That day, as Shen Yunfang's firewood stack was almost complete, she stopped running to the Pine Forest and instead sat beside the sheep, attentively combing through each animal's wool, collecting any that accidentally fell off...
"Ai," she murmured, holding her meager Cotton Coupons, suspecting that after making one thick cotton-padded jacket, there wouldn't be much left. She knew how cold the winters in the Northeast could be, risking frostbitten hands and feet, and had heard once frostbite set in, it wasn't easy to heal. She really wanted to make herself a pair of gloves and insoles, having heard that woolen products were very warm...
Yunfang glanced at the goat standing in front of her, thinking with such a convenient opportunity at hand, she must make use of it, hoping someone would understand.
Ergouzi and two others had just climbed onto the hillside and witnessed this very scene.
"Do you think she's sick or something, picking lice off that goat, huh?" Ergouzi whispered, looking in Yunfang's direction.
"What are you thinking? Do sheep even get lice? If anything, it's fleas," Zhuzi seriously corrected his friend's mistake, lamenting how terrible it was to lack knowledge.
"Aw, forget whether it's lice or fleas, don't you think she's sick?" Ergouzi was now desperate for confirmation.
Indeed, at first glance, Yunfang's actions were puzzling. A skinny girl sat alone on the grassland surrounded by a flock of sheep, her expression peaceful as she gently smoothed the wool of the goat in front of her. Her tender manner made one shiver just looking at her.
The group of kids shuddered simultaneously.
"Let's hurry on by. My mom said, since she lives alone, she's surely developed some problems," Gousheng said, tapping his head to suggest the woman was crazy.
"Uh-huh," Shuanzi agreed.
"How about we not go to the woods for firewood today?" Gousheng, the timid one, became apprehensive after hearing his friends, fearing the woman might block the mountain path during one of her spells.
"Tch, scaredy-cat," Ergouzi scoffed. He wasn't afraid; such a frail woman posed no threat, and even a bunch of them he could handle easily, "Come on, if she dares to trouble us, watch me take her down."
After proclaiming this, Ergouzi shouldered his big sickle and strutted past Yunfang, giving her a sideways glance before he left.
Following behind, Zhuzi and Gousheng, not daring to dawdle under Yunfang's watchful eye, stumbled over each other to catch up.
Yunfang paused her work, watching the rambunctious children pass her by, and sighed inwardly. These kids were only about ten years old, yet carried big sickles as if they were toys. It was clear she needed to eat more, perhaps then she'd grow stronger.
Once they were out of sight, she resumed her task, pulling gently at the sheep's wool. She certainly couldn't commit Aunt Baiyun's mistake of focusing on just one animal; she alternated between the dozen sheep she had.
"There, there, it doesn't hurt, let sister rub it," Yunfang soothed the goat that flinched as she plucked at its wool.
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There was no other way, she discovered that the outer layer of the goat's wool was coarse and hard, and it looked dirty. Underneath, the clean, soft hair was hidden, so naturally, she picked the good stuff to pluck.
However, Shen Yunfang's technique might not have been very professional, and the goats were unwilling to cooperate. After being plucked a few times, they tried to run away, but she'd have none of that, so she kept plucking while soothing them, which probably looked a bit odd to anyone watching.
That evening, after cooking a simple meal, she went busy herself in the west room again.
She first reignited the fire in the kang's stove, then scooped up a ladle of water to water the chives on the floor. She didn't know if it was just her imagination, but after just one day, the chives seemed to have grown a bit.
After checking on the chives, she went straight to the east room to fetch the small jar she always carried and cared for. Her little darlings also needed to be moved to this room to keep warm; otherwise, they wouldn't want to breed.
Keeping earthworms at home required a suitable habitat. Shen Yunfang had spent the whole day looking for one without success. In the end, with no other options, she moved a wide-mouthed jar used for pickling vegetables from the cellar to use temporarily.
Although this type of jar had a wide mouth, it was quite deep, which wasn't ideal for breeding earthworms. She thought she'd make do with it for now and replace it with wooden boxes she'd nail together in the future when conditions improved.
She started by laying some soil from the space at the bottom of the jar, then remembered that there was sun-dried cow manure outside. She quickly got up, went to the courtyard to collect a few pieces without any disgust, and brought them back to the house, dropping the cow dung straight into the jar. Then she found a thick stick and smashed the dung into pieces, much like crushing garlic.
Once the dung was sufficiently broken up, she vigorously stirred it with the stick to ensure the cow dung was well mixed with the soil.
Putting down the stick, she picked up the small jar that originally contained earthworms, turned it upside down, and poured its contents, both soil and earthworms, into the larger jar.
Earthworms are terrestrial annelids without a backbone, living in the soil, hiding during the day, and coming out at night. They feed on livestock manure, organic waste, and litter, swallowing it along with the soil, and also consume stems, leaves, and plant fragments. In short, earthworms are easy to raise and very useful creatures.
An important point is that earthworms have particularly strong reproductive capabilities.
Earthworms are hermaphrodites. In nature, they typically reproduce from August to October, but if the conditions allow – meaning the soil temperature and moisture are suitable, and there's plenty of food – they can breed all year round.
Once earthworms mature, they copulate, and soon after, they produce offsprings. Usually, within seven to eight days, they begin laying eggs. From each grain-of-rice-sized egg, three to five baby earthworms can hatch.
The most impressive part is that once an adult earthworm finds a mate, it can lay eggs continuously, and these eggs can hatch within about half a month, and then, after just over forty days, the baby earthworms grow up and start laying eggs themselves. This cycle continues, and the initial few earthworms, with careful breeding, can produce tens of thousands of offspring within a few months.
In her past life, her parents had established a breeding farm by using earthworms as feed, which did not only consist of chickens but also ducks, geese, pigs, and so on.
She was always helping out with the farm, so she knew exactly how to raise and feed them. Now that she had been reborn in this era with nothing, she believed she could do well with the experience from her previous life.
She planned to raise several chicks next spring. If they were hens, she would keep them to lay eggs; if they were roosters, she would raise them and then kill them for meat.
No matter how many plans she had, ultimately, solving the problem of feed was the first priority, so it was essential for her to breed earthworms now and on a large scale.
Of course, if she wanted to breed quickly, the breeding stock had to be large, so she decided to dig some up from the production team's pigsty every day before the ground froze over.
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