From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 83 Harvest
At night on April 4, by the campfire on the riverbank, Chen Zhou's dinner included not only meat soup and bread, but also a few pieces of sugarcane.

After eating the bread, he used a dagger to peel off the hard and dry outer skin of the sugarcane, took out the coarse fiber inside the sugarcane core, cut it into small pieces and put it in his mouth to try to chew.

The sweetness of this wild sugarcane was not as low as he had imagined. It had a sweet taste similar to corn stalks with a slightly vegetal fragrance, and it was neither choking nor greasy.

Maybe because the rainy season has just ended, the sugarcane core is still full of moisture. The only drawback is that the fiber is too thick and hard. If you chew it too much, your cheeks will hurt and it may even sting your mouth a bit.

Chen Zhou guessed that this situation might be caused by the fact that the sugarcane was too old and the internal fibers were severely lignified. If it was tender sugarcane grown that year, it would taste better.

Sitting under the tree, he felt the long-missed sweetness of sugarcane for a while, and kept spitting sugarcane residue onto the rocky beach. He kept chewing until his jaw became stiff. Then he rubbed his face and put down the remaining pieces of sugarcane.

At this time, the sun has set and the moon is in the sky, round like a silver plate. Looking up, one can feel that the day is approaching the fifteenth.

Amid the sound of rushing river water, Chen Zhou leaned against a tree trunk, squinted his eyes, and nonchalantly threw firewood into the campfire.

Lai Fu was nestled comfortably between two tree roots, his fur still wet—

It had just had a fight and quarrel with the frogs on the river bank, but of course it couldn't do anything to those guys who could shrink into the water, and ended up in a very miserable state.

……

A night passed and it was already April 4th, with only two days left until the mysterious reward arrived.

Considering that it would take another day to get home, Chen Zhou got up early and prepared to make full use of this day to get all the crops he needed to find and transplant them back in glass jars.

As for the intangible things like cassava and wild spices, we can only look for them next time we come.

Anyway, this trip to the river valley plain is just to explore the route. Once we figure out the specific location, there will be plenty of opportunities to come back in the future.

Without waking up Lai Fu who was still resting in the cracks between the tree roots, Chen Zhou let him continue to rest and started a fire to cook.

The rocky beach was quite humid, and although the river did not overflow, the dampness of the night and the dew of the morning still made the clothes and shoes extremely wet and cold.

Chen Zhou lit a bonfire and roasted some clothes while cooking.

After breakfast, warming his stomach and feeding Lai Fu, he took out a glass jar from his pocket and walked straight to the big aloe vera next to the rocky beach.

He carefully selected a piece of tender rhizome that had just emerged, carefully cut it off from the big root with a dagger, dug it out with soil, put it into a glass jar and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he walked towards the wild sugarcane he discovered yesterday afternoon.

Chen Zhou vaguely remembered that the sugarcane plant could be cut into pieces and soaked in water or stuck in the ground to grow into a new sugarcane.

But he was not sure whether his memory was correct, so he found four shorter and thinner sugarcanes, dug them up from the roots, sprinkled some water on the soil above the roots, then cut a few thick grass leaves to wrap the sugarcane roots to keep them moist, tied them up with hemp rope, and placed them on the rocky beach.

The aloe vera and sugar cane were all found, but the wild grapes, melons and tobacco leaves were still missing.

Chen Zhou used a metal knife to cut the grass to clear a path as he moved forward, looking for the remaining crops in the lush green.

Of these crops, he likes wild grapes best.

The grapes have high yield and good taste. They can be dried into raisins or made into wine.

It can be planted in the patio and climbed on wooden frames as an ornamental plant, and can also provide shade during the dry season.

In comparison, tobacco leaves are still somewhat useful, but melons seem dispensable and do not have many functions other than supplementing vitamins.

Moreover, there are substitutes for the function of supplementing vitamins. Next time we explore the fruit valley, we will naturally be able to obtain a large amount of fruit to eat, which will make the melon's position even more embarrassing.

Most importantly, Chen Zhou only gave himself one day to find crops. Although the river valley plains were not as vast as the grasslands, the time was short.

Among the vast number of plants, it is not difficult to find wild grapes that are large in size and vine-like in shape, but it is difficult to find tobacco leaves and melons that look similar to ordinary plants.

If the distribution range of these two plants is not wide enough, we can only rely on luck.

……

Find from morning to night.

Although time is not sufficient, this is not the time to transport supplies down from the ship. There is only one chance, and if you miss it, you can never get it back.

Chen Zhou did not feel that much pressure, and his pace during the search was relatively leisurely.

While identifying the plants, he would stop from time to time to rest, play and joke with Lai Fu, so that it could relax as well.

Sometimes fate just likes to play tricks on us.

When you have expectations, you will often be disappointed; but if you just wander around, you can gain unexpected things.

Moving through the grass, Chen Zhou soon found wild grapes.

It was the beginning of the dry season and the vines still had flowers on them, and many of the fruits were not fully ripe.

Wild grapes are much smaller than the common grapes in our daily life, and their skin is very dark in color. If it weren’t for the grape vines and leaves, Chen Zhou might have thought that this was a larger nightshade.

I dug out a grape vine with roots and cut off a few thick vines to plant at home and continued strolling.

He then discovered melons, tobacco, and even a plant that was very similar to peppers.

But the fruit of this plant was not yet ripe. When he broke it open and smelled it, it did have the pungent smell of chili pepper. He was almost certain that it was wild chili pepper, which made him very happy.

In order to take away this plant that was suspected to be a pepper, Chen Zhou gave up a melon vine he had dug up and planted the collected pepper vines in a glass jar.

So, as he was rushing to Yantan with a bag of harvest, full of joy, he also found a bunch of mountain celery on the road.

The mountain celery has just bloomed, and the clusters of small white flowers are particularly delicate and conspicuous among the green waves.

However, because there were too many plants with white flowers in the river valley plain, Chen Zhou did not notice this unremarkable plant during his first search. On his way back, he accidentally walked closer and found that it was quite similar to the mountain celery commonly seen on the hillsides of his hometown.

Although the name of mountain celery contains the word "celery", its taste is significantly different from the common celery sold in the vegetable market. Its main characteristic is bitterness, especially a strong bitterness.

In Chen Zhou's hometown, the fresh and delicious mountain celery is usually cut in spring and eaten as lettuce with dip in sauce. It is also mixed with mutton to make dumplings. It is said that it tastes very special after being cooked.

After spring, the stems of mountain celery become thicker, harder and more tough, making them difficult to chew and digest, so they are no longer served on the table.

Chen Zhou had never had any interest in wild vegetables before. After eating monotonous and tasteless bread for seven months on this isolated island, he now has to try any normal food that is non-toxic and has a slightly novel taste, no matter how bad it tastes.

So he took out the dagger again, added some weight to his pocket, and returned home with a full load of grapes, tobacco, plants that looked like peppers and plants that looked like mountain celery.

　The heater was too hot, and I fell asleep while writing. I can only continue writing until late at night.

　　Thanks to Gui Zai Zhuanyi, Home Guard Team Member, ygggb, Black and White Believer, Song Tian, Pillow Ice, Early Bird Jumps First, Super High School Level Admiral, This Book Looks So Difficult to Understand, and Jiligulu Vkakaka for their monthly tickets. Thank you all!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)