Apocalyptic Hoarding Diary

Chapter 385 Peaceful Times

Over the next month, Xu Xiaoyan completely adapted to the rhythm of life in the sinkhole and got used to being active at night and sleeping during the day.

Every evening, as the light in the oval-shaped sky above the pit begins to dim, she crawls out of the bamboo shed and begins her day's work.

The first thing to do is water it. Although it's cooler inside the sinkhole than outside, the daytime sun still makes the ground very hot, and the surface moisture of the soil evaporates very quickly.

Her heat-resistant crops planted in the open space—water spinach, loofah, bitter melon, winter melon, chili peppers, eggplant, cowpeas, amaranth, etc.—only survived thanks to the protection of the shade greenhouse.

But a shade shed alone is not enough; water must also be supplied. So every day at noon, she goes to the cave to replenish the water used up the previous day.

The water level in the cave pool was very stable. No matter how much she took, the water level was still the same the next day, as if she could never take it all.

Xu Xiaoyan sometimes wondered if this pool was connected to an underground river, and that the water taken away would be automatically replenished from some entrance of the underground river, circulating endlessly.

Because of the cheat code that is Space, watering is very easy for her. The only problem is to find out how often to water various crops.

Now she's figured out a bit of the tricks of the trade. For example, water spinach needs the most water, so it needs to be thoroughly watered almost every day.

Loofah and bitter melon are next best; they can withstand being watered every other day.

Chili peppers and eggplants are the easiest to care for; just water them when the soil surface is dry. Overwatering can easily cause root rot.

The sweet potatoes and potatoes under the thirty trees are easier to care for, as the roots of the trees have already drawn up the moisture from the deeper soil.

She only needs to water around the base of the tree each time to moisten the top layer of soil.

She sets a rule for herself to work until midnight at the latest, because her back starts to hurt after midnight.

The soreness spread from her lower back to her entire back, which was extremely uncomfortable, so no matter how much work was left to do, she would stop working.

When she sleeps at night, the electric fan has to be kept on all the time. Although it doesn't lower the temperature much, it still blows a little cool air on her.

I slept until ten o'clock the next morning. When I woke up, the sunlight was already leaking in through the gaps in the bamboo shed, dappling the walls.

She always liked to lie in bed a little longer, content with the peaceful life she was in. Only after she had had enough of the bed would she slip on her slippers and walk to the bamboo shed.

On the small table under the bamboo shed, a power strip had already been installed, and appliances such as an induction cooker, non-stick pan, kettle, and rice cooker were placed to one side.

She first boiled a kettle of water, then took out three steamed buns from her spatial storage and sat on the sofa to eat them slowly.

After finishing eating, instead of rushing to work, he took out his phone, opened an audiobook app, and selected a novel to listen to.

Because of the abundant sunshine, she has no worries about electricity. She is grateful for the power storage boxes she purchased during the underground city period, as they have a huge storage capacity and the electricity in one power box is enough for her to use for a long time.

Moreover, every few days she would take out her small truck to sunbathe and store energy, and the solar panels on the roof would charge it up quite a bit, keeping the truck fully charged at all times.

Moreover, she is very economical with electricity; apart from electric fans, induction cookers, and mobile phone chargers, she has almost no other power-consuming devices.

While listening to the novel, Xu Xiaoyan started chopping bamboo.

The bamboo we brought back this time isn't thick; it was cut from a small bamboo grove in the southeast corner of the sinkhole.

She would go and cut a batch every few days, then lean it against the pillars of the bamboo shed to dry before using it.

Fresh bamboo has a high moisture content, making it difficult to split. It becomes much easier after drying for two or three days.

She sat on the ground with a waterproof cloth in front of her. First, she used a watermelon knife to flatten the branches on the bamboo joints, and then used the back of the knife to knock a small opening at the top of the bamboo.

Hold the knife handle with both hands and press down hard; the bamboo will split neatly along the grain.

A bamboo stalk is split in two, then the two halves are split into four pieces, and the four pieces are then split into even thinner strips.

After the bamboo strips are split, the inner membrane must be scraped off with a knife until they are smooth before they can be used.

In the first few days, the bamboo strips she split were of varying widths and thicknesses. Some were too thin and would break easily when she applied force, while others were too thick and could not be bent when weaving.

After five days of practice, I became more accurate. With each stroke, the bamboo cracked with a crisp, pleasant sound, the cut was straight, and the bamboo strips were even.

Xu Xiaoyan first split the bamboo strips into thin bamboo pieces, and then began to weave the bamboo sieve.

She made a circular frame using thick bamboo strips, and then wove it on layer by layer with thin bamboo strips, finishing the edge when she reached the rim.

Besides weaving bamboo crafts, she is also busy drying various kinds of food.

She still had a lot of fresh sea buckthorn in her space, so she spread it out on a bamboo sieve and placed it in a well-ventilated place under the bamboo shed to dry in the shade.

Sea buckthorn berries cannot be exposed to direct sunlight, as this will make them bitter. They can only be dried in the shade. Gradually, the peel becomes wrinkled from being plump, and the color changes from bright orange to dark orange, but the flavor becomes more intense.

She tasted a dried sea buckthorn berry; it was very sour, but not in an unpleasant way. Instead, it had a pleasant aftertaste that made her want to eat another one.

There were also many potatoes, sweet potatoes and corn in the space. She cut the potatoes into thin slices, arranged them one by one on a bamboo sieve, and put them in the sun to dry.

The sun inside the sinkhole is very strong; potato slices dried in the sun for two days become hard and translucent.

Store dried potato slices in a sealed bag. When you want to eat them, grab a handful and fry them in warm oil. Freshly fried potato slices are incredibly fragrant.

She first cuts the sweet potatoes into strips, then makes them into dried sweet potatoes by steaming and drying them three times. The resulting product is very chewy and even sweeter than fresh sweet potatoes. When she is tired from working every day, she will grab a couple and stuff them into her mouth.

As for the corn, she chose to dry it directly in the sun, then made a Y-shaped corn-removing tool out of bamboo, and then used a small stick to tap it to make the corn kernels quickly separate from the corn cob.

Whenever she gets a craving, we'll fry some popcorn for her to enjoy and satisfy her craving.

Perhaps because the soil in the sinkhole was fertile, the water spinach and amaranth grew very quickly. They sprouted in less than ten days after being planted, and in another ten days or so, they grew to more than ten centimeters tall with lush green leaves.

Every morning when Xu Xiaoyan wakes up, the first thing she does is go to check on the vegetable garden. Seeing the vegetables change every day fills her with indescribable joy.

The bok choy grows so fast, but problems arise too; we can't finish it all.

She only needs a small handful of water spinach for one meal, but water spinach can grow into a large bunch in a day. If she doesn't pick it, it will get old and won't taste good.

How could she waste the produce she had worked so hard to grow? So she came up with a solution: pickling sauerkraut.