The first legitimate son of the Tang Dynasty

Chapter 250 Planting sweet potatoes happily

In November of autumn, the sky was high and the air was crisp. Li Shimin came to Li An's sweet potato fields alone. Looking at these sweet potato fields that were growing well, Li Shimin smiled happily in his heart.

This smile made Huang Bao happy: "Your Majesty, in just a few days, the sweet potatoes will be harvested. As long as the sweet potatoes are harvested, it will be impossible for the Meng family to choke our Chang'an by transporting food. ”

"Do you think sweet potatoes can really produce a thousand pounds per mu?" Li Shimin asked, looking at Huang Bao.

"Oh, Your Majesty, please stop talking. Your Highness said that this sweet potato can only produce one thousand catties per mu on barren land. The land here is not barren, so I believe that the land here can produce at least two thousand catties per mu." , By the way, Your Majesty, look at those children?"

Huang Bao pointed at the children in Lijiacun not far away.

These children in Lijia Village are working. Speaking of which, Li An has grown sweet potatoes before. Sweet potatoes are not picky about soil and can adapt to hillsides, flat land, sandy soil, and clay soil.

At that time, mountains, such as slopes on three sides, surrounded the village.

You go there and have a look. In spring, standing on the slope and looking from a distance, except for a small amount of wheat fields, sweet potatoes are planted everywhere.

As soon as spring begins for children, the production team is busy raising sweet potato seedlings. When the seedlings grow to about half a foot high, they will take them out and plant them in the fields.The sweet potato seedlings are easy to plant. A handful of moon-leaf vines spread all over the ground in tender green, and there are many fibrous roots growing on the stems.

In order to ventilate the crops and prevent the fibrous roots from taking away nutrients from the roots, the team leader would send these children who were unable to do heavy work to turn over the sweet potato seedlings every Sunday.We lined up in a row, one person in two ridges, and pulled up the sweet potato seedlings to turn them over, grabbing the fibrous roots on the ground and making a clicking sound.

After the Mid-Autumn Festival, cracks appear on the roots of sweet potatoes, and some even reveal red potato pieces.

On the way home from school, Li An and his friends saw that no one was around, so they ran to the sweet potato field, pulled open the potato seedlings, and saw a place with arched roots. They kicked it with their feet, and the sweet potatoes were exposed.

Afraid of being discovered, we cut the sweet potatoes from the roots, buried them in the hole, straightened the seedlings, and ran to the ditch bank, dug a hole on the spot, found some dry firewood, lit it, threw the sweet potatoes into the fire, and went to the ditch. Went picking wild flowers by the river.

After playing for a while, we used a small stick to pull out the sweet potatoes, squeezed them, and then peeled off the hard black scab on the outside, revealing the creamy yellow flesh. We didn’t even bother to burn our mouths and devour them. It made my hands and face all black.

Sometimes the two "cat faces" look at each other, laugh, and continue to enjoy the delicious food.Sometimes when we are discovered by adults passing by, we are inevitably scolded and accused of being a nuisance to us.

In autumn, this is the time to walk the sweet potatoes, that is, to dig the sweet potatoes. Remember to dig the sweet potatoes at the end of the frost. The children are cutting the seedlings in front, and the adults are digging behind. As soon as the grappling hook goes down, all the egg beaters come up with it.The little-footed old woman sat on the straw, pulled the soil off the sweet potatoes, and threw them into a pile.Under the autumn sun, piles of sweet potatoes glow red, filled with the joy of harvest.When taking a break, those with good teeth will pick a piece of bright sweet potato, use a branch or a tile to scrape off the skin, take a bite, and it will make a crunching sound, and the corners of the mouth will be filled with glycolic lotion, which will quench thirst and satisfy hunger.

After a piece of land was planed, the accountant held an account book with an abacus under his arm, and the custodian pushed a large scale, divided the sweet potatoes and sweet potato seedlings into piles according to the head, and pressed paper with names on them. At noon, adults and children Carry it on your back, lift it up, and get your share home.If there are families with limited manpower, everyone will help send them back. Although rural people cannot say the word "thank you", gratitude is always on their faces.

After the sweet potatoes are planed, the team leader will organize the planing twice to clean up the missing sweet potatoes. We call it walking the sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes we walk will not be confiscated. Whoever walks more will get more.The captain ordered to get up early the next day to walk the sweet potatoes. The night before, everyone had prepared their powerful hooks and baskets. When the sky dawned and the bell rang, they sprinted for [-] meters into the fields. When they reached the end of the field, they turned over like mountains and seas. Even a piece of sweet potato hair or a piece of sweet potato skin must be picked up from the loess under the feet.

There are many ways to eat sweet potatoes. The first thing is to steam them. As soon as school is over, I throw off my schoolbag and go to lift the steamer. Often by this time, my mother has already steamed the sweet potatoes thoroughly and is waiting for us sisters to come back steaming hot.He grabbed a piece of hot sweet potato and rolled it in his hand. When he ate it, his tongue rolled around in his mouth and there was no place to put it, and he huffed and puffed.

Sometimes a mouthful of dried sweet potatoes gets stuck in the esophagus, unable to come up or go down, and makes me gurgling and my eyes open. Therefore, I like to eat the purple and slender sweet potatoes the most, which are soft and sweet. Swallow it smoothly.

In order to facilitate storage, every family has a sweet potato cellar. They hide the sweet potatoes in the cellar and seal the mouth with soil. Whenever they are eaten, they will be as fresh as when they were dug out.I kept eating until the handover in the spring and summer of the next year.The stored sweet potatoes have controlled moisture and are soft and sweet.Another storage method is to use a bed to rub the sweet potatoes into thin slices and dry them on the roof, on the chicken coop, on the pigsty, or even on the windowsill. As long as there is flat ground as big as a palm, you can dry a few slices.

There are also many people who carry baskets of potato chips into the wheat fields and place them one by one on the wheat seedlings.This house is a piece of land, and that house is a piece of it. From a distance, it looks like a flock of sheep on the grassland, which is very eye-catching.Although people were poor at that time, they were rich in spirit. They could dry the food for a few days without anyone looking at it, and no one would steal it from anyone.

Sun-dried sweet potato slices can be boiled and eaten, or ground into noodles and steamed into steamed buns. The steamed steamed buns are left exposed and sweet, and are much more delicious than the colored steamed buns in supermarkets now.At that time, the "Black Donkey Rolling" was considered to have improved life. A thin layer of wheat noodles and a thick layer of sweet potato noodles were stacked up and down, rolled up, cut into buns, and steamed in a basket.After steaming, once the lid is lifted, it is steaming, white and red, really like a black donkey rolling in white flour.

Many children are reluctant to eat the white layer first. They always peel off the black layer and eat it first, leaving the white layer at the end and biting it bit by bit with their teeth.At that time, housewives knew how to cook coarse grains, baked sweet potato noodles into cakes, or pressed them into noodles on a bed of rice. Because sweet potato noodles were not as strong as white noodles, the pressed noodles were very short, about the size of tadpoles. People in my hometown called them "toads." tadpole".

Pound the sweet potato noodles with some garlic sauce and make your mouth full of saliva.Our production team also learned how to grind the sweet potatoes into vermicelli using a mixer, grind them into gravy, drain them into vermicelli or pile them into skin residue.Don’t throw away the sweet potato petioles. You can eat them for stir-frying or cooking.Feed the remaining old stalks and roots to the pigs.

For many, many years, sweet potatoes have been God and life-saving food.Although many people vomit acidic water after eating sweet potatoes, they will starve without sweet potatoes. "Sweet potato rice, sweet potato steamed buns, you can't live without sweet potatoes." This folk proverb became a symbol of the famine era.At that time, anyone who could eat a whole basket of noodles or pancakes (wheat noodles without leaving any gluten) was considered a great person.

Now Li An has brought all of this to the Tang Dynasty. He wants Hongshu to save the poor people of the Tang Dynasty. However, Li An would not have thought that the entry of Hongshu at this time has caused earth-shaking changes in modern times.

"Your Majesty...!" Li An appeared next to Li Shimin. Li Shimin looked up and smiled at Li An: "An'er is here...!" Then Li Shimin stood up and said: "This is the hope of the Tang Dynasty!"

(End of this chapter)