Her Cultivation Diary-Chapter 118 - : 118. Tea leaves, locust flowers, and spring bamboo shoots_1

Chapter 118: 118. Tea leaves, locust flowers, and spring bamboo shoots_1

Tea? Who among the middle-aged and elderly doesn’t enjoy it?

Uncle Song indeed was tempted, “How much does a tea picker earn a day?”

Wu Lan didn’t beat around the bush, “150, our tea plants were fertilized this year, they’ve grown well, and you can pick about five jin a day. Your family’s Tea Mountain has been neglected for many years; I guess it’s not easy to pick there, maybe three jin per person per day?”

What she said was the truth. Tea trees have to be pruned every year and buds picked; otherwise, they will grow tall and thin, with branches sprawling everywhere.

The tips of the buds will also become longer and slimmer, and weigh less and less.

Standing among such tea trees, you can hardly see the end, and to pick the tea leaves, you have to pull down the branches first.

The three jin Wu Lan mentioned per day, that was already an optimistic estimate!

Although Uncle Song had let his land lie fallow for many years, he hadn’t completely forgotten everything; he knew the condition of his own Tea Mountain well.

In other places, if the transportation were a little better, such tea plantations could be leased out in large pieces to those big tea merchants. But in their case, the tea wasn’t famous, the mountain paths were difficult to navigate, and the areas were scattered…

In short, his family’s tea garden was really no different from a wilderness.

While he was still mulling over whether it was feasible or not, Mao Li immediately refused, “That won’t do. Dry tea sells for only two to three hundred yuan a jin in the market, and the good ones for about five or six hundred. It’s more convenient to buy and drink directly.”

“If you hire people to pick tea, you won’t even get a jin of dry tea in a day, and the labor costs go out to one or two hundred yuan. Why bother with all that trouble? Our family definitely can afford to buy tea.”

There was an implied meaning in her words, but Wu Lan let out a sigh of relief.

If it wasn’t economical, then so be it; after all, her family genuinely paid people to roast their tea leaves.

Currently, there were four tea pickers at home, and with her and Wang Lifan pitching in, they could produce six jin of dry tea a day.

Zhou Maozhu’s roasting of the tea was manual, with no tea roasting machine. To ensure the freshness of the tea leaves, they were air-dried for a few hours before starting work in the middle of the night. Although they skipped the sieving process, it was still not easy day after day.

If Uncle Song really joined in the tea roasting, wouldn’t that be her family’s loss of goodwill?

Mao Li refused, and Wu Lan was actually happy about it.

But before happiness lasted a minute, she heard Uncle Song ponder for a moment, “Wu Lan, how do you sell this tea of yours? Give me also a jin. It’s reassuring to drink tea from our own people.”

Wu Lan: …

All she could do was repeat the oft-heard phrase, “Uncle, my tea leaves are quite expensive.”

No matter the supply, it wasn’t that they couldn’t squeeze out a jin of tea leaves; the earlier excuse just wasn’t suitable anymore.

Nothing else to say.

“That can be——”

Just as Uncle Song was about to ask, he suddenly thought of the Milk Vetch selling for twenty yuan a jin, hesitated for a while, and then gave up as well.

He thought: If it’s a thousand yuan a jin, I really can’t bear to buy it! How embarrassing would that be?

As he thought this over, Mao Li quickly took Sun Yanyan with her and ran off, carrying a large plastic basket——

They had to run!

Aunt Song Hongmei had already gone to grandma’s garden with a plastic bag by now, and they had seen the asparagus; there was only that small patch. There was also a patch of garlic sprouts; normally, it wasn’t anything special, but it was twenty yuan a jin now!

Didn’t they need to hurry and bring them back?

As soon as the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law arrived, indeed, Song Hongmei had already pulled out two asparagus stalks. Without a word, Mao Li placed the basket in front and began to pull out more along the vegetable rows.

Wang Lifan’s asparagus had grown well this year, with layers of leaves stacked up, and even bud clusters had started to form on top. Now they only needed a bit of effort to pull them out, which required hardly any labor.

Aunt had pulled out three stalks of asparagus and grabbed two handfuls of garlic sprouts, ready to call it quits. But when she turned her head:

Wow!

The mother-daughter duo had already pulled out a small pile. She wondered:

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“Why are you pulling up so many bamboo shoots? You can’t eat them at every meal.”

Aunt Song Hongmei was frugal, but she had a knack for pinching pennies without resorting to eating the same dish over and over to save money. If that were the case, her husband, Old Zhu, would have had enough and flipped the table long ago.

Even now, a single shoot had grown so large, it was enough for a family of three for one or two meals. Plus, the leaves of the asparagus were also good for a quick stir-fry, so it would take seven or eight meals to finish three asparagus stalks.

Even if you ate one every other day, they would last a week!

So Aunt thought it over and decided that three stalks were ideal to ensure freshness.

Besides, there were still garlic sprouts, right? Later on, you could stir-fry them with cured meat, eggs, anything really, perfect.

But looking at Mao Li and her daughter-in-law, their ambition seemed to be to strip the vegetable garden bare and set up a stall at the market!

But nowadays, every household’s garden had nothing but asparagus left, which was so cheap, was it really necessary?

Feeling Aunt’s gaze of surprise, Mao Li even smiled and said, “Oh my, things in the city are expensive. Mom said to take as much as we can, so I thought I’d bring more back. My brother now has a particular fondness for hometown produce.”

Song Hongmei was straightforward but not foolish.

What her brother loves to eat? Clearly, you all just want a bargain! Then she glanced at the foolish mother and daughter-in-law:

“Then you all take your time. I’ll go back and tidy up the bamboo shoots.”

She turned her head and left the vegetable garden.

Going back, she saw Qiaoqiao happily coming down from the back mountain with a basket, and looking down, she saw a basketful of locust flowers, white with a hint of blue!

“Aunt, I got locust flowers for you.”

Qiaoqiao, holding a plastic bag, poured the locust flowers inside, watching Aunt gleaming with joy.

“Oh my, my nephew cares about me. Look at our Qiaoqiao, so nice! These locust flowers are great, too, smelling so sweet. Tonight I’ll steam the flowers that have bloomed, and the rest I’ll stir-fry later…”

As she spoke, she picked a few flowers and stuffed them into her mouth, chewing them for a sweeter taste with each bite.

She never tasted locust flowers like this before!

Aunt stopped her hand: “Tantan, these flowers are pretty good, don’t eat them anymore, sell them! You could definitely get twenty bucks a kilo for these.”

Song Tan was resigned—sure, she was certain people would buy them, but the problem was the quantity was too little. Three or five kilos wouldn’t even cover the cost of gas.

Even with Spiritual Energy to increase the yield, there needed to be a basic quantity.

Otherwise, getting a hundred and ten kilos from just a couple of locust trees wouldn’t pass muster with her mother!

She simply put everything into the bag:

“Aunt, you cook so well, take them all back to eat. If we want some, there are still more on the tree.”

With so much produce, the locust flowers could be blanched and then frozen for storage; Aunt was over the moon!

After contemplating, she painfully parted with a small portion: “Give some to your grandpa to taste, otherwise, they’ll grumble at their place.”

Seeing no one around, she fished out a handful of cash from her bosom and pulled out five bucks with difficulty, thought for a moment, and stuffed another five to Qiaoqiao:

“Sweetheart, your Aunt didn’t bring you anything to eat this time. You use this to buy yourself some snacks, just don’t let your grandaunt find out.”

Normally, there would be a bit of haggling, like “I don’t want it,” or “You keep it…”

But Song Tan didn’t insist. Instead, she helped Qiaoqiao secure the ten yuan and then picked up a hoe from the base of the wall:

“Aunt, the bamboo shoots in the bamboo grove are tender right now, do you want any?”

As for bamboo shoots, they can also be blanched and dried!

With a decisive move, Aunt pulled out a large plastic bag from her purse: “Let’s go! We’ll do it together!”