The Daily Life of Farming and Raising Children in Ancient Mountain Residences

Chapter 42

Every noon, Shen An and Shen Ning would secretly pick the leaves of the fairy tree and bring them back. The first thing Sang Luo did after having lunch at the Chen family’s house was to make sour jujube cakes.

Because of the two pancakes, the children behind the grass house were as excited as if they had taken chicken blood. They were particularly curious about their sister-in-law, who unexpectedly bought them pancakes to eat.

Naturally, while curious, they also wanted to get closer, but the children were shy and timid, so no one dared to approach.

The situation was the same for the two new children. It could be said that, except for Shen An, Shen Ning, and Chen Ershan, who had already gone to dig and carry clay after eating pancakes, the rest were more or less the same, especially Shen Jin.

Shen Jin still couldn’t forget the fragrance of those pancakes. When he saw Sang Luo coming back, he couldn’t help but stare eagerly, but Sang Luo didn’t even look at him and went straight into the grass house.

Shen Jin shuffled awkwardly while hoeing and picking stones. He didn’t dare to approach.

He just wanted to show his loyalty and make his sister-in-law remember him so she could change his bad impression from before.

He wouldn’t go if she didn’t want him to. When his sister-in-law gave him a stern look, he didn’t dare to go.

Sang Luo was indeed making sour jujube cakes. With so many people around, she didn’t come out. Instead, she prepared two large bamboo sieves for drying the cakes, washed them, and placed them outside. She then brought two buckets of water into the house and closed the door to handle the rest of the process inside.

Making sour jujube cakes wasn’t difficult. When she lived in the mountains, she made this snack for herself every year when the sour jujubes were ripe. She made quite a few, dried them, and sealed them in boxes. This kind of snack was nutritious, clean, delicious, and reliable. It was one of Sang Luo’s favorite snacks.

Now that she had moved to a different place, Sang Luo was also familiar with making sour jujube cakes. After washing, boiling, peeling, removing the pits, and then kneading the maltose into them, the sour jujube cakes were ready. There weren’t many skills involved, just time and effort.

Taking out the bamboo sieves she had prepared earlier, she spread them out and kneaded the sour jujubes into small cakes, pressing them flat with her hands while they were still moist. Once two bamboo sieves were filled to the brim, Sang Luo stored the fruit peels and pits properly before opening the door and going outside.

There were no drying racks available, as they had used all the stools to make beds. But there were plenty of trees on the mountain. Sang Luo picked two trees with three sturdy branches each that could serve as natural drying racks. After moving a large stone over and testing if it was stable enough, she went back inside to fetch the two bamboo sieves and place them on top of the branches. After three days of drying, the sour jujube cakes would be ready.

Lu Dalang and Shi Erlang, who had just come back with the clay, only saw Sang Luo moving the bamboo sieves onto the tree branches to dry something, but they didn’t know what it was.

They were restrained and didn’t inquire further. They thought it was probably some unsold bracken or something similar. Every year, their wives would also dry some bracken to keep and use as a good dish in the winter after soaking it in water.

After finishing these tasks, Sang Luo cleared a space in her empty basket, tied up her trouser legs, sprinkled some snake repellent powder, and then equipped herself before heading into the mountains.

Since she had found the sour jujubes, she wasn’t in a hurry to borrow a hoe from the Chen family to dig up the konjac. With so many people in front and behind the house, it was convenient to process the sour jujubes inside the house, but digging up konjac wasn’t so easy. Since it had been several days already, she decided to wait until the house was built before bothering with it.

After calling Shen An and Shen Ning to give them instructions and greeting Shi Erlang and the others, Sang Luo entered the mountains.

Taking the same path as yesterday, Sang Luo went deeper into the mountains. She took out the sour jujube fruit peels wrapped in lotus leaves from her basket, selected a spot where the layer of fallen leaves was soft and decomposed, lightly dug a hole with a stone axe, and buried them.

As for the fruit pits, sour jujube pits were originally a Chinese medicinal herb and had several processing methods. One of them was sun-drying, but it was obviously not suitable to sun-dry them at home. Even if someone secretly saw the finished sour jujube cakes, they wouldn’t recognize what they were made of, but the sour jujube pits were easily identifiable.

Who in the village hadn’t eaten sour jujubes? In Sang Luo’s area, southern sour jujubes were also called “five-eyed fruit,” and the characteristics of the fruit pits were quite obvious.

So Sang Luo didn’t process them. She planned to wash them clean and air-dry them at night, then put them in cloth bags tomorrow and take them to the county pharmacy to see if they would buy them.

Today, she went into the mountains to pick sour jujubes, nature’s gift. It was only logical to stock up more during the fruit-bearing season.

Because making sour jujube cakes took some time, by the time Sang Luo went out to pick up a basket of sour jujubes, it was time for dinner. The originally bustling grass house had quieted down by now, with only Shen An and Shen Ning still working outside, waiting for her.

Seeing Sang Luo return, the siblings breathed a sigh of relief and put down their tools to greet her.

“Sister-in-law, did you go far?”

After all, it was getting dark, and seeing that she hadn’t returned yet, the siblings couldn’t help but worry.

Sang Luo smiled and replied, “Not bad, just a little deeper than yesterday.”

Shen Ning furrowed her brows slightly. “Sister-in-law, if you go out too late in the future, don’t go too deep. It’s dangerous in the mountains when it gets dark.”

“Alright, I’ll pay attention in the future.” The two children were genuinely caring, and Sang Luo felt genuinely pleased with their concern. She looked around and asked, “Has everyone gone to dinner? Why didn’t you go down together?”

Shen An curled his lips and said, “We’re not hungry; we’re just waiting for you, sister-in-law.”

Then he tiptoed to look at the basket behind Sang Luo. Seeing wild vegetables, he asked softly, “Are there sour jujubes underneath?”

Shen Ning also got excited and pointed to the side of the house and asked, “Did Sister-in-law finish making those sour jujube cakes she picked yesterday afternoon?”

Both siblings had seen the large baskets hanging on the tree, and they were extremely curious. However, they were not tall enough to see clearly.

Sang Luo laughed and nodded. “They still need to dry for three days. We’ll make another batch tonight, and then I’ll let you taste the fresh sour jujube cakes. But we can’t call them that publicly; we’ll need to use a different name.”

Otherwise, if the ingredients were revealed, it would be a problem.

Both siblings nodded in agreement, making a mental note to avoid mentioning it to others, even if their family decided to sell them in the future.

Shen Ning was a little disappointed that she hadn’t been able to see how Sang Luo made the sour jujube cakes in the afternoon, but now hearing that another batch would be made at night, and especially that she and her brother could taste them fresh, her eyes lit up. “Can we eat them?”

Malt sugar was precious, and my sister-in-law had even bought them pastries today.

“Of course, why wouldn’t we eat what we made ourselves? Come on, you two, tidy up and wash your hands, then go down to dinner. Later, I’ll borrow a few big baskets from Grandma Chen, and tonight we’ll make the rest of this basket too.”

If they didn’t go down, the Chen family might be waiting and unable to start cooking.

Shen An and Shen Ning didn’t think too much about it. Just hearing that sour jujube cakes would be made tonight made them energetic, so they quickly went to wash their hands.

Sang Luo also put the basket back in the house.

Just as they were about to leave, they had already walked outside when Shen An remembered something and stopped. “Sister-in-law, I’ll stay home and guard. Can you bring me back some food?”

In Shen An’s view, their family now not only makes fairy tofu but also sour jujube cakes. These were the foundations for their future lives. With a basket of sour jujubes at home now, if someone from the village came in and found them, they would figure out what they were made of when they sold the sour jujube cakes outside.

For her sister-in-law’s family recipe, Shen An was extremely secretive. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he was guarding it with his life.

Thinking this way, he didn’t even wait for Sang Luo’s answer. He made up his mind not to leave. “That’s settled then, sister-in-law. You and Ning can go down to eat; just bring me some food later.”

Sang Luo understood what the children were worried about. She genuinely felt touched. When she first crossed over, she was truly poor, with nothing to her name.

Of course, she is still poor now. Most of the money she earned every day was exchanged for food and household items, and she didn’t save much. To avoid drawing attention, she only bought a little each day and didn’t save anything.

So, even now, Sang Luo doesn’t have a hundred coins saved up.

Getting up in the middle of the night to make fairy tofu, going out to set up a stall before dawn, walking twenty miles back and forth every day—it might seem like just a few words, but doing it day after day was truly exhausting.

But these two children were so understanding that Sang Luo didn’t feel tired despite the hardships. Because she wasn’t the only one working hard, these two children, though young and weak, were doing their best to contribute to the family and protect it. 

From being alone as Sang Luo to becoming Sang Luo in this world, she had realized how it felt to have family and partners in these two children, who had no blood ties to her.

She patted Shen An’s head and said, “Alright, then you take care of yourself; Xiao An, my sister-in-law will bring you some food later.”

It seems like I’ve been praised?

And this sentence, for Xiao An, was the first time Shen An heard such intimate words from his sister-in-law’s mouth.

The child was a bit excited.

He was actually not that young, especially since he lost his parents at a young age and then lost his older brother. He was the elder brother and had to protect his younger sister, so he matured earlier than his peers.

Shen An understood some things, like the fact that his sister-in-law was just rescued by Third Aunt in exchange for half a bag of grain, and she didn’t actually marry his older brother. He had seen people in the village getting married; they had to wear wedding attire and perform the ceremony to the heavens and earth; that’s when they were truly married.

So, if his sister-in-law really took it seriously, she actually didn’t have the responsibility to take care of him and his sister.

Deep down, Shen An actually knew all this, and in the depths of his heart, he was also worried and afraid.

But his sister-in-law never thought of abandoning them, not when they were so hungry they could only eat bran, not now, and these days, she treated him and his sister really well.

However, this kind of heartfelt closeness, that feeling of being truly a family, Shen An only just felt it clearly now.

He was a bit excited—so excited that his tongue seemed to be twisted and tied up, as if he didn’t know how to speak. After a while, he managed to straighten it out, saying, “I’m not working hard; it’s my sister-in-law who works the hardest.”

That kind of joy and eagerness to please or get close to someone, Shen An couldn’t describe; he just smiled with his eyes curved, urging, “Sister-in-law, go quickly.”

He thought that since he would have nothing to do for a while, he would wash all the leaves of the fairy tree so that his sister-in-law would have less work to do when she came back in the evening.