Chapter 710: Fleeing Famine 15
Early the next morning, Sun Chunfeng stayed home to watch the house and take care of the children. Yuan Chun and Geng Dalin took Geng Xiaowu to the bamboo forest behind the village to cut bamboo water and catch bamboo rats.
The bucket of bamboo water they had cut before had almost been consumed by the eight of them on their journey these past few days.
The few bowls of water left were used to make meat soup last night. This morning, without eating breakfast, they hurried to the bamboo forest.
With Yuan Chun around, they certainly wouldn’t run out of water. The first bamboo she cut released half a bucket of water. After cutting four or five more bamboo stalks and collecting two buckets of water, Geng Dalin excitedly headed home.
Yuan Chun and Geng Xiaowu stayed behind to catch bamboo rats.
The bamboo forest behind Fengling Village isn’t very large. Yuan Chun spent the whole morning and caught all the bamboo rats, totaling only about fifty to sixty.
At noon, seeing that there weren’t many bamboo rats, Sun Chunfeng didn’t dare to cook too many. He cooked only ten, and everyone barely had a small bowl with both soup and meat.
Geng Dalin was a bit worried, "Mom, who knows when this damned sky will bring rain. These bamboo rats won’t last us long. Once we finish them, we’ll have nothing to eat."
"What’s there to fear? If there are no bamboo rats, there are always field mice."
"Mom, you’re going to dig up field mice to eat?"
"Pah, I won’t eat field mice. I’m going to dig up the food they’ve hidden."
Yuan Chun doesn’t eat all kinds of mice.
Apart from bamboo rats, she doesn’t eat other mice.
However, field mice can be eaten. Though she doesn’t eat them, the others in the family can.
"Mom, do field mice really hide food?" Geng Dalin jumped up in surprise, "Mom, let me go dig right now. There are quite a few field mice in the ditches by the fields."
"Don’t rush, grab the tools."
Yuan Chun directed him to bring a cart, a few cloth bags, a shovel, and a hoe, then led the whole family to the fields.
This year, due to drought, the fields produced nothing, but in the previous years, the harvests were plentiful, leading to many field mice stealing grains from the fields.
Yuan Chun knew that field mice, much like squirrels, love to stash grains in their nests. Some field mice hide enough food to surprise people.
Arriving at the field ridge, Yuan Chun used her spiritual power to penetrate the ground and probe underground. Soon, she found several nests of field mice.
Energized, Yuan Chun led the entire family, young and old, to the widest ridge and instructed Geng Dalin and Sun Chunfeng to dig into a small hole beneath it.
Following the hole, they dug over three meters deep and finally reached the field mice. Geng Dalin dropped the hoe and lunged at a field mouse trying to escape, grabbing it by the tail.
"Mom, this field mouse is really fat, at least a pound. Hehe, we can have boiled mouse soup again tonight."
Yuan Chun cast a sidelong glance at the silly one and said, "Who said anything about mouse soup? With all this grain, we can have steamed rice for dinner."
Only then did Geng Dalin notice a pile of rice hidden in the field mouse’s nest, and he was stunned, "Wow... these field mice really do hide food. There’s easily ten pounds of rice here."
"You underestimated."
There’s over fifty pounds.
Yuan Chun instructed Sun Chunfeng to fetch the cloth bags to pack the grains.
After packing up all the grains, every face in the Geng family was full of joy.
The children chattered excitedly about having rice for dinner.
Yuan Chun chuckled and nodded, "Grandma will cook for you. Tonight, we’ll all have rice and eat our fill."