My trick of turning enemies into friends has many uses. At least Bailu and Yingchun can now be fully proactive and no longer passively wait for arrangements. Moreover, Bailu knows a lot and is indispensable in making suggestions and helping to solve many small problems. After all, she has opened her own clinic, and after hearing some of my arrangements, she will also make reasonable adjustments and personnel management, which are rare talents.

Furthermore, the food stock is running low, and the logistics need to be stable before I can go out to look for food again to fill the gap. This requires Song Bailu's talents, and I need her cooperation so that I can go out with peace of mind.

I went to saw some wood these two days. Song Yingchun understood the mortise and tenon joints of carpentry, so she optimized the fence that had been arranged before, heightening and reinforcing the fence to prevent wild animals from jumping over and threatening them. As for the living spring well, she just made a wooden awl, chiseled the ice surface, and crushed it into pieces. Then she sent someone down to put the water into a mud jar and pulled it up for daily drinking.

In order to make it easier to chisel ice and get water, we widened the well wall. Yingchun, the girl, had some extra firewood, and she and I made a wooden ladder to facilitate climbing up and down. But even so, it was still difficult to get water. Not only did we need water for drinking, but we also needed water for watering the wheat fields and water for stewing soup and cooking. It would take at least two or three clay jars, and it would take several incense sticks of time to fiddle with it each time.

But the troubles brought by the coming of winter are not limited to this. The temperature in the constant temperature room can drop suddenly very easily, and there are people who are responsible for watching over it to prevent the temperature from being too low and causing the mycelium to be frozen. From time to time, they have to add fire to the kang hole to raise the temperature, and then they have to extinguish the fire when the temperature rises. After about one or two hours, the temperature will drop again, and they have to add fire and extinguish the fire again. It can be said to be extremely troublesome.

The cold winter has arrived. In addition to food, there is another problem among problems, which is the problem of keeping warm. Now it is too cold to fall asleep at night, whether you are by the fire or not. Even if three people are huddled together, they will shiver with cold. Although the earthen house can block the wind, the temperature at night can reach several degrees below zero, which means that blocking the wind alone is useless and effective measures to keep warm must be taken.

Food, keeping warm, getting water, protection against wild animals... these problems cannot be effectively solved, and they become particularly acute when winter comes.

It was already three days later, and everyone was too cold to sleep the previous night, so they all gathered around the campfire to keep warm.

"Brother Zhou Bo, if we go on like this we will all freeze to death. Do you have any way to get some animal skins back so I can cover myself?" Song Yingchun covered her body and spoke first.

"It's so cold, no matter how many animal skins we have, they won't be enough to keep us warm. The problem lies in where we live. People in the Northeast region of China know how to use the principle of kangs to get through the winter. We can also try it. We can first make an earthen kang and burn a fire underneath. It will not only increase the temperature in the house, but sleeping on the kang will also provide a little warmth to keep away the cold." I said.

"Zhou Bo is right. We should start with what we can do. As for animal skins and the like, they are hard to come by." Song Bailu said.

"I agree. Let's build a brick bed first." Yunwen also said.

"Yes, we will rush to make this in the next two days so that we can sleep well and have the energy to find food. As for the animal skins, when I go there to look for food, I will see if I come across any dead animals. I can bring them back then. What do you think?" I said.

The girls nodded, obviously agreeing with what I said.

"The earthen kang requires adobe bricks, and adobe bricks need loess from deep underground. The arrangement for now is, Song Bailu, you will be responsible for boiling water, drying the water, and when the water temperature is suitable, watering the wheat field, and then taking ice for later use. Yunwen, you will be responsible for keeping an eye on the temperature in the constant temperature room, and when you two have free time, cook the meal. Song Yingchun, we still have deerskin that we haven't used yet. I heard that you have many skills. Think of a way to make something with the deerskin that can keep out the cold. I will use an engineering shovel to dig the soil, and after digging the loess, I will prepare to make adobe bricks." I said

After the division of labor, Bai Lu and Yun Wen quickly left to do their work, but Song Yingchun came over angrily and said, "Are you deliberately making things difficult for me? Even if I can sew, can you tell me how I can sew without a sewing kit? You always pick difficult tasks for me to do, and you still hold a grudge against me, don't you? Do you think I forced you to kiss..."

Before she finished speaking, I immediately stood up and covered her mouth. It's not a good idea to talk about such things casually.

She bit my hand and I quickly let go. Yunwen came over and said, "How about this, Yingchun, you switch jobs with me and I'll do the sewing."

"You? Can you perform magic or tricks? Are you looking for an excuse to be lazy?" Song Yingchun said bluntly.

"I'm not being lazy. I have a way to do it." Yunwen said.

"Okay, you flight attendants are always omnipotent. Leave it to me, I'll arrange for a constant temperature room." Song Yingchun was still afraid that Yunwen would go back on her word, so she left after saying that.

"What did she not finish saying just now?" Yunwen asked.

"Nothing, that girl never talks about anything relevant. I want to ask you, do you have any way to sew deerskin?" I asked.

"Well, leave it to me." Yunwen smiled. Her diet has been much more normal recently. She looks much more energetic, and her face has regained its former pretty and round look. She looks really beautiful.

After they finished their work, I started to work too. I used the German folding engineer shovel to dig deep into the ground, piled the black soil on the right, and then dug down about two or three meters. The width was wide enough for two people to stand. When I dug up the loess, I found the wooden ladder, climbed down, found the backpack, filled it up, threw it on the ground, poured the loess into a separate area on the left, and continued to dig the loess. I filled it up again...

This process was repeated several times, and the loess piled up on the ground became more and more, until after more than ten or twenty times, the loess on the left side of the ground was piled up to half a person's height.

The next step was to make a model. I found the remaining wooden stakes that I had sawed before, and sawed them into a length that was about 20 cm long, the same length as my palm, 10 cm wide, and about 2 cm thick. I then sawed off two pieces, and then sawed off another square piece of wood that was 10 cm long and wide and of the same thickness. I tried to use the mortise and tenon technique that Yingchun had used recently to splice them together to form a mold that was 20 cm long and 10 cm wide and high.

Return the wooden ladder, take a basin of freshly heated spring water, find some hay, mix the loess, water and hay, wipe the mold with water again, find a relatively dry ground, put the mold on the ground, stir the cement mixed in the earth basin, pour it into the mold, spread it, fill it, and then smooth it with a relatively flat stone.

Move the mold slightly and take it out. This adobe brick can be used after drying. Then make adobe bricks one by one according to the above order. Before long, the ground is covered with those square-shaped adobe bricks. About a hundred adobe bricks are made.

By the time I finished, my waist and legs were sore. Yunwen came over and called me to eat, so I just left it there to dry thoroughly and went to eat.

For today's meal, since the air-dried venison was particularly hard, it was not roasted. Instead, it was cut into slices and placed in a pot with some wood ear mushrooms and wild grass roots. It was stewed until it was slightly tender before being taken out for consumption.

It is still a bit too hard and tastes salty. The fishy smell is neutralized by the plant roots in the pot, but it still has a unique flavor and is quite delicious, which adds a lot of satiety.

After dinner, I set out with the mud jar, planning to fetch some sea water from the beach, at least so that I could make the mud without wasting precious well water when a large amount of water was needed.