Yan Kejin raised her eyebrows when she heard her subordinates report on the words and deeds of those exiles.

The princess sent a melon, and there was such an unexpected gain?

Those exiles, he has read their lives, and many of them are talented and ambitious, and the strategists are enough to do it.

can be exiled for 3,000 miles, survived for a long time, lost confidence in life, and now is aroused by a piece of melon.

It seems that the princess must be rewarded.

At that time, Xu Yin asked people to pull back a basket of melons from the palace, and sent a few to the people in the palace as welfare, and the rest were stored in the cellar to eat slowly.

She also asked Uncle Wang to cut two tastes for the tenant farmers, but there was no more, and the total was only half an acre of land. If it's delicious, keep it for a good seed, and grow more next year.

Uncle Wang responded one by one.

The seeds brought by the princess are not available locally. They are not so stupid, greedy for a bite to eat, and eat the high-yielding and high-quality seeds.

After all the melons and fruits were doxxed, Wang Bolai asked Xu Yin's opinion on what to plant next.

"Don't worry, it takes time to plough the land and fertilize the fields, during this period I will think about it, and I will send someone to tell you which ones to plant."

Even if she grows another season of melons, she doesn't plan to plant any variety like before. Watermelon and melon are good, you can keep them, and ask Yan Kejin to see what kind of melon he likes to eat.

However, before Yan Kejin could choose the melons and fruits he liked, Chenjiazhuang at the foot of the strange mountain was led by the patriarch's son and came with a cart of sugarcane.

At the end of spring ploughing, they formed a team and went into the mountains to look for sugarcane with the sugarcane map left by the nobles.

The miasma in the mountains is heavy, and they dare not stay in it for a long time, and every time they go, they pinch the time, trying to enter the deep forest when the miasma is the weakest, and they will immediately withdraw when the miasma begins to spread.

Fortunately, the nobles left them a few boxes of mosquito repellent incense (mosquito coils), and then lit a torch, but nothing happened.

It's just that the sweet potatoes that the nobles left them to plant on the slopes and at the foot of the mountains have grown well, but the sugar cane has never been found.

All they can repay is a handful of strength, but now they can't even find a crop, which makes them inevitably a little discouraged.

On this day, after a morning of farm work, I organized a team to go up the mountain as usual.

Feeling that it was going to rain, the miasma in the mountains was heavier than usual, so for safety reasons, the group did not go deeper, but searched carefully along the valley that they had searched two months ago, picking up some fungi by the way.

Suddenly, someone shouted, "Look at that! Is that what the nobles are looking for? ”

The patriarch's son looked up, but no, against the cliff wall of the valley, a cluster of green and yellow plants stood proudly, with roots and heads five meters high.

Because there are tall weeds and shrubs growing near it, if you don't look closely, you think it's bamboo.

Born to the sun, there is a bubbling spring nearby, cut it down and see, the flesh is white, and then taste, sweet and juicy, I think it is the noble man said that the sugarcane is right.

The patriarch's son finished talking about the discovery of sugar cane, and he was annoyed: "If you could be more careful, you should have found it two months ago, why delay it until now to send it to the nobles." ”

Xu Yin shook her head with a smile: "Two months ago, it was still a green seedling, and it was normal to be covered by shrubs and weeds, and it was difficult to find. ”

She didn't expect that the sugarcane at this time turned out to be green and yellow, and the plant height was five meters, which did look like bamboo at first glance, which was a little different from what she painted.

It is no wonder that the people sent out by the prince have not found the sugar cane so far, and it seems that she has been misled into a stereotype.

With sugarcane, the experimental field has a new planting content.

The patriarch's son brought a cart full of sugar cane.

With the real thing to compare, it is much faster to find.

In addition to the bushes in the valley, they found a few more from elsewhere before descending the mountain.

Xu Yin's original words were to let them try to see all kinds of things after they found them, and she would pull them over as many as they planted, and she would accept them all.

But the patriarch thought about it, and asked his son to send it over first.

First, I brought some new mountain goods to the nobles in the spring, thanked her for the grain and spices she left at that time, and helped them get through the difficult days of green and yellow.

Second, I wanted the nobleman to see if what she found was the sugarcane she wanted. If you find the wrong one, you will be planted in white.

Xu Yin happily accepted this cart of sugarcane and gave the patriarch's son ten ingots of silver.

Of course, a cart of sugar cane is not so expensive, and this does not include the discovery prize.

The patriarch's son said that he would not accept anything at first, but Xu Yin said that it was a deposit for the next batch of sugarcane, so that they could rest assured that they would plant, and it didn't matter if they mobilized more people, she would collect as much as she planted.

The patriarch's son accepted it with great gratitude.

Xu Yin didn't give money for the mountain goods sent, but returned the corresponding gifts.

I know what is most lacking in Chenjiazhuang, in addition to food, it is cloth and spices.

She asked Mama to lead the people to Chunlan to collect them, and then called a carriage to take them back.

After the patriarch's son and his party left, Xu Yin began to process sugar cane.

There are seedlings on the head, and two of the stems of the sugarcane are picked without insect eyes, and people peel the skin, cut them into small pieces, and distribute them to everyone to taste.

"How's it taste?" Xu Yin asked with a smile.

Chunlan: "Sweet as honey!" ”

Xia Zhu: "It's better than honey!" Sweet but not greasy, and not sticky to teeth. ”

Qiushuang: "I didn't expect this thing to look good, but it tastes so good!" ”

Dongxue: "It's delicious! It's so delicious! I really want to eat a bite every day. ”

Mama covered her loose teeth and wrinkled her old face: "Ouch, hey! It's just a bit of a tooth drain, and people with bad teeth are afraid that they don't have this blessing. ”

Xu Yin laughed.

Seeing that the maids were holding a piece of sugarcane and gnawing on it, Xu Yin smiled and frowned, not saying that the use of sugarcane is not just to hold it as a fruit to gnaw.

Wait for the brown sugar and white sugar to be made, and then give them a big surprise.

Xu Yin asked people to peel all the carts of sugarcane and cut off the heads and roots.

Keep the head and go back to the test field.

The roots are dried as firewood.

The sugarcane husks are put first, and when the time comes, they are sent to the farm with bagasse for manure.

The sugarcane meat is cut into small pieces and juiced with a stone mill.

The juice is squeezed out, strained with gauze, and then cooked over a stove fire.

The heat should be boiled for several hours, stirring constantly to allow the water to evaporate.

As the concentration of sugar increases, the color of the syrup becomes darker and darker, until you can smell a slight caramel smell, indicating that it is ready.

Xu Yin asked people to immediately withdraw the fire and pour it into the mold to cool, and the lumpy jaggery after solidification is the ancient brown sugar brick.

The ready-made mold is used by the imperial chef to make pastries and snacks, and the mold is a bit large, so it is nothing to borrow it temporarily.

However, Xu Yin thought that if the factory started to make sugar in the future, the sugar produced would be sold to all parts of the Nanban and even the Central Plains, and such a large mold would not be suitable.

Fortunately, there are carpenters in the house, and there is usually not so much carpentry work, so let the old carpenter carve a mold with a few clever little guys, and there will be a reward for silver after the deed.