Chapter 208

Qing Mengzhu's eyes widened. "Dried tangerine peel? Is this dried tangerine peel made from our oranges?"

Zhou Yan: "Not only that, only the dried tangerine peel made from oranges from your mountain has such a fragrance. The dried tangerine peel made from oranges from the orchard doesn't taste as good."

Qing Mengzhu: "I really couldn't taste it at all; there was absolutely no tangerine peel flavor in the meat filling."

Zhou Yan: "That's why it's called a seasoning. If you can taste the seasoning itself, then it's overshadowing the main ingredient."

Qing Mengzhu: "I didn't expect dried tangerine peel to have this effect. Brother Zhou, did you put in a lot of dried tangerine peel?"

Zhou Yan: "It's not much, just a little bit of cooking wine, and then I mixed the spiced wine into the minced meat. It's not exactly a secret recipe, just an innovative dish from our restaurant. You can keep it to yourselves, don't tell anyone else."

Qing Mengzhu assured her, "We won't tell. The main thing is, this dried tangerine peel smells so good; we'll add some next time we cook meat."

Zhou Yan smiled and said, "I'll bring you two more bottles of wine later. It'll taste even better if you cook it with rice wine. To be honest, I never expected that the combination of dried tangerine peel and rice wine would produce such a unique aroma."

Qing Mengzhu: "Then let's give it a try. If rice wine with dried tangerine peel really works, we'll brew some rice wine after our rice harvest. Can japonica rice be used to brew wine?"

Zhou Yan: "Yes, of course! All grains can be used to brew alcohol, but the flavor and yield will differ. By the way, is the Rice in your fields turning yellow?"

Qing Mengzhu: "Yes, it's almost time to harvest the rice."

Not only Zhou Yan was paying attention to their Rice, but Zhao Hexi also remembered their Rice.

Zhao Hexi also specifically asked, "How will the Rice be harvested this year? Will it be harvested by hand?"

Qing Mengzhu nodded. "There are shrimp in the rice paddies, and they can only be harvested by hand. If we use machines, we risk killing the shrimp."

Zhao Hexi: "Then I'll send someone over?"

Qing Mengzhu: "Let's check again next week. The rice isn't ripe enough yet; we can harvest it next week."

Zhao Hexi showed him the weather forecast. "I'm just worried that it might rain when we're harvesting the rice. If that happens, the rain will easily wash the grains into the field, and it won't be easy to dry the rice after harvesting."

Qing Mengzhu has been paying attention to the weather forecast lately. "It's alright, it won't rain heavily anyway. We can harvest it after the rain stops; the rice isn't that fragile. As for drying, if all else fails, we can just use a dryer."

Seeing that he understood, Zhao Hexi stopped trying to persuade him.

Qing Mengzhu and his team planted Rice for the first time, and the quality of the Rice they grew was quite good.

Because the Rice was planted sparsely and given plenty of fertilizer, their Rice was larger than all the Rice in the vicinity. The rice stalks were so lush that they were almost like bushes, and the rice grains were also large, with the heavy ears of rice almost drooping into the water.

Therefore, Qing Mengzhu had to drain some of the water from the paddy field, allowing the water level to drop to just above the soil.

Due to the drop in water levels, the shrimp living in the rice paddies have been forced to hide in the deep, meandering ditches within the paddies.

This made it easier for them to harvest the rice.

Before harvesting the rice, Qing Mengzhu was a little nervous, unable to determine whether the rice was ripe enough. She even called Nian Xinfei and others to ask for their opinions.

Nian Xinfei and the others advised him to harvest the rice when it was about 90% ripe, and not to be too nervous, as Rice has a relatively high tolerance for error.

Qing Mengzhu asked experienced farmers, who said that rice can be harvested when it is hard and crunchy when bitten with teeth. It doesn't matter whether it is a little yellow or a little green, as it will not affect the yield.

However, it's best not to wait until the rice is completely yellow before harvesting. When the rice is completely yellow, it means that the rice is fully ripe and the grains will naturally fall off. If they fall into the field, the loss will be significant.

So, after the Mid-Autumn Festival and the mooncakes, Qing Mengzhu chose an auspicious day and led people to the fields to harvest rice.

They harvest the rice close to the stubble, then bundle the harvested rice and take it to a diesel threshing machine by the field to knock off the grains before taking it for further processing.

When Qing Mengzhu harvested the rice, he counted the grains on each ear of rice and found that there were at least 180 grains on each ear.

For this variety of rice, the number of grains per ear is usually between 130 and 180. The fact that their rice ears had so many grains means it's already considered a bumper harvest.

Most importantly, their rice grains are large and round, weighing almost twice as much as ordinary rice grains.

With grains this big and heavy, the harvest from five acres is sure to be good.

Qing Mengzhu attaches great importance to Rice, and specially asked Gu Benshu and others to come and record all the data for reference next year.

When harvesting rice, the air above the entire paddy field is filled with the fragrant scent of straw. However, standing in the paddy field is not comfortable because the rice awns can prick and itch.

Qing Mengzhu hadn't done farm work this painfully in a long time. He experienced the harvest with a bittersweet joy, bending over countless times with his employees to harvest the rice from five acres of land.

With a large number of people, they finished harvesting the rice in just one day.

After quickly cleaning out the debris from the rice, they weighed the harvest at the edge of the field.

Gu Benshu personally stood beside the scale to record the data. "There are a total of 6,150 jin of millet here, averaging 1,230 jin per mu."

Qing Mengzhu gulped down water because of the heat, and only after finishing the water did he say to Gu Benshu, "Not bad, our rice grains are relatively large and have a low moisture content, so this quantity is considered a bumper harvest."

Gu Benshu: "Yes, the spacing between Rice seeds is relatively large, but the weight of the rice grains compensates for the losses caused by this large spacing. It seems that we can try planting with large spacing in the future; large spacing can indeed promote a bumper harvest."

Qing Mengzhu shook her head. "It's hard to say whether it will promote growth yet. We used too much fertilizer this time. I'll send you a copy of the planting costs in a couple of days for your reference."

Gu Benshu's eyes lit up. "That's great!"

Qing Mengzhu originally wanted to use the traditional method of directly drying the rice in the sun.

Now that the rice has been harvested, it's really difficult to find a place to dry over 6,000 kilograms of rice. Also, wild birds easily eat some of it while it's drying. It's better to just find a factory to dry the rice.

Harvesting rice is too tiring, Qing Mengzhu handed the rice over to Zhao Hexi to dry. She specifically instructed him that it was fine to find a more expensive factory to dry it, but he should keep an eye on it and make sure the factory doesn't hide any rice grains.

Zhao Hexi readily agreed, "I know, we still need to see the experimental data. I'll find a reliable factory and personally deliver it tomorrow, don't worry."

Qing Mengzhu yawned. "Okay, I'll leave it to you. I don't want to move at all right now."

Zhao Hexi patted him on the shoulder. "You've worked hard."

Qing Mengzhu: "There's nothing we can do, this is my family's rice. Once it's dried, we'll mill some new rice to try. You can all come to my house for dinner then."

Zhao Hexi: "The rice grains in this batch are so big, the cooked rice should be as big as sunflower seeds, just like Brother Zhou said, right?"

Qing Mengzhu: "I don't know, it seems a bit difficult, the sunflower seeds are too big."

Qing Mengzhu chatted with Zhao Hexi for a few minutes, then waved and went to the other side of the field.

Ming Chunxi was waiting for him at the edge of the field, holding a bottle of water in her hand.

Qing Mengzhu had just finished a bottle of water and didn't really want to drink anymore, but she still took the water from Ming Chunxi and took a sip.

As soon as he tasted the water, he was a little surprised. "Fresh bamboo juice?"

Ming Chunxi touched his forehead. "I brought fresh bamboo sap because I was worried you'd get heatstroke. You insisted on harvesting the rice yourself, how are you feeling now?"

Qing Mengzhu moved closer to Ming Chunxi and whispered, "The harvest is quite substantial. It seems like the progress bar for becoming Intermediate Grower has grown significantly. We'll take another look when we get home."

Chapter 208

Qing Mengzhu pulled Ming Chunxi back home, closed the courtyard gate, went back to the room, and then opened the Interstellar Mall.