Miao Qingsong followed Lin Mo, stumbling and sinking as they climbed Old Bald Mountain.
As its name suggests, the mountain had long been cleared bare by the villagers who needed firewood for warmth in winter.
The hillside was bare, with only withered tree stumps scattered everywhere.
Beyond Old Bald Mountain lies the even more remote Old Father Mountain, where the two mountains meet on a downhill slope.
"This is it."
Lin Mo chose this location because he knew that wild rabbits preferred to burrow and make their nests between trenches.
He told Miao Qingsong to wait on the hillside and, if he saw a rabbit, to hurry downhill.
He then climbed to the edge of Old Man's Mountain and began rummaging through the hollows and weeds, one by one—
The entrance to a rabbit hole is usually hidden in such a semi-concealed place.
Within ten minutes, Lin Mo successfully found two earthen caves.
As the saying goes, a cunning rabbit has three burrows, and Lin Mo knew that this earthen burrow was not the only exit, and it was impossible to find it by digging.
It needs to be smoked.
He took out a match and gathered a pile of withered branches and weeds from the surrounding area.
Bundle them up, and mix in some tender green grass and twigs. Damp grass and wood don't burn well, so they will produce a lot of smoke.
They stuffed it into the cave and lit it, and the smoke flowed in through the cave passage.
On the other side of the hillside, Miao Qingsong waited for more than twenty minutes, but Lin Mo didn't tell him much about the key points and just let him wait there.
Just as she was about to call out to Lin Mo, she couldn't help but feel the agonizing wait.
"Rustling sound—"
Suddenly, a noise arose around him.
He looked around and soon saw smoke rising from the weeds not far away.
Just as the novelty was beginning to rise in my mind, the rustling sound became even more chaotic.
A plump, grayish-yellow wild rabbit hopped out of its smoking burrow right before his eyes.
The cleft lip was still retracting.
"Wow!" Miao Qingsong exclaimed with delight.
A joyful cry startled the rabbit, which turned and hopped away.
Miao Qingsong finally understood—
The rabbit was hopping downhill, but after only a few hops, it lost its footing because of the speed of the descent.
It jumped once, then tumbled three times before rolling awkwardly down the hillside!
He quickly shouted loudly to scare the rabbit, and at the same time hurried over.
Before they had gone far, they heard a muffled thud from below.
The startled hare was caught off guard and crashed headfirst into Lin Mo's basket, who was already waiting there.
"We caught them just like that?" Miao Qingsong was overjoyed.
I thought hunting would be difficult, but I didn't expect that I would have been standing and waiting for about twenty minutes after only an hour in the mountains.
You'll have gained something!
"Have you learned how to catch rabbits?"
Lin Mo put the rabbit into a burlap sack, tied the strap, and left it aside.
I plan to catch another ten or eight of them.
Rabbits are mostly meat with little fat. Eating them occasionally is fine, but eating rabbit meat long-term is like eating whole grains long-term – it will lead to malnutrition.
While it's still autumn, before the heavy snow closes the mountains, let's catch as many as possible and bring them home to cure.
Keep some for occasional winter meals, and try to get the rest to Bushe City to exchange for wheat flour or money.
In any case, rabbits, which reproduce rapidly, are the easiest to catch in the mountains of Northeast China.
I'll go fishing in the river again tomorrow.
The two brothers, excited by their practice, started looking for rabbit holes everywhere, and at the same time, they followed suit and helped tie up the straw.
"Brother Lin! Brother Lin! Here comes another rabbit hole!"
"You wait down the slope to catch the rabbit! I'll drive it!"
With perfect teamwork throughout the morning, one rabbit after another was caught in the net.
The two brothers accidentally caught six big, fat rabbits.
With noon fast approaching and others helping out, the rabbit-catching speed was much faster than Lin Mo had expected.
The midday sun is warm enough that wading through the water to catch fish isn't too cold.
Lin Mo decided to head back, get a few more bamboo baskets, and take Miao Qingsong fishing with him.
On the way back, the recipe for braised or stewed rabbit kept swirling in Miao Qingsong's mind.
His mouth was drooling non-stop.
Two were packed into one sack, making a total of three sacks.
Lin Mo loosened the opening of one of the bags, grabbed a rabbit by its ears, and pulled it out.
Miao Qingsong thought it was meant for him and was about to reach out to take it when Lin Mo stuffed the rabbit into another sack.
He handed one bag of eggs and another bag of two eggs to Miao Qingsong.
"Divide equally."
Upon hearing this, Miao Qingsong's jaw dropped slightly in astonishment.
He would be extremely satisfied if he could have one, after all, he came out to learn the craft from him.
To my surprise, Lin Mo was so generous, teaching me the craft while also sharing the profits equally.
"This...this is unacceptable," Miao Qingsong knew in his heart that he shouldn't take so much.
"We can't split it equally. Brother Lin, you're so kind as to teach me and even gave me one. I'm already extremely grateful. It's impossible for us to split it equally."
Lin Mo wasn't actually generous, but rather...
Everyone in the village unconditionally obeyed the collective system and public ownership.
If anyone is found secretly cultivating private land or occupying public property, they can report it to the brigade with a reward.
The person who was reported suffered the consequences, while the person who reported them only received a few work points.
This has led to a situation where no one dares to have much private property, for fear of being reported.
If everyone has private property to protect, then protecting that property is in the common interest of all villagers.
That's when there's a tiny possibility of corruption within the village.
Everyone values work points so much.
You can earn at most a dozen work points a day. Let's say ten. Each work point is worth 7 cents, so ten work points only earn 70 cents, which isn't even enough to buy a pound of meat.
And it has to be settled at the end of the year.
If the skill of herding rabbits is taught to everyone in the village, the villagers will find that they can eat meat by herding rabbits in the mountains and earn several times more than they would by doing collective work.
Everyone has skipped work to go into the mountains to chase rabbits. Are the brigade leader Chen Gang and the old village chief Wu Fengshou going to put paper hats on the whole village?
Just deduct it; everyone's the same, so it doesn't matter.
"Qingsong, you keep them. I don't need these rabbits," Lin Mo subtly hinted to Miao Qingsong.
“Every household in the village is struggling now. Not only can they not afford meat, but their porridge is so thin it’s practically watery with hardly any grains of refined rice.”
“But you can catch rabbits easily in the mountains. You have to tell the village this news. We need to start stockpiling winter supplies right away. I don’t want to see anyone in the village freeze or starve to death in the winter.”
Miao Qingsong looked at Lin Mo blankly, wondering how he could be so kind-hearted.
Not only do they not hide their skills, but they are also happy to share them with the villagers.
That's so touching.
"Don't worry, Brother Lin, I promise I'll tell everyone about this!"
Lin Mo nodded in satisfaction, and then took Miao Qingsong to catch fish.
The fishing skills were spread throughout the village, and private property was no longer something to be hidden; it could be done openly and honestly.
While Miao Qingsong went home first, Lin Mo also hurriedly went home.
I didn't eat breakfast this morning, so I guess my younger sister and mother also had some plain water porridge from the communal pot.
First, roast a rabbit to feed my mother and younger sister, then we'll go fishing this afternoon!
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