The leisurely life of farmers in mountain villages

Chapter 43
The rain was heavy for a while, and light for a while, and it didn't mean to stop at night.

Later, Wang Shaodong learned that during the three-day rainfall, the rainfall reached 267 mm, which was almost one-third of the average rainfall in previous years.

Fortunately, Taohualing Village is surrounded by ravines and well-developed water networks, and the rainfall quickly converges into the river, rolling a large amount of sediment and rushing downstream to the Dawen River.

Tomorrow morning, the flood peak in the Liusha River in the north of the village will reach its maximum, and then the only road leading to the outside of the village that can be used by cars will be completely covered by the flood.

Wang Shaodong had a deep memory of this flood. There were many sweet potato fields on both sides of the road. As soon as the flood subsided, the big guys ran to the sweet potato fields to catch fish. Big grass carp weighing five or six catties could be seen everywhere.

In the upper reaches of the Liusha River, there are several reservoirs in the villages of Dongjiazhuang, Gaojiazhuang and Luohanyu. Among them, the reservoir in Luohanyu Village was built in the 50s, and the water has never been cut off. There must be big fish in it.Then in 2002, a flood directly washed the big fish from the upstream reservoir to the downstream. Taohualing Village was six or seven miles away from Gaojiazhuang, the uppermost Liusha River, and many big fish washed down in their village.

Of course, catching the big fish is a drama that will only be staged at noon tomorrow. From this afternoon to night, the most important job is to catch the cicada monkey.

Knowing the monkey, the larva state of the cicada is a cicada after it molts its skin.

After falling into ambush, the young cicadas that have grown underground for six or seven years climb up the roots of the tree, and finally approach the ground when it is getting dark.

Then, the clever cicada will lightly poke a hole on the surface, and then close its eyes to observe the surrounding situation.After ensuring that the outside is safe and the sky is dark, the young cicadas will quickly widen the opening of the hole, and then desperately climb towards the nearest tree, climbing to a safe place on the top of the tree as fast as possible.After it is sure that it is in a safe place, it slowly breaks the shell from its back, and what emerges from the hard shell is the real cicada.

Of course, this is without rain.

Once it rains heavily, the hole opened by the young cicadas will be washed heavily by the rain, and the cicadas soaked in the water will try their best to find the surrounding trees to climb due to lack of oxygen.However, on rainy days, the bark is very slippery, and it takes more physical strength to climb to a high place, which makes it impossible for the young cicadas, which have exhausted a lot of physical strength to climb out of the ground, to do so.Moreover, they have to preserve their energy to prepare for moulting, so whenever it rains, especially when it rains heavily in the afternoon, in the poplar forest in the north of the village, on many poplar trees, where the trunks are about one person high, there will be many Many cicada monkeys.

Wang Fumin watched the rain decrease, so he called his son, and hurriedly walked towards the poplar forest with a plastic bucket and an umbrella.

There are quite a few people in Taohualing Village. On the way, Wang Shaodong and his son saw several competitors in the village, and everyone tacitly quickened their pace.

Knowing that monkeys catch this thing, scald it with hot water, and then sprinkle it with salt, it can be stored for more than ten days.So when I was young, catching cicada monkeys to satisfy my gluttony was the most important job for my friends in summer.

Wang Shaodong and his son had good luck, they were the first to reach Poplar Forest.

To the north of the village, on the bank of the Liusha River, there is a poplar forest of more than [-] mu. The largest tree is more than [-] years old and several times thick.These poplar trees are used to prevent wind and fix sand, and after a long time, cicada monkeys will grow in the ground.

There are thousands of trees, and if you spend a lot of time looking for them with a flashlight, it will take most of the night.

The work of catching the monkeys can be done until the beginning of autumn, and after the beginning of autumn, when the weather is cold, the monkeys will stop crawling out of the ground after knowing the cicadas.There is a saying called "keep silent like a chilling cicada", which means that when the weather is cold, the cicadas will stop singing.In fact, the real reason is that the cicadas stop crawling out of the ground until the weather is cold, and when the weather is cold, the cicadas that were singing on the trees have long since died.

Young cicadas that crawl out of the ground have a short life span of 10 to 15 days after moulting.The larvae of cicadas spend a very long time underground, and the longest cicadas can even live underground for more than ten years.

When they arrived at the poplar forest, Wang Shaodong and his son caught more than twenty cicada monkeys in a short time.

This cicada monkey is chubby, squatting, and waving two big paws.The front end of the claw has sharp sawtooth, which is specially used for digging soil.

In 2002, cicada monkeys cost about 20 yuan a catty, and one hundred cicada monkeys cost a catty, which was about 2016 cents a catty.Later, the price of this thing skyrocketed. By 80, it could be sold for [-] yuan a catty in Linshui City.

In the previous life, Wang Shaodong remembers clearly that his uncle Zhao Shihai, who is good at studying mountain products, studied how to breed cicada monkeys, and finally learned the breeding technology from Jiangsu Province in 2015, and then set up a piece of land in Qingquanling to start raising monkeys. cicada.But the first batch of this thing won't be harvested until three years later. It's a pity that Wang Shaodong was reborn before then.

Wang Shaodong actually admired his uncle Zhao Shihai. This guy wandered around the mountains all day, and later learned to raise scorpions, grasshoppers, and golden cicadas. He made a lot of money, and he was considered a relatively wealthy household in the village.But there are also people who can't understand him, saying that he thinks about crooked ways all day long and doesn't do business properly.

While clutching the cicada monkey, Wang Shaodong began to think about one thing.

According to what my brother-in-law Zhao Shihai told me in the previous life, if you raise cicada monkeys on one mu of land, you can harvest 20 catties of cicada monkeys a year in the harvest season.According to the current selling price of nearly 6000 yuan, the income per mu of land is 3 yuan.Moreover, the cost of breeding this thing is very low. The main thing is to use labor. After the end, it will be no problem to prevent ants.The income per mu is [-], and a family of three raises three or four mus of land, earning [-] to [-] yuan a year, which is considered a well-off family.

It seems that in the next step, I have to urge my uncle to learn this technology, and then promote it in the surrounding mountain villages, which can be regarded as finding a way for the common people to make a fortune.

Wang Shaodong and his son walked around the poplar grove, and caught a cicada monkey that weighed three or four catties, and the small plastic bucket was already full.

It can be seen that the heavy rain washed out the cicada monkeys for the next three or four days.

As the rain became heavier and the sky darker, Wang Shaodong and his son hurried home to enjoy the spoils.

These three or four hundred cicada monkeys would cost a little less than a hundred yuan to buy, and the rain this trip was really not in vain.

After returning home, most of the cicada monkeys were saved by Zhao Shiling with salt and salt, and then picked out thirty or forty injured ones and deep-fried them on a plate.

It was raining outside the house, and the fried cicada monkeys in the house were full of fragrance. Drinking wine and eating fried cicada monkeys was really a joy in the world.

(End of this chapter)