Chapter 163: Digging Sweet Potatoes, Sweet Potato Starch, and Bracken Starch

After the meal, Lin Heng’s third uncle and aunt were a little tipsy and in exceptionally high spirits.

To them, the food at Lin Heng’s house was like something out of a dream—so delicious that they hadn’t even noticed how much they drank.

After the meal, Lin Heng’s mother helped them to the old house to rest.

Lin Heng then called his eldest brother and Li Shiwei to help move some logs.

“Bro, is this what you dragged Dad out for this morning? Just to haul these rotten logs?” Lin Yue asked curiously.

Li Shiwei was also puzzled. “There’s rotten wood everywhere. Why haul it all the way from Shimen Village?”

Lin Heng grinned. “Calling it rotten, huh? If you can lift even one of these logs by yourself, I’ll give you a yuan.”

“You said it!” Li Shiwei perked up instantly.

Lin Heng nodded. “I said it.”

“I’ll give it a shot too,” Li Baiquan chimed in with a smile. He wasn’t in it for the money—just for the fun of the challenge.

When they reached the roadside and saw the cross-section of the logs, their expressions changed to surprise. “This really isn’t ordinary wood.”

Father Lin chuckled. “Of course not. Not even one person can lift a single piece.”

They untied the ropes, and Li Shiwei tried to move one of the logs by himself—but no matter how hard he tried, it wouldn’t budge.

“Damn, this thing’s heavy!” he exclaimed.

Lin Heng mocked him, “Noob. You think this is just regular wood? This stuff’s been buried underground for thousands of years. Its density is on a whole different level.”

“Wait—is this ebony?” Li Baiquan’s face was full of shock.

“You know about ebony, Uncle?” Lin Heng raised an eyebrow in surprise. Bog wood is also sometimes called ebony.

Li Baiquan laughed. “I’ve heard it has medicinal properties. It’s also worth a lot if used to make stools or furniture.”

“Enough talk—let’s get moving.” Lin Heng smiled and joined the others in carrying the ancient red toon root back home.

He moved everything upstairs and had no intention of selling it. He planned to turn the wood into a full set of furniture when he had time.

That red toon root was top quality—perfect for a tea tray or a root carving.

“How much do you think this wood is worth?” Uncle asked curiously after they were done.

Xiulan, holding Xiao Xia, was also full of curiosity. Was this what her husband meant by “striking it rich” earlier this morning? Just a few old-looking logs?

Lin Heng looked around and smiled. “Since it’s just us, I’ll tell you. Those few logs could sell for four or five hundred yuan, and their value will only go up. That tree root—if it’s blood-red inside like I think—could easily fetch over a thousand. And that’s just for now. Give it a few years, and it’ll be worth even more.”

“Four or five hundred? Over a thousand?!”

“Oh my god!”

Everyone gasped in disbelief. The price far exceeded their expectations. Their eyes went wide like copper bells.

“Seriously?” Li Shiwei asked, skeptical.

Lin Heng nodded. “Of course. You guys should keep an eye out too. If you ever come across something like this, buy it. I can help you find a buyer.”

“I’m definitely going to look when I get back,” said Li Baiquan immediately.

Li Shiwei added, “Why don’t we go check the riverbank right now?”

“Sure.”

And just like that, everyone decided to head to the river to try their luck.

“You guys go ahead. I’ll sit this one out. Whatever you find is yours,” Lin Heng said with a smile.

“Alright, no regrets!” Li Shiwei grinned.

Since there wasn’t much to do that afternoon, the group headed off to the riverbank together.

Lin Heng led Hongzao to the stable, added some hay, and fed her. Then he went home and helped clean up the place.

After that, he told his wife about his plan to renovate the house next month—laying down cement and bluestone tiles, and plastering the exterior walls.

“With the plaster, that’s going to cost over two hundred yuan. Maybe we should skip it,” Xiulan said, a little reluctant to spend the money.

Lin Heng waved her off. “Spending on the house doesn’t count. Otherwise, every time it rains, it’s just mud everywhere. It drives me nuts.”

He was used to hardened roads everywhere. This muddy ground was unbearable—after a rain, his shoes would be caked with five or six pounds of sticky yellow mud that wouldn’t come off no matter how hard he tried.

He couldn’t pave everything, but at the very least, his house and yard needed to be done.

“Alright, we’ll do it your way,” Xiulan said, blinking at him.

Lin Heng smiled at his wife. “Let’s go to the backyard. Can you clean my ears again?”

“Sure.” Xiulan wiped her hands and went to get the ear pick and some tissue.

Lin Heng took their daughter to the backyard. It was cloudy today, and the afternoon was quite pleasant—no mosquitoes either.

Xiao Xia was fascinated by the fish in the pond. The giant salamander was hiding in its cave, the carp swam lazily at the bottom, and the snakehead fish darted through the water, occasionally attacking the creek trout with deadly precision—one bite, one fish, fierce as ever.

Xiong Ba had been feasting on fish the past few days and was in high spirits. He rubbed up against Xiao Xia, now about the same height as her and looking more imposing by the day.

But when Xiao Xia threw a little stick, he’d still dash after it. Even when she tugged on his ears, he never got angry—he knew his place.

Xiulan came back with the ear pick. Lin Heng lay sideways on the bench in the pavilion, resting his head on her lap and closing his eyes in comfort.

“Cleaning your ears is just an excuse. You really just want to nap on my lap, don’t you?” Xiulan glanced at him.

Lin Heng smiled with his eyes closed and nuzzled her leg.

Xiulan gently cleaned his ears, letting him nap for half an hour before waking him up and lying down on his lap for a rest herself.

“Sit still, no moving,” she said, closing her eyes.

Xiao Xia played hide-and-seek with Xiong Ba in the yard, but no matter where she hid, he always found her quickly.

Leaning back in his chair, Lin Heng watched his wife napping on his lap, his daughter playing in the yard, and the wolfdog keeping her company. He felt completely at peace and deeply content.

At two o’clock, Xiulan opened her eyes and sat up. “Time to head up the hill and dig up the sweet potatoes. We’ll need them soon to make sweet potato noodles.”

“I’ll help you guys out. Red Maple Mountain doesn’t need me for now,” Lin Heng said with a smile.

Xiulan gave him a look. “It’s not that they don’t need you. You’re just slacking off.”

Lin Heng grinned. “Come on, adults don’t slack—we just manage our energy. I’m just worried you’ll get too tired.”

“Let’s go then. You better pull your weight.” Xiulan rolled her eyes at him with a smile.

“Alright. I’ll swing by Red Maple Mountain first,” Lin Heng nodded.

He rode over to Red Maple Mountain. The crew had just started working. Lin Heng lit a fire and boiled a kettle of water.

They didn’t provide meals, but tea was always available.

“Li Shiwei, did you guys find anything?” Lin Heng asked as he set up the fire.

Li Shiwei shook his head. “We found a small tree root—your dad spotted it. We brought it back. It’s over by the cement.”

“I’ll go take a look.” Lin Heng was a bit surprised—they actually found something.

He ran over to the cement area and saw a tree root with a pale gray exterior and rough texture. It didn’t look big, but when he tried lifting it, it weighed over a hundred pounds. Definitely bog wood. Since it hadn’t been cut open, he couldn’t tell what kind it was.

If it turned out to be the same blood-red hue as his red toon bog wood root, it could be worth a pretty penny.

“Dad, you’ve got some luck! This one might be worth a few hundred too,” Lin Heng said.

Father Lin grinned. “I found it in the sand. Only a corner was sticking out. When the water rises again, we might find more.”

After chatting a bit, Lin Heng checked on the team’s progress. He figured it would take another ten days or so to level the remaining two rows of land.

He said a quick word to his father and slipped away.

Back at the sweet potato field, his mother and sister-in-law were already digging. Xiulan was wearing gloves and picking sweet potatoes, while Xiao Xia and a few nephews played nearby.

“Mom, let me do it,” Lin Heng said as he walked over.

“Alright,” his mother nodded, surprisingly without scolding him.

Harvesting sweet potatoes doesn’t take much skill—just aim the hoe at the base of the plant and dig. With one swing, Lin Heng unearthed five or six sweet potatoes, weighing around four to five jin in total. The yield was far higher than any other crop.

“Not a bad harvest. Next year, let’s plant all liwaihuang. I’ll go buy the seeds—these white sweet potatoes don’t taste good,” Lin Heng said with a smile.

There are many types of sweet potatoes. The ones they planted had red skin and white flesh—not particularly tasty. The best ones are called liwaihuang, with yellow skin and yellow flesh. They’re delicious, especially when roasted. The purple sweet potatoes with red skin and red flesh weren’t available in their area.

Mother Lin nodded. “I told your dad two years ago to buy liwaihuang seeds, but he said they were too expensive.”

“No worries, I’ll buy them next year. These white ones don’t even make good dried sweet potatoes,” Lin Heng replied, nodding. He knew all too well how frugal his father was.

“This year’s crop looks great. I estimate we’ll get about 1,500 jin per mu. That’s a lot of starch,” Liu Juan said with a smile.

Their family had planted over five mu of sweet potatoes, expecting a total yield of around 8,000 jin. After extracting the starch, the leftover pulp could still be used to feed the pigs.

Compared to sweet potatoes, wheat and rice had much lower yields. Lin Heng was digging enthusiastically—the joy of the harvest was contagious.

Mother Lin and the others had been digging sweet potatoes for days. The two mu here were the last of the lot. In one afternoon, the four of them managed to dig up over 800 jin from just half a mu.

At six o’clock, work at Red Maple Mountain wrapped up, and Father Lin came over to help carry the sweet potatoes.

The old house, where Lin Heng and Xiulan used to sleep, was now piled high with sweet potatoes. The joy of a bountiful harvest lit up everyone’s faces.

“But when I think about how all these sweet potatoes aren’t worth as much as those few rotten logs you picked up, I’m just speechless,” Lin Yue said with a chuckle, shaking his head.

Lin Heng laughed. “Bro, those logs of mine have been buried underground for thousands of years—they’re not just any old wood. But yeah, farming doesn’t really make much money.”

Father Lin shook his head with a sigh. “Lin Heng, let’s move that bog wood tree I picked up back home too.”

“Sure thing,” Lin Heng agreed without hesitation. Once it was sold, he’d just give the money to his dad.

That evening, Big Brother Lin Yue invited their third uncle and aunt over for a meal, and of course Lin Heng and the others joined in.

The next morning, the couple took their leave. Father Lin and the others gave them some meat and dried fish to take back with them.

They had clearly enjoyed their stay, and before leaving, they held Lin Heng and the others’ hands, urging them to visit when they had the time.

After they left, Father Lin shook his head and said, “Sigh, life’s not easy for them either. Their son and daughter-in-law are so unfilial.”

“Let’s go home,” Lin Heng said with a smile. Truth be told, life was hard for ninety percent of people in this world.

Right now, all he wanted was to lead his family to rise up. As for helping others—he didn’t have the energy for that just yet.

The sun was shining brightly that day. Father Lin and the others headed back to Red Maple Mountain to help, while Lin Heng went with Xiulan and the others to dig more sweet potatoes.

They dug all day, leaving only half a mu unfinished. On November 3rd, they worked through the morning to finish it.

That afternoon, Mother Lin and the others started washing the sweet potatoes to prepare for starch extraction.

They dumped the sweet potatoes into a large wooden basin, filled it with water, and used bamboo roots to scrub them. The small protrusions on the bamboo helped remove dirt and sand without damaging the sweet potatoes too much.

After one round of scrubbing, they’d pick out the sweet potatoes and scrub them again in a clean basin. Usually, that was enough to get them completely clean.

Once washed, the sweet potatoes were ground by hand using the same kind of grater used for konjac.

These graters were usually made by hammering small holes into a metal sheet with nails. Rubbing the sweet potatoes against the rough side turned them into pulp.

After grinding, Xiulan and the others would add water to the pulp and wash it to extract the starch. Then they’d use cloth bags to filter the mixture, resulting in a starchy liquid. Once the liquid settled, it became sweet potato starch.

To ensure purity, they would usually dissolve the starch in water and wash it two more times before letting it settle again, yielding refined starch.

Since they didn’t have machines and transporting thousands of jin of sweet potatoes to town was too much trouble, they processed everything themselves.

Grinding this much sweet potato into starch usually took about a month. From 100 jin of sweet potatoes, they could get 10 to 15 jin of starch.

The leftover pulp was cooked and fed to the pigs, helping fatten them up before the New Year.

Lin Heng had no choice—there was no electricity in the village, so even if they bought machines, they couldn’t use them. Everyone had to do it the old-fashioned way.

But it wasn’t too exhausting, and taking it slow wasn’t so bad.

“Xiulan, I want to dig up some bracken roots to make bracken starch noodles,” Lin Heng said, looking at his wife.

Cold bracken noodles were one of his favorite dishes—absolutely delicious.

Xiulan nodded. “Sure, go dig some up. We can make noodles together later.”

There wasn’t much farm work left. Wheat and rapeseed had already been planted. The rest were just small chores, so everyone had time to make food and snacks.

“Alright, I’ll go dig some over the next couple of days. There’s bracken over by Red Maple Mountain,” Lin Heng said with a nod.

The next morning, when heading to Red Maple Mountain for work, Lin Heng brought along a hoe to dig for bracken roots.

Life moved steadily forward. The weather kept shifting between cloudy and sunny, but it hadn’t rained in days. The dried fish at home was almost ready.

The cured sausages were also done. Xiulan stir-fried some for Lin Heng. The aroma of the dried sausage was rich and meaty, with a satisfying chew that made it more flavorful the longer you chewed—utterly addictive.

As time passed, the autumn wind grew colder, the leaves turned yellow, and eventually, even the sturdy yellow smoketrees and red maples couldn’t hold on—they all began to fall.

The ginkgo tree in the village center lost all its leaves overnight in the cold wind, blanketing the surrounding area in golden yellow.

It looked like a golden carpet, and kids ran around gathering the leaves and tossing them in the air. Lin Heng picked some up and made a bouquet of ginkgo leaves for Xiulan. She loved the golden bouquet and placed it by the bedroom window after drying it.

On November 11th at noon, Lin Heng came home with a basket full of bracken roots. He figured he’d dug up two to three hundred jin over the past ten days.

“Wife, how much starch do you think we can get from all this?” Lin Heng asked, pointing at the pile of bracken roots in the house. Their life together was cozy and content.

“This stuff’s not as good as sweet potatoes. I’d say you need fifteen to sixteen jin to get one jin of starch,” Xiulan replied after thinking for a moment.

“So with 300 jin, I’ll only get about 20 jin of starch? Alright, that’s enough. I’m done digging,” Lin Heng said, giving up. Twenty jin was plenty.

Xiulan blinked and smiled. “Then let’s stop here. Wash your hands and eat. I made stir-fried Chinese toon with cured pork this morning—used up the last of the toon.”

“No wonder it smells so good—it’s Chinese toon with cured pork!” Lin Heng’s eyes lit up. He washed his hands and went to scoop some rice.

Stir-fried Chinese toon with cured pork was one of those unbeatable dishes that paired perfectly with rice—absolutely mouthwatering.

The three of them were enjoying their meal when suddenly there was a knock at the door.

“Who is it?” Lin Heng stood up curiously, bowl in hand, and walked toward the door.

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(End of Chapter)