Volume 1: Farming Chapter 26 Food Crisis
There is nothing much to say about making handmade soap with wild boar meat. The only problem is in extracting the lye.
Well, extracting natural lye is actually quite simple. Just pick up some white ash from burning wood in a brick kiln (filter out the large pieces of black charcoal yourself), add water (the amount of water should cover the wood ash by half a finger), put it in a ceramic pot and boil it for about ten minutes, then let it sit overnight. The yellowish liquid on the surface of the pot is the lye.
With lye, making soap will not be a problem. Put the boiled wild boar oil in a ceramic bowl and heat it to a certain temperature with hot water. When the temperature of the oil and the lye are almost the same (both are placed in a ceramic bowl, and the standard is that it is not too hot to touch the ceramic bowl), mix the two liquids and start stirring.
This process requires ventilation and also ensures that the mixed liquid does not cool down too quickly. Xiao Yun carried out this work in an activity room with the door open. The time chosen was in the morning when the cubs all went out to play in the snow. During the process, the mixed liquid was heated in water to maintain its temperature. It was stirred continuously for about half an hour with a stirring tool made of forked thorns. The mixed liquid turned into rice paste, which means the saponification reaction is complete.
Next, pour the saponified liquid into a shallow mold (Xiao Yun directly used a brick mold), throw it somewhere and wait for it to mature (it must be placed in a ventilated and light-proof place for more than a month before use)... It's so simple, without any technical difficulty. When winter just came, Xiao Yun decided to get the wool in winter, so he made a few brick-molded handmade soaps and put them there (so there was no wild boar oil to fry fish for Ox Horns during that time...).
The soap made by this unsophisticated method is very primitive, but it's fine as long as it can be used, no matter how particular... The philosophy of life Xiao Yun learned when he came to this world is that it's okay to talk nonsense when there is no guarantee of having anything. When he first came here, he even ate raw meat.
If I must say, the jealousy he caused was simple and crude...
Making vinegar requires fermentation, and fermentation requires yeast. Fortunately, making your own yeast is not difficult. Take a ceramic jar, fill it with crushed cheese (produced by the tribe), add water, and place it in a mobile house (with floor heating temperature of about 30 degrees) for fermentation. Open the lid and shake it a few times every day. If bubbles appear in the jar in about four to five days, the fermentation is successful.
Filter out the original yeast juice, add about half a pound of acorn powder that has been boiled several times in changed water (there is no place to find wheat flour, so just make do with it), knead it and put it indoors to ferment. After about 10 hours, the acorn powder becomes more fluffy, and knead it into small balls... The homemade yeast is made.
The next step... is to prepare the black beans, soak, boil and steam them. After steaming, mash them while hot and spread them on a rattan mat to drain out the moisture. When the temperature drops to a lukewarm level, crush the yeast made from acorn powder and stir it in. Then cool it to a level that is only slightly warm but not icy (10-20 degrees), put it in a jar and ferment it at room temperature with floor heating (a temperature of about 30 degrees is required).
If you feel a slight sour smell in the jar after about two days, it is considered successful. Pour water into it, add powder ground from acorn shells (no bran or wheat bran, just find a substitute), stir to ensure that the oxygen space inside the jar is increased, and continue fermenting. After about a week, a pungent sour smell will come out of the jar, and you're done.
If it is vinegar for eating, then there will be a process of sedimentation and filtration, adding other seasoning ingredients, and long-term fermentation for the vinegar to mature. Xiao Yun couldn't wait that long, so he just rinsed it with water and used it to wash the wool.
Anyway... in this fucked up place with nothing, Xiao Yun would have to work himself to death if he really wanted to do anything...
Fortunately, all the hard work was not in vain. The ten kilograms of wool piled in front of him were the reward for his efforts.
"It's really not easy." Xiao Yun sighed with a serious face, pinching the fluffy curly wool balls with his fingers. The processed wool was a little linted because it was washed with alkaline soap, and it was not so soft and smooth, but it was wool after all and could be spun into yarn. Of course... this kind of long wool was still a little coarse no matter how it was processed, and the yarn spun from it was only slightly better than linen. It was probably not suitable for wearing next to the body, but it was barely acceptable for weaving outerwear, carpets, etc.
Before mobilizing the tribesmen to work with the raw wool, Xiao Yun wanted them to see with their own eyes the practicality of the processed wool, so he continued to spin the yarn by himself, and the hand-made spindle turned again...
"——Damn it! This kind of pure hand spinning is too inefficient!"
Manually twisting the wool with one hand and using the other hand to rotate and stretch the wool, it might be fine to just play around and experience the novelty, but the thought of spinning ten kilograms of wool in this way made Xiao Yun feel a little desperate. Even if he just mixed the wool fibers and stretched them into yarn, and then wound the yarn into thick wool thread and put it around the spindle, the workload was no joke.
In other words... if Xiao Yun wants to complete the task of spinning wool yarn and lead all the tribesmen to wear sweaters, he must first learn how to make a hand-cranked spinning wheel... When he thought of the technical difficulty involved, Xiao Yun felt a chill on his head. Damn it, he was going to go bald again.
It's not that the hand-cranked spinning wheel is so technically demanding that it can't be made by hand. In modern society, some kindergartens have teachers leading their children to make spinning wheels. But the problem is that this is when there are ready-made materials... The toy version of the hand-cranked spinning wheel is made with convenient tools such as cardboard, gear blocks, chopsticks, hoses, and glue guns. Now, Xiao Yun has to DIY it all himself... This kind of entertainment that modern people use to relax and cultivate their sentiments is so fucked up in this world.
In modern society, if you want to drink milk, you can just go out and find a small shop and spend five dollars. In this broken place, if you want to drink milk, you have to raise cows. This is the difference.
Xiao Yun stood up like a wandering ghost, staggered out, and went to find trouble with the laborers... uh, no, to find trouble with the adult tribesmen.
Four newly built family-style mud-brick houses with internal and external partitions are lined up on the east side of the mobile home. Unlike the two large rooms with a kang bed next to them, these four privately owned houses are more than fifteen meters apart from each other. This is the vegetable garden that Xiao Yun left for each household in preparation for a rainy day.
Three of the four new houses belong to families with children. Qingcao, who lives in one of them, has just gone into heat and will give birth next year... However, Qingcao's house is not just occupied by her husband and wife. When Xiao Yun entered the house, he took a few steps and saw Qingcao and Ayue snuggling together on the kang in the inner room. Next to them was Dahe, who was rolling on the kang to occupy the couple's private space. At present, the tribesmen still have no concept of private property. If they have a good relationship with someone, going to someone else's house to take the place is as natural as eating and drinking. Even the owner of the house would not think there is anything wrong with it.
In other words, they haven't even developed the concept of privacy. In the warm little house, they don't need to wear animal skins, but they take off all their clothes and only wear leather pants... Alas, it's a good thing that the sexual characteristics of the upper body of a female snow werewolf are not obvious when she is not breastfeeding, and they look the same as her chest muscles, otherwise Xiao Yun wouldn't know where to put his eyes.
Well, as for the fact that the young couple looked like a pair of gay men no matter how you looked at them, Xiao Yun had gotten used to it...
"Ayun, I also want a house of my own!" Daha saw Xiao Yun and started talking.
"Wait until you're no longer single," Xiao Yun responded casually, and sat on the kang to warm his feet. His eyes swept over the exposed hands and feet of the three adult tribesmen, and seeing that they were almost healed, he began to coax them, "Have you seen the sweater vest that the tribe leader wears under the animal skin?"
"Ah?" Dahe, Qingcao, and Qingcao's partner Ayue were all puzzled.
"That one is woven from the inner wool of long-wool sheep. There is not enough wool on sheep to share with everyone, so we only woven one for the tribe leader. He is old and cannot withstand the cold like young people." Xiao Yun said, "During the time when you were busy building the house, I thought about making use of the long wool on the sheep and processed it into wool material that can be woven into clothes. Of course, clothes made of this wool material are not as soft as the tribe leader's and will irritate the skin a little, but it is more comfortable than wearing animal skins, and can also be made into blankets that are more suitable for laying on the kang than animal skins."
"Okay, okay." Qingcao said happily.
"Ayun, what do you want us to do?" Daha asked with blinking eyes. Look, there is a gap between smart people and stupid people. Qingcao is still so happy. She guessed that Xiao Yun mentioned this to ask them to help.
"To spin wool into thread, you need a spinning wheel. You two are both good at spinning. Come and do it with me tomorrow." Xiao Yun said frankly. He looked at A Yue and said, "A Yue, you have rested enough. Do you want to go out? Most of the winter has passed. The tribe should prepare for the snow melting."
Xiao Yun didn't think he was a devil. After twenty adult members of the tribe had worked hard to build four houses in the winter, he generously gave them four or five days of rest... Well, the main reason was that many people had frostbitten fingers and toes. If he forced them to work again, Xiao Yun was afraid that the tribe members would rebel...
The soldier A Yue, who had been resting comfortably for a few days, did not see through Xiao Yun's sinister intentions. He nodded innocently: "Okay, I have no problem."
Xiao Yun nodded in satisfaction and continued to recruit laborers...
I walked through four households and two large rooms for singles. Those whose hands and feet were not healed were let go and allowed to continue to rest. Those who were healed were fooled and assigned tasks. It didn't take much manpower to make a spinning wheel. Grass, rivers, and wool were all that was needed. There were more other tasks that needed to be done by the tribesmen. For example, after the snow melted in the spring, you had to prepare a lot of fertilizers. It was convenient to take the livestock manure from your own sheepfold and the snow wolf manure from your own toilet. It was better to shovel bird droppings and shovel the humus layer of forest leaves in the forest as soon as possible.
However, he encountered some trouble when trying to fool the chief. The chief asked why they didn't grow mushrooms yet. Xiao Yun couldn't just say that the snow werewolves were too simple-minded to do complicated and delicate work, and he was busy and there was only one Thrall. He talked for a long time before he finally got the matter over with.
Most of the tribesmen who had recovered from frostbite were given tasks to do, and the next day, the tribe, which had been quiet for a few days, became busy again.
The carefree cubs once again rushed to the snowfield outside the tribe to play in the snow. Yangmao wanted to follow them, but was caught by Xiao Yun before he could run out of the hall.
"Good boy, you have to work with me today~" Xiao Yun showed his white teeth.
"Huh..." Yangmao looked at his friends who had already run out of the tribe and felt very unhappy and unhappy.
"They can't help, they are all too stupid. Only you, Yangmao, are smart and dexterous, so I only look for you." Xiao Yun cast a disdainful look at the cubs who were having fun, trying to misunderstand Yangmao's reaction.
"Oh, okay." The innocent Yangmao immediately revealed a proud and sweet smile, "Ayun, what are we going to do?"
…the plan worked.
There was some leftover wood from building the house before, and Xiao Yun found the one with the densest wood fibers, and used an ox horn knife to laboriously cut it into palm-sized pieces of wood. Then he provided tools such as ox horn knives, quartz stone blades, and pottery knives, and asked three dexterous people in the tribe to work with him to make a model of a hand-cranked spinning wheel.
The most primitive hand-cranked spinning wheel mainly consists of a large rotating wheel and a small round spindle. The diameter of the large rotating wheel is dozens of times that of the spindle. The two are connected by ropes or belts. The crank is located at the center of the large rotating wheel. When the crank is turned, the large rotating wheel starts to rotate. Since the diameter of the rotating wheel and the spindle differ by dozens of times, the spindle will rotate dozens of times for every rotation of the rotating wheel. Several wool fibers are fixed at one end of the spindle. As the spindle rotates, they can be twisted automatically. Since the number of rotations of the spindle is determined by the rotation angle of the large wheel, the number of twisting circles can also be precisely controlled by the operator.
In addition, after twisting is completed, just take the yarn off and stick it to the side of the spindle. As the big wheel rotates, the yarn will automatically wind around the spindle tube as the spindle rotates, thus realizing the continuous operation of twisting and winding.
This is the principle of spinning wool fiber or any other fiber. Of course, Xiao Yun wants to spin coarse wool for knitting sweaters and even coarser wool for knitting carpets, so it does not need to be as fine as the yarn for textile cloth... The spinning wheel made can be used even if it is a bit rough.
Well... actually it doesn't matter whether it's rough or not, because the structure of the hand-cranked spinning wheels used by the Chinese people before the Han Dynasty was quite simple. You don't even need to use the hand crank on the big wheel, you can just turn the wheel with your hands.
Of course, Xiao Yun himself knew that a pedal-operated spinning wheel was less labor-intensive than a hand-cranked spinning wheel and could free his hands to better assist in twisting and winding the wool fibers. However, in the early stages of his exploration, when he had little confidence, he decided to be sensible and crawl before learning to walk...
Two hollow wheels shaped like wheels were made of wood pieces and combined together. The wheel surface was pulled out with animal tendon wire in the middle, and tiny gears and wood pieces used as bearings were ground out. The wheels were fixed on a frame that looked like an inverted table leg. Bones were used as spindles on the other side, and they were connected with belts cut into strips. A toy spinning wheel without a hand crank was made in more than a day.
Qingcao and the other two looked at the wooden frame in amazement, not knowing what it was used for. Yangmao curiously turned the hollow wheel a few times with her hand, and saw the wheel making a squeaking sound as it turned. She thought it was a toy.
Xiao Yun did not explain to them. He took a handful of wool and pulled it into strips. He twisted out two fibers with his hands and stuck them to the spindle. He manually stretched the fibers and passed them around the large wheel. Then he turned the large wheel with one hand and held the wool ball with the other hand. As the large wheel turned, the spindle rotated rapidly, and the wool fibers held in the hand completed the twisting and stretching work in the rotation of the large wheel and became threads wrapped around the spindle.
"Oh? Oh oh oh?!" Qingcao and the others looked confused and their eyes widened.
"Hmm?" Xiao Yun turned it twice and found that the thread on the spindle was too thin and not tightly wound, so he added two more fibers. When turning the large wheel, the hand holding the wool material slowly moved and adjusted the height as the wool fiber was twisted and stretched on the wheel...
"Oh oh oh oh!" Qingcao and the others had starry eyes. The thread spun onto the spindle appeared to have become much thicker with the naked eye.
"...That's how it is. Let's make three more spinning wheels like this and spin together." Xiao Yun picked up the spindle with thick wool thread wrapped around it and showed it to the others. "This wool thread is very useful. You have seen the sweater vest on the tribe leader. It was woven with this thread~"
Qingcao all nodded together, without any doubt at all.
Green Grass and Wool were both relatively able to sit still; Dahe was a little more active but also had the self-control to sit down. The three of them thus became professional textile workers in the tribe. As for the fact that there were child laborers under the age of fourteen and suspected pregnant women among them, Xiao Yun simply ignored it.
Besides, compared to the hard work of shoveling bird droppings, humus layers, and livestock manure in the ice and snow to pile and ferment them for the spring, staying in a warm room is much more comfortable...
And Xiao Yun didn't just sit there and do nothing after throwing the spinning to others. There were still hundreds of kilograms of smelly and rough raw wool waiting for him to process - to be honest, it was all tears.
Entering the fourth month of winter, unexpectedly but understandably... the tribe's food supplies ran out.
When the nervous-looking chief dragged Xiao Yun, who was still sleepy, to the place where wild boar meat was piled and looked at the empty pit, Xiao Yun didn't realize what this place was filled with... He had been entangled with wool and had no energy to take care of food reserves during this period.
"This winter, we... ate too much!" The patriarch burst into tears after saying just one sentence. This was also his dereliction of duty. He had been living too happily recently and didn't have the tension he had in previous years when he had to struggle through the long winter.
Xiao Yun: “…”
Xiao Yun understood that the chief was not to be blamed for this. It was true that there were plenty of ways to keep warm this year, as well as an uninterrupted supply of bean sprouts and enoki mushrooms, two major vegetables. However... the tribe members' consumption was also greater than in previous years, because throughout the winter, except for a few days when it snowed too heavily to go out, the tribe members were ordered around by him doing this and that - if they consumed more, they would eat more, right? Not to mention the frozen wild boar meat, the tribe also slaughtered dozens of sick cattle and sheep.
"Without staple foods with high starch content, relying solely on meat and vegetables is indeed not very reliable." Xiao Yun sighed.
"If there are only bean sprouts and enoki mushrooms, the tribe members will not be able to eat enough, Ayun." The tribe leader was worried.
"We have no choice but to kill some more sheep." Xiao Yun said, "The snow is lighter now than in the past few months. It should melt in half a month. After the snow melts, we will go to the Tauren tribe and exchange pottery blankets for food, vegetables, and grass seeds. This year, we will work harder to cultivate more fields and store more food, so the demand for cattle and sheep will not be so great."
"...Eh?" It's not that the tribe leader couldn't agree to slaughter the sheep to save his life, but...after all, he had been fooled by Xiao Yun for so long and had gradually developed the ability to listen to his words. "Ah Yun, do you mean that we won't raise so many cattle and sheep in the future? But the tribe doesn't have that many cattle and sheep to begin with?"
Xiao Yun nodded. He would have to discuss this with the chief sooner or later. He immediately pulled the chief to the mobile home, which was relatively quiet in the morning, and prepared for a long talk: "The tribe still needs to continue grazing cattle and sheep. Our people consume a lot of meat, and the harvest from hunting is not necessarily reliable, so we need to raise enough animals to ensure the supply of meat. However, there is no need to raise more than the meat demand. We raised extra cattle and sheep before for trading. Yes, now we don't need to exchange them for pottery, we just need to exchange them for salt... Then chief, do you think I can use the two kilns of pottery I fired recently to exchange for salt with the human caravan?"
If he was not given the exchange, the worst that could happen was that he would organize his people to go to the inland sea further south to boil salt... Xiao Yun had no intention of using the fruits of his people's labor to benefit the caravan anyway.
The tribe leader did not object to Xiao Yun's proposal at the first sight. He knew very well that throughout the winter, Ayun was the busiest person in the tribe. Although Ayun had added a lot of work that was not done in previous years, he was indeed the busiest person in the tribe, so no one complained. Ayun, who had a lot of things to do, would open the kiln once every two weeks without fail, and the tribe members would not have any complaints about this.
The chief showed a hesitant look. Every time Ayun fired pottery, he would keep an eye on it and forcibly take away the ones he thought were valuable for safekeeping. Now, his original tent was already filled with various pottery... Especially the double-colored pottery bowls and cups fired by Ayun. Even the chief couldn't help but secretly play with them in private.
Xiao Yun saw the tribe leader's intention and continued: "Reducing the scale of grazing does not mean that the tribe members will be idle and have nothing to do. Instead, there are more important things that require the tribe members to do, which are more beneficial than grazing..."
The clan leader couldn't deny this. When it came to arranging tasks for everyone, he felt that Ayun was particularly talented in this area. He had also been led around by Ayun for most of this winter. This was because Ayun thought that he was older and was relatively "lenient"...
"...Moreover, I can guarantee that the work that the tribe members will have to undertake in the new year will be more difficult and tiring than any previous year." Xiao Yun said seriously, "Continue herding and live a leisurely life, or reduce herding and spend this year on a heavier and more burdensome career that can make the tribe members live a better life. I believe that you, the tribe leader, will choose the latter without hesitation, right?"
“Hmm…” The tribe leader was a little emotional but didn’t dare to show it directly, because he knew very well that Ah Yun was not joking when he said it was more difficult and tiring. He only dared to mutter, “Well, we didn’t feel it was easy when we were herding before…”
Xiao Yun couldn't let the clan leader retreat at this time. He pulled the clan leader out of the activity room, walked out of the tribe, and faced the empty snowfield. He waved his hand:
"Imagine, Chief, as long as our entire tribe unites, works hard to reclaim the land, and farms with all our heart, this useless wilderness will become our field in a year, no, in half a year, and will be planted with grain and vegetables. The food you ate in the Tauren tribe can all grow in our fields. We will have food reserves that are not inferior to those of the Tauren, and we will have cattle and sheep that can provide an endless supply of meat... We will never go hungry again, and we will never need to go out hunting temporarily. Our granary will always be filled with all kinds of food, which our people alone cannot eat up. In order not to waste food, we will have to find other snow wolf tribes to merge with us and become new members of our tribe. Our tribe will be stronger than the cat tribe and the tiger tribe, and we will no longer be afraid of any foreign enemies - what a great future that will be!"
The author said: "Those who can fool people may not necessarily be able to get things done, but those who can get things done are definitely good at fooling people." - Xiao Yun.
