Socially Anxious Girl Starts Hoarding Before the Apocalypse-Chapter 163: Wood-Fired Kiln

Wen Qian spent a lot of time playing with clay, yes, she had to gradually master and familiarize herself with various shaping methods.

She was not particularly dexterous, so she could only make decent creations through long practice.

She also tried making glazes, as some utensils needed to be glazed for better use. There were many ways to make glazes, and Wen Qian chose methods that suited her conditions and successfully made them.

She set up a shed in front of her house to store the clay and make clay bodies.

The small clay bodies had dried, but she hadn't fired them in the kiln yet, as she was still making jars.

If she didn't do a good job, she would knead the clay back into a lump. She didn't lack bowls and plates, but she was in dire need of jars and crocks. After several attempts, she could make jars.

However, it was difficult for her to make larger crocks. Compared to the bottom-small, round-bellied water crock style and the plastic bucket style with the same size top and bottom, Wen Qian felt that the latter was easier to make.

But she had no choice. When she made a relatively acceptable clay body, she always felt that the fired product wouldn't be able to hold anything.

She wondered if she couldn't master this technique alone because to make large crocks, she had to knead the clay into long strips of the same length and thickness, and then stack them in circles on the base plate.

The problem here was that during the finishing process, the clay often deformed, with some parts suddenly collapsing or caving in.

Then she began to think that maybe she didn't need to make crocks after all, and it would be better to settle for something simpler.

Being able to make jars should be good enough, so she focused on making jars and pots, starting with small ones and gradually working her way up.

Apart from the crocks she couldn't make, she could make everything else very well.

After the clay bodies dried, she glazed some of them for testing, and then she began firing in the kiln. Of course, she also knew that she wouldn't succeed on the first try, so she prepared far more than she needed.

She planned to win by quantity. If some were spoiled, she could just keep firing the next batch until she got usable ones.

During this time, she only collected or set traps nearby, and didn't go hunting or build houses far away.

However, to her surprise, the first firing actually produced some usable pieces, so Wen Qian happily started the second firing, but the second one was a total failure.

Wen Qian fired a total of five times, with the last two firings yielding about half of the products usable.

After that, she didn't have time for more firings, so she put all the unfired clay bodies, glazes, and clay under her shed into her spatial storage, waiting for the next opportunity to work on them.

Because next, she had to start gathering food. Wen Qian went hunting, and if she didn't encounter any prey, she would forage for wild fruits.

In any case, she never came back empty-handed, and very often she went out specifically to gather wild fruits, a habit she couldn't break.

She always tried her best to gather the wild fruits that weren't affected by human intervention.

The more she gathered, the more she felt she was getting a good deal, as if the time and effort she spent didn't cost anything, without realizing whose good deal she was taking advantage of.

As for the crops she grew near her home, she was not as enthusiastic about them.

Of course, once she spotted prey, she would switch from foraging mode to hunting mode.

She also harvested two wild boars, big and small, near the logging camp.

She shot the large one with a hunting rifle, while the small one was caught in a trap, proving that her precautions were not excessive.

The wild boars were drawn by the smell and came, but the thorny seedlings hadn't grown large enough yet to be much of an obstacle.

Although the wild boars rampaged through the fields, the damage wasn't too severe, as Wen Qian took them down before they could cause much destruction.

Wen Qian put the two wild boars into her spatial storage for now, as she didn't have time to skin and dress them yet.

This year, she had only chosen a location and hadn't planned to build a house, so she had plenty of time.

Next, she began harvesting the berries and fruits from the trees around her home. There were a few apples left from last year, but there were still many persimmon cakes left uneaten.

This year, she picked both fruits and put them in her spatial storage without making persimmon cakes.

She thought she would just leave them there, but unexpectedly, Ni Sha wanted to trade for her fruits, as she couldn't get much from Big Jin's family.

Big Jin's family was large, and these fruits were barely enough for their own consumption, so they didn't have much to trade.

So Wen Qian traded game meat for persimmons and apples from Ni Sha's family, with more persimmons than apples.

It was perfect timing, as Ni Sha and Big Jin's grandmother-in-law were learning to make persimmon cakes.

By this time, Wen Qian had to start harvesting her own grains, as she had enough time to process all her grains during this season.

The harvest time was always laborious, but it was also a time of accomplishment. Wen Qian would go to the logging camp like going to work every day, clocking in.

The first crop to be harvested was sesame. When the sesame stalks were still greenish and the leaves at the bottom started turning yellow, she would harvest them, lay out an oilcloth on the ground, and bundle the sesame stalks in grass ropes.

All the bundles would be placed on the oilcloth and taken home in her spatial storage. Then she would take them out and stack three or four bundles into a tower on the flat bricks behind her house, letting them slowly dry in the sun.

At this point, the sesame pods would gradually burst open, and some sesame seeds would fall onto the bricks. Wen Qian wouldn't waste these either but would sweep them up and collect them.

She would flip the bundles over from time to time to expose different sides to the sun.

After everything had dried, on a sunny day, Wen Qian would lay out an oilcloth on the ground, hold a bundle of sesame stalks with the roots up, and strike them with a stick. The sesame seeds inside the pods would fall onto the oilcloth. 𝘧𝑟𝓮𝓮𝓌𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝓵.𝒸ℴ𝑚

After striking all the bundles, she would pile the seeds into three or four heaps and sun them again to prevent any pods from remaining unopened, then strike them a second time.

After collecting all the sesame seeds, the sesame stalks could be used as firewood.

The collected sesame seeds contained many small insects and leaf debris, so they couldn't be consumed immediately.

She would use a larger sieve to remove the larger debris, then spread the seeds on a bamboo tray and cover them with a cloth to continue drying.

After that, she would slowly shake the tray, allowing the smaller debris to gradually collect at the edges to be removed.

She could do this process in the winter when she had nothing else to do, then move on to harvest her other crops.

There was no abnormal weather this year, so the potatoes, sweet potatoes in the fields, and the wheat in the paddies were all growing quite well.

With not much fertilizer available now, it was fortunate that the soil quality here was still decent.

All she could do was make compost herself. She dug a pit in the woods and piled various kitchen waste and rice field waste that she had collected into the pit for composting.

At the same time, she also tried making a worm composting bin, putting in leaves and fruit peels, which would gradually produce worm castings at the bottom.

These fertilizers were not much, after all she was just one person and couldn't provide a lot of things to make compost with, but she didn't stop just because it was little.