Her Cultivation Diary
Chapter 854 - 844. Old Lady Zhou’s Thoughts

Chapter 854: 844. Old Lady Zhou’s Thoughts

Teacher Qiaoqiao nonchalantly broke apart the necklace, stringing it onto Granny’s neck and head, causing the silver-haired old lady to sway dazzlingly. In the eyes of the elderly group present, this was nothing out of the ordinary.

Kids, they just love to play like this.

What was remarkable was when they sat together, chatting incessantly, appearing aged and slow, yet their actions were incredibly brisk.

One by one, the tangled sweet potato vines were quickly unraveled and sorted. With one glance, the old men and women knew which shoots were tender enough to eat and which were old enough to feed pigs.

Once the long vines were sorted and tossed aside, they began working on the neatly aligned sweet potato shoots, swiftly pinching off the top leaves.

"Snap, snap, snap," breaking them off crisply and rhythmically, quickly bringing back the focus of the distracted live-streaming viewers.

You have to admit, the snapping sounds are quite pleasing to hear.

Only the viewers in the livestream felt distressed—

[Leaves! The leaves!]

[Don’t pinch off the leaves, they are edible too!]

[Give me the leaves, aahhh I can cook them, massage and pickle them into something spicy, boo hoo hoo]

[So picky! The host’s family is too picky... Why does all the good stuff go to the pigs?]

[What are you guys talking about... I already found it incredible that they eat sweet potato vines, now you even want the leaves they pinch off?]

[Yeah, isn’t that a bit much...]

[Boo hoo hoo, drooling all over and I still couldn’t buy pickled sweet potato vines]

[I’ve sworn to the heavens, set three alarms, decided to hunt for treasures at the vegetable market early tomorrow!]

[I scrolled from yellow to blue on the food delivery app, and not a single store sells this spicy sweet potato vine!!!]

[Ah, am I the only one who’s full and watching this, getting a fix for my OCD?]

Indeed, the neatly sorted sweet potato shoots, each with a similar curve, were placed into clean baskets. Everyone’s movements had rhythm and melody, lightly chatting in dialect about things they didn’t quite understand, their hands effortlessly moving...

Not only does it cure OCD, it’s quite hypnotic too!

Though the sweet potato vines piled up like a small hill, when the group of old men and women sat together, it was neatly sorted out before dusk.

The beautifully sorted sweet potato shoots, naturally curved, lay neatly in the baskets, a truly delightful sight!

The removed leaves weren’t wasted either; the agile old lady quickly steamed them into a pile, casually picked up an old and tattered cutting board, and "chop, chop, chop," chopped them up and packed them into a basket, then passed it to Qiaoqiao:

"Here, dear, take these to feed your chickens, ducks, and geese."

And those unchosen sweet potato vines and old stems and leaves? They couldn’t be wasted either.

Song Youde found an old man to partner up with, dragging out a cleaver from a corner—frankly, this mountain factory was really stocked with farm tools!

The two of them, one pulling and the other chopping, worked exceptionally smoothly, quickly filling up a basket with chopped pieces. But this time, they didn’t hand it over to Qiaoqiao; instead, they loaded it onto a tricycle, and Song Youde directed:

"Let’s give half to our pigs, and the other half to the cattle and sheep on the Riverside Beach."

After all, the pigs are always in the pen, not as free as the cattle and sheep grazing on the Riverside Beach.

As for the basket of sweet potatoes that Qiaoqiao dug up, it had already been taken by the cafeteria’s Zhai Xiaofeng, who scrubbed them clean with a steel brush, sorting the red-skinned and white-skinned into separate piles, and deftly peeled one for Qiaoqiao to eat.

Qiaoqiao joyously took it, and her eyes lit up at the first bite, the "crunch, crunch" sound captured by the microphone on her collar, making the viewers’ eyes pop—

[Ahhh I want to eat too!!!]

"[Humph, what’s so great about it, I’m going to the supermarket to buy a box right now! Wuu wuu wuu!]"

"[Well, Teacher Qiaoqiao has taught us a new skill, gonna update my offer soon, and add ’eating raw sweet potatoes’ to my skill list!]"

"Am I the only one who noticed that not a bit of this sweet potato is wasted from top to bottom?"

"Are you kidding? Didn’t you hear what Teacher Qiaoqiao said? Even the weeds cleared from the vegetable garden are thrown into the fermentation pool!"

"[Main theme: use everything to its fullest... this really is using everything to the fullest!]"

But that was all they could talk about, as the new cell phone bravely hung on till then but finally ran out of battery.

Meanwhile, the old men and women on the mountain weren’t idle either. Having finished their chores, they went into the kitchen to help Zhai Xiaofeng clean up the food, dishes, and chairs. They marveled at the sterilization cabinet and admired the shiny stainless steel dishes...

And then sniffed the aroma of the big pot dish carefully prepared by Chef Jiang—

Oh my goodness! This beats eating pickled vegetables and noodles at home!

...

However, not everything in the village was so harmonious.

For example, among the old men and women invited by Lao Song’s family, there definitely wasn’t the notoriously infamous Old Lady Zhou.

Why is that?

Why do others flatter Lao Song’s family, get money and meals, while her unfilial son Maozhu just dumps bags of rice flour at the doorstep and doesn’t take care of anything else...

What did she eat today?

Just some old cowpeas stir-fried haphazardly, eaten from yesterday till today, along with leftover rice.

She doesn’t take care of the vegetable garden herself; even the cowpeas were nabbed from someone else’s garden at the front!

It’s just not the right season, and after a long search, she could only find a handful of old stringy ones, taking ages to peel, and even squeezed out two chubby caterpillars.

Luckily, she added an extra ladle of water whilst frying the cowpeas, and the beans inside were cooked soft and quite fragrant.

But right as she was eating, she heard an old lady loudly discussing tonight’s menu on the main road: winter melon brasied with pork belly, squash blossom egg drop soup, and stir-fried shredded pumpkin...

Compared to that, Old Lady Zhou’s cowpeas seemed so pitiful!

Yet, Lao Song’s goose, Big White, was too fierce. It pecked her painfully last time, and she didn’t have the guts to mess with him again. Then, overheard people by the roadside discussing collecting Sweet Potato Vine, Old Lady Zhou’s eyes rolled around as she formed a plan.

So Old Lady Zhou stayed up lighting oil lamps until midnight, then quietly slipped out with a flashlight.

It was dark, and with the frightening big dog in the back mountain, she dared not cut through the forest, so she had to take the main road.

But even detouring to the hillside via the main road was quite a distance, usually, people from Lao Song’s family would ride electric bikes or tricycles, Old Lady Zhou was left breathless.

But before she even arrived, she heard people talking. As she stealthily approached—

Hey, the mountain top was brightly lit, quite a few people there!

Old Lady Zhou: ...???

No one in the village talked to her, and with her being out of the loop, she naturally didn’t know that people were picking vegetables in the middle of the night, each day!

However, having prepared for the middle of the night, she wasn’t willing to give up and couldn’t manage another trip back and forth. She looked greedily at the luscious-looking vegetables.

At that moment, she gritted her teeth and sat by the roadside to wait!