Flowers in full bloom

Chapter 311: Squeezing Out the Oil

After searching his entire body, he finally pulled out a crumpled fifty-liang silver note from the corner of his holed pocket, saying it was for the Han brothers to buy wine and meat for the journey. As for whether it was enough, it was definitely not enough, but that was not the concern of Old Marquis Pei.

Hua Lei had no idea what was happening in other people's study rooms and continued to live a happy life every day.

After all, she was young, and after resting in the house for five or six days, Hua Lei felt fully revived. She rejected Aunt Song's suggestion to rest for a few more days, and went directly to Baihua Manor, ready to start making money with corn cobs from which she had peeled the corn kernels.

Originally, Uncle Zheng was going to grind these corn cobs into fine powder to feed the pig brothers, but Hua Lei specifically told him not to waste them and to save them for growing mushrooms. Yes, Hua Lei was going to use the corn cobs to grow mushrooms.

It is autumn now, and the mountains in the northern city are full of mushrooms. Yuanying Manor has also exchanged a lot of fresh mushrooms, but because Baihua Manor needs to make pickled mushroom chili sauce and the bun shop also needs to make buns with vegetable and shiitake mushroom fillings, no matter how many mushrooms there are, they are not enough.

If we ask people to go to the mountains to collect them, it is indeed possible, but it is too much trouble and they may not be able to compete with the villagers living at the foot of the mountain.

Anyway, most of the mushrooms they picked were taken to Yuanying Village to be exchanged for fertilizers, tofu and even sausages, so instead of competing with these villagers, it would be better to grow them themselves.

So Hualei asked Yuanying Manor to send out a message saying that they wanted to replace the mushrooms with a lump of mud at the root. They wanted all kinds of mushrooms except the poisonous ones.

When the villagers heard this, they thought that even soil could be exchanged for tofu and dried bean curd. So they went up the mountain to pick mushrooms with soil on their roots and brought them to Yuanying Village to exchange. Within a few days, the village received a lot of them.

Hualei put all the corn cobs in an iron pot and cooked them at high temperature for half an hour to disinfect the corn cobs. After they cooled down, he found a suitable place and arranged the corn cobs neatly against the wall.

Cut off the replaced mushroom roots with the soil at the roots and carefully sprinkle them on the corn cobs, then lay another layer of corn cobs, and cut off the mushroom roots and sprinkle them on the corn cobs again.

Repeat this process until you have laid five layers of corn cobs and five layers of mushroom roots. Then cover the top with straw and surround it with straw to keep the mushrooms warm.

After a month, remove the straw and you will see white mold on the surface of the corn cobs, which means the mushrooms are growing. Continue to cover them with straw, and in about two months, the mushrooms will grow out. When they are the right size, you can pick them.

After picking the mushrooms for the first time, you should immediately water them with rice water and make sure they are watered thoroughly. This will increase the nutrients the mushrooms need. Then cover them with straw and wait for ten days or half a month, then you can pick the second batch of mushrooms.

After picking, water the mushrooms thoroughly with rice washing water and cover them with straw. This way, you can pick five or six batches of mushrooms in succession. It is very simple and productive.

When Aunt Zheng saw mushrooms growing on the corn cobs, she almost screamed in surprise. Her boss was really amazing. He could even grow mushrooms on useless corn cobs. What else could he not do?

As a result, the mushroom chili sauce at Baihuazhuang was made more frequently. The number of vegetable and mushroom buns at Qingyunxiang Baozi Shop was also increased, and later wontons stuffed with mushroom and pork were added.

However, there were too many corn cobs, so they could not use up all the mushrooms. Hualei had no choice but to dry the mushrooms and make dried mushrooms and mushroom chili sauce and send them to Mobei. The useless corn cobs were used up by Hualei.

Hualei gave the task of growing mushrooms on corn cobs to Aunt Zheng and a few others, and no longer took care of the rest.

Aunt Zheng worked very hard and didn't worry about the buds at all. Then Uncle Zheng ground the buds from the corn stalks into powder, part of which was used as feed for the pigs and part as a base soil for mushroom cultivation, so that the scale of mushroom cultivation could be expanded.

Even the corn husks and flower buds were not wasted. After being washed, dried, and given to Aunt Zhao, when she was preparing to make glutinous rice snacks, she used the corn husks to pad the steamer to prevent sticking. It can be said that there was no waste at all. The corn that was not made into corn oil was finally squeezed into oil from the flower buds.

During this period, the retired Marquis Pei did not have any free time. After a few gatherings with his old friends and subordinates, he would occasionally go to his own farm. He even visited all of Hualei's farms and shops.

After a round, he immediately expanded his own winery. Because the Marquis's Mansion was promoted from the third rank to the second rank, there were many more fields and the amount of wine that could be made increased a lot, so the original winery was too late. Marquis Pei followed the principle that if you don't seek benefits, you are a fool, so he immediately decided to expand the winery.

At the same time, he doubled the size of the Marquis's pottery workshop in the North City District. The demand for pottery jars and pottery vats in Yuanying Manor has been increasing, and his own winery has also been in need of pottery jars and pottery vats, so Old Marquis Pei expanded it without hesitation.

Then when he walked to his newly bought pond farm, he took a look and found that it didn't seem to be as good as Lei'er's distant farm.

So, he personally brought a group of farmers from his own farm to Yuanying Farm to learn how to raise chickens and ducks, and how to feed pigs and geese. He learned everything from scratch.

Finally, even the duckweed and water hyacinth with flower buds thrown into the puddles were imitated by Old Marquis Pei.

You know, when people see water hyacinth and duckweed in puddles with flower buds in other villages, they just think they are accidentally grown in the puddles.

It can be seen that they did not completely learn Hualei's method. Also, they were all farmers, and many of them were illiterate. Although Hualei had explained and demonstrated it when the puddle was being renovated, it was estimated that they did not hear it at all or did not take it seriously at all at that time. It was not Hualei's fault.

After visiting all his farms and shops, Lord Pei started to visit Hualei's farm. He had been to Yuanying's farm, so he didn't go there anymore.

So, Lord Pei wandered over to Baihua Manor, and when he saw the mushrooms grown from corn cobs, he was equally stunned. Can this be grown? Oh, Lei'er is really omnipotent.

So she picked a basket of mushrooms carefully, brought them back to the mansion and sent them to the kitchen. She tried them at dinner time and they were really good. Although they seemed to taste a little worse than the mushrooms freshly picked from the mountains. Hua Lei didn't know what Marquis Pei thought.