◎Happy Day 93: Food Storage◎

Others have become numb to humidity, but Jiang Muyun has not.

She lives in a floating house with normal humidity every night.

Jiang Muyun experiences the transition of his living space from dry to wet and from wet to dry every day, and is much more sensitive to air humidity than other people.

The air humidity has obviously dropped in the past few days.

Especially after today's rain, the air is no longer filled with the smell of mud and decay, but instead carries a hint of grass fragrance. Even the sky has lost a layer of gray fog, revealing a bit of openness.

Unfortunately, everyone has been hit by Blue Star’s terrible weather so many times that they no longer dare to hold out hope for it.

Otherwise, with the current trend of weather changes, everyone should sigh that the rain is over and the sky is clear.

But Jiang Muyun dared.

She has been tortured by Blue Star's weird weather so many times, so it doesn't matter if she is tortured once more.

As a human being, you should always have some hope in life.

Master Jiang, brave enough to face Lan Xing's beating, closed his eyes and clenched his hands, striking a pose as if to calculate things in a serious manner: "Dui is on the bottom and Kun is on the top. The Lin hexagram has Dui on the bottom, which represents joy, and Kun on the top, which represents compliance. In the future, everything will go smoothly, and everyone will be happy."

Jiang Muyun sighed: "Good news, it's really good news."

"What are you talking about..." Qin Shiwu's expression now is like an old man on the subway looking at his phone.

Qin Shiwen explained in a low voice: "The last time I saw her, she was reading the I Ching."

"Master Jiang, my wishes will come true, and my words will be fulfilled." Jiang Muyun practically swung her whisk twice. After a moment of formal contemplation, she said, "In that case, my first wish is for the sun to come out. Ideally, it would come out tomorrow."

Jiang Muyun shook his head after he finished speaking, his face full of regret: "I am really a good person who cares about the world."

Zhao Jiahao has been fooled so many times that he has become immune to her tricks.

Zhao Jiahao poked Qin Shiwen and asked, "She studied meteorology or something like that in college, right? Has she noticed something's wrong with the weather again?"

Qin Shiwen had a complicated expression: "That's not true. But it seems... it has something to do with meteorology."

Zhao Jiahao was at a loss.

So does it matter or not?

Jiang Muyun’s explanation for this was that it didn’t matter whether she had a connection or not, as she had never taken a single professional course anyway.

Master Jiang's current fame is not due to science but metaphysics.

Jiang Muyun, who specializes in metaphysics, was once again favored by the god of metaphysics.

The next morning, Jiang Muyun opened the door and a ray of golden light squeezed in from the gap.

Jiang Muyun's brows relaxed, he exhaled lightly, and pushed the door open.

The scorching sun embraced the earth and dispelled the sticky moisture in the air.

The strands of wind are gentle and soothing, comforting every figure that once had difficulty walking hunched over in the heavy air.

The sun is out.

Xiaobai barked and rushed into the sunlight to play happily. Jiang Muyun couldn't help but raise her head and open her arms, letting the long-lost sunshine cover her whole body.

Jiang Muyun seemed to hear cheers.

The voice was distant and vague, but it carried a penetrating joy.

The next second, this joy appeared beside her in a concrete form.

The mountain became lively.

"Master Jiang—" Wang Qingqing shouted at the top of her lungs, "Master Jiang, just wait! I'll make a clay statue for you right now! I'll burn incense for you every day!"

Seeing the excited crowd, Jiang Muyun was about to recite a poem to express his feelings when he was stopped by Wang Qingqing.

"No... I can't." Jiang Muyun refused with difficulty: "The scene looks very unlucky."

Chu Buwen handed her a sun hat and sunglasses: "Be careful of sunburn."

When Jiang Muyun saw that the hat was the same style of fisherman's hat he liked, he immediately put it on his head.

Qin Shiwen, who was still basking in the sun, let out a long "hmm" when he saw Jiang Muyun wearing a hat.

Qin Shiwen, sweat dripping from his forehead, walked around in circles in the sun. "How come you tell fortunes like a centenarian who's seen through the mundane world? Why don't you even try to act like one?"

Jiang Muyun, wearing a sun hat, tugged at his sleeves and said, "Isn't it pretentious enough that I'm wearing long sleeves to bask in the sun in this temperature?"

Wang Qingqing brought Wu Xingyue with them, and they both threw themselves on a large rock and lay down.

Wu Xingyue felt the scorching heat of the sun on her back and sighed, "Go ahead and let me die! I'm not going anywhere today. I'm going to stay here in the sun all day! I'm willing to die in the sun!"

Zheng Xiang touched her head and said, "No, if you die from the sun here, we will have to carry you down the mountain and throw you away. It will be so tiring."

Wu Xingyue was shocked: "Why do you have to carry it down the mountain and throw it away? Can't you just dig a grave for me on the mountain? Don't you want me to be with you forever?"

Zhou Ying explained to her softly, "No, there are too many plants on the mountain, and their root systems are very complex. Digging a hole is very tiring, and it will attract insects if it rots. It's more convenient to just throw it away."

Wu Xingyue was stunned by this cruel reality.

She lay on the stone and thought about life for a while, and decided to live a good life.

The phrase "lift it farther away and throw it away" really sounds like throwing away garbage.

However, Wu Xingyue's declaration of not going anywhere today still received widespread support from everyone.

After being cooped up for such a long time, not only they but also other things in the house need some sun.

It is no exaggeration to say that if they had not occasionally heated the kang to dry the cave, the cave would have been filled with all kinds of moss and mold by now.

The same goes for other supplies stored in the cave. None of them can escape, as they are all breeding grounds for mold.

Now that everyone has finally waited for the sun to come out, it is natural to put out all the things that have been moldy from being kept out of the sun.

Jiang Muyun took out the small speaker she had treasured for a long time, and soon the passionate song "Today is a Good Day" was heard on the mountain.

The sun came out, and they could finally relax a little on electricity use.

The first batch of solar flexible panels brought back from the Nanshan warehouse have been retired. Fortunately, they had considered the service life of the flexible panels at the time, and each person took more than one set, so there are still replacements available.

As soon as Jiang Muyun started singing, it immediately alerted the others.

Now they don’t have to be stingy with electricity anymore!

At least it’s not necessary these days while the sun is still out!

Anyway, the battery is limited in size, and no matter how frugal you use it, you can’t save more power, so you might as well enjoy yourself while you can.

The sound of music rang out one after another. As long as it was a cheerful tune, they were happy to listen to it, even if it was the alarm on their mobile phones.

Move all the things in the house out of the cave and let them enjoy the sunshine, and wash all the clothes and sheets that need to be washed.

The clothes I washed before always had a musty smell even after drying them on the kang. How could they compare to those dried in the sun?

Except for the clean snow water stored in the large reservoir on the mountain and the drinking water that they had repeatedly purified, all other water was carried out.

Once again, those shelves in the big cave played a vital role.

Jiang Muyun poured laundry detergent into the bathtub full of clothes. The moment the water was poured into the bathtub, clusters of white bubbles emerged.

Along with the white bubbles, there is also a fresh fragrance that spreads in the air.

The clothes they wash now are not dirty, even if they don’t pour in the detergent, there is no problem, and there is no need to scrub them at all.

For convenience, almost everyone throws their clothes into the bathtub to soak them, then takes them out and rinses them several times before hanging them on the rack to dry.

It’s just that it’s been a long time since anyone wore clothes that smelled of sunlight and laundry detergent.

Qin Shiwen also imitated Jiang Muyun and poured laundry detergent into the tub. "I scooped out so much soap, laundry detergent, and powder at the beginning, always worried that it wouldn't be enough. Now I see I was too naive. I shouldn't have worried about not having enough, but about not being able to use it all!"

Either the sun shines for half a year without a drop of rain, or it rains for half a year without the sun.

There is no water when there is sun, and there is no sun when there is water.

There are only a few days like now when there is enough water to wash clothes and the sun is shining.

Most of the time, the clothes we wear are like disposable. When they get dirty, they are just piled together and thrown aside, waiting for an auspicious day with plenty of water and sunshine to come and wash them together.

Jiang Muyun scooped up a handful of bubbles and threw them into the air. "You should be thankful that we found enough clothes to last through the changes. Otherwise, we would have to wear stinky clothes for 300 out of 365 days a year."

"I agree!" Zhao Jiahao fished a single piece of clothing out of his tub and rinsed it, taking a deep breath. "Smelling the laundry detergent right now, I really feel like I've been reborn."

In the more than 20 years of his life before the end of the world, Zhao Jiahao always considered himself a lazy bum who always put his clothes in a bucket and then put them in the washing machine.

He never thought that one day he would sit by the basin and wash clothes by hand, and he would be so happy while washing. Even the scent of the laundry detergent fascinated him.

The scorching sun at noon did not dampen their enthusiasm. Even though they were wearing hats and long sleeves and sweat was dripping down, the most they did was to move the place where they washed clothes from the flat ground outside the cave to inside the cave.

As he was washing, Qin Shiwen realized that the water was running out, so he shouted, "What do you say now? Fetch water or open the reservoir?"

Jiang Muyun stood up and stretched: "Of course, let's go get some water."

The water in their reservoir is so clean that it is incomparable to the muddy river water and the rainwater mixed with mud and sand. At the beginning, they were afraid that the water in the reservoir would be polluted, so they specially covered the reservoir.

It would be such a waste if such a clean pool of water was used to wash clothes.

It is also very fast to draw water.

Two people stayed behind, and eight people pulled two carts down the mountain, and they could bring back more than ten barrels in one trip.

When drawing water, use stockings to cover the mouth of the bucket to filter out debris in the river water.

After being transported back, the water is filtered again using a simple water purifier they made with charcoal, fine sand, cotton and other materials.

If it is for daily use, it will take some time for them to settle.

But now everyone is waiting for water to wash clothes and doesn’t have the patience to wait for it to slowly settle. Just filtering it twice through a water purifier will have the same effect.

After washing clothes in the afternoon, everyone went to fetch water several times to make up for all the water used during the day.

Anyway, it’s getting dark late and there’s still plenty of time. Everyone is quite excited today and doesn’t feel tired at all.

And now that the sun is out, their daily routines have to be replanned.

First, take some time to build a small kitchen at the door of each house.

The liquefied gas and other fuels in their home had long been used up, and the original stove in the house was also connected to the kang. If cooking took a little longer or boiling water or something, the cave would become an oven.

It is fun and enjoyable to steam in a dry sauna occasionally, but it will cause trouble if you steam in a dry sauna every day in the hot summer.

So they have been using iron stoves to cook with firewood during this period.

It’s not that I don’t want to build another stove, but the air is too humid and it won’t dry out even if I build one. It’s better to use the iron stove for now.

Now that the sun is out, it’s natural to put a new stove on the agenda!

Just build a small kitchen outside the house, which will make it more convenient to open the chimney, and there will also be a place to store firewood for daily use. This will save you from having to run to the cave where firewood is stored to move firewood every now and then, or piling up a pile of firewood to get in the way in your daily living space.

It doesn’t matter if there is an unexpected situation and it is inconvenient to go out to cook, the original iron stove can still continue to glow and heat.

With the experience of building a kang, the new small stove and kitchen were built very quickly.

And now that there are plants on the mountain, they can also use dried grass and yellow mud directly, which is much more efficient than cutting strips of cloth with great effort.

Once the stove is set up, it will naturally be burned with wood.

Fortunately, they no longer have to travel thousands of miles to the art market to collect firewood.

There are trees everywhere on the mountain now. It is faster to cut down two and dry them than to go to the art market to buy some tables and cabinets.

The group was quite experienced in chopping furniture, but they were a bit hesitant when it came to cutting down trees.

Before, when there was no sun, these trees were able to thrive. Now that the sun is out, they are changing every day. Each trunk is thicker than a human thigh, and even the leaves are so green that they seem to be glowing.

Not to mention firewood, even if they wanted to prevent the small hill where they lived from becoming a primeval forest, they had to start cutting down trees and controlling the size of these plants.

A tree trunk of this thickness would be too thick for a group of people with little experience in tree felling to chop it with a fire axe. Even if their hands became numb, they still couldn't cut a hole. A saw would be more reliable.

Fortunately, when they went into the water to salvage supplies, there were two ships with amazing carrying capacity. They could salvage all kinds of things, so they had no shortage of tools at this time.

Jiang Muyun and Chu Buwen held the saw, each at one end, and pulled it back and forth. When they saw that they had almost finished sawing, Chu Buwen signaled Jiang Muyun to step back, then kicked the tree trunk.

The tall tree swayed twice under Chu Buwen's force, and then slowly fell down under the influence of gravity.

On the other side, Zhao Jiahao looked at his side, which was not even halfway through, and couldn't help but exclaim in amazement, "How are these trees growing? I thought they had genetically mutated and no longer needed photosynthesis, and would die in the sun. But it turns out they grow fine when there's no sun, and they grow even more wildly when there is."

Jiang Muyun wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, "Maybe they were very restrained before, and now is their normal growth rate?"

"My goodness, if we let them continue to grow like this, we will really become Jurassic Park." Wang Qingqing was still a little out of breath when she spoke.

Wang Qingqing and Wu Xingyue knew that they were not very strong, so they simply chose the weakest tree around and started to attack. Now they were almost done.

Jiang Muyun unscrewed the kettle and took a sip of water.

Although it was hot outside, the wind never stopped blowing. They were now at the outermost edge of the forest, where they could hide in the shade and enjoy the natural breeze.

After everyone else has completed their goals for the day, they will drag the tree back together and chop the whole tree into firewood.

Their current goal is for two people to chop one tree a day, chop the wood in the morning, and put the wood in the sun to dry before noon.

In order to save time, it doesn’t matter if the firewood is a little thicker, as long as it can be dried. It won’t affect the use of it by chopping it again.

Of course, if there are other things that need to be dealt with occasionally, such as crops reaching harvest time, the tree-cutting operation will be suspended for one day.

After noon when the temperature is highest, eight people will go out to fetch water.

The two people who stayed behind were responsible for taking care of the animals and plants at home.

The mother rabbit has given birth to her second litter, but the baby rabbits are not even a month old yet.

This time no one dared to provoke the mother rabbit again. Everyone obediently stuffed the hay near the rabbit nest and left, for fear of scaring the mother rabbit, otherwise they would have to grab the baby rabbits and feed them artificially.

Last time they had no choice but to raise them blindly. But that doesn’t mean they really know how to raise dairy rabbits, not to mention that the temperature is so high now, which is not very friendly to rabbits.

If they kill the little rabbit, they will cry out loud on the spot.

They saw that as long as this litter of rabbits could grow up healthily, they could then cross the river, demolish the bridge, and eat the rabbit meat, and there would be no more trouble in between.

The five chickens, two large and three small, are quite well-behaved now. Apart from the eggs that often disappear mysteriously, there is nothing else to worry about. Jiang Muyun doesn't even have to clean the chicken coop.

They stroll in the woods day after day, and even their grazing becomes nutrients for the plants on the mountain. It can be said that they have strong self-management abilities.

After these days of consumption, most of the ice in the cave has been used up by them, and the empty space has been occupied by various crops that cannot withstand high temperatures.

During this period, potatoes and sweet potatoes were harvested again.

After using the prepared soil sent by Professor Chen, the potatoes and sweet potatoes harvested this time were indeed a little bigger, but still far from the common size before the apocalypse.

Jiang Muyun held up a potato and comforted everyone, "Think about it another way. What if we didn't plant a split potato, but it was just a small variety? Small sweet potatoes and spicy small potatoes, aren't they both delicious?"

"That's true." After being reminded by Jiang Muyun, Zhou Ying looked at the chubby little potatoes with a much kinder look in her eyes. "My chili seedlings are growing quite well. When the chilies are ripe, we'll turn them into spicy little potatoes. I had them once in Le City, Sichuan Province, and I've been thinking about them ever since."

Regardless of whether Blue Star really doesn't want to give non-mutated plants a chance to survive, Jiang Muyun and others don't want to give up these two foods.

Even though their production did not meet their expectations, they are indeed easy to feed. They are currently the only staple food they can choose besides mushrooms and are also their main source of carbohydrates.

It is also one of the few crops around them that still retains its pre-apocalyptic appearance and taste.

When you think about it this way, even the fact that they are not able to adapt to the environment and their production is reduced becomes much more adorable.

Two days after the potatoes and sweet potatoes were harvested, the mushrooms were also harvested.

This batch of mushrooms was grown after the sun came out.

In the past, when they grew mushrooms, they would deliberately divide the mushrooms into several batches so that their maturity times would be staggered, basically adhering to the principle of growing and eating them immediately.

After all, mushrooms cannot be dried without sunlight, and it would be a waste if you grow too many and cannot eat them.

The firewood they got from the art market was not enough to support them in burning the kang and drying mushrooms every night when they had nothing to do. They could only eat the mushrooms they had grown.

Now there is sunshine and water, all conditions are in place. If Jiang Muyun and Chu Buwen don't encourage everyone to expand the planting area and store more food, they will have lived in the apocalypse for so many years in vain.

Jiang Muyun even took out all the mushroom strains she had saved before, trying to grow as many mushrooms as possible before the river dried up.

Today is the first harvest season after the expansion of mushroom cultivation.

Generally speaking, it takes two to three days to completely dry fresh mushrooms of average size.

But mutant mushrooms like the mutant oyster mushrooms are very large, and each cluster has grown like a bush. If they are exposed to the sun without any treatment, even if the sun is strong enough now, it will not be completely dried in two or three days.

If left for too long, mushrooms will easily go bad.

So after harvesting, they have to deal with the mushrooms that are too big.

For example, oyster mushrooms that grow in clusters can be torn into small florets or strips and dried in the same way as before the end of the world.

If the mushrooms mutate and become larger in size, with the cap and stem becoming too thick, they need to be cut open and then dried in the sun.

Before the apocalypse, the yield per mu of unmutated oyster mushrooms could reach tens of thousands of kilograms, not to mention the mutated mushrooms after the apocalypse, whose individual sizes have generally tripled or quadrupled.

Jiang Muyun and his friends have a total of more than one acre of land, and the total amount of various mushrooms they harvested is about 50,000 to 60,000 kilograms.

This is the result of them not planting high-yield varieties.

If all the crops are oyster mushrooms, it is not a problem to produce over 100,000 per mu.

But this weight is calculated based on fresh mushrooms.

Different types of mushrooms have different water contents, so the remaining weight after the water in their bodies is dried is also different, generally shrinking by 5-10 times.

In other words, after drying the mushrooms harvested by Jiang Muyun and his team, about 7,000 to 8,000 kilograms of dried mushrooms will be left.

If ten people divide it into one, each of them can harvest several hundred kilograms.

Mushrooms are very filling and easy to store after drying. Apart from the need to be rehydrated before eating, they have almost no disadvantages.

The few people who faced the output of the doomsday table tyrant for the first time were stunned.

Wang Qingqing even felt that as long as they could preserve the fungus strains well, there would be no such thing as a food crisis in the future.

Jiang Muyun cruelly shattered her fantasy: "Wake up, nothing is perfect. Growing mushrooms requires water, and eating mushrooms also requires water. What if there's a three-year drought outside..."

She swallowed back the unfinished words Jiang Muyun had spoken.

The dry season is indeed a good time to store food.

Not only mushrooms, but also dried sweet potatoes and dried vegetables, they have stored a lot of them.

Even the fish in the pond they raised were taken out one by one, gutted and dried.

The sun had only been out for about ten days when the river water level began to drop at a speed visible to the naked eye. The "three-year drought" that Jiang Muyun had mentioned was beginning to show signs.

Now that the river is gone, they naturally have no place to get food for the fish.

This group of people have been tormented by Blue Star for several years and are very open-minded about this kind of thing.

It’s just a few years of drought and a few years of flooding. It’s not the first time we’ve experienced this.

Rather than lamenting that Dog Blue Star is making trouble every day, it is more practical to store more water and catch more fish while there is water.

Jiang Muyun and Chu Buwen didn't need to remind everyone about artificial fish farming, as everyone was very self-aware.

After several unsuccessful attempts to feed mushrooms to the fish, everyone realized that they could not raise fish. They stopped thinking about it and just caught and killed one fish after another, turning them all into dried fish.

But gradually, as the water level of the river dropped, the creatures in the river seemed to know that the dry season was coming here, and they fled in all directions and began to find a way to survive. The number of fish they could catch every day became fewer and fewer.

Despite the scorching sun in summer, the temperature seemed to be held back and did not continue to rise like in previous summers.

Several people are still able to go out to fetch water and work. In addition to the fact that they are gradually adapting to the high temperature, it is also because the wind has never stopped this summer, which has stopped the high temperature.

The wind wasn't strong, nothing like the wind during a spring rainstorm, but it just kept blowing.

If you look at it alone, it's nothing special, just like the wind before the end of the world.

But if you add the duration, the wind becomes weird no matter how you look at it.

It was so strange that even Wang Qingqing and others, who had no idea what would happen next, noticed something was wrong.

Wang Qingqing split the tree trunk with an axe, wiped the sweat off his face against the wind, and casually told Jiang Muyun about his concerns.

Jiang Muyun piled the chopped firewood to the side and said, "We can't stop Blue Star from causing any trouble anyway, so it's always a good idea to store more food and water."

Wang Qingqing felt something was wrong, but after thinking about it for a moment, she felt that this was indeed the case.

"The trend of lying low and the trend of internal struggle coexist. It is really unreasonable not to award you the Nobel Prize in Philosophy this year." Zheng Xiang commented accurately.

Wang Qingqing was bewildered: "How come I've never heard of the Nobel Prize in Philosophy?"

Qin Shiwen sighed: "If you have heard of it, then the problem is more serious."