Flowers in full bloom

Chapter 390: Low-key and profitable

Prepare to make persimmon dye to make the color of your own wool sweater more colorful. Ask people to go to the barren mountains to pick those unripe, hard and green fresh astringent persimmons. After picking them, wash them, remove the fruit stems, and cut them into small pieces.

Use a small stone mill to grind the persimmons into a paste, and then use clean white gauze to squeeze out the persimmon juice. This is a laborious task, and Hualei specially found a few strong people to help.

After the persimmon juice is squeezed out, put it in a ceramic jar and place it in a naturally ventilated place to ferment for about twenty days to a month. During the fermentation process of the persimmon juice, stir it thoroughly with a clean wooden stick every day. Before stirring, skim off the bubbles produced by the fermentation and floating on the surface of the juice.

Stir at least four times a day.

If time permits, it is best to stir it every hour or so. When no bubbles appear on the surface of the fermented product in the persimmon juice, it is almost ready.

Put the fermented persimmon juice into a ceramic pot and boil it. After the persimmon juice boils, it needs to be boiled for about a quarter of an hour. The purpose of boiling is mainly to sterilize and disinfect the persimmon juice for the storage of the finished product.

Of course, you can also skip boiling and put the fermented juice directly into a small ceramic jar. There is no need to filter the residue and just seal it for storage for one year. After one year, the originally green persimmon juice will have turned brown.

Hualei was in a hurry to dye the wool yarn, so she boiled half of the persimmon juice. The other half was not boiled, but directly put into a small ceramic jar and sealed.

Because of the two different production methods, the dyed colors will have different effects. In order to have a variety of colors, Hualei tried both methods.

After the persimmon juice is boiled, pour it into the dye vat, cool and settle, filter out the sediment, and then you can start dyeing the wool yarn.

If you want to dye a darker color, just put the coil directly into the dye vat for dyeing. If you want to dye a lighter color, add a certain proportion of clean water to the dye liquid, stir it evenly, and then put the wool yarn in for dyeing.

When dyeing, keep a certain temperature for boiling dyeing, the effect will be better. After soaking for an hour, take it out, and then put mordant in clean water. Different mordant will produce different colors.

Then take the dyed wool loop out of the dye vat, put it into the mordant vat, and soak it for about an hour. Then repeat the dyeing and mordant steps according to the required color depth.

The persimmon dyeing process requires constant stirring to ensure uniform dyeing. Repeat several times, take out and dry, and the wool yarn will show different colors.

There are shrimp pink, dark green, tan, cool colors, and warm colors. At the same time, the final color of the persimmon-dyed wool yarn will also be affected by sunlight. The longer the sunlight is, the darker the color will be. Soon, the wool yarn on the farm became colorful and colorful.

Moreover, persimmon dyeing can be combined with other dyeing methods to present a different style.

In addition to cold dyeing and hot dyeing, persimmon dyeing can also be painted, which has a very artistic texture and beauty. This makes the persimmon-dyed wool yarn present a more diverse and rich visual experience.

What’s even more different is that the color of ordinary plant-dyed wool yarn will gradually fade over time after being exposed to the sun. However, the wool yarn dyed with persimmon is not only not easy to fade after being exposed to the sun, but the color will even deepen, which is quite special.

After the wool yarn is dyed, do not waste the remaining persimmon paint. It can be used to paint the wood furniture in your home to prevent insects and moths. It is very useful.

This is also where persimmon dyeing is superior to dyeing from other general plants, so Hua Buds made a lot of persimmon dye liquid and preserved it based on the principle of the more the better.

While busy making persimmon dye, on the other hand, potatoes and sweet potatoes on the East Mountain can also be harvested. Hualei is even busier, really has no time to rest.

Although the land on the barren mountain is indeed barren, because Hualei is willing to apply fertilizer and provide timely watering and care, the potatoes and sweet potatoes are growing very well, and baskets of them are piled up on the hillside.

Looking at the baskets of potatoes, Hualei started to think again. In addition to daily consumption, what other derivatives can be made from potatoes to make money? After all, daily consumption does not require such a large amount. The restaurant and the Imperial College cannot deliver all of them.

If the potatoes are left in the warehouse, they will easily sprout, and sprouted potatoes are poisonous, so they are useless. Therefore, you still have to find a way to make full use of the potatoes and earn money for yourself.

After reading many books on the bookshelf and combining her past life experience, Hualei decided to make vinegar from potatoes. Making vinegar from potatoes is actually a very old production method that converts potatoes into vinegar through natural fermentation.

Wash the potatoes, remove the rotten parts and mud, cook and mash them, add cold boiled water in a certain proportion, and when the mashed potatoes are still slightly warm to the touch, mix in the vinegar.

In order to make vinegar, the flower buds have been made into vinegar koji in advance. Rice and wheat are mixed in a certain proportion and beaten into grits. After stirring evenly with water, it is wrapped and hung under the eaves. After a month, the vinegar koji is naturally ready.

After stirring the vinegar koji evenly, pour it into the jar and cover it to start saccharification. After six or seven hours, the mashed potatoes begin to bubble up and down. Stir it up and down with a wooden stick every day. When the top is thin and the bottom is thick, the saccharification is successful.

Put the mashed potatoes into a ceramic bowl and mix in the bran and rice bran. Mix evenly until the mashed potatoes are moist enough that no water drops appear when you squeeze them with your hands. Pour the mashed potatoes into a ceramic jar and cover them with a bamboo plate for fermentation.

Place the ceramic jar in a warm house. After three days, the mashed potatoes will produce acetic acid. Then turn the jar upside down every two to three hours to make the temperature consistent between the top and bottom of the jar, but not too high.

If the temperature is too high, you need to press the potatoes a little to control the temperature. Keeping this temperature for about three days will allow the mashed potatoes to cool down until they turn into vinegar.

The fermentation period is about ten to half a month. Taste it and if it tastes sweet and sour, it is almost done. Then shape the mashed potatoes, mix them with salt evenly in a certain proportion, seal them in a jar and compact them, and increase the aroma of vinegar through aging.

After a period of time, the mashed potatoes become mature vinegar embryos. Put the mature vinegar embryos into a pouring tank, add a certain amount of cold boiled water, and simmer the vinegar embryos.