readsfreenovel Chapter 122 Working together to build a home
Chapter 122 Working together to build a home
Ordinary people at that time really had no skills. They either steamed or boiled their food. Like the housewives in later generations, they could become chefs in any small restaurant.
Of course, Hou Xiaoge also knew the main reason, which was that there was no material to practice with.
Just imagine, how delicious can people who only eat meat once or twice a year or even two years make the meat? Most people only add a little salt and green onions to cook meat, and it is good enough if it is cooked well without any fishy smell.
After all, the recipes of this era are not like those of later generations, where all kinds of recipes are uploaded to the Internet everywhere, and even the word recipe is no longer valuable.
In this era, even if you have the skill of frying fried dough twists, it can be a way to make money to support your family.
Therefore, recipes are really precious these days. In fact, most of them are passed down from father to son, not from daughter to daughter, and from elders to younger ones. Even if a wife wants to see the recipe when it is being prepared, she will be beaten.
So when everyone heard Hou Xiaoge say that he had a recipe for braised pork, they were shocked and surprised.
At this moment, everyone was thinking that if this recipe was real, even if it tasted half as good as those in the shops in the city, it would be enough to become a family heirloom, and they would never have to worry about food and drink in the future.
"You are so unlucky, you don't even know that green smoke is coming out of our ancestral grave!" Hou Yangmin said with a wry smile.
Upon learning that Hou Xiaoge had the recipe, Hou Yangmin spoke up to stop the division of the family business. After all, if he disagreed, it would mean that he was taking advantage of his nephew.
"Uncle, my family doesn't have any strong labor force right now. If my mother and I go out to sell our goods, we'll be easily targeted by others, which is too troublesome.
So my family will just make the braised meat, and you, your elder brother, and your uncle will sell it, and we will all make money together." Hou Xiaoge smiled and said the news that made everyone ecstatic.
"Heiwa, your aunt really loves you so much." Hou Cuiping, the aunt, let out a strange cry and hugged Hou Xiaoge with a smile.
Hou Xiaoge pushed away the girl who was pinching her face with a look of disgust, causing everyone to laugh.
“Heiwa, since you can support yourself and your family, then separate!
I still have eighteen dollars and some French currency in my hand. Let's divide it among the three of us, six each!
Also, Heidan will live with me. When the disaster is over, I will send Heidan back to you."
After Hou Yangmin finished speaking, he took out a small cloth bag from his underwear, and then took out a handful of dollars and some legal currency from the bag.
"Uncle, I don't want this money. I haven't even given you the money from selling the gun. You can split it with my uncle!" Hou Xiaoge really looked down on these dollars. He waved his hand and refused directly.
"That's impossible. Your son risked his life to buy that gun. Besides, you paid for most of the expenses along the way. Forget about the money.
This money belongs to the public, so if we are dividing the family, I must give it to you. If you don’t want it, then we won’t divide the family.” Hou Yangmin looked stubborn.
Seeing his uncle like this, Hou Xiaoge could only smile bitterly and take the money.
However, Hou Xiaoge did not want it, but gave all the money to his stepmother, which made Wang Maimiao so happy that she smiled from ear to ear.
"Brother, Heiwa, I'll take four of this money!
We want to take advantage of this, Cuiping wants to keep this iron pot." Zhou Xinmin took the money and handed a dollar to Hou Yangmin and Hou Xiaoge respectively.
"also!"
Hou Yangmin nodded in agreement, and Hou Xiaoge also nodded.
In this way, the Hou family's only valuable asset, the ancestral large iron pot, was divided.
Hou Xiaoge knew that a large iron pot with a diameter of forty to fifty centimeters would cost at least seven or eight dollars if it was new, and even an old one would cost four or five dollars, so the couple really got a good deal.
But he didn't care. There was no need to be too clear about the details for a family. It was just one pot. Hou Xiaoge was not short of anything either. He had dozens of big black pots in his space!
"Heiwa, since we've split up, your uncle will return the gun to you. After all, this thing is very valuable." After Zhou Xinmin said this, he took out Hou Xiaoge's first trophy, the Hanyang-made gun, from the straw curtain, stroked it reluctantly, and then handed it to Hou Xiaoge.
"Whoa!"
"Uncle, you can keep this gun for yourself! It's too long and it's not convenient for me to hold it.
Besides, I have a pistol in my hand! It is much more impressive than a long gun.
From now on, this gun will be a common weapon for our big family. Whoever catches prey will have to share some with everyone.
Besides, uncle, you are a good shooter. If we ever meet someone who has bad intentions towards our family, we can use you.
But I have to say something unpleasant in advance, if uncle and cousin need it later, you can't just take it and not give it to them!" Seeing that his uncle-in-law looked reluctant, Hou Xiaoge smiled and did a favor.
"Hehe! That's great." Zhou Xinmin took the rifle back with a look of joy. He felt closer to her than his wife.
The next day, Hou Xiaoge discovered that after the family split up, whether it was his adoptive mother and eldest sister, or his uncle and aunt, they were all very motivated when they worked.
"It seems that only when people consider their own interests can they work hard!" Hou Xiaoge said with emotion, smiling.
After buying the land, the next step was naturally to divide the land and dig kilns. The village allocated a six-meter-wide earthen slope to each household.
The land was obtained for free, and now more people in the village wanted to split up their families. Some unmarried people wanted to split up, but they were slapped in the face and asked to leave.
The earth slope in the familiar village is more than 70 meters long, and the garbage ditch in front of the slope is 34 or 35 meters long.
In other words, after digging a cave and leveling the earthen slope above the cave and the garbage and smelly water in the trench, each villager can have nearly one acre of farmland, although the quality of this farmland is average.
When it was Hou Xiaoge's turn, Hou Xiaoge was dissatisfied with the width of only six meters, so he directly used his financial ability and spent ten dollars to buy another nine-meter-wide earth slope. Now his house had a width of fifteen meters.
This width is equivalent to the width of a residential plot of about five houses in rural areas in later generations, so it can be said to be large enough.
Hou Xiaoge decided to dig four caves, one for himself and his younger brother, one for his mother and older sister, another for the kitchen, and the last one for breeding and storing firewood and sundries.
Building a cave with four holes is no small project and it is certainly not something that Hou Xiaoge’s family can complete alone.
Although Hou Xiaoge is very strong, he doesn't want to be tied to doing such strenuous work for a long time.
So it’s better to hire someone! This will not only make things easier for yourself, but also help the refugees.
In this way, Hou Xiaoge "spent" ten dollars to buy 650 kilograms of sweet potatoes and hired disaster victims from outside to dig caves.
One basket of soil weighs 20 kilograms, and ten baskets of soil can get you one kilogram of sweet potatoes, which are distributed on the spot. This immediately aroused the enthusiasm of the refugees.
A person can at least dig forty or fifty baskets of soil a day, which is more than enough to earn four or five kilograms of sweet potatoes.
Not only the refugees outside who were almost starving to death, but even the refugees in the village were scrambling to work for such good treatment.
Hou Xiaoge's family did not have to dig the soil, they just had to stand in their own trenches and cave entrances to check on the distribution of sweet potatoes.
In this way, after half a month of intensive excavation, four caves with a length of six meters, a width of three meters and a height of three meters were dug out from the slope by everyone.
Of course, digging so many caves of this size took a lot of effort on Hou Xiaoge's part. The labor costs alone amounted to 3,000 kilograms of sweet potatoes and bran, worth fifty dollars.
(To be more accurate, the four-hole cave has about 210 cubic meters of soil. One cubic meter of soil weighs 2,800 kilograms. 210 cubic meters means about 3,000 kilograms of grain.)
This amount of food is enough for a family of ten to eat for a year and a half. Many villagers around secretly cursed Hou Xiaoge for being a prodigal son, and he probably spent all the money from selling the gun.
However, after Hou Xiaoge "shot back" a wild boar weighing more than 300 kilograms with a "gun", everyone fell silent.
A big wild boar is worth fifty dollars, and the kid brought it back directly. It’s like getting a four-hole cave dwelling for free!
In fact, Hou Xiaoge took both the sweet potato and the wild boar from his own space, without spending any coins. As for the wild boar, Hou Xiaoge just took it out to slap the people around him.
One step at a time, one step at a time.
When Hou Xiaoge was building walls and kitchens with stones and mud, most of the surrounding villagers had only dug one cave hole. Some were four or five meters deep, while others were only two or three meters deep, which was barely enough for living.
After all, ordinary villagers are not as wealthy as Hou Xiaoge. In addition to digging caves, they also have to do odd jobs to earn money to support their families.
It is the autumn harvest season recently and the nearby farms are in need of a large number of laborers. If we don’t make more money now, it will be even harder to make money when the weather gets colder.
After another seven or eight days, Hou Xiaoge and his family finally completed the construction of the wall and the kitchen after several days of hard work.
The wall is three meters high and the kitchen is about twenty square meters. It is made of a large amount of ready-made stones and mud, and is quite solid.
Looking at the yard of more than 100 square meters and the high walls surrounding it, a sense of security immediately comes over me.
When building the wall, Hou Xiaoge got some wheat straw from the space and mixed it with soil to smooth the inner wall of the cave. He then built a kang and placed some simple furniture in it. A warm home was finally formed.