Volume 1: Farming Chapter 25 Druid Magic & Raw Wool Processing
Next to the tribe's favorite mobile home, there is a semi-underground mushroom house: an underground space with a depth of about one meter and an area of twelve square meters was dug out, and walls with a height of about one and a half meters and a mezzanine were built on the ground with extra mud bricks. The walls were covered with thicker mud mixed with a lot of straw stalks, and the top was covered with a thick layer of reed roof.
This mushroom house was built a month ago. The base of the west wall is connected to the smoke exhaust port of the mobile house's floor heating, which leads the smoke exhausted from the floor heating straight hole flue into the interlayer of the mushroom house's earthen wall to slightly increase the temperature of the mushroom house. Enoki mushrooms are cold-resistant fungi, but if the temperature is too low, the mycelium cannot grow out, and if it grows out, deformed mushrooms are likely to appear, so the indoor temperature needs to be kept between 10 and 20 degrees.
Thrall carefully moved open the three-layer door made , entered the dark mushroom house, closed his eyes and adapted to the barely visible light in the lower room, then turned around, gently took off the airtight animal skin curtain and put it aside.
When there is no wind or the wind is not blowing towards the door, the animal skins must be taken off to allow ventilation to the mushroom house... Sal doesn't know the principle behind this, but it doesn't stop him from enforcing the rules set by the cub Ayun.
There are sixteen culture troughs made of mud and wood, about 30 centimeters high, in the mushroom house. Small squares are made of wooden boards in the long troughs, and the squares are filled with acorn shells that have been cleaned, dried and ground into powder, oak wood chips, reed grass clippings that have been finely chopped, and something specially made by the cub Ayun, which he calls natural soil fertilizer, but which Sal thinks is complete garbage.
These useless things are mixed with water and piled in small squares. After the excess water is filtered out from the soil base made of mud at the bottom, the oak wood segments with natural mycelium are buried in them. After that, the temperature in the mushroom house is kept higher than the outdoor temperature, but not too warm (about 10 to 20 degrees), and fresh air is replaced in the room every day without light transmission. In just one day, the mycelium on the oak wood segments began to germinate. After ten days, the mycelium covered the entire surface of the material. After being shocked, the astonished Sal performed the next operation, removing the miscellaneous bacteria and transferring more mycelium to the small squares where the germination was not complete. Half a month later, dense, white and tender mushroom stems of varying lengths have grown in sixteen culture tanks and hundreds of small squares. (If it is Flammulina velutipes for sale, it is necessary to cool down and breed them evenly to ensure that the length of the Flammulina velutipes is consistent, and artificial light sources must be provided to ensure that the mushrooms grow in the same direction. There are no such requirements for eating them yourself.)
At first, when Thrall was asked to take charge of the cultivation of Flammulina velutipes, he refused. He also liked to eat this kind of mushroom in the human kingdom, but it was not called this name... He remembered that this was a delicious mushroom picked by mushroom pickers in the forest, and it was not something that could be grown like beans. When the cub Ayun explained the work to him and told him to follow the rules and cultivate patiently, Thrall felt that Ayun seemed to have bad intentions - if these cultivation tanks made of garbage and waste could not grow Flammulina velutipes, would this "Ayun" throw the responsibility on him?
This worried and anxious mentality disappeared not long after he took on the job of caretaker of the mushroom house, because Thrall saw with his own eyes how the mycelium in the culture tanks composed mainly of oak wood chips and acorn shell powder germinated and grew into thin and tender mushrooms - it was like a wonderful miracle performed by the magical spell cast by a druid. In the snowy winter, in this simple, dark and damp semi-underground mushroom house, the precious delicacy that mushroom pickers could only find in the mountains and forests in spring and autumn was actually appearing in the world little by little through his hands.
Sal took off his straw sandals and walked into the room wearing only animal skins. Ayun reminded him countless times that enoki mushrooms need a clean environment to grow. He would feel impatient before, but now, he almost religiously abided by the rules set by Ayun... Before coming to the mushroom house, he would even change into cleaner clothes.
Using fire smoke to raise the temperature will result in insufficient humidity in the mushroom house. To ensure humidity, the ground and surrounding areas of the mushroom field should be sprinkled with enough water. Sal uses melted snow water for spraying every day. During this process, water should not be sprinkled on the mushroom body. In order to make the mushrooms grow more neatly, each bundle of mushrooms should be covered with a loose bundle of straw woven with straw (similar to the function of paper tubes) - indoor mushroom cultivation is a delicate job, which the Snow Wolf Man definitely cannot do, but Sal can do it with ease.
"It has grown longer than my palm. Can it be harvested in the next two days?"
After sprinkling the clean snow water, Thrall wiped the sweat off his face and sat up. He looked at the white and tender elves growing vigorously in the room with the weak light, and his heart was filled with unprecedented satisfaction... Ah Yun said that after successful cultivation, mushrooms can grow once every thirty to forty days on average. In this way, wouldn't he be able to meet the needs of the entire tribe for the consumption of Flammulina velutipes? The Snow Wolves can eat whatever they want, and there is more than enough~
This is really... absolute sense of security! The Snow Wolf people will always need him, always respect him, and will be reluctant to leave even if he wants to... He is no longer a poor creature who survives at the mercy of the Snow Wolf people, but a person who is truly needed by the Snow Wolf people with his own hands and can provide delicious mushrooms even on such a snowy day.
"...No, even if the Snow Wolves love me because of the mushrooms, it was 'he' who made him have such value. And... 'he' didn't tell me what 'soil and fertilizer' is until the end. Next time I grow mushrooms, I still need the 'soil and fertilizer' provided by 'him', otherwise..."
After waking up from his joy and thinking clearly about his situation, Sal felt a chill in his heart. If it was so easy to grow enoki mushrooms, then why didn't the mushroom pickers in the human kingdom grow them themselves but went deep into the mountains and forests? Obviously, even if he worked very hard, the key to the growth of these delicious mushrooms was the "soil fertilizer" that the young cub Ayun pretended to add to the culture tank... This meant that his sense of security and status of being needed were still controlled by Ayun.
Thrall felt anxious again. The human thinking mode always makes humans stand out in the racial competition, but humans can also easily fall into the thinking trap and cause troubles, which is the so-called thinking too much... Thrall's first half of his life can be described as ups and downs and wandering. This experience makes it even more impossible for him to be as simple as the snow wolf. After ventilating the mushroom house for half an hour, Thrall left the mushroom house and returned to the No. 2 large room where he now lives. He sat cross-legged on the kang that everyone tacitly gave him, thinking about it for more than half an hour, and finally made up his mind to get off the kang, put on his shoes and go find Xiao Yun.
The mobile home was still filled with acorns, dried meat strips, and groups of young cubs weaving rattan grass. Despite the crowds, no one bothered Xiao Yun, who occupied a corner of the room. Beside Xiao Yun were several piles of wool and many jars and cans. At this moment, he was pinching a curl of wool with his hands, with a cold and profound expression.
"Ayun." Sal carefully sat down not too far from Xiao Yun, with a happy smile on his face. He gestured with his hands and said, "The enoki mushrooms have grown this tall , and the caps are as big as fingernails. The mushroom bodies are firm and each one is this thick. Can we harvest them now?"
"It's Sal." Xiao Yun came back to his senses, "Well... this batch of Flammulina velutipes seems to have been cultivated for a . You can check later to see if the mushrooms are full of moisture. Let them ventilate for two days to let the moisture evaporate, and then harvest them."
"Do we need to continue cultivating after the harvest? Do we need to replace the culture medium in the culture tank?" Sal led the topic in a very natural and careful manner.
"Of course, keep growing it. You can never have too much green food. During this period, we have been growing bean sprouts and meat. Several people are a little irritated." Xiao Yun nodded, but before Sal could be happy, he continued, "The culture medium does not need to be changed. When you harvest, be careful not to damage the part where the base of the stipe connects to the culture medium. Just remove the damaged and underdeveloped parts. This enoki mushroom can be harvested not only once. Keep taking good care of it and you can harvest two or three more crops."
"..."Sal's jaw dropped down, and the ecstatic expression on his face looked a little awkward - it was certainly a good thing that such delicious mushrooms could be cultivated and harvested several times at a time, but wouldn't the "fertilizer" he wanted be lost?
Sal was unwilling to stop there, so he quickly adjusted his mood and asked in a very natural tone: "Then this time, do you still need to add the 'soil fertilizer' you gave me last time to the culture medium?"
"Hmm..." Xiao Yun was a little embarrassed. He really didn't know whether to add homemade phosphate fertilizer during the second planting. He only remembered that when his sister was bored and threw the roots of the enoki mushrooms bought from the market into a cup of water, she stuffed a few wet tissues into the bottom of the cup and put some water with baking soda in it.
Xiao Yun's hesitation made Sarr's heart rise. When Xiao Yun asked him to add "soil fertilizer", he was very resistant to the cultivation work. He didn't even look carefully before mixing the mud residue that looked like it was mixed with other things into the culture tank. Now he really regretted it when he thought about it... Could it be that the soil fertilizer was an alchemical product or a magical creation that was difficult to make? !
Sal regretted it so much that his intestines turned green - if he had known, he would have secretly kept some for himself!
Just when Sar was regretting deeply, Xiao Yun spoke up: "How about adding a little more? Mycelium still needs nutrition to grow."
As he spoke, he pushed aside the wool piled at his feet and took out a clay jar from under the wall. The jar had a lid and the opening was sealed with mud.
Sal stared at the jar in amazement. Wait, such an important thing was just placed in a mobile home where people were coming and going?!
Xiao Yun picked up the pottery jar and walked out of the mobile home. Sal quickly got up and followed him. Then he saw... Xiao Yun used his claws to scrape off the sealing mud and just casually opened the lid. A smell that couldn't be said to be smelly, but was also quite indescribable, wafted out from the mouth of the jar.
Xiao Yun shook the can, and Sal heard the sound of water. He stretched his neck to see Xiao Yun tilting the can and pouring out some of the contents to check the lid... Sal was a little confused at the time. There were a lot of debris soaking in the water with a faint, indescribable smell, and one of them was a bit white - uh, was he dazzled, why did this look like some kind of bone? !
...A mysterious creation made of bones that can nourish crops? When Thrall came to this conclusion, he felt a chill rushing from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. What kind of witchcraft is this? !
The cub Ayun seemed very satisfied with his work. He poured the liquid and the bone in the lid back into the jar, turned to Sal and said, "Take this, and when this batch of enoki mushrooms is harvested, add water and sprinkle it into the culture tank. Remember not to sprinkle too much, just make sure the culture medium is almost moist."
"..." Sal achieved his goal, but he was not happy about it. He looked at Xiao Yun with a trembling face. He wanted to reach out to take it, but hesitated.
"It's okay, take it and use it. Return the jar when you're done. I'll ferment another jar for next time." Xiao Yun obviously misunderstood Sal's reaction. After thinking for a while, he said, "How about this, since you'll be in charge of growing Enoki mushrooms in the future anyway, why don't you ferment the phosphate fertilizer yourself? I'll teach you how to do it."
The sudden turn of events was so sudden that Sal was completely unable to react and just stood there in a daze.
"What's your reaction? Don't you want to learn?" Xiao Yun frowned. A subordinate who is afraid of hard work and gives up when he finds it troublesome is not a good subordinate.
"Think!" Thrall blurted out, gritting his teeth, his expression a little ferocious. So what if it's witchcraft? There's no Inquisition here to judge him!
Xiao Yun had no idea what kind of mental journey Thrall had gone through. He was very satisfied with Thrall's diligence, studiousness, and intelligence, and immediately took Thrall to learn witchcraft... No, learn how to make your own soil and fertilizer for growing Flammulina velutipes:
The tribe’s leftover pig trotters, pig bones, freshwater fish viscera caught with cow horns, fish scales, small freshwater crabs picked up from the river bank, bird droppings picked up from the edge of the jungle, hair cut off by the tribesmen, stray hair picked up from the sheep pen, wood ash... these things are poured into a jar, sealed with a little water, and placed in a humid place for a first fermentation; after ten days, the lid is opened, the fermented things are poured out, large pieces of bones are smashed and mashed, stirred, put into the jar again, soaked in water, and fermented a second time... In this way, a pure natural and pollution-free handmade phosphate fertilizer is obtained, which can be used after diluting with water.
Xiao Yun instructed Thrall completely with the upright attitude of the Chinese people making soil and fertilizer for balcony vegetable gardens. These things were easy to obtain and many of them were ready-made in the tribe. Although the process was a bit cumbersome and the fermentation time was a bit long, it was always better to have them than nothing; however... he didn't know how similar the materials he used were to the witchcraft and black magic materials that were criticized and rejected in this world, and how dark the materials were in the eyes of the indigenous Thrall... So Thrall followed him to learn and memorized the materials one by one, while getting goose bumps on his back and a chill in his heart.
"This is indeed some kind of witchcraft... If I learn these things, I will also be regarded as a believer of black magic..."
He poured out the phosphate fertilizer in the pottery jar for use, ran around for half a day to fill it with new fermented material, and sealed the mouth with mud. Then, Sal suddenly fainted and slumped to the ground, his mind in a mess.
"So what about witchcraft, so what about black magic... It's not these things that caused me to fall to this point." With both hands on the clay pot, a self-deprecating sneer appeared on Sal's face, "The church... the priests... they are honorable and noble, but they will not save me from my fall."
He dug a hole behind the chimney of the No. 2 main room, buried the pottery jar in it, and sprinkled water on the soil. After completing the fermentation preparations, Sal returned to his tent with a determined face, changed into clean special clothes, went into the mushroom house, took off the animal skins to ventilate the room.
"No matter what, I have to live. I won't give up...witchcraft or the devil, as long as I can survive, it's more important than anything else."
Looking at the densely growing Enoki mushrooms in the culture tank, Sal's eyes gradually became firm.
"A-choo, ah-choo!"
"Damn... I can't possibly catch a cold. I don't go out to play in the snow every day..." Xiao Yun rubbed his nose, tilted his head to look at the cubs who would run out to roll around in the snow every morning, then retracted his gaze and stared at the ball of fur in his hand.
The long-wool sheep raised by the tribe have two kinds of wool. One is the outer layer of long wool, which is more than 20 centimeters long. The cuticle is extremely rough, has a strong smell, is thick in oil, is severely tangled, and is almost in clumps.
The other type is the fluff that grows on the inner layer. This type of fluff is more like Xiao Yun's understanding of the Central Plains hair. Although it is also extremely smelly, greasy and dirty, and clumping, it is at least cleaner and finer.
Since the beginning of winter, the tribe has slaughtered a dozen old or sick long-wool sheep. The meat was eaten, the skin was given to Thrall to make leather, and the wool was collected by Xiao Yun. These days, he has been thinking about how to make use of the raw wool.
The fur was relatively easy to deal with. Xiao Yun took a piece of cloth that Sal owned, wrapped the fur in it and soaked it in snow water. After changing the water several times, the dirt on the fur was basically removed. Then he still wrapped the fur in cloth and placed it in the melted snow water, and gently rubbed it with the wild boar oil handmade soap he had made to remove some of the lanolin and residual dirt.
The fluff is washed, squeezed dry, and spread on the floor heating to dry, thus obtaining roughly processed raw wool.
Unlike the pure white wool imagined, the wool after rough processing is slightly yellow and slightly curly. The raw wool cannot be used for spinning immediately, and needs to be combed and fluffed with a special wool comb first; this is not a problem for Xiao Yun. He found the long thorns on the thorns that can be found everywhere on the grassland, dried them, and inserted them into the smooth mud board. After the mud board is dried in the shade, the wool comb with a primitive flavor is made.
After roughly combing the raw wool to make it fluffy and soft, you can start spinning by hand. Xiao Yun has seen what a spindle looks like in elementary school textbooks. He directly took a piece of pig bone and used it as a spindle, and figured out how to spin raw wool into thread bit by bit... Don't say it, this is really a technical job. Fortunately, Xiao Yun saw an old lady with bound feet spinning hemp thread in the countryside when he was in elementary school, otherwise he really wouldn't have a clue.
With great patience and after several days and nights, Xiao Yun finally processed the wool from more than a dozen sheep into raw wool and then spun it into thick wool yarn (he was afraid that the thin yarn would break, so he made it thicker). Then, he cut the wooden chopsticks into thin pieces and ground them into thick knitting needles...
Xiao Yun, a grown man, had never knitted a sweater in his life. Fortunately, his older sister loved to play DIY when she had nothing to do. She would often knit a scarf, crochet a pair of slippers, or knit small clothes for the cat at home. Xiao Yun was bored of watching her. He tried hard to recall his sister's techniques, and after constant trial and error, he actually managed to knit a woolen vest.
Then this wool vest was worn by the clan leader... Xiao Yun still hoped that he could live a few more years, otherwise he would have to train the next clan leader from scratch, which would be too much trouble.
Logically speaking, Xiao Yun should be happy that he had a way to utilize wool, but the fact was that Xiao Yun couldn't be happy... The reason was that there was too little wool on sheep, and he hadn't finished weaving the wool of more than a dozen sheep. Judging from the remaining amount, it would be good if he could weave five sweaters weighing two kilograms... The wool of an adult long-wool sheep weighed less than one kilogram after rough processing. Who the hell could he complain to?
You have to know that the sheep raised by modern farmers can produce 15 kilograms of wool a year... After the wool is sheared, the sheep can continue to be raised. However, for the long-wool sheep raised by the tribe, the inner wool can basically only be sheared off when slaughtering...
Xiao Yun knew very well that the emotion of jealousy should be born as late as possible. When basic fairness could not be achieved, he could not let his people have the idea that there was favoritism or inequality in the tribe. So he stopped instructing his people on how to weave sweaters and first thought about the utilization rate of raw wool - an adult long-wool sheep has only a little over one kilogram of wool, while long wool is abundant and heavy, weighing more than thirty kilograms. If this stuff can be used well, then there will be no problem of scarcity or equality.
…Then Xiao Yun hit his head against the wall.
This thick and long hair is really like seeing a ghost... It is easy to make a thick and heavy tent after felting, but if Xiao Yun wants to make it softer and have a wider range of applications, he will never be able to do it even if he tries his best.
After much trouble, Xiao Yun had no choice but to use experimental methods to try processing:
First, it is processed according to the fluff method, but the finished product is still in the form of agglomerated sheets, which are not easy to tear apart with claws.
In a rage, Xiao Yun soaked it in hot water, and the original wool turned directly into felt...
Change to warm water, and do repeated short-term soaking while keeping the water temperature as constant as possible. Each soaking should not exceed twenty minutes. If the water temperature changes, change the water immediately... The original hair obtained this time is a little softer, but it is still difficult to comb, and the hair is hard and prickly.
This put Xiao Yun in a passive position, so he simply gave up the treatment. He cooked a pot of black beans, fermented yeast, brewed vinegar (the process was extremely crude and simplified, and inedible), and then used the vinegar to wash the hair... Doesn't acetic acid soften the hair? Can you soften it for me? !
Then, he succeeded.
The ball of hair in his hand was still a little hard, but at least it wasn't prickly. It was washed out with vinegar.
