As she cultivated more crops, Wen Qian had more work to do - weeding, watering, and fertilizing.
Compared to the minor skirmishes of the past few years, this felt relatively relaxing to her.
After becoming a true farmer this year, she found herself unable to straighten her back, exhausted every day.
However, such a fulfilling life meant there would be a harvest, though the harvest time was still a ways off.
She finally understood why farmers were always so anxious, because there was still a long way to go before the harvest.
So they worried about floods, droughts, pests, diseases, and all sorts of disasters that could reduce or wipe out the crop yield in the meantime.
Yet after the volcanic winter, water disasters and ice and snow calamities became more frequent, and crop failure or total loss due to abnormal climate was common in many places.
The place where Wen Qian lived was no exception - there was a hailstorm at one point, luckily with small hailstones and brief duration, otherwise Wen Qian's hard work would have been in vain.
In July, Wen Qian noticed that there was only one radio frequency left, seemingly a nationwide unified one.
Now Wen Qian could tell that the social situation had further deteriorated.
Word was that new crop varieties had been developed in seed research, large-scale mouse farming had been achieved in livestock breeding, and mushroom cultivation had also become a major industry.
But there was still no news on other scientific research, so some people began questioning the researchers.
Because the researchers' living standards and project funding input were relatively high, some thought they were just freeloading with no discernible progress.
Of course, others held opposing views, believing that scientific progress wasn't so easily achieved, and especially qualitative leaps required quantitative accumulation, so long-term efforts were needed to bear fruit.
Therefore, although some complained, no one obstructed the continued execution of the plans.
Worried about her crops at home, Wen Qian didn't venture far this time.
At most she went to the ranch once, foraging for wild vegetables and catching small fry, but the fish were too small and hadn't grown much.
Wen Qian also didn't dare deplete the fish here, as it was hard enough for them to survive, and she didn't want them to go extinct.
Another outing was to dig for cordyceps near the mountains.
This was a local custom she had read about, where before the volcano erupted, locals would gather cordyceps from March to June at different altitudes in different periods.
So Wen Qian tried to find them, and indeed managed to, though as a novice she didn't find much, but it was enough to make her happy.
She also tried harvesting mushrooms in the rainy season, but only picked mushrooms and didn't eat them.
Instead, she used them as a backup food source, storing them in her storage space, with only short trips and no long journeys.
After that, Wen Qian's other time was spent checking on her crops every day, and taking a look at the traps along the way.
Ever since a wild boar fell into one, she hadn't seen any other wild animals fall into this trap.
Of course, some smaller animals did get in, but judging from the aftermath, they could also climb out, so Wen Qian could only keep setting traps.
In August, her crops and vegetables were harvested one after another, making Wen Qian particularly happy. After harvesting the greens, she immediately replanted new seedlings, hoping to get one last wave of vegetables before winter arrived.
This year she learned to cultivate water spinach and amaranth in water, and the water-grown vegetables were indeed good - one crop could regrow after being cut.
She also tried planting a few sunflowers on the hill slopes. The flowers bloomed nicely but the yields weren't great.
There were also a few experimental seeds whose growth wasn't very good, allowing Wen Qian to judge what else she could try growing next year.
As temperatures hadn't risen and remained the same as before, with summer temperatures also not high,
the radio forecast said the global temperature was still in a volcanic winter, with no signs of warming.
This point was clear to Wen Qian from looking at the distant snow-capped mountains, the descending snowline being the best proof.
During the period of global warming, people often saw news of melting glaciers and thawing permafrost, so many places should have been alleviated now.
If human society hadn't collapsed, seeing such news might have been considered a good thing.
But now that humans were preoccupied with their own survival, no one would be happy about this.
One day in August, the basin had a sunny day that could be called bright and sunny.
This made Wen Qian very happy. In the past she could at most take things out for some air, but this time she truly got to bask in the sun.
So she hurriedly set up some poles and started sunning all sorts of things, savoring this long-missed feeling of sunshine.
Having some sunshine was truly a joyous thing.
However, there weren't many places with sunshine, and even in many parts of Summer Province, the sun couldn't be seen.
The sunshine was brief, quickly covered again, but seeing the sun once made Wen Qian happy.
She felt that if there was more sunshine each year in the future, at the very least it would give people something to look forward to.
The next day it rained, interrupting Wen Qian's harvest, as harvesting greens or potatoes at this time would be very messy due to the mud.
After the rain stopped, Wen Qian waited another day for the soil to dry out a bit before continuing to harvest.
Some crops needed to be harvested in late August or even September, so she let them grow for as long as possible.
However, as harvest time drew nearer, more and more birds appeared around the area.
Wen Qian had never seen so many birds before, and suspected they might have nested in her crop fields.
So she set up fishing nets on bamboo poles to protect her food.
Then some of the sticky nets accidentally caught a few birds. Wen Qian suddenly remembered the sticky nets used for bird catching in the past - the fine threads would entangle struggling birds caught in them.
So before harvesting her crops, she also harvested some bird meat.
Of course, after catching them, she would release the unharmed rare and beautiful species based on their condition and type, keeping things like sparrows to eat.
Looking at her maturing crops, Wen Qian wondered what to do with the excess straw after harvesting, since she didn't have any sheep to feed it to at the moment.
So she planned to store it in her space first, thinking maybe she'd have sheep someday.
This year in September, she put her harvested crops straight into her space without any other processing, all fresh produce.
She planned to slowly process them over the winter.
Normally, these crops should be sun-dried to thresh out the grains, then further dried before being bagged for storage.
But for Wen Qian, winter was coming soon, and leaving the grains outside would attract too many birds, so it was better to put them directly into her space.
Compared to bird meat, she valued her own hard-grown crops more.
