356 High Consumption
Xue Sifu felt a lump in his throat, but he smiled at Liu Guixia and the others, “Mother, Yifu, Hehua, Hongyan, no matter if this ice can be made or not, I will make our family richer and richer.”
“If that’s the case, then by all means.” Liu Guixia and the others laughed. “But if it’s not like that, it’s fine. Our lives have already improved. Don’t we still have the rice noodles and liangpi business to earn money from? The workshop is also about to be completed. Even if we take out the four hundred silver, we still have more than a hundred left. No matter what, it won’t affect our daily lives.”
When Xue Dafu, Xue Erfu, Xue Sanfu, and Xue Wufu came back from work and heard about this, they all had the same attitude as Liu Guixia.
To Jiang Yue’s surprise, Xue Sanfu, who usually didn’t talk much, was the first to express his opinion when the four of them returned.
“They can do whatever they want.” Xue Sanfu said indifferently. Then he took down the ax hanging on the pillar and began to chop wood for the house. Because they had been making rice noodles recently, the firewood at home had been consumed a lot.
The next day, Xue Sifu took four silver from Liu Guixia and gave it to Doctor Shen.
If he wasn’t a trustworthy person, Xue Sifu wouldn’t have paid him so quickly. After all, he hadn’t even seen the saltpeter yet.
His Xue Yan trusted Doctor Shen and told him that saltpeter could be used to make ice. Since he trusted Xue Yan, he would naturally trust Doctor Shen as well.
Moreover, Doctor Shen had helped their family a lot, and he had been dragging his feet when he didn’t want to give them money.
The money had been given, and Doctor Shen had also agreed to help get saltpeter yesterday. Now, all that was left was to wait for the doctor to help get a lot of saltpeter.
While they were waiting, Xue Sifu went to the town to sell liangpi and rice noodles as usual. The number of bowls he sold was getting fewer. It was at most 50 bowls a day now.
Naturally, the rice noodles that they made at home were much less than before. Now, Xue Yifu had quite a bit of free time. However, Xue Yifu couldn’t stay idle. He heard that he would need wooden basins to make ice. If he really wanted to make ice, he would need a lot of wooden basins. There weren’t enough wooden basins at home? It just so happened that the blueprint drawn by Xue Yan had detailed instructions on how to make wooden basins. He decided to tweak around and planned to make a few big and small basins.
Xue Yan hadn’t finished drawing the blueprints for Yifu, he said would draw more things for him in the future if anything came to mind. After he finished reading, he put the book back to Xue Yan’s desk like a treasure, and then he started to make the wooden basin.
That day, because the weather was especially hot in the morning, Xue Sifu didn’t bring Xue Yan and Jiang Yue to town as he was afraid that the two children would get a heat stroke.
Jiang Yue walked to the shed where Xue Yifu was making things. Xue Yifu was still making the wooden basin, but he had already finished on one wooden basin, but it was a small one.
Xue Yifu’s skills were getting better and better, and the wooden basins were especially sturdy and smooth.
Jiang Yue thought that since they were going to make ice, how could they not make ice popsicles? To make popsicles, they needed molds, which were not easy to make here. However, where there was a will, there was a way.
They could use bamboo tubes that were popsicle sized. Ten bamboo tubes of similar thickness could be tied together to form a bundle. To turn them into popsicles, they could put the bamboo tubes instead of the small basins. Each bamboo tube had to be 80% full of the liquid used to make popsicles. Each popsicle juice would fill each bamboo tube. Once the liquid in the bamboo tubes is frozen, the popsicles would be ready!