Chapter 23 Catching Rabbits
Because the weather is getting hotter, many spring wild vegetables have grown taller in just a few days and are too old to be eaten.
Summer has arrived early.
There were no more wild vegetables to be found everywhere, so Zhao Yeqing thought about exploring deeper into the mountains.
The big vegetable garden at home is still full of vegetable seedlings, and there is still a month before the harvest. After having a few meals recently, the stock in the small vegetable garden is running low.
As for leafy vegetables, it’s okay. Picking a few leaves every day can meet the daily vegetable needs. However, there is really not much meat in stock.
Adhering to the concept of sustainable development with a precautionary approach, Zhao Yeqing began to think about expanding the scale of breeding.
The chicks I bought before have grown a lot after raising them for more than a month, but they are still a few months away from being ready to eat as meat, and we can’t kill the hen that lays eggs.
The fastest way to achieve meat freedom now is either hunting or farming.
She hadn't hunted for so long, firstly because she didn't want to kill animals until she had no choice.
Second, she couldn't do it.
What normal child can fight with a wild beast?
After Zhao Yeqing clearly realized his own strength, he chose to expand breeding.
Since the homestead was fenced off, she would open the yard door from time to time to let the chickens and geese go out for a walk. Anyway, the vegetable garden was covered by the shed and the chickens and geese couldn't get in.
In fact, if possible, she would like to let the chickens go to the mountains to find food by themselves and become pheasants.
I’m afraid I’ll never come back.
It generally takes at least three months for a chicken to hatch from its shell and become an edible broiler. Recently, one or two of the eggs laid by the chickens were fertilized. She left them to hatch. Some of them hatched successfully, while some remained rotten in the chicken coop.
Now the flock consists of one rooster, three hens, five chicks and three chicks.
Zhao Yeqing frowned and spat out the bayberry seeds in his mouth, thinking in his mind what would happen if he continued to be trapped here and could not learn how to hunt.
Then from now on, chicken will be her only source of meat.
Of course, small fish cannot be considered meat.
She opened the ranger's file...
emmm....bears are national second-class protected animals, leopards are national second-class protected animals...it doesn't matter, we can't beat them anyway.
Pheasant, a national second-class protected animal...
It doesn't matter, she has domestic chickens and doesn't eat wild chickens.
Rabbit, a national protected animal...
This is good, it reproduces quickly, it's not very cruel, and it's not considered a rare animal.
It should be okay to catch them but not eat them and use them to give birth to puppies.
Zhao Yeqing has never seen rabbit holes near his home. They prefer to live in places where there are water sources and trees.
When she went to pick bayberries two days ago, she seemed to see a dead leaf hole by the stream, but she didn't know whether it was a mouse hole or a rabbit hole.
Zhao Yeqing took the basic tools, sprinkled some snake repellent powder on his body, and walked towards the bayberry tree.
The bayberry tree grows by the stream downstream of the small pond, between the foot of the mountain and the middle of the mountain.
To the left of the stream was a forest of bushes and to the right was an open meadow. The hole she had seen that day was right next to the meadow.
As the weather gets warmer, the bayberry fruits fall, which should have fattened up a lot of the little rabbits.
She went to the bayberry tree, picked a few, washed them in the stream, and then put them in her mouth.
This wild bayberry tree has a bit of history. My grandparents ate the fruit from this tree when they were young. The fruit, which is 50% sweet and 50% sour, made their mouths water.
While eating bayberries, she found the small hole that had been drilled out of the dead leaves that she had accidentally glimpsed.
There are two fist-sized holes that look like rabbit holes, but whether there are rabbits inside remains to be seen.
It is possible that the nest has been taken over by a snake.
Snakes don't dig holes; they only invade other people's holes.
Zhao Yeqing placed a few fresh cabbage leaves that he had just picked from the vegetable garden this morning and wild strawberries picked on the road at the entrance of the cave.
The wild strawberries of this season are ripe, juicy and high in sugar, but there are not many of them, and the few that are there are the ones she saved from her teeth.
Next to the food she wanted to make a trap.
She didn't know whether rabbits could dig holes, so she couldn't make a hole trap to avoid accidents. She could only make a trap that would pull someone into the air and hang them in the air.
The principle of this trap is simple and is often used by children in the mountains to catch mice. However, catching rabbits requires materials with better load-bearing capacity.
There are some Guanyin bamboos growing by the water. The poles of this kind of bamboo are relatively thin, only slightly thicker than a thumb.
Cut off one and divide it into two parts. The tough upper part is used to tie the rope, and the lower part is used to reinforce the base so that the upper part can be firmly inserted into the ground.
After tying the upper half of the rope, tie a flexible noose at the end of the rope so that as long as the rabbit steps into the noose, it will be pulled into the air and hung.
Animals caught with a lasso will not be injured, unless they are of a fierce temper and would rather die than live in disgrace. In general, they can be brought back intact.
Rabbits have very sensitive senses of smell and hearing. Zhao Yeqing placed the noose, tested it several times with his fingers, and made sure it could be put on, then clapped his hands and left.
Of course, I have to pick a basket of bayberries before leaving.
Caterpillars love to crawl on the bayberry tree. She hates hairy insects and gets goose bumps just thinking about them. There are also snakes that love to climb up the bayberry tree.
Therefore, Zhao Yeqing never climbed a bayberry tree. Every time, he would use a long wooden stick with branches to hook down the nearby bayberry branches, and only pick the fruits after making sure they were safe.
As for the red bayberries on the top of the tree, no matter how delicious they were, she chose to give them up.
The bayberries bought in the city markets are soft and have a stale smell.
When she first started school, she went to a first-tier city and bought this kind of bayberry. She thought she had bought bad ones and was about to throw them away.
My roommate, who grew up in the city, took it and said she was wasteful, saying that all bayberries are like that.
Only then did she realize that many people in the city had never eaten truly fresh and delicious bayberry.
Bayberry should be crispy and sweet, and the juice should burst out when you bite open the fine flesh, rather than being soft and squeezed out.
Zhao Yeqing picked half a basket of bayberry, some of which he ate as snacks and some of which he made into iced bayberry soup.
There will be some fruit fly larvae in the pulp of bayberry, which can be soaked out by adding salt water. When conditions permit, she will also be particular about soaking it clean before eating.
Add more salt and after soaking for about an hour, you can see white larvae crawling out of the flesh.
Grab two handfuls of bayberries and pickle them with sugar, then boil water in a pot and add rock sugar to melt.
Zhao Yeqing was a little impatient. He didn't wait for the rock sugar to slowly melt in the water. He heated it and stirred it with chopsticks to speed up the melting, then poured the candied bayberries in.
After the pot has been bubbling for ten minutes, the water has turned into plum color. Turn off the heat and pour it into a bowl.
The sun has been quite strong recently and there is no need to power the chainsaw, so the small freezer has been put into use again. It is just a little empty. She likes to drink cold drinks these days, so she froze some ice cubes in it.
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