Chapter 20 Daily life in the new home
Yike has lived in the paradise for seven days. She built an earthen stove a few days ago. The first thing she did when she got up today was to check whether the moisture in the stove had dried up. She felt the stove inside and out and found it was completely dry. She was happy because she finally had a proper stove. The stove doesn't look pretty and seems rather bulky, but it has everything it should have.
The stove door is a bit big, mainly because the firewood picked up is very big; the chimney has only one opening and no chimney pipe, mainly because there is no material; the stove top is smoothed with mud and looks pretty good; the iron pot is placed into the round opening of the stove and fits perfectly.
Yi Ke filled the pot with water and lit the first fire of the new stove. The fire was very strong, the flames licked the bottom of the pot, and the smoke came out of the chimney and drifted towards the vast sky (the gap in the cave).
The water in the pot boiled quickly, and I started cooking breakfast as soon as I filled it with boiling water. This is the first meal of the new stove, so it has to be rich. So for breakfast there was fried eggs with leeks; stir-fried black fungus with shredded chicken. I saved a chicken leg just for this meal; and an egg drop cabbage soup.
Yi Ke had a full breakfast and sat at the stone table, muttering, "There are three things in life: food, clothing and shelter. Eating wild vegetables is considered eating, living in a cave is considered shelter, and wearing two sets of clothes from my sister is also considered clothing. Alas! Life is hard but it is not easy."
Yike remembered that there was wind last night, and the gust of wind blew straight in from Tunnel No. 1. The weather is still warm now, so he won't catch a cold. If it were winter, he would definitely catch a cold with the wind. A door needs to be built in Tunnel No. 1 and it must be completed before winter comes.
A bamboo house also needs to be built. The cave is too spacious. Sleeping in the cave feels like sleeping outdoors. It lacks a sense of security and is not warm in winter.
We also have to find a way to make the bow and arrow, and we don’t have to find the materials.
Yike had a lot of thoughts in his mind, but he couldn't do anything right away. He was small, had short arms and limited strength. Things that seemed simple were, in fact, very difficult for Yike now.
Summer is coming, and spring, the best time for sowing, is about to slip away. One might like to catch the tail of spring, sow some green vegetables, and transplant wild vegetables nearby so that one doesn’t have to look for them later.
The vegetable garden needs to be fenced first. Although there are no people living here, it seems that there is no need to build a garden, but there is a fear of animals such as pheasants and rabbits coming to destroy it, so it is safer to build a fence.
Yi Ke found a place near the spring. This place can get sun in the morning but not in the afternoon. This is the best location for a vegetable garden, so we decided to plant a vegetable garden here.
She chopped down a dozen tree sticks as thick as arms, cut them into short sticks more than one meter high, and sharpened one end.
One can stick the pointed ends of these short sticks into the ground and hit them hard with stones, hammering the sticks into the ground as stumps until they feel stable. Such a tree stump was hammered every one meter. After all the sticks were inserted, sticks slightly smaller than arms were tied horizontally to the stumps. Then some small sticks with branches were tied horizontally and vertically until the whole vegetable garden was enclosed. A doorway was left on the side near the spring, and a fence gate was made with small bamboo strips to facilitate entry and exit of the vegetable garden. The vegetable garden fence is perfectly finished.
First, clean up the weeds, pebbles, etc. on the ground in the vegetable garden, turn the soil over with a hoe, and divide it into small, neatly arranged vegetable plots.
She also gave the vegetable garden a nice name, "Baicao Garden". Baicao Garden does not have a single member yet, but hopefully it will live up to its name in the future. However, she had thought of who would be the first member of Baicao Garden.
Yi Ke picked up his hoe and ran towards the place where the cabbages were growing. There were still more than a dozen cabbages there. Of course you can’t eat it all, you have to keep the seeds. I excitedly dug up the Chinese cabbage seedlings and roots and moved them into the Baicao Garden. I dug up ten cabbages in total and left six undigged. This was in case the transplanted Chinese cabbage was unsuccessful. If there were any, I would still have a few to use as seeds. So the first member of Baicao Garden successfully moved in.
Yi Ke was very energetic and searched for wild vegetables in the forest, and he did not miss any herbs he saw. Wild vegetables and herbs were dug up with their roots and soil and transplanted into the herb garden. Maybe it was because the ground here was moist, suitable for the growth of many wild vegetables. It didn't take half a day to pick a lot of wild vegetables, such as wild leeks, Houttuynia cordata, water spinach, bamboo shoots, snake insect seedlings, Amaranth, Purslane, and Chinese cabbage, etc. The Baicao Garden suddenly became lively. Look at the wild vegetables stretching out their leaves and greeting each other. They are so happy. Now that we have vegetables, is meat far behind?
…
Today is the eighth day that Yi Ke has moved into his new paradise. When Yike went to feed the pheasants in the morning, he found that the pheasants had become thinner. It had only been a few days and the pheasants had become thinner. Yike patted his head in annoyance, wondering why he was so stupid. In the previous life, the chickens were raised in a pen and fed with food. Now there is no food and they only have a few earthworms and some wild grass to eat. It would be strange if they are not thin. Looking at the rabbit again, fortunately the rabbit was not thin. It had fresh wild vegetables to eat every day, so it did not lose weight.
"No, pheasants cannot be kept in caves. They must be allowed to fend for themselves. Where should they be kept?" Yi Ke asked himself and answered, "It is better to keep them in the bamboo forest. It is convenient to enclose the chickens there."
The bamboo forest is a good place, but it also needs to be fenced off. If you run away, you won’t come back. So Yike spent almost another day to fence off a corner of the bamboo forest.
"This little hand is so pitiful! It has to chop with an axe every day. Yesterday, I chopped trees in the vegetable garden; today I chopped trees in the chicken farm. Chopping, chopping, chopping, the little fingers are so painful!" Yi Ke blew on his hands to comfort himself, "Be good, hands, huh, it won't hurt!" After blotting his hands, he acted silly and funny again.
The chicken yard has been fenced off and is about 100 square meters in size. There are few chickens now, so it is enough for the chickens to find food.
One way is to catch the chickens from the hole and put them in the chicken farm. As soon as the pheasant was put in, it started to sing "cluck, cluck, cluck" first, then darted around among the bamboos, running happily for a while. When it had run enough, it finally started to dig happily on the ground. When the dry bamboo leaves were dug up, it used its pointed beak to pick up all the insects, big and small, into its mouth.
"The insects are so pitiful!" Yi Ke mourned for the insects for half a second, but was also worried that there were not enough insects for the pheasants to eat. Besides, the pheasants could not be kept in one place every day, because no matter how many insects there were, they would eventually be eaten up.
Yi Ke decided to cut bamboo strips and weave them into bamboo gates that looked like fence gates, and then combine them into a movable fence. He would put the chickens in different places to find food every other day, so that the pheasants would have insects to eat every day.
When life is back on track and we no longer have to go out to look for food, we will enclose the entire bamboo forest to form a natural chicken farm and build a chicken coop in a corner of the bamboo forest, so that the chickens have a place to hide from the rain, sleep, and lay eggs. Just imagine flocks of chickens walking in the bamboo forest, chasing and searching for food. What a beautiful picture.
Once the chicken problem was solved, making bows and arrows was put on the agenda.
If you want to eat meat, you can't just rely on traps, you have to take the initiative to attack. Bows and arrows are the main tools for obtaining meat.
The wood used to make the bow and arrow is made of branches of pear trees. There were originally 50 arrows, but some were used up on the way to Longshan. The tail feathers of the remaining 30 or so arrows are temporarily replaced with feathers from chicken wings, and the feathers of the big bird will be used again after shooting a big bird. More arrows need to be prepared, as there are large tracts of bamboo forests here, and arrows can be made from bamboo. The only problem that cannot be solved now is the tendons for making bowstrings. Bowstrings are usually made of animal tendons or nylon ropes, silk, etc., which there is no way to get. Does this mean that this most convenient long-range weapon has to be given up? She is unwilling to accept this.
ah! Without bows and arrows, there would be less meat. I, who loves meat, don't want to give it up, so how can I make bows and arrows? What did people in ancient times use?
"Stupid Yike, think about it! Think carefully, you will definitely remember it!" Yike encouraged himself.
Oh, right! It seems like there was a tribe in a period drama that made strings out of grape vines.
"It's decided. If the ancients could use it to make strings, I can do it too!" Yike encouraged himself.
With a target, she was instantly revived to full health. In such a large forest, it is easier to find wild grapes than to kill animals and take their tendons.
Grapes generally grow in places with plenty of sunlight. Yike climbed up the watchtower and observed which side of the forest had the most sunlight. She found that the sunlight was most abundant on the back of the mountain, and the sun was still shining brightly there!
To get to the back of the mountain, if you walk around the mountain, it may take two to three days to get around, because the dense bushes and weeds block the way forward. You have to weed and chop wood to get there, haha!
The saying “There is always a way when you reach the mountain” is absolutely true. The ancients were not deceiving me. The exit of Tunnel No. 2 is at the back of the mountain.
"Hahaha!" Yi Ke laughed three times towards the sky, "God help me!"
Yike decided to go to the back of the mountain tomorrow, and today he would first check if there were any unlucky people caught in the trap. When we got to the trap, we found that although there was nothing in the other traps, there was a pheasant caught in the noose, and it was a mother hen.
Look: a group of tiny chicks are playing next to their mother hen, completely unaware that their mother's feet are snagged. The mother hen was trying hard to peck at the noose with her sharp beak, and the surface of the noose was somewhat pecked to pieces.
"Mother Chicken, your luck seems to be a little bad. If I come tomorrow, I will definitely let you run away. Now, I have no choice but to ask you to bring your little babies to my house as guests."
Yike tied up the mother hen and put her in a backpack, and made a hole the size of a fist near the bottom of the backpack. She placed the basket containing the mother hen under a tree and hid behind the tree.
Not long after Yi Ke hid, the mother hen started fluttering her legs and clucking. The chicks obediently ran over and circled the basket to respond. One smart chick crawled into the basket through a hole, and the other chicks followed suit.
Yike ran out from behind the tree and quickly blocked the hole.
"I'm rich, I'm rich! I can put my breeding business on the agenda." She went home contentedly, carrying the basket on her back.
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