It's really hard to just farm peacefully.

Chapter 335

After learning from Jiang Yan that they had reached a deal with the strong man in front of them worth a wild boar leg, old man Jiang Fa suddenly felt that one cannot judge a person by his appearance.

He quickly stuffed the picked vegetables into Hong Lao Ba's hands and said warmly, "It's dangerous to walk on the mountain road so late. Why don't you stay in the village for a night and return tomorrow morning?"

"That's not necessary. Someone will pick us up on the way." Hong Lao Ba refused without hesitation.

But it was inconvenient to carry the bag of dried vegetables with him after carrying two baskets on the journey ahead, so he borrowed a large bamboo basket from Jiang Yan and put the turnips and radishes in it again.

Before leaving, Hong Laoba remembered Jiang Yan's words that their village was afraid to go up the mountain for fear of encountering wild boars. He hesitated for a moment before reassuring her:

"The wild boar we caught today was the last one in the nearby mountains. We've already captured its entire family. We've also been around this mountain behind us. There aren't any ferocious prey there, so you can go into the mountains and collect firewood without worry."

"Oh, alright."

After sending the man up the mountain path in a daze, Jiang Yan and Jiang Fa returned to the courtyard and looked at each other in silence.

All the wild boars in the nearby mountains were caught, and they even caught an entire family?

Jiang Yan didn't know whether he should be thankful that he hadn't come face to face with wild boars during his journey into the mountains, or that the person who had caught a whole litter of wild boars had no ill will towards his village.

Everyone had searched the back mountain thoroughly, but the whole village, including himself, was still unaware of it.

As for the possibility that Hong Lao Ba exaggerated his words...it should not be necessary for them.

After a long while, Jiang Fa finally found his voice: "Let's go and talk to your grandfather Jiang Wang about refining the pulp tomorrow morning."

……

Before dawn, the millstones in Dongshan Village began to rumble.

Jiang Yan yawned and poured the last bucket of raw soy milk into the pot and slowly boiled it.

When Grandma Li Hao came over with a bowl of bean dregs and asked if they wanted to eat bean dregs rice today, Jiang Yan shook her head and said, "Make some bean dregs cakes. You can even take them into the city to eat."

Today's itinerary had been agreed upon last night. She and Uncle Jiang Hu were to go into town to deliver taro oil to the Hao Mansion, then buy some salt, a necessity for the village. When they passed through Hezhou Village, they were to ask Wang Mazi to make saltpeter for them, and then help Old Man Jiang Shun bring something for Aunt Jiang Lu.

Jiang Yan thought of the large jar of cliff fruit oil stored at home and the heavy copper coins that were about to fall into his bag. He no longer felt sleepy and became full of energy.

By the time today's soy milk was taken away, it was just getting light outside.

The weather is getting colder, and Jiang Yan usually has to struggle on the kang for a while before getting up, so his breakfast time will be delayed, and he basically won't meet the two elderly people next door who get up early.

But today is an exception.

Jiang Yan first put half a spoonful of bean paste into the bowl, thought for a while, picked up a chopstick of meat scraps from the jar in the cupboard, then poured a ladle of boiling soy milk on it and stirred it well.

Finally, he picked up a piece of bean curd cake from the bamboo plate and ate it bit by bit.

Li Hao and Jiang Fa stared with their eyes wide open. Li Hao even said, "Yanzi, your way of eating is really fresh. You don't put the sauce and meat in the pancakes but use them to soak in the batter."

Jiang Yan chuckled and said, "I tried it once before. It only had sauce but no meat, but I quite liked it. Don't you guys really want to try it?"

Before sitting down to eat, Li Hao and Jiang Fa had already rejected Jiang Yan's recommendation, but when they saw such a fancy way of eating, they couldn't help but feel curious.

After a lot of internal struggles over whether to eat it or not, they both finally changed sides and said, "Okay, let's try something new too."

After eating and drinking, it was almost time to go into the city as agreed.

Jiang Hu came to Jiang Yan's house and hugged the clay jar filled with taro oil. He weighed the amount in his arms and said, "It's not as little as I thought."

When he followed the villagers to Jiang Yan's house to see how to deal with it, he only saw half a bucket of cliff nut crumbs poured in, and not a scoop of oil could be skimmed out for a long time.

It was Jiang Yan who had many ideas, was patient, and was willing to spend time and effort and use firewood to come up with this new thing that could make money.

"Not that much. Except for what we keep for our own use, the rest are all here." Jiang Yan had experience and no longer had unreasonable expectations.

And when she found that the production ratio this year was slightly higher than before, she felt particularly satisfied.

We would like to thank Mr. Jiang Shun and Mr. Jiang Qi for helping us improve the foot-operated stone mortar, and we would like to thank the other young and old people in Dongshan Village for their secondary fine grinding of the cliff nuts in their spare time.

Although she has not yet gained any inspiration on how to increase the oil yield of oil-bearing crops, based on her limited knowledge, she believes that there is definitely a causal relationship between fine grinding and increased oil yield.

Manager Hao San obviously could not understand the difficulty of improving oil pressing skills.

He said in disbelief, "Didn't you say you picked up over 300 kilograms of goods this year, but this is the only amount of finished product?"

"It's quite a bit. Not counting the jar, the net weight is thirty kilograms. It's enough to last a year under normal use."

Jiang Yan really did a rough calculation on the ground. According to the usage of wealthy families, which was also the habit of Fu Nulang when she was still in the governor's mansion, lighting lamps for three hours every day, the jar of cliff fruit oil she moved could be used by three people for a full year.

The Hao family is just a wealthy family, and two hours a day is enough for four people to cook for a whole year.

Manager Hao San was speechless: "Is that how you calculated the number? What about the interpersonal relationships in our mansion?"

"Use it sparingly?" Jiang Yan touched the tip of his nose. "Everyone in your house can light the lamp for no more than one hour a day. The rest of the time, use other lamp oil instead. This way, the excess can be distributed evenly to the Fu family."

"Well... two people, with a light at night, should be enough to handle official business for more than two hours."

"Who said it was given to the Fu Mansion?" Manager Hao San retorted, but seeing Jiang Yan's face full of "I don't believe it", his tone of denial weakened.

After a moment, he changed his tone, his face falling, and said pitifully, "You also know that the Fu Mansion is definitely indispensable, but not long ago, General Song took over the counties in the north of our mansion. Can this be missed? No way."

Jiang Yan expressed her sincerest sympathy...that was impossible.

She traded high-quality lamp oil to the Hao family at a fair price. What does it have to do with her whether the Hao family can use the lamp oil to exchange for the desired benefits?

But that's not the way to say it. Jiang Yan couldn't say anything nice either, so she could only say helplessly:

"There's really nothing we can do. Our entire village went into the mountains to look for it. We dug up the ground and only found about 300 kilograms. This thing is born and raised in nature; it can't be conjured up.

I think Mr. Hao and the adults have seen many treasures, so they will definitely understand this."

Manager Hao San: "..." What else can he force?

The price of lamp oil in the county has increased by another two copper coins, and the price of high-quality lamp oil has reached a high price of one ounce and thirty-two copper coins.

Manager Hao San asked someone to bring a beam scale to confirm the weight, and then settled the money for the cliff fruit oil and the clay jar to Jiang Yan.

The total amount exceeded fifteen taels of silver.

Jiang Yan grinned so hard that his teeth couldn't be seen. He and Jiang Hu hid the small silver beans and a large bag of copper coins in their arms, and then rushed out of the city and back to the village.