She Only Cares About Cultivation

After the harvest, the temperature dropped day by day, and the vegetables planted in the yard, the ones climbing on the walls outside, like winter melon, pumpkin, and the yellowed loofah, were all collected into the space. The loofah grew large, and after peeling off the skin and removing the seeds inside, the remaining mesh-like fibers could be used to scrub pots and dishes.

Then she found herself even busier, casually squatting there, able to work a whole morning or afternoon.

The vines and shoots around the house could be chopped up to feed the chickens, not wasted at all. Even corn stalks, peanuts, soybeans she kept for firewood. After burning, the plant ashes were collected and now, when there was time, she soaked them all in large basins.

This required cold water to soak for seven days. The soaked water had lye on top and ashes on the bottom. Pour the lye separately, mix with fat for heating and stirring into a paste, pour into molds and let it naturally dry and demold for use. The fats could be animal fats or vegetable oils, commonly coconut oil, pig pancreas, lard, palm oil, and others. Some places directly mix plant ashes with oil for heating and stirring into a paste before shaping and demolding. However it’s done, the effect is similar because plant ashes are rich in alkali, making them excellent for cleaning.

Previously, she didn’t have time to make it, and the plant ashes weren’t enough for her to tinker once, so she usually cleaned directly using plant ashes.

Now that she had free time, in the space she also cultivated roses, chrysanthemums, lilies, osmanthus and such, lazy to extract the fragrances, she directly integrated them into fat soap.

She kept the chicken fat from slaughtering chickens, mixed it with lye water, stirred into a paste with a translucent color. Before shaping, added rotten flower juice, stirred again, poured into wooden carved molds, arranged a whole yard, totaling around ten to twenty pieces.

The remaining plant ashes could not be wasted either, mixed with vegetable oil for continued stirring. This type was mainly used for scrubbing pans and washing dishes, so poured into large molds, cutting off a piece for use as needed, such as spreading it around before scrubbing with loofah pulp. It’s very clean.

The soap made with leftover plant ashes was blackish, unlike the ones mixed with flower juice that looked pretty. One was for scrubbing pans and washing clothes, the other for bathing and washing face and hair, aye, arranged conveniently and beautifully!

Finally produced about 300 pounds, from soaking to successful demolding, took half a month. As soon as the soap was collected at home, snowflakes started drifting.

She cut the 300 pounds of soap into convenient small pieces, stored them in her space, and gave five beautifully scented soaps to both Li Qiuxia and Liu Caixia, whereas the black soaps made from plant ashes, everyone could make them at home, because it was handed down from ancestors. It’s just the scented ones had hard-to-find ingredients, and rural people weren’t that particular. If it was summer, flowers could be found, but where to search in this winter?

"Sister An, your hands are so skillful, things in your hands seem to transform, too beautiful, both fragrant and pretty, washing your face with this, it’s definitely clean,"

An Yi glanced at the sisters’ hands and faces which had already begun to crack, frowned slightly: "You deal with water every day, why not buy some Clam Oil to apply?"

The sisters chuckled: "That stuff, a small box doesn’t last a few days, and it’s 5,000 yuan per box, too expensive, we can’t bear to use it."

"Exactly, Snow Cream is plenty but also twenty to thirty thousand per box, while we’re not hungry, we just don’t have money in hand!"

Hearing the price, she frowned, quickly realized they were still using a set of coins, the two looked really pitiful, she sighed.

Returning indoors she took a large box of Clam Oil from the space, bought back when she was in a coastal city, extremely cheap. She had lots of Japanese skincare products in her space, those she bought during two years in Japan selling fruits, because fruits were scarce there, sold for a lot of money.

But Japanese stuff couldn’t be taken out, so she could only use it herself. As for domestic products, they were good quality, made with genuine materials, usually, a large box would sell for about two hundred thousand, she was aware of keeping it secure, so only took out two small boxes to gift them.