Su Ze took Lin Liangjun to the edge of his reed field.
It is still the season for reeds to grow. The withered yellow reeds left over from last year and the green reeds that just grew this year are intertwined together with the mist that has not yet dispersed at the mouth of the Haihe River, forming a beautiful picture.
Su Ze pointed at Ashida and said:
"'The reeds are green and the white dew is frost.' The reed mentioned in the Book of Songs is the reed. Do you understand the meaning of these two lines of poetry?"
Lin Liangjun nodded repeatedly, and the system immediately popped up a prompt:
It's a pity that he didn't bring the other four carrot heads. Su Ze turned off the prompt with some regret.
Su Ze took Little Carrot Head into the reed field, harvesting last year's dried reeds and looking for weeds like yellow croaker.
Everyone in Changning Wei knew that this reed field belonged to Su Ze. The people in Wei were very simple and simple, and no one secretly cut the reeds in Su Ze's field.
Looking at the other half-grown children immersed in cutting grass in the reed field, and looking at the dry reeds that were almost finished cutting in the reed field, Su Ze felt slightly ashamed. Compared with the people of Changningwei, he was still too lazy.
Work at sunrise and rest at sundown. Life in the agricultural era was not leisurely picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence, but endless farm work.
Children as young as eight or nine have to help mow the grass at home. This is not a modern society where you can lie down and eat your old age, always having a mouthful of food to eat. In this era, once the people stop eating, they will starve to death without food and cannot burn.
Fire freezes to death.
Take this reed field as an example. The dry reeds are a very important output, and the reed poles are good fuel and can be used to make fires for cooking.
Cutting off dry reeds can make room for new reeds to grow, so that there will be more reeds next year.
Agriculture is like this, spending every penny has to be counted, and getting output from nature bit by bit.
And by collecting more fuel, you can make more fires in the winter, and you may be able to survive the next winter.
What? You said going up the mountain to cut down trees for the winter?
Not to mention the risks of going up the mountain to cut down trees in this era, the mountains and swamps all belong to the Ming Dynasty. If you cut down trees privately and the county knows about it, I'm afraid it won't be as simple as fines for you in future generations.
After retracting their thoughts, Su Ze and Lin Liangjun continued to harvest reeds, and soon they heard the cry of the little carrot head.
"Brother Aze! Yellow fish!"
Su Ze hurriedly walked over and saw a strange kind of grass.
The leaves of this grass are green, but they have woody stems that are segmented like bamboo.
Su Ze immediately pinched off a few yellow croakers, carefully placed them in his collar, and then said to Lin Liangjun:
"Okay, let's go back."
After returning to the beach, the beach filled with seawater the day before had evaporated a lot under the stirring of the children. Su Ze asked them to dig out the sea mud soaked in seawater and spread it on flat stones to dry in the sun.
Su Ze started carpentry work in front of the dug pit. He nailed some wood into a wooden frame, nailed bamboo slices horizontally to the bottom of the wooden frame, and then laid reed poles vertically.
Su Ze placed the wooden frame on the big pit and stepped on it with his feet. After confirming that it was strong, he asked the little carrot heads to carry the dried sea mud over.
Su Ze gave Lin Liangjun another wooden bucket and asked him to fetch sea water from the seaside. Then he spread the sea mud on the wooden frame and said to Lin Liangjun:
"Slowly pour the seawater into the frame."
The rushing seawater poured into the frame, and the filtering device composed of reeds and sea mud washed the dried salt in the sea mud into the large pit below together with the sea water.
Su Ze then asked the lightest child to stand on the wooden frame and squeeze out the seawater from the sea mud.
After repeatedly scouring the sea mud, Su Ze finally got a puddle of brine.
He took out the croakers from his collar, pulled off the leaves of the weeds, and threw the woody stems into the brine pit.
When Su Ze visited the salt fields for the first time with his mentor, he was surprised by the wisdom of the ancient working people.
The stem of the yellow croaker is a primitive salinometer. Its density is equivalent to that of saturated concentrated brine. As long as the yellow croaker floats in the brine, it means that the salt content is saturated.
If the salinity is not enough, the yellow croaker will sink into the brine, and it will need to be left in the sun for a while until the seawater evaporates and the salinity reaches the standard.
Su Ze was lucky this time. Yellow croakers floated on the brine, and the salinity reached the standard!
Su Ze quickly fished out the brine with a water ladle, and then carefully scooped it into the rock plate that was dug a few days ago.
After Su Ze finished all this, the rocks were covered with ponds filled with brine, reflecting the blue sky, as if pieces of blue crystals were scattered on the tidal flats.
Su Ze raised his head and looked at the sun. Today, when it reaches the third pole, it is when the sun is at its strongest.
It's still only March, and although the sun isn't as hot as summer, the salt exposure is enough.
This is the ancient method of drying salt that Su Ze once read about.
Store sea water, dry salt mud, collect sand, filter, dry salt, and collect salt.
Although every step is not difficult, compared with the mainstream salt-making method of this era, the sun-dried salt method has many benefits.
It saves fuel and does not require brine. The only disadvantage is that there are too few stone trays for drying salt, so the efficiency is lower.
Su Ze has only carved out a total of seven large stone plates in the past few days. According to Su Ze's estimation, one large stone plate can produce about one kilogram of salt.
Sure enough, by two or three o'clock in the afternoon, crystals had begun to precipitate in some stone plates.
Is this salt?!
The little carrot head looked at the stone plate with excitement. It could produce salt without boiling it! Is this scholar so good?
Naturally, Su Ze would not explain the principle of drying salt to them, but quickly called to the carrot heads and asked them to use bamboo slices to scrape off the precipitated salt crystals.
When it was four o'clock in the afternoon, Su Ze estimated that according to the Ming Dynasty calculation, a total of ten kilograms of salt had been produced today.
Lin Liangjun looked at the bluish-white salt. Could this be refined salt?
He pinched a piece of salt and put it in his mouth, then spit it out.
Still bitter!
Although it is not as bitter as the brine, the salt still has a slight bitter taste. This kind of salt cannot be sold as refined salt!
Now Lin Liangjun sat on the ground in disappointment. After working for so many days, he produced ten kilograms of coarse salt.
The coarse salt bricks sold at the salt factory at the night market that day were only worth a hundred cents for ten kilograms, and they could only earn less than one tael of silver in ten days and a half.
Moreover, coarse salt is not easy to sell in Fujian. It is not known whether these coarse salts can be sold. The more Lin Liangjun thought about it, the more uncomfortable he became.
Su Ze also tasted it, and sure enough it still had a slight bitter taste, but it already met his requirements.
After carrying the prepared coarse salt back to the family temple and sending the carrots home, Su Ze closed the door of the family temple.
Next is the most important part of purifying coarse salt to remove the bitter taste!
There was a burst of bean aroma coming from the backyard. Lin Cainiang, a busy and sweaty little carrot head, put down the pot and spoon and said to Su Ze:
"Brother, I've cooked the soy milk you asked for!"
Lin Cainiang exited the kitchen obediently and said:
"I'm going to review my books, brother, you're busy."
Su Ze had to lament that children from poor families had long been in charge. Lin Cainiang knew that Su Ze was busy with making money, so she naturally knew that such important matters could not be pried into casually, so she found an excuse and ran away.
But Su Ze also knew that Huai Bi was guilty, and he kept certain things from them to protect everyone.
Su Ze poured the salt into the iron pot, then poured in the mountain spring water that had settled overnight, stuffed a reed rod into the stove, and melted the coarse salt that had finally dried in the sun again.
Su Ze held his breath and poured a large spoonful of soy milk into the brine. Large sticky foam appeared on the originally transparent brine. Su Ze carefully skimmed off the foam with a spoon.
When all the foam was gone, Su Ze scooped up the soy milk and added it to the salt water, repeating until no more foam appeared after adding the soy milk.
At this time, Su Ze added reed rods to the stove, and the cauldron began to boil violently. The water gradually dried up and turned into snow-white salt foam.
Su Ze dipped some with his hands, and sure enough, the bitter taste was gone, and the coarse salt had turned into refined salt!
I know everyone thinks I write slowly, but I have to recommend new books, so I can only update them twice for the time being.
There will definitely be more updates after they are released!
Thank you very much for your love and readers who helped me correct my mistakes.