Shan seemed to know what she was thinking. He glanced over there and said, "He doesn't cook it there. He always fetches water back to the front of the house to cook it."
Qiao Yu: “…”Okay.
She turned to Man, who hadn't left yet, and asked, "Given the tribe's current hunting situation, do you think you can spare a tribesman to build a kitchen and a yard?"
Man nodded and said, "No problem."
He explained, "Thanks to traps, snares, bows, and spears, our hunting harvest is now twice as great as before. Plus, with the addition of the women's hunting team, we're catching a huge number of wild animals every day. The slightly injured ones are sent to the farm, and the seriously injured ones are kept for food, leaving us with half a catch every day. The weather's getting warmer, and jerky meat won't keep for long. Besides, people prefer fresh meat for soup these days. So, I think we can definitely reduce the number of people going out hunting."
"Also, we used to hunt so hard because we worried about running out of food during the snowy season, so we wanted to store more dried meat. But now we have yams and chestnuts, and the breeding team is raising more and more animals, especially rabbits. They've had seven or eight litters in the month you were away. If we can keep them alive, we'll have dozens more rabbits, and they'll keep breeding later. Now Mangdu is so worried, he wants us to kill them."
"But we can't eat all the wild animals we hunt in the mountains. Are we going to kill the rabbits and make jerky and let them go bad? So I didn't agree to his request. Now he worries about having too many rabbits every day."
As Man spoke, his heart was filled with disbelief.
Last year, before Qiao Yu became the leader of their valley tribe, the entire tribe was worried about food shortages. Now, only half a year later, he was actually worried about having too much food.
If someone had told him about this six months ago, he would have definitely called them a pipe dream. Now even talking about it seems like a dream.
Qiao Yu also found it a little funny.
Rabbits are really fertile. If we continue like this, they might become a disaster.
"Okay." She smiled and nodded. "Then we should reduce the number of hunters and eat up a batch of the rabbits raised by the tribe. Actually, there are only a limited number of wild animals in the mountains. If we hunt dozens of them every day, the wild animals on the nearby hills will soon be hunted out. So it is necessary to slow down the pace of hunting and reduce the number of hunters."
"At the evening meeting, we will discuss with the team leaders how many people to send out hunting and who to send."
"Let's go and talk while we walk." Qiao Yu said, and walked to the top of the mountain with Shan, Man and Liushui.
Shi had already finished work and followed them up the mountain.
"In that case, is the breeding team short of manpower?" asked Qiao Yu.
"Yes," Man said, "I was just about to tell you about this. There are more and more wild animals being raised, and many of them are giving birth. Although we've recruited some women and disabled men from the Shanyin tribe into the breeding team, it's still not enough. Before, when you weren't in the tribe, I discussed it with Shan and Liushui and recruited ten more people into the breeding team."
"You did the right thing," Qiao Yu praised. "When I'm not here, you should handle tribal affairs flexibly. You don't have to wait until I return to make decisions, lest things go wrong."
Seeing that Qiao Yu had no objection to his approach, he breathed a sigh of relief.
Although Qiao Yu had left the tribe before, it wasn't for such long periods of time, and he always explained everything clearly before leaving. This time, he left without saying goodbye and stayed away for a long time. Man realized that things couldn't be delayed any longer, and that any further delay would lead to disaster. After discussing it with Liu Shui and asking Guo Shan, he made this decision only after gaining their support.
He was originally worried that Qiao Yu might have some thoughts in her mind, but now he saw that she didn't care and it was encouraging. He relaxed and secretly made up his mind to do better in the future and live up to Qiao Yu's trust in him.
When they reached the elders' residential area, the group split up. Man and Shi went home; they had to go to a meeting after dinner. Qiao Yu wanted to see the plants in her yard.
After she returned to the tribe, she was anxious to see if the iron ore in her hand could be smelted into iron. She only went to the mountain house once and had not even entered her own yard.
It wasn't locked yet, and the gate was ajar, ready to be opened with a push. Qiao Yu felt a little worried as he pushed the door open.
As a leader, she always had important things in her yard that no one could enter or leave at will. Although she had iron and would soon have copper, she didn't know how to make a lock, as that seemed to have a very complicated structure.
After stepping over the threshold and seeing the lush greenery, Qiao Yu was so pleased that he immediately put the matter out of his mind.
"Koizumi went hunting during this time. Who took care of the plants in my yard?" Qiao Yu asked while looking at the plants.
"It's me. Xiaoquan brings up water every night and pours it here. I water the plants in the morning and evening." Shan pointed to a row of row of water tanks next to the yard.
These water jars included both stone and pottery, but pottery was the most common. Because they lacked the necessary tools, they could only polish small stone tools, selecting the most suitable stone and shaping it to its original shape.
Finding a stone that looks like a water tank is more difficult.
Looking at this row of water tanks of different sizes and materials, Qiao Yu got a headache again.
Starting from scratch, she lacked everything. She needed bamboo for the water diversion system, buckets, and time.
If we can't get planting and animal husbandry up, we'll be scrambling for food in all three seasons except winter, leaving us no time to focus on infrastructure development. And in winter, with the ground frozen and covered in snow, many things can't be done.
Therefore, the most critical step is to improve productivity and free the workforce from the constant scramble for food. This, too, takes time.
After all, grain production requires years of experimentation and expansion; the same goes for livestock farming. Without a few years, this problem simply can't be solved. Although Man was worried about having too much prey earlier, it was simply because dried meat tends to stink in the summer.
For a tribe to thrive and thrive, it must have a certain resilience and a sufficient food reserve. What if a disaster strikes? These days, even people can easily die from illness, let alone livestock. If a large number of animals died on a farm, wouldn't the tribe, who relied on the animals to survive the winter, be devastated?
"A fortune is worth a fortune, but hair doesn't count." Before the apocalypse, due to swine fever, pork prices soared to dozens of yuan per pound. Even primitive people didn't understand the risks of animal farming, so how could Qiao Yu not understand? Therefore, farming must be promoted, and animals must be kept in captivity according to species.
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