Socially Anxious Girl Starts Hoarding Before the Apocalypse-Chapter 162: Grapes

Wen Qian had finished making soy sauce. She would soon complete the final step of high-temperature heating and sterilization, and then everything would be accomplished.

After that, she could bottle up all the soy sauce and store it in her space.

In the Northern Forest, it started raining. When the rain stopped, Wen Qian would either patrol her crops at the logging camp or catch fish by the river.

The other two neighboring families also couldn't hunt much, so they ended up fishing by the river without any prior agreement. Although the river water had risen somewhat, it couldn't be called a flood.

In the Northern Forest, it was only a continuous light rain for now, while in the south, there was a heavy downpour.

Heavy rains in the south easily lead to floods, and after floods, plagues tend to occur. Fortunately, after so many years, people knew how to disinfect.

Wen Qian covered the clay oven in her courtyard with a plastic tarp, otherwise the mud on top would be washed away by the rainwater.

On the corridor of the house, there were strawberry pots with four-season strawberries. Wen Qian treated them as snacks, picking the ripe ones, leaving only green strawberries on the pots.

In the storage room, some cured and smoked meat was hung up, while the rest was stacked with firewood.

She originally planned to build a thatched shed for the firewood, but later, seeing that the storage room didn't store much food or tools, she just put the firewood in there.

In the courtyard, the grape trellis had already grown small bunches of grapes this year.

Each bunch had many tightly packed small fruits. Wen Qian consulted her gardening books and started thinning out the grapes, including those by the river.

She estimated that in another two or three months, she would be able to eat fresh grapes from her home.

Previously, when she picked other berries in the mountains, she also saw wild grapes growing naturally here, but they didn't taste very good.

Although she had harvested them, she didn't process them into other foods, but just kept them in her space.

Although she could now make her own soy sauce, she was still a bit afraid of making grape wine.

After all, she had read many news reports about experienced home winemakers having accidents one day, resulting in entire tables of people being poisoned and sent to the hospital.

In this era, if there was food poisoning, she wouldn't have anywhere to find medicine or a hospital, so she thought it would be better to use the grapes to make something else to eat.

While Wen Qian was listening to the rain at home, the two adults from the Big Jin Family were still inspecting their crops.

The elderly and children stayed home, as it was windy and rainy outside. Even wearing waterproof cloaks and conical hats, their clothes still got wet.

Fortunately, the duration of the rain was the same as usual, and it didn't cause much damage to the crops.

It should be known that in the south, many crops had already been affected, and without weather forecasts, people couldn't prepare in advance.

Modern agriculture truly depended on the weather. No matter how carefully the crops were tended, a strong wind, flood, or hailstorm could result in a total or partial loss of the season's harvest.

Due to the rain, the number of animals that could be hunted outside would also decrease.

At this time, people had to rely on the food they had stored in advance to get through, so no matter where they lived, people would have a mindset of storing food in preparation for adversity.

Fortunately, the three families in Wen Qian's area now all had enough food at home.

After the rain passed, the three families all chose to go out hunting. Wen Qian did it so she wouldn't get out of practice, while the other two families were truly storing food for the winter.

Yes, from winter to spring, people would start storing firewood and food continuously. After the food stored in summer and autumn allowed people to get through the winter smoothly, the cycle would repeat.

In Wen Qian's view, this was similar to her previous life of studying, working, and earning money to spend on living expenses.

Since there weren't many places where money circulated now, most people still considered food, clothing, and shelter.

Moreover, due to natural factors, most people didn't rely on a single survival skill.

For example, among these few families in the Northern Forest, no one was solely a farmer, hunter, or fisherman - they combined multiple skills.

They were afraid that if one day, one skill failed, they would still have another to help them get by.

The grapes in the courtyard received the most care and were the first to ripen.

After the first frost, Wen Qian picked one to taste. It was soursweet, so she would pick a few every day to taste.

When the sweetness became increasingly intense, Wen Qian took a basket, lined it with soft hay, and used large shears to harvest the grapes one bunch at a time.

She would also go harvest the grapes by the river regularly, as she was worried about birds stealing them, so she had covered them with a net.

Since it was the first harvest, the quantity wasn't very large, and interestingly, when she had originally grafted them, she didn't separate many varieties, so her grapes were of all kinds.

Yes, to Wen Qian, both grapes and raisins were simply called "grapes."

After harvesting, she sent two bunches to the Big Jin Family. Their child often went near the river, so when Wen Qian called out, they could hear her.

The Big Jin Family had previously noticed the grapes Wen Qian had planted by the riverbank, so in spring, they had exchanged three small grape seedlings with her using game.

However, the small seedlings hadn't grown yet and might need another two years before they could bear fruit.

The Nisha Family lived too far away, so Wen Qian could only give them some to taste when they came to trade.

If they also wanted to exchange game for fruit seedlings, Wen Qian wouldn't refuse.

She didn't need to monopolize anything, so as long as others traded things, she would mostly agree.

For her, besides her own space being exclusive, she didn't need to monopolize crops, seeds, or seedlings. 𝔣𝖗𝖊𝖊𝖜𝔢𝔟𝔫𝔬𝖛𝖊𝔩.𝖈𝖔𝔪

In Wen Qian's space, she still had some inexpensive grapes and raisins that she had bought in bulk directly from growers at wholesale prices long ago, so the starting wholesale price was very low.

After so many years, she had consumed most of them, and she was increasingly reluctant to finish them off.

Now that she could eat truly fresh grapes, varieties different from those in her space, Wen Qian was very satisfied.

When she had originally looked at the prices, she didn't dare look too much at those expensive grapes costing dozens of yuan per catty.

Yet among the varieties she was now growing, there were some of those previously high-priced grapes. She couldn't help but marvel that what she couldn't afford to buy due to poverty before, she had now obtained through another means.

In this season, besides grapes, she had another important thing to do - shaping clay embryos.

The clay soil that was initially dug from other places and suitable for firing, now had to go through a process to become highly malleable clay.

Just this one Wen Qian step alone took a very long time. Once she tamed the clay, that was just the beginning.

Next, she had to make the clay body. She had a simple potter's wheel, but initially only had the idea of firing pottery without any actual pottery-making experience, so now she could only slowly explore on her own.

Fortunately, failure is the mother of success, and she was able to make plates and bowls.