Li Pan returned home to work, Zhao Quan and Qin Jianzhong had straightened the land beautifully, their work efficient and meticulous, even picking out the grassroots and stones, and digging a long canal for her.
She prioritized the most important tasks first, planning to make sugar from the Stevia and sell it. This would reinvigorate the farm's finances, giving her some disposable cash to buy other farming tools.
Back in the kitchen, she checked the clay stove, which was almost dry and ready for use that afternoon.
Sitting at the door, she began by picking out the weeds from the Stevia, just needing to wash and cut the herb into small segments for simplicity, not precision. Then, she could put it in a large pot, add water, and start simmering.
After lighting the fires under both stoves and setting the pots on, she would be ready to begin simmering. With the sugar cooking in the pots, she watched the flames beside the stoves, burning the weeds inside the firebox. Since she needed ash anyway, there was no need to go out for firewood separately.
With the stove burning, she continued to pick out the weeds from the Stevia, washing and chopping it clean.
As the syrup simmered, she had to keep stirring with a stick to prevent burning at the bottom, until it was nearly done. Then she could filter out the dregs and continue to simmer until it reached the right thickness. By the afternoon, she would have a barrel full of syrup, which after cooling could be cut into blocks.
In the afternoon, when Xue Dong came back for a meal, Li Pan had timed the preparation just right.
"You don't need to work on the rest, just cut it and set it aside. I'll find someone to pick it up when I return, and it might be worth some money," she said.
The Stevia didn't produce as much sugar as sugarcane or beets, but it was still sweet, and the price remained good.
"What can we exchange this for?" Xue Dong asked.
"I want to get a signal tower, because the signal is too weak here. We almost have no reception; I couldn't make a call all through yesterday. If there's danger, we wouldn't even have time to call for help," she explained.
Xue Dong was the first to consider the safety issue due to the poor signal.
"I'm thinking about getting some mechanical farming tools, as well as a metal frame for growing vegetables. I plan to use vertical cultivation and intercropping, traditional techniques," she said.
This approach would yield high productivity without wasting land. However, it required pots, which she could make from clay – they were ugly, but functional, breathable, and she had been using them for two years already.
Over the years, whenever she had free time, she went to the library to read, and her knowledge had greatly increased. Reading at the library cost ten dollars a month, and these days, people couldn't even afford food, let alone books.
But Li Pan didn't agree with this sentiment. She believed that knowledge changes the world and that technology strengthens a nation – this was definitely true. Her farming success wasn't just due to her superpowers but also to knowledge. Besides the restricted sections, she had browsed through almost all of the publicly accessible books in the library.
Her superpower also enhanced her physical qualities, granting her a photographic memory. Many of her skills were developed through learning and experimentation.
She successfully tested vertical cultivation and intercropping in the small yard she rented at the base. When she left, she gave most of the frames and clay pots to the landlord, who was Xue Dong's comrade-in-arms.
The landlord was happy to keep these items, claiming he could raise the rent for the next tenants – apparently, there were people willing to pay as much as eight hundred.
"Okay, think carefully if you need anything else. Make a list for me, and I'll bring it all to you in one go. I'm planning to get some cement and sand for building a house," Xue Dong stated.
"Brother, we also need a fireplace, an iron one, for winter use. We can build one with stone and red bricks in the living room, but the second floor might need a smaller one. Buy a few," she added.
"Sure, write it all down."
"And don't forget the pest repeller sonar, wire mesh, solar panels, portable power sources. Ouch, we're lacking quite a few things."
"I'll exchange for the expensive items first; we can slowly get the cheaper, smaller things later," he responded.
After the discussion, Xue Dong continued to clear the land and harvest the Stevia.
Li Pan stopped simmering as well; she ran out of storage containers. All pots and buckets were in use; she had nothing left to hold anything else. She set it aside and began to chop potatoes for planting, using the wood ash that was available.
Xue Dong didn't return until twelve at night, having cleared a few more acres. Now, with more than twenty acres temporarily sufficient, he worried about managing it all at once, as the grass would keep growing back as soon as it was cut.
Early in the morning, Li Pan got up and began to sprout seeds in clay pots.
She started with rice by selecting high-quality seeds that were disease resistant and had robust anti-adversity characteristics. This step was crucial and could not be skipped, as it impacted the future yield.
After selecting them, they were sun-dried for two days to promote the germination rate.
Today, the seeds were sunned and needed to be soaked for another two or three days before they could be used for seedling cultivation.
Leave that aside for now; there are other tasks at hand.
She took two large baskets and a carrying pole to dig up some soil, thinking of bringing back some red earth. She planned to make some bricks in the evening and build a chicken coop later. Noticing that the wild chickens were not decreasing in number and there were plenty of eggs, she wondered if she could raise and hatch a brood of chicks herself. In the future, there would be chicken meat to eat, and the chicken manure could also be used as fertilizer.
There was red earth on the hillside; she thought she might as well see if there were other things on the mountain.
The trees on the hillside were very tall. Li Pan used her superpower to scan each one individually. Fortunately, there were no abnormal trees and no poison.
After making a round in the vicinity and digging up some soil, she returned. There were quite a few tasks these days, so she couldn't go too far. She'd have to wait until she had some free time to explore further.
After several trips, she had dug up quite a lot of earth and brought it back. Li Pan then went to cut grass in the field to take care of the Stevia first, and then move on to other matters, feeling more at ease.
She had already harvested a lot of Stevia, which was piled to the side for drying. She burned some weeds and kept the ash, accumulating it in a clay pot to eventually spread on the fields.
She also imbued each of the dozen or so clay pots she brought back with her superpower. They contained chili peppers, scallions, and leafy greens. She continued to cut the potatoes into pieces, coating each slice with ash before placing them in a cool spot to sprout, ready to be planted later on.
Xue Dong returned in the evening, and they had a simple dinner. The steamed buns were already finished, and they hadn't made more dough yet, so tonight they ate cornmeal pancakes, scrambled wild chicken eggs with scallions, pickled cabbage, snow vegetables, boiled millet porridge, and half a chicken stewed with potatoes.
"I'll head back to the base early tomorrow morning. You stay here and pay attention to safety. I'll be back quickly," he said.
"Okay, how will you carry all these things?" she asked.
"Isn't there a small cart? I'll pull it along on foot," he replied.
Marching twenty miles a day was nothing to him.
"Alright then, I'll prepare the food for you," she said.
"When I come back, I'll buy a freezer for you so we can stock up on some meat. I plan to head back within a month," he said.
Xue Dong had explained all his plans.
"Sure, don't worry. I'll take care of the farm here," she said.
"Leave what you can't handle for when I return. Just make sure to harvest the Stevia. Don't go up the mountain; I'm afraid it hasn't been cleared properly, and in case you encounter a Mutant Beast, it would be too much for you to handle. Stop digging up soil on the mountain; we'll burn bricks when I return," he advised.
Xue Dong, like an old mother hen, went over each detail again.
"I got it," she said.
In the early morning before dawn, Li Pan got up to cook for Xue Dong. Without a refrigerator, every meal had to be freshly made. No leftovers were ever kept; everything was eaten up. In these times, there wasn't much luxury to go around. People mostly ate grains because many items, such as sugar, were too expensive and unaffordable. Li Pan also didn't have much to spare and would rather buy essential supplies like vegetable seeds, so they could grow vegetables and have a constant supply of food.
She was already living more comfortably than others. At the very least, she had vegetables and grains to eat, consumed less mixed-grain buns, and could even afford some finer grains. There were many other families who were suffering even more than she was.
She made a stack of soft rolled dough pancakes, filled a large bottle with sugar water, and loaded up the cart for him, including the Stevia. The boiled sugar could also be cut into pieces and carried away in cloth bags. Moreover, just yesterday, Xue Dong had caught several wild chickens to take with him.
After eating, Xue Dong set off for the base.
Li Pan continued working the land, marking off the areas where the grass had been cut to prepare for plowing.
Xue Dong had already come ahead of time to scout the valley, turning it inside out once and had drawn a map for her.
They had planned in advance where to plant grains and vegetables, where to dig ditches and canals, what crops they wanted to grow in the later stages, how much space to reserve, and that the house should be built on a higher point on the hillside to avoid flooding from rain. All these plans needed to be made in advance; otherwise, it would be foolish and wasteful to redo the work if it was not done right the first time.