Apocalyptic Tundra Age

"The third kiln is out again. When will the stone come to take away?"

At the cave entrance, the village head greeted Xu Zhonglei.

"Wait a while, the two of us just came back from digging, and we will go back and pull the cart later!" Xu Zhonglei and Cheng Yuming unloaded the goods on their hands and hurried home, and went back to get the small cart for moving bricks.

The time is spent in this kind of busyness.

Bricks are fired one kiln after another, and a large pile of charcoal is getting less and less.In the end, Xu Zhonglei used the kaolin that was carefully selected, and Uncle Yang Tie fired a kiln of pottery, and a month had passed.

The days are getting longer and longer, and the sun has moved back to the Tropic of Cancer.

But the temperature did not go up as quickly as the villagers expected, but hovered around 15 degrees half dead, and even dropped below 10 degrees, so cold that the old farmers in the village cried while hugging the potato leaves in the field.

Only cabbage, which is relatively cold-resistant, grows decently, with a large area of ​​bright green, and loves it very much.

***

After Xu Zhonglei's brick and tile order business was completed, the villagers seemed to be enlightened.It is no longer a salty fish to put the village entrance every day to hope for rescue, and honestly engage in infrastructure construction.

The people in the village became hot and alive.Those who made great efforts to build and burn bricks; those who went to several hills to cut firewood and came back to save charcoal; and those who copied Xu Zhiping's greenhouse and copied a small vegetable greenhouse behind the house;

Anyway, as long as Xu Zhonglei does what he does, there will be a lot of people following him to learn;

After all, it is not like before. In the past, rich people were worthy of fawning over, but now they are strong people who can eat enough. Xu Zhonglei is that strongman worth learning from.

Besides, the time of rural people is not so valuable after the crops grow. It is not difficult to spend a morning or afternoon cutting firewood and digging soil.

However, the asking price of the village chief's big kiln has become lower. It only costs three catties of millet to burn a kiln, so the price has dropped several times. Some people still think it is expensive and plan to build their own kiln.

But not everyone has the work experience of Uncle Tie. Without that technology, the villagers can barely burn carbon by themselves. They don’t even know which direction to open the furnace mouth when they want to burn bricks. After burning mountains twice in a row, there is this kiln. The people in the village with this idea spend food honestly, so don't worry!

The two large kilns work day and night, the towering chimneys exude green smoke day and night, and the small greenhouse brick sheds in the village.After covering up the two, the village head has been a blessing in disguise for more than a month, and his life is more nourishing than when his nephew was around. He even looked a lot better when he saw Fan Yu.

***

"Hey, brother, it's the first time I feel that the rural people are really creative!" Cheng Yuming couldn't help but sigh with Xu Zhonglei while rubbing the mud.

"how?"

Cheng Yuming: "It's no longer popular in the village to ask Uncle Tie to burn bricks to build a house. They have changed their way of thinking."

Xu Zhonglei: "What the hell? What are you doing?"

Cheng Yuming: "They asked Uncle Tie to burn the kind of deep, wide-mouthed pottery pot with many holes in it for growing vegetables. It is said to be better than the greenhouse made of bricks, and it is more affordable! You can move it out to bask in the sun, and you can also grow vegetables in it. There is a kang burning in the house."

Xu Zhonglei drew a tall pottery basin in his mind, always feeling that there should be many ways to play with this thing.He put down the brick in his hand and slapped his thigh: "Oh, this is really a good thing!"

He had already started worrying about where to collect his [-] Chinese cabbages. The cellar has limited capacity, and potatoes need to be stored. Isn't this a ready-made answer?Pots and vats are almost the same anyway. To make Northeast sauerkraut, it is perfect to put it in a large vat!

"Hurry up, Xiaocheng, when this house is built, we'll go out and dig kaolin. Ask Uncle Tie to burn twenty or thirty large pots for it, and then put them all under the fence. What's it called? Traditional farmhouse in Northeast China !"

Xu Zhonglei made a plan on his own, leaving Cheng Yuming in a daze.

What's the new idea here?Cheng Yuming, the second monk Zhang Zhang -- couldn't touch his hair, and asked cautiously:

"Brother, I have no objection to digging the soil. Are we still short of food?"

Xu Zhonglei looked at him with an expression of "how did I get to know such a mentally handicapped person who can't keep up with me at all", who couldn't explain anything but could only tolerate it, and explained with hatred:

"Big pot, if you make it deeper and make a garden, isn't it a perfect sauerkraut tank? You need to open your mind a little more. In addition to growing vegetables and potatoes that can be done in the village, think again, huh? Pickle sauerkraut, make miso, brew soy sauce, where will the hundreds of Chinese cabbages in our vegetable garden go soon? 嚱!"

The modal particle at the end of Xu Zhonglei fully expressed his helplessness.

Cheng Yuming was going to laugh at this man's reasonable reasoning:

Is there any native southerner who thinks of pickling sauerkraut as soon as he sees a big vat?You never pickle your own food in his house, okay? !Even the coldest weather in Guang'an is [-] degrees, so there is no need to worry about stocking up in winter, okay? !

He wanted to complain 380 degrees back, and let his elder brother pay for his disdainful tone.

But Cheng Yuming soon calmed down.

He changed his mind and made up his mind: You scolded me first, right?Then if I go a little too far at night, there is no problem, right?

This side has the upper hand, and the other side has made up for it. This wave is not a loss.

Those who do attack should be magnanimous and generous!

He stopped being awkward, and asked courteously: "Brother, do you still want to eat spring bamboo shoots tonight?"

Xu Zhonglei didn't feel at all how undercurrents and magnificent waves were surging in the hearts of the people who were working honestly behind.

Instead, I thought about it seriously and ordered: "I don't want to eat bamboo shoots at night, I want to eat bracken, cold dandelion, kukuding, mustard greens, as well as pork, braised pork, beef, grilled chicken, KFC chicken... Eat meat."

Cheng Yuming smiled dotingly, and he replied:

"The meat has long been gone, and the refrigerator is empty. Where is the pork? Unless I cut the meat for you to eat. Except for the meat, we can eat it, and we don't have to go up the mountain to pick it. Sister Liu sent a basket here. We will have it tonight. Eat cold wild vegetables."

Xu Zhonglei was stunned, this matter was wrong, very wrong, he stopped the movement of his hands, and said seriously:

"How can I ask for other people's things? Now there are some wild vegetables growing outside. Sister Liu and the others rely on eating these things to save a few mouthfuls of food. In this way, when it gets dark, I will send some rice to others. It is not easy for their family. It's not easy to take advantage of others. Especially now, it's fine to call Brother Zhiping to help look after the house, and you can't take other people's food..."

Cheng Yuming rolled his eyes and said, "You think I'm stupid? Wrap some rice in a cloth and give it to others, don't worry."

Sister Liu had half of her leg amputated, but she couldn't stay idle. Recently, she ran around the village and the mountains with a pair of crutches fixed to her hands with wire.

Yinyin, the youngest daughter of her family, followed with a bench in her arms. Her mother was going to pick wild vegetables and dig the soil.Let Sister Liu sit, and Yinyin will help to pick wild vegetables. The mother and daughter have been busy all day, and the harvest is not bad, and they also sent a basket to Xu Zhonglei's house.

When Cheng Yuming went out, he saw mother and daughter on the side of the road, busy picking wild vegetables and digging herbal tea, so when Sister Liu came to deliver wild vegetables, Cheng Yuming didn't want to refuse, but sent half a basket of rice stuffed instead To sister Liu.

I really thought that Cheng Yuming couldn't do it, anyway, he is also a person who has messed with the system, so Cheng Yuming decided to write another stroke of Xu Zhonglei in his small notebook, and pay it back slowly!

In the countryside in spring, everything is flourishing, there are not too few wild vegetables, especially spring bamboo shoots.

There is a large bamboo forest next to the wall of his house. Now all kinds of small bamboo shoots are emerging from the ground. The tender bamboo shoots and the white and fat bamboo shoots are simply unspeakable temptations. Xu Zhonglei and Cheng Yuming I spent half a day free, carrying a hoe from east to west, and searched the young bamboo shoots in the small bamboo forest, filling two big baskets, big and small.

The fresh bamboo shoots are not peeled for fear of spoilage, and they are placed in the kang-burning boiler room waiting for people to eat.Most of the fresh bamboo shoots have been processed neatly, and after passing through one side of the hot water, they turned yellow. Cheng Yuming tore the bamboo shoots one by one, and dried them on three bamboo sieves.

When the two of them were building the house, the small wind blew a half-dried bamboo shoot smell from time to time.

Bamboo shoot soup, fried fresh bamboo shoots, stewed bamboo shoots, scrambled eggs with spring bamboo shoots, small bamboo shoots mixed with spicy sauce... or as a main dish, or as a side dish of Wang Gang hot pot base spicy hot pot, Xu Zhonglei has eaten it all over the past few days. Cheng Yuming's practice almost emptied out...

No matter how much Cheng Yuming racked his brains to play with more than a dozen seasonings in the kitchen, anyway, when the house was built, the two of them were very satisfied with every meal, and even the lack of meat was no longer an irritable thing things.

***

"Seeing that I don't have a concubine, this is what I created for the two of us!" Cheng Yuming shouted majesticly with his hands raised and his neck raised.

"You can pull it down. Hurry up and set fire to the vegetable cellar. We'll put lime on it and put up a wooden frame." Xu Zhonglei pointed coldly at the door of the firewood house, signaling him to go to work quickly.

Xu Zhonglei was also amazed at how quickly the two moved, and within half a month, another vegetable house was built.

In view of the heavy snowfall in March, which was so fierce that the sun was blocked out the next day, snow removal was really exhausting. In order not to ask for trouble, Xu Zhonglei specially designed a sharp and exaggerated roof for the vegetable house this time. Measured from the side, the opening angle is [-] degrees.The roof is higher than the body of the house.

In order to prevent his new vegetable house from being top-heavy and falling down when the wind blows, Xu Zhonglei added two more beams on both sides of the eaves.

Building down the two beams, the eaves become a little bit longer, and the distance from the ground is less than one meter.

Xu Zhonglei is very satisfied with such an ingenious design by virtue of his professional instincts. This kind of eaves that are quickly attached to the ground can minimize the resistance of wind and snow and increase the safety by 100%!

It's the final appearance, which always makes Xu Zhonglei feel a little familiar... What does it look like?

Cheng Yuming also felt that his new house looked familiar. He walked back and forth, up and down, left and right, and asked Xu Zhonglei uncertainly:

"Brother, do you remember that there is a picture in our junior high school history book, what is it called...the restored picture of the Hemudu cultural house, yes, it is a short and fat straw house! The house where the Hemudu people lived, oh shit, it’s the same as this A house! Model! One! Like!"

Before Xu Zhonglei had time to think carefully about Cheng Yuming's meaning, he had already blown the rainbow skin:

"Brother, your brain is so smart and so smart. This house is back to the basics and inherits the past and the future! I didn't even know that one day I could see a textbook-level art reproduction, it's amazing!"

Xu Zhonglei recalled that "textbook-level art reproduction" reproduced a grass house in a primitive society?He has studied for so many years, dare not enter his mind at all, right?Fuck you, swearing is still swearing without profanity!