling sugar cane to the sugar mill! Liang Chuan felt the urge to burst into tears when he saw such hard-working female mountain comrades. Don't these people feel tired?
The process of boiling sugar and making sugar is one of the important secrets held by Liang Chuan. In order to take away this secret recipe, Zhao Zonge did not hesitate to let the steward kidnap Zheng Ruoying to Bianjing. In the end, Zhao Zonge’s body was not found.
Get your wish.
In Fengshan, the sugar house will never be open when it is not boiling sugar. The only people who can enter the sugar house are a few ladies, Ye Xiaochai and several other servants who are absolutely loyal to Liang Chuan, as well as Li Chuyi, Lian He Baozheng and so on. I don’t know where this sugar came from.
If this secret recipe can be preserved well, the speed of making money can be compared to mountain mining, which is almost the same as a gold mountain.
Fengshan's sugar was not only famous in the Song Dynasty. The imperial court regarded the white sugar produced in Fengshan as a royal gift, and every year the imperial government came to Qingyuan to purchase it. Ordinary people have sharp eyes, and the things used by officials are not bad. They spread the word from person to person. Every year, as soon as Fengshan’s sugar leaves the factory, it is sent to the Wanda Chamber of Commerce and Taobao stores in Qingyuan. If they don’t make an appointment in advance, they usually grab everything. Less than.
The prices of white sugar and brown sugar have fluctuated every year over the years, and the prices have doubled several times. But just like the precious ones, there is a price but no market. At this time of year, not only cane cutters come to Fengshan to wait, but there are also many Many businessmen come to Fengshan, hoping to grab some high-quality freshly baked sugar.
People in the Song Dynasty were very fond of white sugar, and people outside the country also took a fancy to this kind of treasure. The Arabs in Persia also have the habit of drinking tea. They found that if they add this kind of brown sugar to the tea, the flavor will be more mellow!
And the role of sugar is not only because it is sweet. Smart Easterners discovered that this material is extremely effective in war. It can not only heal wounds and diseases, but also eat a little sugar-made food when you are hungry. It makes you feel fuller!
This is food gold!
In the early days, overseas merchants came to the Song Dynasty to buy whatever they wanted, whether tea or porcelain, and they were shipped back ship by ship. Now they don’t want it anymore, what they want is the candy from the Song Dynasty!
This thing is too expensive, and sugar cane cannot be grown in Persia! There is sugar cane growing on Luzon Island, but they have no idea how sugar is made!
Every year when Qingyuan opens to the sea, the first group of outsiders come to Qingyuan and grab the candies from Taobao stores. If they grab it, they will make money!
What a huge industrial chain that supports not only the villagers in Fengshan, but also the mountain people in Xinghua Mountain, the businessmen in Qingyuan City, and countless foreigners overseas!
The clapper had just been struck at the second watch, and the running machine outside seemed to have suddenly stopped. Liang Chuan went out and saw that Yi Niang was lowering the yoke of the ox, and He Baozheng stretched himself and was about to stop the work at hand.
"Can you take a break?"
He Baozheng glanced at him and said: "Don't you look at what time it is now? Even if people don't rest, the cow will have to rest! At this time, the dew started to fall. If it continues, everyone will get rheumatism when they get old. Go back Squint for a while, then you have to get up and work again at dawn!"
Li Chuyi said to Liang Chuan, "My boss, I will take the first shift today. You go and take a nap and get up later to take over from me!"
Liang Chuan nodded, and when he went out, he saw that a small area of sugarcane fields in the distance had been shaved. Mountain women are laying bedding in the felled sugarcane fields, with sugarcane leaves and sugarcane heads underneath!
Sleep on the floor! Liang Chuan knew clearly how heavy Fengshan Lu was at this time. How could he use the sky as his bed and the earth as his bed?
Liang Chuan looked at Yi Niang and said, "She... they just slept like this?"
Yi Niang replied helplessly: "This is also a helpless solution.
There are also hotels in the market, but half a day's wages are spent on that night. Who is willing to be so lavish? The people living in the countryside are sugarcane workers recruited by the villagers themselves. These people who cut sugarcane for our family have no place to go. More, me. . There is nothing I can do. . "
Liang Chuan was so angry that he stamped his feet. Yi Niang was so busy that she no longer cared about the sugarcane farmers outside.
"Open our bamboo weaving workshop. You can't sleep inside. There is a shelter on the dock so you won't be hit by the dew!"
Only then did Yi Niang realize, and she was very upset. She worked with a few people to open the door of the bamboo weaving workshop, and even went to the sugarcane field to call for help!
Having a shelter from the wind and rain is better than sleeping out in the open! An open Longshui Temple is so popular, but this bamboo weaving workshop is surrounded by fences on all sides, which is better and more comfortable than the Longshui Temple!
If you go to the villagers to rent a place like this, it will cost a lot of money. It's not that they don't want to go to a good place, but the mountain people who cut sugar cane have to save even a little money so that they can save some living expenses for their families.
The huge bamboo weaving workshop was suddenly crowded, and it was immediately overcrowded. Seeing that these people had a place to rest, Liang Chuan could finally sleep well.
In his sleep, Liang Chuan dreamed that he was eating those cloyingly sweet sugars. Several ladies couldn't get enough of them, and they were adding spoonfuls of sugar to their bowls. Men are afraid of diabetes when they get older, and saw those sugars being poured into their bowls one by one. Adding eggs and sugar water, Liang Chuan woke up immediately!
The shadow of Yi Niang was no longer around, only Xiao Xiaocheng was sleeping on the side with his arms stretched out. Looking out the window, it was still dark!
Liang Chuan walked out of the house. A wisp of green smoke rose from the sugar mill in the morning. The sound of an empty sugar reel came slowly. The old cow made a mooing sound from time to time, as if he was complaining about injustice. Although he was a cow, he couldn't be bullied like this. You're a beast! The candy shop actually started making sugar early!
Liang Chuan estimated that he had slept for less than three hours!
Walking out of the old house, people outside had already set up iron pots and started cooking. Many people had finished cutting a large bundle of sugar cane early and were carrying it to the sugar house. .
Oh my God!
Capitalists don’t exploit workers like this, right?
Fortunately, the women around him were even more desperate than these mountain women, otherwise it would not be a good thing to hear about it.
Liang Chuan doesn't know how to smoke, but at this moment he is thinking that the road to making sugar is so damn hard. If he has a chance in the future, he might as well just get cigarettes. If he has a cigarette at this time, he will definitely light it up and taste it to taste life. , it was so damn hard, after just one day of work, his arm felt like it had been filled with lead after rowing a dragon boat for a day, and he couldn't lift it!
Liang Chuan rushed into the sugar mill. Li Chuyi was already exhausted, and Ye Xiaochai was helping him. Yang Xiu helped, and Li Erhua added firewood. However, bucket after bucket of sugarcane juice kept coming in, and Liang Chuan seemed to be suffocated. Sugar is filled with hate.
At this moment, he seemed to be able to understand why the people in Fengshan became so fast. Poverty is a force of life, so picking and choosing is not a force of life! Such a tiring job can still make money in other ways. Who wants to plunge into this sugar house and never see the light of day!
I don't know how long it took before the roosters in the village slowly crowed. Liang Chuan asked Li Yichu to leave early to rest, and he was holding the big spoon by himself. He didn't know how long he had been swinging the big spoon, but it was just dawn!
