Chapter 272 Primitive Beast World Cubs 46
I used a handmade ceramic jar. After washing it clean, I put the jars in one by one and filled them with water. I made a lid that looked like a kimchi jar, and the lid was designed to seal the water and prevent bacteria from getting in.
Then you just have to wait for it to ferment naturally.
By the time both of these are harvested, time has passed. Millet is harvested last because it needs to be processed after harvesting.
The golden ears of grain need to be cut down along with the stalks. Since there's only one machete in the house, only one person can cut them down, one bunch at a time, while Cang Ye is in charge of carrying them.
Although the field was only a few steps away from home, I still had to move back. Fortunately, I had a basket, so it didn't take much effort.
It took two days just to harvest millet, and we had to take turns working. The long hours of bending over were really tiring.
Two days later, all the millet was finally harvested, and the harvested millet stalks were piled up.
With so many crops, it would take more than a day or two to harvest them all. It took a long time to collect and store them properly.
The next most important step is processing the millet, specifically removing the husks.
The first step is to remove the ears of grain from the stalks; this step is called threshing, which mainly involves hand-rubbing and beating with wooden sticks.
Then, after removing the husks from the millet, you can get millet that can be cooked.
A stone mill is needed to husk the corn, and the system rewarded us with one before the signal.
We have a stone mill at home, but it's too inefficient and too tiring to husk so much grain by manually pushing the millstone.
So Shen Ci decided to use livestock, choosing calves to pull the millstone, as oxen seemed to be stronger than horses.
Moreover, this ox came to our home earlier and only used it for plowing the fields. The rest of the time, it was well-fed and cared for, living a more comfortable life than anyone else.
You raise cattle for a thousand days, but only use them for one.
They put simple wooden tools on the calf and connected them to a millstone with a rope. The millstone had a handle, so it was as if they had tied the calf to the handle.
One person could simply lead a large ox around in circles, slowly turning the millstone, and also keep an eye on whether the millet was finished, adding more millet as needed.
Improving productivity is of paramount importance.
"Bighorn, let's go!"
Shen Ci guided the millet while Cangye continuously poured the millet into the millstone.
The stone mill emitted a deep, rumbling sound as golden grains were ground. Rice bran fell out from between the millstones, and after the outer husks were removed, the golden millet flowed out from the edge of the millstone.
Below are the basins that were placed there long ago; what's being ground now is their entire year's worth of food!
Using oxen was much faster than using people, but it still took two or three days to husk all the millet.
In the end, we harvested about four or five bags of millet, but since we didn't have any bags, we had to pour it into large wooden buckets, filling two large buckets.
Although it wasn't a huge amount, it was still a pretty good first harvest. Combined with the meat and other things we had stored up before, we should be able to get through the upcoming winter without any problems.
After working hard for almost a week, we finally finished harvesting all the crops and all the grains have been ground and stored.
This is the first batch of rice! Shen Ci decided to cook a meal to celebrate the harvest and reward herself for all her hard work over the years.
She measured out a full bamboo tube of millet, rinsed it clean, added an appropriate amount of water, and steamed it in an earthenware pot.
While the rice was steaming, she placed several thin wooden sticks on top of it, then washed a piece of her homemade sausage, which was a mix of lean and fatty meat and had a deep red color, and put it on top to steam together.
These sausages have been smoked for a while and the surface is already dry, but they are best eaten around the Lunar New Year to create the festive atmosphere.
On the other side of the stove, she stir-fried a plate of wild boar slices with freshly harvested chili peppers. Wild boar meat still has a bit of an odor, so it's best to stir-fry it with chili peppers to mask the smell.
The spicy aroma was incredibly tempting. I also made a fish soup, adding a few slices of ginger to remove any fishy smell. The fish soup was white and steaming hot.
This meal had meat, vegetables, soup, and rice—it was simply wonderful!
When dinner was ready, Shen Ci lifted the lid of the earthenware pot for steaming rice, and a long-lost, pure fragrance of grain wafted out.
The millet rice in the jar was distinct, glistening with oil, and looked especially tempting after absorbing the oil from the sausage and its savory aroma.
The aroma of millet mingled with the salty fragrance of Chinese sausage, making you feel hungry just from the smell. Take the sausage out and slice it while it's still hot, and the aroma will fill the whole house.
"Come on, sweetie, taste the fruits of our labor!"
The fruits of your own hard work taste the sweetest!
Shen Ci filled a large bowl, no, a large basin, for Cang Ye.
Cangye imitated her mother, using a wooden spoon to scoop up a spoonful of rice mixed with sausage and put it in her mouth.
The millet has a soft, sweet and glutinous texture, which is combined with the unique salty and oily flavor of the sausage, and a touch of spiciness to enhance the taste of the stir-fried meat.
How to describe this flavor? It's very complex, but one bite makes you feel happy. Your whole mouth is filled with this flavor, and it's a deep sense of satisfaction!
Cang Ye's eyes widened after taking only a few bites of rice. "My god, this kind of grain is so delicious!" he exclaimed, and then began to wolf it down.
This is truly wolfing it down.
"Delicious! Mother, this tastes even better than meat!"
He still had rice in his mouth, and as he ate, he mumbled, "It's so delicious! That's the power of a good dish to make you want to eat more rice."
The heat and energy from food enter the body, making the body feel warm and full of energy.
Eating the right amount of meat and rice won't make you fat; it will only make your skin more radiant and rosy, your hair darker, and your limbs stronger.
As Shen Ci ate the hard-earned rice, he felt a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. This was the grain they had harvested from the land with their own hands.
I did everything myself, without ever asking anyone else to help me!
Winter is coming.
All the harvesting, threshing, hulling, drying, and storage work was completed in about a week, and there were quite a few miscellaneous tasks to be done before and after.
After you finish dealing with the food, you should hurry up and stockpile firewood. The forest is big enough that it took a long time just to collect dry firewood.
But dry firewood alone is not enough; you also need to cut some suitable branches, otherwise it won't burn well in winter.
The firewood was piled up in a place where it could be sheltered from the rain, and it could also block the wind from the hut.
The firewood had just been stockpiled when, less than a month later, the weather suddenly turned cold.
The biting north wind began to howl, and a thin layer of ice formed on the water in the morning. The real winter had arrived.
On her first winter in the Spirit Beast Continent, Shen Ci prepared ample supplies so that she could safely hibernate without having to go out to find supplies.
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