??Chapter 273: 273. Baking room and board fees_1
Chapter 273: 273. Baking room and board fees_1
Song Tan felt increasingly that sothing was odd:
“Wait a minute.”
“Grandpa, aren’t you guys building a stove?”
Only then did Song Youde smile, “With such large tobacco leaves, how can you bake them on a stove? You can’t spread them out.”
“I’m building a taller baking room; we’ll take it slow, I’m not in a rush, Grandpa.”
Darn it, by comparing like that, Song Tan realized, they actually wanted to build a small room two ters tall!
A four-square room tightly sealed, with just an opening at the bottom for burning coal.
Indeed, to ensure the temperature and finesse, they wouldn’t even use firewood at the bottom; Song Youde was even planning to haul coal instead.
Coal burns longer and the temperature doesn’t fluctuate wildly; it’s advantage is its stability.
Hanging the tobacco leaves one by one inside the baking room, placing them on the racks, and burning coal piles on both sides outside, after several days of baking, these tobacco leaves would surely be golden and translucent, top-quality stuff!
And it would be more convenient to store than those sun-dried.
Imagining all this, Song Youde beca even more enthusiastic; he hurried onto the cart, determined to get more bricks—
Just for such a small brick room, in half a day, the two had indeed exerted all their strength!
Fortunately, since it was built against the periter wall, saving the effort of one wall, they finally accomplished it.
After a hasty lunch, the two little old n looked at the big sun in the sky, then glanced at each other and simultaneously said, “Let’s go check the fields!”
Song Youde even quickly grabbed a basket: “We’ll take a topping off along the way, and in the afternoon, you sort out the leaves while I go fetch coal, let’s heat up the room first.”
The two had their tasks divided, cooperating seamlessly; at this mont, they truly didn’t find it botherso at all.
Only Qiaoqiao stubbornly held a cigarette case, loudly repeating, “Smoking is harmful to health!”
However, at this mont, only the backs of the two little old n could be seen.
In less than half an hour, they indeed returned with a basket heavy with tobacco leaves, all still carrying their flower clusters.
At this mont, Song Youde couldn’t wait to contact the coal seller and also started heating up the newly built room with firewood, his energy showing a sense of urgency every second.
Seventh Uncle sat in the corridor breaking off the leaves one by one—
He and Song Youde had agreed to first bake the tender leaves picked from the topping.
The second batch would be to bake the old yellow leaves near the tobacco’s roots.
For the third batch, they would seriously bake the best quality batch of tobacco!
As for how to distribute it, they didn’t negotiate; whoever ran out would just take it, they weren’t planning on selling this stuff.
It was Zhang Yanping who was getting antsy again.
He sneakily asked Song Tan, “Smokers can’t resist this; why don’t we grow more next year so we can prepare more to sell?”
They would certainly fetch a high price!
Sell?
Song Tan countered, “Who will you sell to?”
Tobacco cultivation on a large scale required registration, and tobacco companies would co to collect it, the top-quality leaves might fetch you fifty or eighty cents each…
“I’m not going to do that business.”
Zhang Yanping instantly deflated. Then he was puzzled:
“You didn’t even know how to deal with the tobacco leaves just now, so how co you know so much already?”
Song Tan shook his smartphone: “Thanks to the almighty group friends, they know everything.”
Of course, there was one downside: after she asked about the tobacco leaves, so custors in the group seed to sll an opportunity. Quite a few of them ca to private ssage her, looking to secretly buy a batch…
Looking at the two little old n in the house, how many tobacco leaves could they possibly have?
During this ti, Song Tan went to take a look at the new brick room they had built, a little over two ters tall.
The room wasn’t large, two ters in length and width and just over two ters high, with a coal-feeding channel stuffed at the bottom to let coal burn in the bricks and stones, heating the air evenly and transmitting it to the curing chamber so that the tobacco leaves inside could be heated evenly and thoroughly cured.
Seventh Uncle was carefully breaking off the tobacco leaves, setting them in front of a bamboo pole, then tightly wrapping the leaves with twine onto the bamboo.
A shelf was filled with neat rows of lush, green tobacco leaves.
However, compared to others’ specialized and comrcial tobacco leaf curing, his shelves seed much sparser, with the leaves spaced out enough to fully expand.
There was no helping it—it was all top-picked leaves, and there weren’t many. It was their first ti, so best to start small!
As he worked, Seventh Uncle pondered: he had started smoking many years ago, and once the tobacco leaves were cured, he was going to get himself a smoking pipe too!
Nowadays, everyone shopped online; he’d ask so youngsters to look for a good one on the internet for him…
Song Youde’s old smoking pipe had been in use for who knows how many years. Its bamboo shaft, polished red and glossy from handling, would not be outdone.
…
In the evening, Wu Lan, who had just returned from picking up a couple of handfuls of tea leaves on the mountain, saw the small courtyard filled to the brim with wood ear shelves and now with an additional room. She couldn’t help but be puzzled, “What’s this new construction? A toilet?”
There was no choice; the issue with Grandpa and Grandma’s yard, just like Song Tan’s, was the inadequacy of the toilet facilities.
There was nothing to be done, as the number of people living in the house was increasing.
Even though Zhang Yanping and Xin Jun had moved in with Seventh Uncle, six people shared just one toilet, which was quite constraining.
However, a glance inside the new room told Wu Lan this was no toilet—it didn’t even have a window! The floor was neatly made, and it even had a properly built flue!
Looking at Song Tan, she indeed got her answer, “My grandpa built it to cure tobacco leaves.”
Wu Lan: …
Alright, then.
Her response was unexpectedly brisk, “Growing our own tobacco leaves costs nothing, and it saves much more than buying cigarettes over the year; go ahead and cure them.”
Looking at the bricks used, “These were from tearing down our place, weren’t they? Oh, Tantan, the crew you found to do the job was ticulous!”
“I stopped by this morning when they were laying bricks and saw they scraped every bit of excess cent smooth. The work is really well done!”
…
At that mont,
the young man operating the excavator stepped down for a break and after much deliberation, couldn’t help himself and went over to the person in charge.
He didn’t have any other agenda, just one question that had been on his mind for days:
“Boss, why don’t we eat with this family?”
The boss’s reasoning was simple, “If they offered us als, wouldn’t that decrease the money we take ho? With the sa money, isn’t it good to make our own als?”
“What are you implying? That the food is not good? I haven’t been feeding you the ‘construction site trio’ like others every day!”
The so-called ‘construction site trio’ refers to cabbage, potatoes, and radish. This crew, often handling villa projects, usually had employers who were generous, so the als were quite decent.
For instance, at noon the dishes included big chunks of at and ribs; however…
The tanned young man looked at him with a hint of grievance:
“Have you never eaten food made by their family?”
“If I could eat with them, I’d be willing to pay extra for als every day!”
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