After the twelfth lunar month comes the New Year. After the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, families start steaming cakes and preparing food for the Tiancang Festival on the nineteenth day.
Tiancang means "adding granary", which means that the family's granary is full and the family has enough food and clothing.
Chunniang and her two sisters-in-law used rice flour, wheat flour, bean flour, etc. to make lanterns in the shape of ingots, pots, bundles, sheep, cows, chickens, and dogs, and then steamed them in cages.
Then take it out, put cotton threads into the lantern-shaped steamed cake, and pour in a little castor oil.
At night, the Jiang family lights rice lanterns and places them in every corner of the house, symbolizing a prosperous family, a bumper harvest, and abundant livestock.
Early the next morning, all the men in the Jiang family went out, some carrying water and some carrying soil. The water was poured into the water tank, and the soil was piled in a circle outside the reed mats that had been placed around the grain circle.
Then pour all the grain in the grain bags at home into the granary until the granary is full. The grain will pile up high to form a pointed top, which means wealth and happiness.
Chunniang and her two sisters-in-law got up early in the morning and started cooking. They made a pot of crucian carp soup, made dumplings and dumplings, and fried last night's rice lanterns with lard for the family to eat.
Dumplings mean filling the granary, hezi means covering the granary, and drinking fish soup means surplus every year. These are all festive foods.
While making dumplings, Chunniang also made a few little hedgehogs and little mice out of the dough and placed them in the corner of the yard.
Starting from the 20th day of the first lunar month, the rice jar at home must not be empty, the water jar must not be without water, and there must always be food in the pot, even if it is just a few steamed buns.
On the 25th day of the first lunar month, the day for adding to the granary, Jiang Liushi used a sieve to fill it with wood ash to build the ash cellar.
She was seen holding a sieve in one hand and a small wooden stick in the other, knocking as she walked. The green ash she shook off drew circles of grain cellars and granaries in the yard. She then sprinkled rice, wheat and other grains in the three-ring and five-ring granaries drawn with green ash, put a few stones on the corners, and drove her own chickens in to eat.
This implies that the granary is full of grain and the harvest is abundant.
At noon, the Jiang family carried out the incense table and hung up the colorfully painted statue of the Warehouse Official. The whole family lit lamps, burned incense, kowtowed and paid tribute to the Warehouse Official.
After the big warehouse purchase, the entire January and Spring Festival are completely over.
Soon it was early March and the weather gradually warmed up, which was a good time to transplant seedlings.
Yingbao took out dozens of grape vines and a bunch of pepper seedlings from the cave and secretly placed them in a bamboo shed in her yard.
This bamboo shed is now under the management of Yingbao. Dad and his family have built a new row of bamboo sheds to serve as mushroom sheds in the vegetable garden outside the yard.
"Dad, I've grown a lot of seedlings. Where do you think we should plant them?"
Yingbao pulled her father into the bamboo shed and pointed at a pile of seedlings on the ground. "This is a Western grape, and this is a pepper seedling."
Jiang Sanlang squatted down and picked up a pepper seedling to examine it. "Is it really pepper?"
Pepper is a precious commodity. Although many aristocratic families are now growing it, its price is still extremely high and the demand exceeds supply.
But there is no such thing in small mountain villages like Chuanhe Town.
Yingbao nodded: "It's pepper. I bought the pepper seeds at Jiukang Pharmacy in the county. It can't be wrong."
Jiang Sanlang didn't mean to disbelieve his own daughter, he just found it unbelievable.
Is my daughter a human or a fairy
Everything she took out was not ordinary, including the Water Treasure Gourd that everyone had been talking about.
Jiang Sanlang felt that it must be related to his daughter, and his second nephew Jiang Quan was just taking the blame for Yingbao.
But no matter what, his daughter's magical skills only need to be known to himself, and he will fight back against what others say or suspect.
"What should we pay attention to when growing pepper?" Jiang Sanlang asked.
Since my daughter has cultivated these vine seedlings, she must know some planting methods.
Yingbao: "Pepper is drought-tolerant and should not be planted in humid places. It is best to plant it in sandy soil with good drainage. The same goes for grapes."
This was told to her by a clerk at the pharmacy, who also heard it from a pepper farmer.
As for grapes, she had grown them once herself and had some experience.
Jiang Sanlang thought for a moment and said, "Why don't we build a vineyard and a pepper garden?"
Yingbao did have this intention, otherwise she would have planted it herself.
But planting seedlings requires a lot of land, so she must first get her father's consent.
After the father and daughter finished their discussion, Jiang Sanlang immediately went out to check the land.
Finally, they decided to grow pepper and grapes in a low-quality field outside the village.
But this place is remote and the seedlings are easily destroyed by wild animals.
So Jiang Sanlang asked a few villagers to help cut some bamboo and build a bamboo fence around the two fields.
It was a bit outrageous to have a bamboo fence around two low-quality fields, which attracted the villagers to come and watch.
"Third brother, what are you doing now?" Chen Yin asked while leaning on the bamboo fence.
Jiang Sanlang was digging holes and planting seedlings with Chunniang. Without even looking up, he said, "Plant some grapes."
"Grapes?" Chen Yin knew this. He had even secretly picked and eaten grapes from Third Brother Jiang's orchard.
"This whole area is planted with grapes. Isn't that too much?"
Fruit trees are fruit trees after all, and cannot be eaten. It’s okay to plant one or two trees at home, but planting too many will not only occupy land, but may also increase taxes.
Jiang Sanlang cultivated a seedling and said, "It's not much. If you can't finish it, you can make wine later."
At worst, sell it directly to the winery in the county town, that’s what the girl said.
Chen Yin scratched his head and pointed at the fence next door, "Are grapes planted there too?"
"That's the land for planting pepper." Jiang Sanlang dug up the soil with his hands, put the grape seedlings in it, and then compacted the soil.
"What? Pepper!" Chen Yin jumped up, his eyes sparkling with excitement, "Third brother, your family also grows pepper?"
Pepper is a good thing. It is valuable and easy to sell. All the pharmacies in the county are scrambling to buy it.
Jiang Sanlang glanced at him and said nothing.
Chen Yin ran in through the fence gate and asked with blinking eyes: "Third brother, do you have pepper seedlings at home?"
"Yeah." Jiang Sanlang kept working and planted another grape vine.
Chen Yin chuckled: "Can you give some to your brother?"
"Let's wait until the pepper seedlings grow up."
My daughter said that pepper vines can be cut and transplanted, so we won’t need pepper seeds to grow seedlings.
"Then I'll make an appointment first, brother." Chen Yin squatted down to help Jiang Sanlang plant the seedlings.
When a few villagers who were watching outside saw this, they looked at each other and quickly ran in to help plant the seedlings.
With the help of others, the grapes were planted quickly in a field, and then the pepper seedlings were planted.
Pepper is a climbing plant, so Jiang Sanlang first planted it in a circle next to the bamboo fence, so he didn't need to put up climbing frames for them later.
Then estimate the distance and plant the peppers until the entire pepper garden is planted.
Wait until these seedlings grow a little bigger, then put them on climbing frames.
Jiang Sanlang and his wife and several villagers were planting seedlings, while Yingbao was watering them with a small bucket.
She used the water in the cave and mixed it with a little water from the river and pond to water each seedling sufficiently.
The two gardens were soon planted with seedlings, dotted with green, arranged neatly, which was very pleasing to the eye.