Chapter 40 The Development of Animal Husbandry

Presumably because the maintenance station was guarded by zombies, no one had come here. Su Yun was lucky enough to find a large sack of salt and a lot of sugar in the canteen's warehouse, which were probably purchased by the canteen.

Unfortunately, the barrels of peanut oil are no longer edible; expired peanut oil is prone to mold and bacteria growth. Although it's not for consumption, it's perfect for lubricating a tricycle or something similar.

Because of the thick canvas cover, the tricycle wasn't too badly worn. After cleaning off the dust, applying lubricant, and pumping the air out again, it was ready to ride.

Su Yun tried riding it, and apart from the tires being old and leaking air, it was barely rideable.

"I think it's great!" Su Yun patted the back seat with satisfaction, happy that the family finally had a car. "Ye Feng, you give it a try!"

Ye Feng had been very curious about the tricycle since the beginning, and kept watching Su Yun fiddling with it the whole time.

"Shall I give it a try?" Night Breeze walked over. "How do I operate this?"

"Okay, sit on it first, put one foot here and the other foot here, then push forward and you'll move." Su Yun instructed Ye Feng to start riding the tricycle. Because it was supported by three feet, the vehicle was quite stable and didn't need anyone to hold it.

Except when Ye Feng first got in the car, he was a little unsteady on the steering wheel and the front of the car wobbled a bit. After a while, the car gradually became stable.

He rode his bicycle along the road, the summer breeze blowing in his face, the scenery rushing past on both sides, everything rushing by, accompanied by gusts of cool air, a novel feeling he had never experienced before.

"It feels like we can fly," Night Wind exclaimed excitedly.

"Hehe, I think so too." Su Yun also really likes riding bicycles. When he was a child, he lived far from the town and often rode his bicycle to the town with his friends. They would ride in all sorts of ways and race each other, giving each other rides. It was a lot of fun.

However, my family was poor back then, so I mostly rode on my friends' bikes. My biggest dream at that time was to own my own bicycle.

When they grew up, they couldn't use them for various reasons, and there was nowhere to park them, so they never bought them.

Unexpectedly, after transmigrating to the apocalypse, I was able to pick up a free tricycle, which turned out to be quite practical.

Su Yun loaded everything he had collected from the small, dilapidated building into the car: old cotton clothes, toolboxes, oil, salt, sugar... a whole bunch of miscellaneous items. Finally, there was a stack of books he had collected from the staff dormitory: "The Code of Wealth," "The Philosophy of Speaking," "The CEO's Sweet Little Wife," "The Rise and Fall of Jade Gambling"... The books were of varying quality, and he didn't know which one to start with for teaching his pet cat.

Baldness...

I'll just take them all home and teach the kittens to read sometime.

Having collected a considerable amount of supplies and acquired a vehicle for transportation, Su Yun sat in the back of the truck, humming a song as he drove along, in a very good mood.

Ye Feng had just learned to ride a bike and was still excited about it, so he pedaled like a rocket all the way home. It took him about three hours to get there, but only a little over an hour to get back.

"It's so great to have a car!" Su Yun exclaimed again. "Now we can go to town and have a look!"

"Okay! I'll give you a ride." Night Breeze indicated that he was happy to oblige.

“Okay!” Su Yun nodded in agreement. She hadn’t really collected any supplies in this area. The things she had collected before could last a long time if she was careful with them.

The flowering cabbage in the vegetable garden finally produced seeds. Over the past few days, Su Yun watched as the seed pods gradually filled out and turned yellow. Only then did she pick up a knife and lay it down, throwing the old cabbage leaves into the chicken coop. She tied up the seed pods and placed them under the eaves to dry.

When the next rainy season comes, we can plant the cabbages.

As for the mustard greens, Su Yun also kept the largest and strongest ones, letting them flower and produce seeds naturally, and then kept the seeds.

Once we have enough mustard greens next year, we can pickle them into sauerkraut.

Things are getting better day by day.

Today, when Su Yun took cabbage leaves to feed the chickens, she was pleasantly surprised to find several round eggs in the chicken coop.

She excitedly went to check the quail's nest again, and after not coming for several days, she found several round little quail eggs.

Su Yun happily plucked another handful of sweet potato vines and threw them into the chicken coop. Lately, Su Yun had been watering the vines frequently, and they were growing like crazy. She and Ye Feng couldn't finish them all, so they were mostly used to feed the chickens.

Originally, the plan was simply to fatten up the chickens for food reserves, but this time it has turned into sustainable productivity.

Su Yun happily held up the eggs to Ye Feng, "Look, we have eggs to eat! Tonight we're having scrambled eggs with tomatoes!"

Night Breeze: "Hmm!"

The tomatoes planted in the yard were ripe and fresh. Su Yun picked a few and stir-fried them into a dish of scrambled eggs with tomatoes.

Add some white wine to the beaten eggs to enhance the aroma and remove any fishy smell. Then, stir-fry them in oil until they are slightly caramelized. Set them aside on a plate. Next, stir-fry the chopped tomatoes to make a sauce. Finally, add the eggs back in and stir-fry to coat them with the sauce. The rich sauce soaks into the eggs, giving them a caramelized aroma with the sweetness of the tomatoes.

Stir-fried tomatoes and eggs is a timeless classic!

Ah! It would be even better with a bowl of rice!

Su Yun held her rice bowl and sighed. But even without rice, sweet potato leaves with tomato sauce were delicious. Tomatoes really go with everything!

With the tomato juice mixed with vegetables, Ye Feng ate quite a few green vegetables as well.

In the days that followed, their meals consisted mainly of boiled eggs, fried eggs, and steamed eggs...

No one can resist the deliciousness of eggs. After trying several different ways of eating eggs, Ye Feng ran into the mountains more often.

Almost every time they come back, they have several clucking pheasants in their hands, which greatly enriches their chicken coop. Now, the coop houses about a dozen pheasants of various sizes, and a dozen quails...

Su Yun also abandoned building chicken coops and expanded the chicken coop area to cover the entire yard.

During the day, they were allowed to roam freely in the yard looking for insects to eat. In any case, they would come into the house on their own at night. Su Yun had already emptied the house, laid out dried reeds inside, and built a few chicken coops out of discarded wooden boxes to make it easier to collect eggs.

With more chickens raised, egg production has increased significantly.

Su Yun ate two eggs almost every day. At first, she found it very novel, but after a few times, she got tired of it.

But Ye Feng seemed to really like it, regularly giving her an egg each morning, noon, and night, and her enthusiasm for raising chickens was even greater than hers.

They even took the initiative to take on the task of feeding the chickens.

Taking advantage of the sunny weather, Su Yun has been busy weeding the cornfield these past few days. The corn is now almost knee-high and growing very well. Su Yun is busy clearing away the weeds that have sprouted after the rainy season to prevent them from competing with the corn for nutrients.

So he basically didn't manage the chicken farming, leaving it all to Yefeng. Yefeng would pick a handful of sweet potato leaves and throw them into the chicken coop every day, then bring back a few eggs. Now the family has a huge basket full of eggs.

Su Yun was surprised to see so many eggs. So when she finished working in the fields, she ran to check the chicken coop and was astonished to find that Ye Feng had caught a bunch of chickens again. By the time she noticed, the grass in the yard was almost bare.

Dozens of chickens of all sizes were crammed into the yard, fighting and scrambling for food, their feathers all falling out in all directions. This won't do.

This dilapidated little courtyard can no longer meet the growing needs.

Su Yun pondered what to do; no matter how many sweet potato vines she planted, it wouldn't be enough to feed these chickens.

We need to find new places to raise chickens, preferably places that are convenient for raising chickens and have plenty of food.

While pondering this, Su Yun suddenly had an idea – orchard chicken.

I remember that many orchards had chickens raised under the trees. These chickens would fertilize the fruit trees and catch insects. Because they were raised in the orchard, their meat was firm and sweet, and they even had a special breed name: orchard chicken.

It seems like it might work.

Su Yun suddenly remembered that there seemed to be an orchard at the entrance of the village, with many longan, persimmon and mango trees growing there. Su Yun thought about it and decided that he could build an ecological chicken farm there.

However—this is a huge project.

But Su Yun thought it was feasible. Anyway, there was no one around, so he could just build as many things as he wanted for himself.

If you're bold enough, the whole village can become a chicken farm!

Su Yun made a plan on the spot, intending to use bamboo to surround the pond, and the small tile-roofed house next to the pond would be used as a chicken coop.

So she and Ye Feng went to dig up bamboo.

Fortunately, the bamboo here has been neglected for many years and has grown vigorously all over the mountain. It can be cut and used at will, making it a readily available and excellent material.

Su Yun cut down the thick bamboo stalks and transported them to the pond in a cart for later use.

Then she picked up a small hoe and first cleared a line in the planned direction to mark the boundary for burying the bamboo fence.

Ye Feng was responsible for digging holes at appropriate intervals along the boundaries she had drawn, and then inserting bamboo stalks deep into the ground to lay a solid foundation.

The night wind is very strong, but the bamboo was buried very deep and securely, so there shouldn't be any problems. Even if a strong wind comes, it won't be able to blow it away.

Su Yun was responsible for splitting the bamboo into thin strips, then nailing the bamboo strips to both sides to fix them between two stakes. Then, at appropriate intervals, he nailed another strip.

Such repeated efforts made the major renovation very tiring. The two of them worked all day and were exhausted, but they had only made less than a fifth of the progress.

Slumped into a chair, Su Yun was exhausted after a long day and even considered giving up.

She rubbed her aching arms, feeling like crying. This was probably the gap between ideals and reality; things that seemed simple and easy were so difficult to do.

"I might as well just find an empty house and let them roam freely. It's such a huge effort and such a large plot of land, how long will it take to finish... Ah, so tiring, I might as well just let them fend for themselves..." Su Yun slumped in the chair, having lost all hope, and just wanted to be a lazy bum.

Seeing that she was exhausted, Ye Feng thought for a moment and suggested, "How about we fence off a smaller area first, and do the rest later?"

The circle that Su Yun had planned was really too big. It might not be possible to finish it even after a month of work. Seeing her exhausted expression, Ye Feng kindly suggested, "Anyway, there aren't too many chickens right now. We can raise the quails and chickens separately."

"Ah! Yes! That's a great suggestion!"

Su Yun's eyes lit up. At first, she only thought about making a big splash and wished she could just contract a whole mountain. She didn't expect that the reality was that there were only the two of them, Ye Feng and Ye Feng. Even if the two of them were exhausted, they still couldn't finish the work. Moreover, they had other things to do.

Upon hearing Ye Feng's suggestion, Su Yun immediately perked up. "We can fence off a small area first, let the extra chickens out, and then do the rest later. Why didn't I think of that?" Su Yun slapped her forehead, exclaiming how stupid she was, and then praised Ye Feng generously: "Ye Feng, you're great! You're really amazing! Let's fence off the area around the pond first tomorrow. We can do the rest later."

"Okay, sure."

The rest was much simpler. After narrowing down the area, the two of them worked for three days to basically enclose a small foundation. Su Yun even dug out the old wire mesh from the abandoned house, pulled off a small section, and tied it to a bamboo pole, which was both convenient and easy.

The two of them worked for several days, half building and half constructing, and a small chicken coop was finally completed. Su Yun planned that once the weeds on this side were eaten bare, she would take down the fence to enclose the other side, allowing this side to rest and recuperate, and letting the chickens move to a new place to continue eating.

This dual-feeding approach is so much better than the original plan of grazing in one whole area!

So, it seems that lazy people are the ones who come up with the solutions?

Su Yun was moved by her own cleverness.