Back to 1980: Please Love Me Again

Chapter 138 Grinding Flour

Shanqian Village, new home.

Zhao Wenmu is washing wheat at home.

Well, just like washing rice, wash wheat.

Because, their family also has to grind flour.

After the news that flour could be milled in Shandongtou Village, every household in Shanqian Village was washing wheat, which became a different kind of scenery.

Zhao Wenmu's family is no exception.

Liu Sufang, Zhao Wenjun, and Liu Xiumei are very enthusiastic about flour milling, and they can't wait to grind all the wheat at home into flour.

Then Zhao Wenmu was escorted to work.

"Mother, you don't need to grind too much flour at one time, just grind it after you finish eating!"

"Wheat won't go moldy at home, but flour will grow worms!"

Zhao Wenmu talked all kinds of things, and finally convinced a few women that their family only grinds [-] catties of wheat this time.

Three hundred catties were given to the three brothers' family, Zhao Wenjun and Zhao Xuehai's old couple.

This is the bottom line for several women.

Zhao Wenmu had no choice but to accept it.

Washing wheat is a time-consuming and labor-intensive job. It usually takes a few minutes to wash two or two meters, let alone washing hundreds of catties of wheat.

Moreover, the rice has been threshed, shelled and screened clean.

The newly harvested wheat is mixed with a lot of chaff, sand, soil and other impurities.

First of all, it needs to be screened over and over again, and the chaff and pebbles that are visible to the naked eye are removed by wind blowing and hand picking.But no matter how many times you sieve, there will always be some fish that slip through the net in the wheat grains.

Zhao Wenmu only felt dizzy and annoyed.

This is just the first process.

After that, the wheat should be washed with water to remove soluble impurities such as attached soil, as well as debris and bran that can float on the water surface.

Wash continuously to remove the floating impurities time and time again.

Until it is visible to the naked eye, the water surface is clean.

Then use a strainer to filter out the water, and spread the wheat on a clean cloth.

There are no good materials at the moment, just wash the big sheet and spread the cleaned wheat on it.

In the process of panning, we must continue to pick stones.

During the drying process, continue to pick stones.

When the wheat is dried, the mixed stones are almost picked up.

It's just about the same.

Wheat can not be too dry, must maintain a certain moisture content.

This can improve the toughness of the wheat husk and reduce the mechanical strength of the wheat endosperm.When grinding, the wheat husk will not be ground very finely and affect the quality of flour.

It can also reduce the wear degree of the pulverizer and reduce energy consumption at the same time.

Naturally, these are the words of the propagandists in Shandongtou Village.

"Little brother, don't be unhappy! You don't know, all the flour sold now has talcum powder in it."

"Otherwise, how can it be so white? So, it's better to eat the flour you grind yourself!"

Liu Xiumei lowered her voice and whispered to Zhao Wenmu.

"Sister-in-law, who did you hear all this from?"

Zhao Wenmu smiled.

Then he laughed.

"Everyone says that. I don't know who said it first. Why are you laughing?"

Liu Xiumei was puzzled by his laughter.

"Sister-in-law, I taught Zhang Zhenpeng to say this."

Liu Xiumei was stunned for a while, then grabbed an arm and patted him on the back a few times.

Zhao Wenmu doesn't know if there is talcum powder in the flour sold now, anyway, later national standards do not allow the addition of talc powder.

Some people also say that talc powder has the effect of ascorbic acid, and at the same time helps to extend the shelf life of flour, and the brittleness and shape of flour products will not change, etc., which means that talc powder is beneficial.

More people say that talcum powder can cause cancer.

In any case, there must have been talc added to the snow-white flour, and this view is still firmly believed by many people 30 years later.

Zhao Wenmu just borrowed it in advance.

The effect is still very significant.

Most of the villagers believed this statement.

So I prefer to grind my own flour.

When the villagers ate the somewhat yellowed flour they had ground themselves, they found it fragrant and chewy, much better than the flour they bought.

I feel much more at ease in my heart!
After loading the washed and dried wheat into carts, Zhao Wenmu drove the mule cart to Shandongtou Village with Zhao Wenjun.

By the way, the mule cart has already been bought by Zhao Wenmu.

I usually pull food, firewood, etc. at home, and they can also be used to pull mushrooms after a while.

The dark old mule didn't expect his life to be so miserable.

The Zhao family treated it very well, and they all ate cornmeal, so there are no complaints.

In the past two years, people sometimes couldn't eat cornmeal, okay?

"Second sister, what are you going to do with Zhang Zhenpeng?"

Zhao Wenjun came along, not only to help grind the flour, but also to talk to Zhang Zhenpeng because of something.

Zhao Wenmu was driving the mule cart, chatting with her sideways.

"Little brother, I think this wheat bran is very suitable for feeding crayfish. I want to talk to him and buy bran from him."

Bran is actually the outer skin of wheat.

When the flour is milled, it will be broken and screened by the machine, and it will become a pile of wheat-yellow flakes.

It's kind of like cereal, but much thinner and finer.

It stands to reason that the nutritional content of bran is not less than that of flour. There is no shortage of protein, starch, vitamins and minerals, and some components are even higher than flour.

In the era of poverty, bran naturally entered people's stomachs.

Now, many people feed them as feed to chickens, ducks and other poultry.

Well, it is indeed a good thing to feed crayfish and crabs.

And the price is still cheap.

Flour mills not only help villagers grind flour, but also produce flour themselves.

When the villagers grind flour, they will naturally take away the flour and bran together, but the bran produced by the flour mill when it produces its own flour probably has no good sales channels.

The villagers will definitely not buy it back to feed the chickens.

Just go up the mountain to dig some wild vegetables, stumble over some cornmeal to feed the chickens, why spend money on bran?
"Second sister, this is a good idea. It is indeed necessary to develop some special feeds. The feed standards are unified, and crayfish are not prone to problems!"

"Yes, I think the same way. You can't feed them randomly. It's better to have a clear recipe. What to eat in summer, what to eat in winter, and how much to eat are all regulated."

When it comes to crayfish farming, Zhao Wenjun is in high spirits.

It can be seen that she really likes what she is doing now.

"Well, I think you can draw a few small fish ponds and compare them, so that you can better determine which plan is better."

"Don't worry about the money issue. There will always be costs for experiments. These are not big things."

"it is good!"

When we came to Shandongtou Village, there were not so many people waiting in line, but there were still more than a dozen families waiting.

After Zhang Zhenpeng came to say hello, he went to talk about Bran with Zhao Wenjun.

Zhao Wenmu had nothing to do, so he went to chat with the villagers.

Many villagers here know him. After all, harvesting mushrooms last year has radiated to 7 villages.

"Boss Zhao, do you still accept mushrooms this year?"

It was a man in his 30s who spoke, and Zhao Wenmu glanced at it.

"You are from Shaojialing, that..."

"Shao Feng."

Seeing that Zhao Wenmu was going to pass him a cigarette, the man immediately took two steps forward.

"Ah, yes, Shao Feng!"

"Collect, of course, it will be collected at the end of May (lunar calendar). You can tell everyone when you go back."

In two days, Zhao Wenmu will go to several villages below Zheshan Commune. He has selected a dozen villages and plans to further expand the scope of harvesting mushrooms this year.

"That's a good relationship, I'll talk to you guys when I get back!"

The man looked very happy.

After a while, he said a little excitedly.

"Boss Zhao, you are such a good person!"

Zhao Wenmu smiled.

Shaojialing is even more remote and mountainous than Sanlizhuang, and its life is at the bottom of the poor Zheshan Commune.

Zhao Wenmu only collected about 10 catties of mushrooms here last year, which cost more than 6 yuan.

He felt that this was a small amount, but he didn't know that for hundreds of households in Shaojialing, the 60 yuan in cash was more than a family's savings for a whole year!

Just because the day of harvesting mushrooms was approaching, many villagers were talking about it, which naturally attracted more villagers' attention.

These days, many villagers even went to Shanqian Village to find Zhao Wenmu, begging him to collect mushrooms in their village.

"Boss Zhao, we also have a lot of mushrooms in our village, can you collect them from us too?"

No, someone hit on him again right now.

It can be seen that the other party's family background is very ordinary, there are two bags of wheat on the trolley, and the clothes on his body are also patch upon patch.

There was also a four or five-year-old girl sitting in the car.

Zhao Wenmu loves Wu and Wu, especially when he sees little girls.

After all, both her little girl and Zhao Wenlin's kid Ziting are cute little girls.

"Which village are you from?"

He took out some candies from his pocket and handed them to the little girl.

The little girl looked at her father, the man nodded, and she took the candy timidly.

"Thank you uncle!"

Zhao Wenmu's mood immediately improved.

"I'm from Majialiu. There are many mountains over there. Boss Zhao should know that there are really many mushrooms on the mountains!"

Zhao Wenmu nodded.

He still knew where Majialiu was. It was indeed mountainous, but there were too many of them!
There is not even a good road into the village!

The location is also remote. To be honest, it is not a good place to collect mushrooms.

Mushrooms are very pursuing the timeliness of purchasing and drying. Once the drying is not timely, the quality will be much worse.

Therefore, he didn't think about the whole area, such as Majialiu, Zhangjiabao, and Northwest Village.

"There should be a hunting area in your area, right? Has anyone gone up the mountain to catch rabbits?"

"It's too inconvenient for you to collect mushrooms."

Hearing this, the man was a little disappointed, but he still answered Zhao Wenmu's question carefully.

"A few hills were set aside to allow everyone to catch rabbits and pheasants, but the supply and marketing cooperatives don't accept these things, so we just put down a few rope buckles and catch a few rabbits to make cotton-padded jackets in winter."

The production of wild rabbits in Shanqian Village is already stretched. It is obvious that a village can support several state-run restaurants, especially in the case of vigorously developing game feasts. Obviously, it will not last for too long.

Unless Shanqian Village solves the problem of large-scale breeding and breeding of wild rabbits.

This short-term estimate is unrealistic.

"If I harvest wild rabbits for 6 cents a catty, are you willing to come to Shanqian Village to sell them every day?"

The man was overjoyed when he heard it.

"sure!"

(End of this chapter)