This time, the main haul was building materials and some plant branches.
It was a harvest that Wen Qian was quite satisfied with, and then she remembered that she had seen so many birds in Mangge City but had not set up a net to catch them.
In the environment of a natural disaster, animal protection no longer applied, and Wen Qian would seize every opportunity to collect edible things.
But it wasn't until she was almost home that she thought of doing this, so she added catching birds and fish to her to-do list.
Although it was quite far away, she still had to go there again, after all, there were still things left to collect.
Wen Qian didn't go into the house first, but instead inspected all the crops around her before climbing over the wall.
Come to think of it, she was just too lazy. For so many years, she had been climbing up and down with a ladder, but never thought of making a door somewhere.
Initially, she didn't make a door for safety reasons, and to a certain extent, it did serve a purpose.
If she were to leave in the future, apart from the foundation of her house which she couldn't take with her, she would have to dismantle the surrounding wall and take the bricks and wood with her.
During the time she was away, her crops had grown well and the vegetables were doing fine too, without any other issues.
So Wen Qian felt quite at ease about going out again next time.
After returning home, Wen Qian boiled a lot of hot water and soaked herself in a tub of mugwort water for a good long bath.
Having traveled back and forth, Wen Qian felt very tired and wanted to relax her muscles and bones in the water.
After eating a light meal to fill her stomach, Wen Qian went to sleep. She had returned in the afternoon and slept for two hours after lying on the bed.
Upon waking up, Wen Qian ate some blueberries and strawberries. She had always been very appreciative of fruits and ate them sparingly.
Even so, her stock of fruits was dwindling in variety, though she had bought the most watermelons which were the cheapest and still had quite a few left.
The small orange jam bottles she had emptied before could now be used to store blueberry jam.
So after returning home the second day, she began making blueberry jam for herself, as she still had plenty of white sugar left.
For something like blueberries, in places suitable for their growth, one could just pick them by hand.
But in areas not suitable for their growth, Wen Qian had originally seen that blueberries were quite expensive, with a small box costing more than ten yuan for the expensive ones and six or seven yuan for the cheaper ones.
It would indeed be very costly if calculated by the pound.
As such, Wen Qian had a bit of an obsession with growing those relatively expensive fruits. If she could grow them herself, she wouldn't have to buy them.
Now that there was no buying or selling, Wen Qian also wanted to grow blueberries as a way to enrich her own cuisine.
On this trip out, Wen Qian didn't see any people.
Wen Qian was actually quite conflicted. On one hand, she was afraid of seeing people, having lived alone for so many years, with no one to talk to except herself. If she really did encounter living people, she wouldn't dare speak to them.
On the other hand, if there really were no people, she would feel very desolate. It would be better for some people to have survived after the disaster, as it would give her hope.
She had also tested the radio in Mangge City, but it was clear that there was no signal here either, so Wen Qian still had no new information from the outside world.
She saw the desolation of Mangge City and felt that many small cities in Xia Province would likely be the same. Extrapolating to other places, it was probably the same situation.
If people were still surviving here after the volcanic winter in the first few years, then the successive two years of severe disasters would have made them lose hope of guarding their hometowns and they would have moved southward to warmer places instead.
However, Wen Qian's future direction was northward. Her first choice was the mountain forests near Jade Lake, the place she imagined from movies where a grandfather and little girl lived.
Her second choice was to head further northeast, entering Liang Province. With its elongated terrain and diverse geography and climate types, even if the climate recovered in the future, there wouldn't be too many people there.
And on the way from Xia Province to Liang Province, Wen Qian could also collect plenty of resources. Just thinking about it made her wish she was already on the road.
The only thing was, she hadn't decided when to set off yet. If she were to depart, it would definitely be after winter was over.
That meant during the journey of walking all the way, there would be a year when she couldn't grow any crops.
With the current long winters and non-existent summers, if she chose to leave in spring, she basically wouldn't be able to plant any grains or vegetables.
Of course, that wasn't too big of an issue, as her food supply was still sustainable.
Relying on the relevant materials she had left behind, Wen Qian carefully researched what she could harvest along the way, hoping to gain some additional yields.
For example, which local specialty plants might appear along the route that she could use, which areas would be best to avoid, and which areas she could linger in for longer periods.
In fact, when she was initially searching for backup locations, Liang Province had also been within her range of choices, so the materials on it were more abundant and detailed.
It was just that her first choice back then was the plateau region, so those materials had not been put to use.
At the end of July when the sun was out, Wen Qian took out all her cotton quilts to sun them, and also washed many clothes.
She set up quite a few racks outside the wall to hang the clothes for drying. After cleaning and drying, Wen Qian started kneading dough to steam mixed grain buns, bake flatbreads, and stir-fry meat and pickled vegetables.
Basically, all were quick and convenient foods. Although she hadn't decided on a time to leave yet, she had already started making dry rations for the journey.
In particular, many of the wild vegetables she had dug up here, after cleaning, were either sun-dried or soaked in water and then dressed with oil, salt, and chili sauce.
There were also some dishes cooked with lard and shredded cured meat that were packaged up too.
In short, she was slowly taking out things that she had previously just put in without carefully sorting through, and making them into finished or semi-finished products.
By August, Wen Qian went to Mangge City again, and this time, in addition to catching fish and birds, she also wanted to collect the crops that had grown sporadically.
It was unknown how much would be left after the birds and other small animals had been visiting.
On this return trip, Wen Qian's courage had grown a bit and she didn't enter the urban area, but instead went around from the suburbs, following the river as she went ahead. Along the way, she used up almost all of her sticky nets.
She also still used her kitchen waste for fish traps, but she didn't use a throw net much, as it was too strenuous, and the high river banks made using a drag net quite difficult too.
When she arrived at the planting area, it was indeed quite lively. Amid the weeds overgrown in the fields were stubbornly growing crops, so Wen Qian set up bird-catching nets on bamboo poles in the open spaces and began collecting the wheat stalks.
Although scarce, why not take something that's free? The rustling of the underbrush might startle birds, which would then be posted online.
Wen Qian stayed there for three days before returning home, bringing back plenty of fish, birds, and some homegrown crops.
Afterward, he began to harvest what he had planted.
After the harvest was complete, the ninth winter would arrive.
