tall and rhubarb

In October of the Gregorian calendar this year, Gao Chang's mountainous area was under a heavy snowfall, and winter officially entered. According to this situation, they will not welcome spring until March or April next year, that is to say, If the situation remains the same, they will have to spend more than half of the year every year in the cold winter.

In order to welcome the long winter, most people in the village built earth kangs at home. Because the second floor is not suitable for repairing kangs, many people sleep on the big earth kangs on the first floor. Although there is no privacy, a group of When people are crowded together, if they are in harmony, they will enjoy themselves happily.

He Yun and the others who lived upstairs from Gao Chang's family, as well as Wei Changrui and his son, also occupied a kang bed in Uncle Ashan's house.For He Yun and Bai Bao, Gao Chang also couldn't understand. Once he finally couldn't help asking Bai Bao this question. Bai Bao said, let's do it now, and one day they can both Marry when you live out into the sun.

This topic is a bit heavy. Gao Chang, who has died once, knows that when he is about to die, what he regrets the most is not the wrong things he did before, but the regrets that he did not have the courage to do it.But as an outsider, Gao Chang can't persuade them to say that they are drunk today, and when they are separated from each other, what can Gao Chang say in the face of their pain?

In the environment where every family is building a kang, there is no movement in Gao Chang's family. There is a wolf and a dog in their house, both of which are natural heaters. When sleeping, Sobo hugs Simba, and Gao Chang hugs Rhubarb. No one needs it. Kang this thing.

On the contrary, Gao Chang was a little worried about Miaozi, because the fur on cats is a bit thin. I heard that in the north, domestic cats like to nest on the kang. I don’t know if this guy can withstand the cold.

However, Miaozai's performance this time was surprisingly good. About a month after entering winter, Gao Chang found that the short black hairs on Miaozai's body had fallen off badly, and soon, many soft and soft hairs appeared on Miaozai's body. And long fluff.These fluff not only brought warmth to Miaozai, but also brought him an air of luxury. It didn't look like an ordinary cat, but a bit like those rare breeds in books on TV.

On the contrary, for Yingzi, Gao Chang was quite at ease from the beginning, because eagles are animals like the overlord of the sky who come and go in the wind and snow. I heard that eagles like to build their nests on cliffs.Although this winter is colder, this eagle still lives indoors after all, and there is a soft silk cushion, so there is no reason why it can't survive.

It's a pity that the little eagle in their family was not up to snuff. He fell asleep and felt that the cold was unbearable, so he got into Miaozai's big bamboo basket. Naturally, there was nothing good to eat, and he was tickled by Miaozai. , The feathers fell all over the place.There was a bit of commotion at the time, so Gao Chang went over to take a look, and saw Yingzi shrinking his head and feathers in a mess, he finally realized another fact, it seems that his Sobo's belly is still not as good as the fluffy eagles' bellies, The hatched eagle cub is not of the same grade. If it is really not good, add a hot water bottle to it tomorrow.

It is said that the east side is not bright and the west side is bright. Although Yingzi does not have the spirit of the overlord of the sky, he knows how to flatter. When it got dark that night, he flew to the unfrozen sea in the bay and caught some small birds. Fish and shrimp pay tribute to Miaozi.The cat hadn't eaten such fresh and delicious fish and shrimp for nearly a month, so it was bought immediately.

When Gao Chang made a rare kindness and planned to send Yingzi a hot water bottle, but this guy was dumbfounded. The little eagle like a plague chicken had successfully climbed into Miaozai's nest.

"You're too immoral." Gao Chang despised his cat quite a lot, who did he learn this from?

"Meow!" Miao Zai gave Gao Chang a disapproving look, and then licked his mouth with unsatisfied enthusiasm. Can morals be exchanged for fish and shrimp?

"Chirp." Yingzi yelled flatteringly at Gao Chang, contentedly hugged Meow Zai, curled up his neck, and closed his eyes to sleep. Don't mind your own business anymore.

The heavy snow fell intermittently, and the turbulent greenness on the mountain was quickly buried under the thick snow. Even the crop fields in each village were buried by the heavy snow. The snow on the ground was not easy to clean, and the The upper soil was also frozen by snow, and it was impossible to continue planting crops.

The villagers counted with their fingers, and every year, he would only be able to plant crops in the field for half a year, and the rest of the time he could only sit and eat the mountains, and he felt a little panicked.In order to save food as much as possible, the villagers filled the baskets with soil, and planted some easy-to-grow potatoes, radishes, and cabbage. When the weather was good, they put these baskets out to bask in the sun. In snowy days, they all kept them in the yard. leave it alone.

The sea water in the bay was also frozen, especially on the shore. After several tides ebbed and flowed, the ice surface formed wavy arcs, and the ice layer was relatively thick. The two ships docked by the sea had already been blocked The ice was stuck and I couldn't move.

In such cold weather, the crabs also lost their traces. It was impossible to hang crabs on the shore, so everyone had to climb onto the ice, dig a hole in the ice with a shovel, and try their best to catch some fish.It's a pity that none of them are good at fishing, nor do they come from famous families who are good at fishing. During the years of rapid technological development, the traditional handicraft industry has declined day by day, and many handicrafts have been lost.There are so many people from all over the world living here, but no one knows how to fish on the ice. They often work hard all night, but the harvest is pitiful.

In order to reduce the consumption of grain as much as possible, the chickens and ducks raised by each family, except the necessary number of eggs for reproduction, are slaughtered. Not only are there a few mouths to eat grain, but the whole family can still eat it. Hun Xing, coming and going again and again, saved a lot of millet.

The pigs raised by the people in the yard are also in the slaughter season. Except for a few breeding pigs and piglets, all the others will be consumed in this winter.There are also wild boars under the trenches. After such a long period of breeding, the number of wild boars is also somewhat excessive. It is time to reduce the number of people, although the process of capturing and slaughtering is somewhat difficult.

For Gao Chang and the others, the days in this winter are really good. They can eat a big pot of rice every day, and their mouths are full of oil. Both Rhubarb and Simba gnawed some bones.After Gao Chang’s words and deeds last time, not only Sobo and Simba gave up brown sugar, but even Rhubarb and Miao Zai didn’t touch sweets anymore. As a result, no one touched the brown sugar in Gao Chang’s family In addition, it snowed heavily that night when the sugar was boiled. Gao Chang expected that he would not be able to grow sugar cane for the next half a year, so he left a lot for his family.

What if no one eats so much sugar?Anyway, being idle in the winter is also idle, so Gao Chang tinkered with a few snacks and sold them in the village.Needless to say, peanut candy, sesame candy, ginger candy, frozen rice candy, etc., the brown sugar glutinous rice cake alone can sell a lot in one night.

When he was free, Gao Chang took Rhubarb Simba up the mountain together, carrying a shovel on his shoulder, with a dozen sacks hanging on the shovel, and brought back many wild hawthorns to pretend to be hawthorns.There used to be a lot of wild hawthorn growing in the mountainous area near Gao Chang and the others. In the past, because of their general taste and small size, not many people ate them.But after some improvement by Blue Sunshine, the size of this kind of wild fruit is about to catch up with the hawthorn, but I don't know what the authentic hawthorn looks like now.

With rhubarb and Simba, no matter how thick the snow is, the wild fruits can be easily dug out by Gao Chang. He tasted them while digging, and felt that this thing could be used as a hawthorn, so the three brothers He dug the entire mountain into the surface of the moon until the sacks he carried with him were full, then cut down a few branches and vines nearby, made a simple sled, and dragged it home.

Gao Chang set up a table at the door of his house, with sticks tied with straw fixed to the sides of the two doors, and strings of fiery red candied haws wrapped in sugar were stuck on the sticks, making the dolls in the village salivate.

Gao Chang used these snacks to seduce the children in the village to help him work. Every household in his village raises silkworms, and all the dolls are masters of silk reeling. As long as one or two silks are needed, they can be exchanged for a piece of brown sugar from Gao Chang's house. Glutinous rice cake, or two pieces of peanut candy, or five pieces of ginger candy, or a large piece of frozen rice candy, or two strings of candied haws.

Don't underestimate the labor of the dolls. During this long winter, because the temperature is too low in every household, the mulberry leaves outside grow slowly, which reduces the number of silkworms raised at home, which also leads to several other families. There is no work to do in the village.Only Gao Chang’s family is still able to continuously provide silk to various villages. Of course, his family’s work is not easy to do. The silk is all small and small, and it always stops when weaving. Connectors, too, were a nuisance, but work was better than no work.

Adults in different households have different attitudes towards the children's behavior of exchanging silk for snacks.Generally, those who are enlightened will not interfere with children's behavior of buying snacks. As long as the problem of one degree is controlled, children are allowed to eat snacks.

There are also more open-minded ones. When working at night, just keep doing it. If you feel that your mouth is too dull, you can twist a few taels of silk and let the children in the family take it to Gao Chang to exchange some. Snacks come back, the whole family, you and I, will be eaten up in no time.

Of course, there are also those who can't think about it. Seeing the children at home trade silk for food, they feel annoyed, and it's not easy to get angry with Gao Chang, so they curse at home.In fact, it's all caused by the so-called "bitterness first, sweetness later" thinking. These people just want to save more cloth at home, and insist on saving the good life for later. The so-called good days are always in the foreseeable future.

Of course, no matter what other people's attitudes are, Gao Chang will continue to do business. The cloth pile at home is getting higher and higher every day. Every night when he goes to Bai Bao's yard to listen to the radio, he still brings these snacks with him. Business is everywhere. ah.

People from these various villages, who are willing to listen to the radio, are generally willing to buy food. When they come to Gao Chang for consumption for the first time, they usually carry a piece of cloth to him, and then Gao Chang will give him a piece of cloth. Registered his name, until the cloth is consumed, he can take care of the tall stall at any time.No one was worried that Gao Chang would swallow their cloth. Although Gao Chang didn't have the best reputation in this area, he had a good reputation.

In the winter of this year, apart from working on rations, the two most frequent places for activities were Baohua Temple and Baibao's yard.Now listening to the radio has become a fashionable thing. Naturally, the arguments on the radio are always affecting the people in this mountainous area. They were not addicted to it, and there were some fights, but they were not very hard. Gao Chang understood this as a little adjustment and vent in a boring life, and had nothing to do with politics.

This evening, Gao Chang listened to the radio and asked Rhubarb to go home with the unsold items. The glutinous rice soaked this morning is almost ready to be ground. The brown sugar glutinous rice cake is a snack that their family makes every day, and it sells well. , after a period of practice, rhubarb is now quite good at making pastries.

Gao Chang followed the crowd out of the village, walked along the road for a while, scraped away a pile of snow, cut two handfuls of grass with his dagger, and brought them back to feed his two sheep.They bought these two sheep from Tara at the beginning, and built a shed for them in a corner between the pigsty and the wall after they brought them back, and kept them there.

Probably because of the bad living environment before, these two sheep are not picky at all, just feed them some hay, and they are not afraid of the cold. Recently, the temperature is so low that many poultry have been frozen out of order. These two sheep look like Quite energetic.Gao Chang would sometimes help them get some green grass and leaves, but he would not feed them too much, worrying that they would suddenly eat something wrong after eating hay.

Tara said that the two sheep are not related by blood. After they mate and give birth in a few months, Gao Chang's family will have goat milk to drink.

"Gao Chang, why are you still here? Master Mingtong has come and has been waiting for you in our yard for a long time." At this time, Uncle Ashan, who was carrying a bucket of pig food to the nearby pigsty to feed the pigs, called Gao Long cry.

The great monk is here?Gao Chang responded and walked towards the yard. This monk rarely leaves Baohua Temple, why did he come to see him?Could it be that something happened to Suobo in the temple?When he entered the yard, Master Mingtong was giving Zen sermons to the villagers. When he saw Gao Chang coming, he smiled at him. With his smile, Gao Chang's heart was relieved. There were five pieces of cloth on the table next to him, and he greeted him casually: "Master, you are here right now, what gift do you bring, it's too polite."

"Amitabha, the benefactor has not been going to Baohua Temple recently, so the old monk has to go out by himself." Master Mingtong said his reason for coming directly without beating around the bush with a smile on his face. The monk was greedy, and the great monk came to sell snacks for them.

"It seems that the cultivation base of the little masters is not enough." Hearing what he said, Gao Chang was immediately happy. He had been to Baohua Temple a lot before, and he knew that the temple's management of these young monks was relatively loose. But those dolls grew up in temples, and they also learned from those great monks. They always put on a straight face in front of people, and they always look at Amitabha Buddha, and even make gestures and bows, which looks like that.

"Amitabha! The Buddha said that all living beings are equal." The great monk implied that the children in the village could eat snacks, and so could the young monks in Baohua Temple.The villagers in the yard are deeply convinced.

Gao Chang naturally also knows that the reason why there are so many young monks in Baohua Temple today, a small part of them is that in the previous peaceful era, the abandoned babies who were taken in by the monks and were abandoned by their parents at the gate of the temple, more than [-]% of them were A child with a congenital disease.Most of the remaining children are orphans who have lost their parents or both of their parents have been taken in by the monks in the southwest over the past few years.

The monks of Baohua Temple adopted them, but they did not treat them harshly according to the rules and regulations of monks. Instead, they raised them as ordinary children, took good care of their lives, and taught them the principles of life. The monks could also come out with cloth on their shoulders to exchange for snacks for them, which is exactly what Gao Chang respected the abbot the most.

Gao Chang didn't really want to earn more cloth from these monks, so he gave a lot of peanut candy and sesame candies that could be preserved, and made a lot of candied gourds according to the number of young monks in Baohua Temple, and tonight's brown sugar glutinous rice cake They will not be sold anymore, and after steaming, they will be taken away by the great monk. The life of the masters in the monastery is really poor. In the cold weather, drinking a cup of warm tea and eating a piece of sweet cake is not considered breaking the precept.

Steam was gurgling in the pot. Master Mingtong was surrounded by villagers talking. Gao Chang and Dahuang were steaming sugar cakes in one pot. The round bamboo steamer was about [-] centimeters in diameter and about [-] centimeters deep. Wide bamboo leaves are placed, and on the bamboo leaves, wet and soft dough balls kneaded with water-milled glutinous rice flour mixed with sticky rice flour and brown sugar are placed. There are peanuts and melon seeds in the dough balls, and red and green silk and Black and white sesame, steamed, is a sticky and delicious traditional delicacy.