Today is The Little Cold, which is the 23rd of the twenty-four solar terms and the 5th of winter. "Little cold, big cold, frozen into a ball." The Little Cold Festival marks the beginning of entering the coldest day of the year.
Editor's Note
The seasons were the government decrees on agricultural affairs formulated in ancient China according to the seasons, and the twenty-four solar terms were supplementary calendars that guided agricultural affairs. Sponsored by the Wenzhou Municipal Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the "Wenzhou Seasonal Season" column takes the twenty-four solar terms as the node, and each issue selects the crops with both local characteristics and industrial scale in the Wenzhou season to report, so that people living in the city can better understand the Wenzhou season, set up an interactive platform for urban and rural information symmetry, help the construction of the ecological leisure industrial belt and the rural revitalization demonstration belt in western Wenzhou, spread farming culture, and regain good memories and nostalgia.
Do you know when Wenzhou's specialty mud cockles are the fattest? The answer is around the Spring Festival. Therefore, Wenzhou people's New Year's table and banquet are indispensable to a plate of fresh mud cockles as a plate. The flesh of the mud cockle contains heme, also known as the blood cockle, which is commonly known as the "flower cockle" by Wenzhou people. Where are the mud cockles in Wenzhou that are most popular? It is recognized as the mud cockle produced in Yueqing, especially from the Ximen Island National Marine Special Protection Area under the jurisdiction of Yandang Town. Due to the superior ecological environment of the reserve, coupled with the sea temperature, salinity, water quality, etc. are particularly suitable for the growth of mud cockles, the mud cockles cultivated in its jurisdiction have a slightly salty taste and a tender taste, especially in the months or two before and after the Spring Festival, which is particularly fat.
Ximen Island mud cockles come with an "internet celebrity" aura
Mud cockles, traditional chinese cultured shellfish, are mainly distributed in the southeast coastal area. Mud cockles can be eaten fresh or wine-stained, or made into dry products. Cockle meat contains a lot of protein and vitamins, and in some places in Wenzhou, there is a custom of maternal confinement to eat mud cockles to replenish blood.
On the morning of January 2, the reporter walked into the Ximen Island National Marine Special Protection Area in Yandang Town. Rows of ponds can be seen everywhere on the island, and flocks of egrets flying. In the tu fields and ponds by the sea, farmers are harvesting seafood such as mud cockles and clams.
Near the Ximen Island Paradise in front of Aoli Village in Yandang Town, Lin Wenjiang and his family after the 90s are fishing for mud cockles in a breeding pond. They were seen wearing one-piece waterproof pants and shoes, carrying homemade mesh bags and scrapers to catch mud cockles in the water. Although they could not see the cockles in the mud under the water, they were skilled, moving forward and left and right along the marks made with bamboo poles to scrape and rake and salvage. Every time the bag was filled with half a mesh bag, Lin Wenjiang dragged it to the side of a simple harvesting boat docked on the surface of the water, washed the silt with water from the pond, and poured it into a large plastic basket on the board.
According to Lin Wenjiang, he is a native of Aoli Village, who used to do business in Guangxi and came back 2 years ago to engage in farming with his family. The farm pond is a polyculture of shrimp and mud cockles, the shrimp has been harvested, and now it is the season of ripe harvest of mud cockles, and it is also the most fertile season for mud cockles on Ximen Island. The mud cockles produced on Ximen Island are well-known in Wenzhou, Taizhou and other places, and the mud cockles on the island are all picked up by buyers, which can be said to have their own "net red" aura.
The head of the e-commerce of the "Ximen Island Fishing Shop" who is waiting for the goods to land said that the "Ximen Island Fishing Shop" will receive mud cockle orders from all over the country every day, and most of these customers are Yueqing people who do business in other places. 75 kg were ordered for shipment on the same day, and in order to ensure fresh quality, the salvage time and quantity were booked in advance every day. The mud cockles are fished from the breeding pond on the same day, packed in gift boxes and directly to the courier company, and delivered to customers in the field the next day. The week before the Spring Festival is the peak of orders, with a maximum of several hundred kilograms a day.
Yueqing has a national germplasm resources reserve for mud cockles
At the head of the bridge from Yandang Town to Ximen Island, a building near the sea is very conspicuous, in front of the building is an endless beach, and the signs of the Yueqing Bay Mud Cockle National Aquatic Germplasm Resources Conservation Area and the boundary monument of the core area are hung on the left and right of the gate. At the entrance of the road, a management notice board of "Yueqing Bay Mud Cockle National Aquatic Germplasm Resources Conservation Area" was also erected.
The reporter saw on the notice board of the management of the protected area released by the Yueqing Municipal Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in March 2019 that the total area of the Yueqing Bay Mud Cockle National Aquatic Germplasm Resources Conservation Area was 7463.3 hectares, of which the core area was 63.3 hectares and the experimental area was 7400 hectares. The special protection period for the core area is annual. The reserve is located in the north of Yueqing Bay, the core area is near the jumping village of Yandang Town, close to the embankment of the jumping village, and the Ximen Island Marine Special Protection Area is only about 250m apart, the main protection object is the mud cockle, and other protected species include clams, oysters, rainbow cherry clams, green clams and so on. The implementation of fully enclosed management in the protected area, and it is strictly forbidden for any individual or group to enter the reserve to engage in activities that are detrimental to the protection of organisms and their ecological environment, which shows the status of the mud cockle species in Yueqing Bay.
It is understood that Yueqing Bay is located in a subtropical area, the bay is calm and calm, the beach is vast, the temperature and water temperature are suitable, the natural feed of the mud cockles is abundant, especially the National Marine Special Protection Area of Ximen Island under its jurisdiction, rich in marine biological resources, and is one of the important bases for the development of aquaculture and seedlings in Yueqing City.
At present, Yueqing City has won the title of "China's Mud Cockle Town", and is also the largest mud cockle seed center and commercial cockle base in China, and the mud cockle breeding industry has become the pillar industry of Yueqing Aquaculture Industry, and "Yueqing Mud Cockle" has also become China's geographical indication certification trademark.
There are experts who study the mystery of the delicious yuqing mud cockle
According to experts from the Zhejiang Institute of Marine Fisheries, the breeding period of mud cockles is generally in the early June to late July in the summer, the sperm eggs are first discharged on the beach by the sea, the young shells grow to a certain extent, and then move to the water source in the seawall breeding pond (commonly known as the cockle pond) that meets the water quality standards of marine aquaculture water, and the water temperature, salinity, soft mud substrate and so on in the pond also have certain requirements. Winter is the ripeness of mud cockles, and during the Spring Festival is the fattest time of the year, so during the New Year, every household basically has a mud cockle dish. Wenzhou people eat mud cockles, generally with boiling boiling water to boil with blood to eat, people who have not eaten, see the open cockle shell blood dripping, scared to touch, but after tasting, the taste buds will be conquered by its deliciousness.
According to historical records, Zhejiang has a history of more than 1700 years of breeding mud cockles, and in the Ming and Qing dynasties, Yueqing has a history of raising cockles. However, before the early 1990s, Yueqing mud cockle farming scale is small, low yield, is a very precious high-grade aquatic products, the finished product price per kilogram sold for more than 120 yuan, only in the New Year's Festival or major happy events can only be eaten. By 1993, after the breakthrough of the invasive artificial seedling technology of mud cockles, mud cockle breeding developed rapidly, and the price of finished products is now about 40 yuan per kilogram, which has become a "common meal" on the table of Wenzhou people, and is also a sea specialty with obvious regional characteristics in Wenzhou.
China's Shandong, Fujian, Guangdong and other places have produced mud cockles, why is Yueqing mud cockles particularly delicious? As early as the 2008 National Mariculture Academic Symposium, the scientific research team of the School of Life Science and Biological Engineering of Ningbo University had announced its reasons, and they found through experiments and investigations that Yueqing Bay algae bait was particularly rich, and the aquaculture ecological series such as seawater temperature, salinity, and pH value were tailored for mud cockles, which were particularly suitable for its growth. Based on this research result, the scientific research team also tried to simulate various indicators of the Yueqing Bay ecosystem, and planned to promote them in various coastal areas of the country, so that "Yueqing Bay cockles" were cultivated everywhere.