She Only Cares About Cultivation-Chapter 735: 【729】Beast World Farming 39 (2 more)

The discovery of millet suddenly made her think of rice wine and rice vinegar. You have to know that although they planted soybeans this year, it was too little, and it was unclear if there was enough to make soy sauce. If they were lucky enough to find more soybeans this year, they could even make better soybean paste and tofu, but hadn’t they found none?

So, the appearance of millet brightened her eyes, after all, she couldn’t remember how long it had been since she had tasted the sourness of vinegar.

To protect this patch of millet until the harvesting season, they needed to wait around another month, so she called over the beastmen in her family, along with the children, to pull weeds. They removed the grass and encircled the patch with branches, and also made many scarecrows to ward off birds.

In about seven or eight days, the rainy season arrived.

It was unexpected how fortunate this rainy season was. Just after discovering millet, they also found crops a bit different from it, like proso millet, sorghum, and buckwheat, scattered throughout the land. They weren’t grown in fields, but by the harvesting season this year, they could be stored as seeds for next year.

Meanwhile, Jin Han, who had been patrolling outside, brought her good news. He had found the soybeans she had mentioned. Similarly, they were widely dispersed, and it was clearly impossible for their family alone to clear all the weeds, especially since the plants grew scattered, not densely.

After much thought, Tangtang decided not to mess around. Gathering enough seeds in one year? How could that be possible? She would wait until they matured and then pick them carefully to bring home.

After marking the area, she no longer tended to it.

Pan Lin was the most cheerful during the rainy season, especially fond of rainy weather. Tangtang, whenever she had nothing to do, would draw pictures for him on the ground or on clay, mainly looking for spices like star anise, bay leaves, and cinnamon. Some he might not find even with the drawings, so she’d describe the scents. Snakes have an extremely keen sense of smell, and ever since Pan Lin took on this task, whenever he wandered around the jungle, he always brought back various types of samples. As long as they were non-toxic, he brought them home, sometimes not even sparing tree bark, since she had mentioned cinnamon bark, saying it came from some kind of cinnamon tree.

What was originally a needle-in-a-haystack approach turned out to be so effective. Who would have thought?

Thanks to this method, she found not only cardamom, cinnamon, Cumin, star anise, and bay leaves, but even strongly-flavored vegetables like coriander and chives. This was as exhilarating as discovering a new continent.

After all, isn’t the Beast World Continent rich in forests, and with so many forests, doesn’t that mean there’s an unimaginable variety of ingredients?

Tangtang believed she only knew some common spices, and as for the more high-end ones, for instance, truffles, she only knew they were black, round lumps. She had no idea what they tasted like or what exactly they looked like, let alone where to find them.

So, she searched for whatever the common folk ate.

Perhaps Pan Lin felt he hadn’t been much of a help during the Cold Season, so during the rainy season, he was particularly industrious. Aside from helping her find ingredients, he continuously hunted. During this process, he brought back live quails to her, which were as big as pigeons here and laid eggs nearly the size of wild chicken eggs.

Ever since the wild chickens at home started laying eggs, their family had more to eat. Just the simple dish of stewed egg was something the children never tired of.

During the idle time in the rainy season, they collected all the rice grains from the grain fruit and stored them in the space.

With this, not only the space, but even the cliffside areas were cleared. Fruit peels and the like took up too much room.

When Jin Han visited the regions teeming with grain fruit this year and found them as laden with fruit as in previous years, sugar was truly happy from the bottom of her heart.

Because it meant they had a wider variety of food to choose from, and this year, the Beastmen wised up and expressed their intentions to gather the grain fruit as well.

Sugar thought to herself that they only needed to take care of the patch by the sea; the others were free to harvest wherever they wanted. The sea was so far away, transporting the yield was difficult, so it was best left to them.

After all, with so many mouths to feed in her family, they needed to prepare more food, or there might not be enough to go around.

This year her vegetable garden was thriving exceptionally well. Every vegetable that she fancied eating, she had saved seeds from the year before, like chili, soybeans, cucumber, scallions, ginger, wild garlic, and various green vegetables (a rather mixed assortment). Although she had planted many, she would still subconsciously go foraging outside because, like wild grasses, these wild vegetables would spring to life again with just a breath of spring, abundant beyond belief.

The mushrooms she had dried and stored last year were all eaten up. Now, with the rainy season upon them, it was a time when various fungi competed to bloom. Not just her, but even the little cubs would follow her outside. Relying on their Beastmen instincts, they could quickly discern which species were edible and which were not, and they did so by the presence of animal droppings.

If a mushroom didn’t have any particular smell around it, then it was definitely not to be touched. If there were animal tracks and dung close by, it could be confirmed as an edible species. She was, after all, a member of the Diao Clan, so with a little thought, she understood this principle.

Although the household had many more members now, increasing the pressure, seeing them all going out to forage in groups was delightful.

12-year-old Lili called her Sister, and the other few naturally followed suit and called her sister too. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Lang Sen became Pan Lin and the others’ younger brother, and so Tom had to address her as elder aunt, making Lang Sen her brother-in-law. The delineation of their kinship was rather awkward.

Who let her be nominally the female of Pan Lin and the others while Lang Sen was Tom’s father? If she were addressed as sister, the familial order would be a mess.

The little ones were all very sensible, and Pan Lin and the others taught them as if they were their own, especially Pan Lin, who had experience as a wanderer. Hence, he was extremely strict with them. Despite their young age, they were already learning how to identify food and distinguish the scents of different animals.

Black Falcon and Ling Yue’s flight training was taught by Jin Han. Although Ling Yue was still at the stage of flapping his wings since he was only one year old, he was quite adept at even this, looking every bit the part. The five-year-old Black Falcon already had a few flying experiences, albeit at a low altitude, but with diligent practice, he would soon be soaring into the higher skies.

In the animal world, they have their own survival rules. As a female, she didn’t understand these things, as females were generally protected and raised by the males, whether it was the soul from her previous life or the survival environment of this one. She couldn’t teach them anything except for how to recognize various foods. If they came across any she knew, they would bring them back to her, haha, she was particularly persistent about this and wouldn’t miss any chance for them to go foraging.

Helpless as she was, with the abundance of resources in the Beast World forest, if she didn’t make good use of them, when and where could she ever live a normal human life?

She even figured out how to make a loom, but the original material for the cloth, cotton, remained elusive. Without cotton, she would have to keep wearing beast skins, regardless of comfort. And she was fortunate that her elder aunt (menstruation) hadn’t set in yet. What would she do when that time came? The very thought gave her a headache.