Witty Wife, Better Life

In the following days, Shen Zhiwen had no time to enter the mountains to collect firewood, so Shen Yunfang was busy gathering potatoes and radishes at home in the mornings and evenings. During the workday, she would herd the sheep into the mountains. Since she was still unfamiliar with the mountain area and didn't dare to roam around freely, she would always lead the sheep to the Pine Forest, letting them graze on their own while she gathered pine branches. Of course, she couldn't possibly carry them down the mountain one basket at a time; that would be too inefficient. Instead, after gathering the pine branches, she would directly store them in her space.

Herding sheep up the mountain was not easy, so she didn't go home for lunch anymore. With her space at hand, eating in the pine forest was like having a picnic.

Only when evening approached and it was almost time to finish work did she herd the sheep back down the mountain. After sending the sheep back, she would close the courtyard gate and spread the pine branches from her space in the yard to let the wind dry them. The next morning, before leaving the house, she would collect them back into her space.

If suddenly there was a lot more firewood at home, people might become suspicious, so Yunfang decided not to expose the pine branches to daylight anymore. If she needed them in winter, she would simply take them directly from her space.

After clearing a certain area of pine branches, Yunfang discovered something good—the dark soil on the ground mixed with decayed leaves—natural nutrient soil perfect for planting crops with amazing fertility.

Therefore, in addition to collecting firewood on the mountain each day, Yunfang took on another task: shoveling soil with an iron spade.

A few days later, Yunfang noticed that her space was really becoming a mess, with a pile of firewood on the left side, a mound of soil on the right, and some cow dung also collected in her space. Seeing all these things mixed with food, even her mild obsession with cleanliness, which had almost been cured in recent days, couldn't stand it.

What to do? One evening, after stepping into her space and seeing the dismal sight, she had a sudden idea. If only she could divide the whole space into several small compartments, she could store different things in each without them interfering with one another. Surprisingly, the space really worked with her, and as soon as she had this thought in her mind, the space automatically divided itself into small compartments like dormitory rooms, just as she had imagined.

Each compartment was about ten square meters, and although there was a lot of firewood, storing it in these compartments took advantage of the space's seemingly limitless height, developing substantially upwards.

Yunfang then neatly organized everything in her space by category.

With firewood available, a plan in place, and materials on hand, Yunfang took advantage of her free time to tidy up the west room at home.

First, she removed all the junk from the room. Besides the big kang bed, there was nothing else left in the west room.

She planned to turn the west room into a warm room where she could raise earthworms during winter. She believed that after a winter of breeding, the earthworms would have grown substantially. In spring, she would raise more chicks, catch a couple of piglets, and the earthworms could serve as feed.

Using earthworms as feed for livestock was nutritious but could easily lead to diseases. If not managed properly, it could result in total loss. Yunfang's parents had suffered such a loss in her previous life, but they eventually learned from their failures, mastered the technique, and succeeded in using earthworms to fatten pigs and keep hens laying eggs prolifically. Yunfang had participated in this, so she knew the technique as well.

In this era, feeding livestock with grain was too extravagant and impractical, so using earthworms as feed was the best solution Yunfang could think of. No one seemed to forbid raising a large number of livestock, nor were there any rules against raising earthworms. Therefore, she planned to raise a surplus of earthworms at home quietly, which would likely go unnoticed. Moreover, earthworms were easy to maintain without using grain, which was ideal for the times.

Additionally, she found a row of chives in the backyard. She thought about growing chives inside the house during winter, similar to growing vegetables on balconies later on. Whether for sale or personal consumption, it would be nice. Chives are easy to grow, fast-growing, and as long as they are well-fertilized, they can be harvested every half month or so.

Originally, she intended to build wooden boxes to grow the vegetables and earthworms, but after searching high and low at home, she couldn't find enough wooden planks to make boxes, nor nails or a hammer. In short, wooden boxes were out of the question for the time being.

But a living person can't let themselves be stifled by urine; even without wooden boxes, her plan had to proceed.

Without wooden boxes, she would simply spread soil on the ground and plant the chives directly on the floor indoors.

Of course, she needed to find a container for the earthworms to be raised on the kang.

Fortunately, chives are cold-tolerant, growing best between 15 to 25 degrees Celsius, while earthworms need temperatures between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius to breed actively. Without separate rooms for both, she had to make do with keeping them together.

The only way to keep the room warm was to heat the kang, which would definitely be warmer on top than the ground was. This arrangement perfectly solved both issues.

The house had been uninhabited for a long time, and who knows how much ash from plants and trees had accumulated in the kang stove, Shen Yunfang scooped out the ashes bit by bit, and then grabbed a handful of pine branches to start a fire.

Before long, smoke followed the path of the kang and made its way inside, Shen Yunfang's heart settled, thankfully, the kang was still good for burning.

She added a few more branches and then left it alone, took off her shoes to get on the kang, and started cleaning up the windows.

The windows of this house were originally small and had been pasted over with newspaper, she began to peel off the paper and then took out some plastic sheeting from the basket.

These pieces of plastic had been used for something in the past and were quite old, some even a little damaged.

After measuring, she found a piece of plastic that was about the size of the window and nailed it to the window frame. There was a small hole at the bottom of this piece of plastic, Yunfang took a branch still sparkling with embers from the kang, found a small piece of plastic, held the branch close to the plastic until the surface showed signs of melting, and quickly pasted the piece she held onto the window, thus covering the hole.

Perfect.

That night, Yunfang spread the soil she had gathered from Pine Forest in the western room, and since the soil was already fertile, she did not add more fertilizer.

By the time she had finished, night had fallen completely. As the house had not had a fire lit in a long time and needed to warm up overnight, Yunfang stuffed the kang stove with firewood, sprinkled some water throughout the house, and then went to sleep in the next room.

The next day, she woke up early. After settling breakfast in the large pot, she grabbed a shovel and went to the backyard to dig out the chive roots.

After shaking the soil off the roots in the field and loading them into a basket, she carried them to the western room.

The porridge in the pot was also ready. Yunfang washed her hands, removed the fire from the stove, ladled a bowl of the coarse porridge, and started eating it with a small dish of pickles.

After breakfast, with a quick wash, she dived back into the western room to get busy.

During the preceding night, she had intentionally got up twice to add firewood to the kang to keep the room heating, and each time she also sprinkled some water. After a whole night had passed, when she pushed open the door to the western room, a wave of moist and stuffy air hit her right in the face.

Without a thermometer or hygrometer, entirely based on feel, she thought it was about time to plant.

Dragging the basket filled with chive roots inside, she dumped them onto the ground and started arranging them.

Chives are a perennial plant, and once planted, as long as the roots survive, they will continue to grow for several years as long as they're well fertilized, which is why almost every family in the village grew chives—they were easy to tend to and produced reliably.

Yunfang now wanted to plant the chive roots directly for quicker results.

She separated each clump of roots, then pinched off any overly long roots, leaving about four fingers above and two below. Then, she put six or seven roots together, planting the small bunches into the soil spread on the ground.

It didn't take long before all the chive roots were planted. Since she didn't have many chive roots to begin with, not all of the spread-out soil was used up. After giving it some thought, she went to find some lettuce seeds, tossed them casually by hand, scattering them around.

Hopefully, these lettuce would grow, so her winter vegetables wouldn't be so monotonous.

After watering thoroughly and filling the kang stove with firewood, only then did she tidy herself up and head off to work.