She Only Cares About Cultivation-Chapter 746: [735] Beast World Farming 45 (1 update)_2
Sweet potatoes, potatoes, millet, broomcorn millet, sorghum, soybeans, buckwheat, and others were all sown, and it took just three days in total.
Besides these crops, she also scattered seeds of chilies, cucumbers, and scallion, ginger, garlic. Because she planned to attend the fair organized by Wanshou City this year, she planted more to sell when the time came.
The second group of laborers nearly finished their seven-day term, and she did not account for the remaining time.
The third batch of laborers was tasked with cutting wood. She had nearly ten acres of land fenced off with bamboo and sturdy vines, interwoven with thorny plants to protect it from beasts and small animals. After all, plants in the Beast World were not easy to grow, so she had to safeguard them.
The three batches of laborers, each with their duties, of course, she also contributed many desirable items. Fortunately, the outcome was pleasing. Within a week before the rainy season began, all the plants, including those in her yard, were sown and watered one more time before she left.
This year, Pan Lin woke up two months later than the last. He only awoke just before the start of the rainy season and then joined the beastmen at home in organizing the drying of grain fruits, peeling the outer shell, and storing the grains inside the containers. When the weather was fine, Tangtang took them out to dry.
Beyond that, there were stinky fruits. After the earth thawed, the laborer beastmen were busy with the fields while the four of them went out daily in search of stinky fruits. Now, the courtyard was piled full of them, and whenever they had time, they sat there, either peeling the grain fruits or the stinky fruits.
The peeled skins were not discarded but dried. The grain fruit powder could be mixed with wild greens as excellent fodder for the livestock.
Eight days later, the rain came, just as the crops in the field began to sprout, and the previously poured water had dried up—this rain arrived right on time.
Although the Beast World’s rainy season brought plenty of rain, there was also ample sunshine, so she wasn’t worried that the abundant water would rot the sown crops.
The crops in the Beast World had rather hardy survival capabilities. The stinky fruit was proof of that, as even when frozen under thick snow, they did not rot once the snow melted. Naturally, this also had to do with their sufficiently hard shell.
Lili now revolved around her most of the time, while the little ones were left to the 5-year-old Black Falcon, as she was too busy with numerous tasks.
The beastmen also needed to go hunting, only Lang Sen stayed behind. But he had to care for the livestock moved out from the caves, peel fruits, dry them, grind them into powder—many miscellaneous tasks awaited him.
Tangtang and Lili, besides preparing three meals a day, also had to wash cotton. This was a physically demanding job, but fortunately, they set up the workshop by the stream. They washed the cotton on the bank while hanging it on racks to control the drying, repeatedly rinsing it with flowing water until it no longer smelled pungent.
Every day the beastmen went hunting and would bring back the fragrant, nontoxic flowers Tangtang requested. Flowers of the same color were put into a stone mortar, crushed to extract juice, and once enough was collected, they soaked the cotton in it. The longer the soaking for desired color durability. They couldn’t use fruit colors until autumn, so they relied on fresh flowers for now.
After dyeing, the cotton was dried and then fluffed, beaten to remove toughness before being wound into rolls. Placed on a spinning wheel, they could spin out colored cotton yarn, which they would later weave into cloth.
Busy making clothes every day, she and Lili had no time to gather wild greens, so they asked other females to help, offering milk, sheep milk, and eggs from home as a return favor.
After spring, there was a ceaseless supply of eggs. Unable to consume them all, they bartered the surplus for fresh wild vegetables, allowing them to receive the veggies they wanted without leaving home.
Last year’s cabbages, green vegetables, wild vegetables, whether in the space or the cellar, still had leftovers. With the season passed, she decided to steam and sun them thrice, turning them into dried plums. Dried plums in storage jars were an excellent accompaniment for rice when cooked with cured meat—a delightful pleasure.
Making dried plums was tedious, so she had not had the chance until now. With new vegetables coming in, she managed to deal with the previous year’s stock by chopping and processing all at once. The more complex the process, the more fragrant the result.
There were many unknown varieties of green vegetables among the wild ones, all suitable for making dried plums. Thus, she wasn’t too demanding about them.
As long as they were edible and non-toxic, they could be used as green vegetables. After all, resources in the Beast World were scarce.
After drying, the stinky fruits were separated into rind and flesh. The rind could be burned, containing some oil and good for fuel. The flesh, full of fibrous tissue, was beaten half-dry to flatten the fibers completely before being strung up to dry. Once dried, they were pressed with stones in running water every few days, fetched out, hammered in a stone mortar until it became cottony wood pulp. Then, they poured the pulp into a stone basin mixed with water for stirring.
Using a specially made bamboo sieve, she scooped from below. A layer of pulp spread over the sieve and dried a little to set. Then, they pasted the film-like material onto a wall for the sun’s rays. With sufficient sunlight, it would dry in half a day. Peeled off, flattened, compressed, and smoothed by hand, it became a type of handmade paper, soft but coarser than that of her former world.
