Wen Qian had read a lot of materials related to well digging. Although the river was not far from home, she had the resources, so why not do it?
She had to get the well done before the soybean harvest, after which she would have no more time.
If the temperature dropped further and the ground froze and hardened, there would be no chance, and she would have to wait until next year.
Before that, she had chosen a few spots by the riverside, where the grass grew more lush and the locations were higher than the river surface during floods, so even if the river flooded in the future, the well opening would not be submerged.
Another consideration was that during the well digging process, she needed to find a spot that was easy to dig.
If she ended up like when she dug traps before, unable to dig deep due to roots or rocks, that would be a disaster.
Wen Qian had three backup spots, and she started digging at the one directly opposite her home, which was the shortest straight-line distance.
This way, when she buried the pipes later, she could dig a shorter distance, and she would need to dig deeper here to bury the pipes.
This would lower the chances of it freezing over in winter.
However, during the digging process, she encountered rocks, and they were relatively intact stones, not fragments. Neither the iron shovel nor the pickaxe worked.
So Wen Qian chose a spot a distance upstream to continue digging.
She didn't dig too deep before it became very moist, and there were not many obstructions.
Since there was space, even for one person, it wasn't inconvenient. She could load the dug-out mud and stones into buckets and put them into her spatial dimension, so she didn't have to climb up and down to pass them out.
As she dug deeper, it turned into muddy water, which also needed to be cleared out.
After measuring with a ruler that she had dug about six meters deep, Wen Qian didn't dig any further.
Since it was close to the river, the well didn't need to be too deep.
For the next half month, Wen Qian would come and scoop out the water in the water barrel whenever she had time.
At the same time, she started digging a trench from the well to bury pipes.
She also had to choose a location for the water pressure well. If it was close to the house, then the drainage trench she would dig next would need to be longer.
If it was far from the house, she would need to bury fewer pipes, but it would be less convenient for daily chores like washing.
In the end, she decided to place it near the surrounding wall close to the house, and she would build a shed there when she had time.
The drainage trench by the water pressure well wouldn't need to be too long.
After that, she prepared glutinous rice, yellow sand, lime, and soil to construct the well.
They said that a well wall built this way would be more solid and durable.
After draining all the water, she started building the well wall from the bottom up. Since she worked slowly on her own, it took her a day to complete.
Then she laid pipes towards the house. After digging the trench, she first placed the pipes into the trench.
Every segment was weighted down with stones, and she would bury it after everything was done, leaving markers for future maintenance.
She built a well platform around the well opening, and for the next while, she would come every day.
She would drain the well water until it was clear, then cover it with a stone slab, leaving an air vent.
The pipe extended above ground at the house, and Wen Qian wrapped the exposed part with grass to prevent aging.
A pool would be built next to the water pressure well, where Wen Qian could conveniently wash vegetables and clothes in the future.
As for the riverside steps, those would be used for washing larger items or cleaning fish and game.
Wen Qian let the water flow in, and after applying pressure, the water soon came up.
Burying the pipes with soil after that was easy, and building the water pool was straightforward as well.
Wen Qian was very happy and satisfied that she had accomplished another task.
After that was the soybean harvest season.
When the stems started turning yellow, it meant they could be harvested. Wen Qian spent a few days harvesting them, then put them into her spatial dimension, and brought them back to spread on the paved ground around her home.
The paved ground was flat and had no holes, so she could sun-dry the soybeans here before shelling them.
The soybean stalks were also good for heating the kang bed furnace and could be used in their entirety.
For her first time shelling soybeans, after separating most of them from the stalks, Wen Qian sun-dried the beans a few more times before storing them in jars and urns she brought from her old home.
Legumes are prone to insect infestation, so Wen Qian kept them in her spatial dimension for safety.
There were also many impurities in the harvested beans, and whether for eating or saving seeds, they would need to be carefully sorted.
Of course, this sorting task was best scheduled for winter when she couldn't go out and had no other tasks.
As for the freshly shelled beans, besides making fermented soy beans, Wen Qian could also make tofu or cook soy milk.
Only God knows why she bought so many small stone mills back then.
Later on her travels, she discovered that some villages had particularly large stone mills, so Wen Qian brought back one of those large stone mills.
She soaked the beans, ground them with the small stone mill, filtered the liquid through a fine cotton cloth, and then boiled the soy milk.
When boiling soy milk, she had to be especially careful, as the first boil might be a false boil, so it needed to be boiled repeatedly before it was safe to drink, or she could get food poisoning.
When she was young, Wen Qian could drink pure, original-tasting soy milk, sweetened with sugar, and it tasted great and was nutritious.
But as she grew up, although the price of soy milk increased, it was no longer guaranteed to contain actual soybeans.
Later on, not wanting to drink the soy milk she didn't like, but also lacking the energy to soak beans and make soy milk with a soymilk maker every day.
But now, with plenty of time, as long as she was interested, she could make it slowly herself.
She no longer had to worry about wasting time and effort on something.
Making fermented soy beans took a slightly longer process, but the boiled beans smelled fragrant.
Boiled beans with white sugar could only be consumed in small amounts, or it wouldn't be good for the stomach. The remaining boiled beans would be used for fermentation.
Different regions had different methods for making fermented soy beans, some adding red chili sauce, and some sun-drying again after fermentation.
Wen Qian made both versions.
What she looked forward to the most was making tofu and thin tofu sheets, which were time-consuming, laborious, and required a lot of firewood and simmering.
But luckily, she could make larger batches at once, enough to last until the next spring.
The main reason was that she had her spatial dimension, so she could store hot items like soy milk and tofu pudding, and take them out whenever she wanted to drink or eat them.
She didn't have to worry about expiration dates or quantities, which made her more enthusiastic about making these foods.
After digging the well and laying the pipes, followed by the soybean harvest.
Although her daily tasks were portioned into set times and quantities, doing them consecutively meant physical labor, and she was a little tired.
So Wen Qian took a day off to rest at home, then went out to dig potatoes.
The soil here was relatively fertile, and the potatoes grew large and didn't form a hard crust when dug up.
While Wen Qian was digging for potatoes, things went quite smoothly. This year, she only planted these, so the harvest could only be called a harvest, not an abundant one.
During this time, she didn't forget to go out and collect various fruits, although she couldn't go too far.
One day, Wen Qian was threshing soybeans with a flail, and the beans on the edge kept bouncing all over the place. She had to sweep them up with a broom, not wasting a single one.
Wen Qian wore a hat and mask as she threshed the soybeans one swing after another.
Most of the soybeans had been threshed, but she still had to thresh the leftover straw again, trying to make sure not to miss too many beans.
This time, she planted a lot of soybeans, so she was finally relieved a bit. In the past, she often sprouted soybeans in winter.
Although they tasted good, she was worried about running out of seeds.
Now that she had threshed so many, she could eat them however she wanted in the future.
Just as Wen Qian was busily threshing soybeans at home, a family arrived nearby in the forest area.
Originally, three families had set out together, but two of the families stopped midway, planning to settle there.
One of the families found a suitable place to grow rice paddies and planned to grow rice there.
The other family stopped in a village with five or six households, a village where people had settled when they migrated northward long ago.
This family were originally Southern People, and their old hometown used to have terraced fields. Now they planned to head even farther north.
They felt that since the temperature would gradually rise back to its original state, it wouldn't be bad to farm the fertile black soil in the north, so they headed northward.
During part of their journey, they took a train, saving them some time.
The currency used for purchasing now was something similar to ration coupons, with a small amount of new currency as well. Often, they also traded goods for goods.
They soon reached the north-south border, where the rail line ended, and they began traveling northward again.
The rest of the journey took a much longer time, but they reached the north in the autumn.
There were five people in their family: three adults and two children.
The place they chose to settle was near Wen Qian, although "near" was still quite far away.
They settled downstream across the river from Wen Qian, in an area that didn't intersect with either her hunting grounds or croplands.
Of course, before choosing a place, they had scouted around everywhere, so they had seen the smoke from afar along the river.
Before this, they had camped out on the road at night, cutting down a few trees for shelter.
The farther north they went, the fewer people there were. Originally, they thought there wouldn't be anyone here.
Now that they saw people nearby, they were naturally happy, as it meant the place they had chosen wasn't bad.
And living not too close meant less friction, yet it wasn't a completely desolate place, either.
So one day, they came to the riverside, following the upstream until they reached the area across from Wen Qian's home.
Wen Qian was threshing straw with a flail inside her courtyard wall. This was the second round of threshing; after the first round, she would use a pitchfork to rake up the straw and shake it again.
Among the chaff on the ground, there were still some soybeans. Although not many, it was still food.
It was amidst this noise that she heard what sounded like people's voices.
This kind of voice often occurred in her hometown, where villagers would shout greetings to each other from the hilltops, basically by yelling.
She thought she was hearing things at first, so she put down her tools and listened quietly. Realizing there really were people's voices, she immediately went back into the house to grab her hunting rifle.
Then she returned to the edge of the wall and pulled out a small wooden stick to observe outside.
Wen Qian also took a telescope, but later found it wasn't needed, because the people were right across the river.
A man and a woman were cupping their hands around their mouths like a megaphone, shouting, "Anyone there?"
Upon closer inspection, they didn't have any weapons, but rather carried cloth bags, looking like they weren't looking for trouble.
But why would there be people nearby? In the past few days, she had been around her home, so she hadn't gone far away and didn't know there were new people here.
Wen Qian went out through the side door and walked down. When the others saw her coming, they quickly waved and smiled.
"Hello, we're just arrived from the south and plan to settle down here."
Wen Qian greeted them across the small river, "Hello."
Perhaps they were apprehensive and worried that showing up unannounced would frighten her, so they called out from this distance.
Of course, they didn't think about crossing the river either, and this distance felt quite appropriate to Wen Qian as well.
They then introduced themselves, saying they were from the south. Because the Husband was a hunter, they decided to live in the northern forest area.
But who knew what the real situation was, since they had traveled such a long way.
They pointed out to Wen Qian the location of their home, the place where they had initially decided to build a house.
That place was currently smoking, clearly visible.
Wen Qian saw that the distance was quite far, so she didn't need to worry about them encroaching on her territory. She welcomed their arrival.
After they explained their purpose for coming, both sides spoke amicably, and the conversation ended with them leaving separately.
However, when Wen Qian returned, she began to consider whether she should delineate the area with the new neighbors.
Because right now, all the mountains and wilderness were unoccupied, with no laws to govern them.
If they didn't establish boundaries early on, there would be disputes later.
But the newcomers were likely busy building their house, so they probably didn't have time for delineating areas yet.
She thought she would delineate the areas once they had time.
Two days later, when Wen Qian was foraging downstream, she ran into two children.
When they saw Wen Qian, they happily greeted her as "Auntie."
Wen Qian recalled that when they spoke, they mentioned having two children, so these must be the new neighbors' kids.
The two children were also foraging on the other side of the river, so they asked Auntie if she had any children at home to play with them.
Wen Qian shook her head and said she lived alone.
She didn't think there was any problem telling them she lived by herself.
If they really did have ill intentions, she felt she could handle it easily, getting rid of them all at once.
Their parents had greeted Wen Qian earlier and told her in detail how many people were in their family.
But Wen Qian didn't inform them about her own family situation.
They assumed Wen Qian had a family because her house looked large, with such high walls.
But their two children who went out to play told them that the Auntie lived alone, with no children at home for them to play with.
The adults were all surprised that a single person could live so capably by herself here.
The Female Host suddenly developed two additional levels of respect for Wen Qian, thinking that someone who dared to live alone in such an environment must be quite capable.
This entire family had reached the idea of living in harmony with the others, as they were not originally the type to provoke or oppress others.
Before the volcanic event, they were originally from a small town in the northern region.
Later, the Husband had brought the whole family southward, eventually settling near a small base.
There, they could grow some food, and the Husband somehow acquired a hunting rifle and began hunting.
Unfortunately, their area later became more densely populated with Hunters than prey, as more and more Southern People moved south.
Some people were even mistaken for prey and killed by other Hunters while hunting.
Therefore, as the climate gradually normalized, the Male Host decided to bring the whole family northward to the northern forest he had always longed for.
The children had grown up and could withstand the journey northward, so the entire family unanimously set out north.
Along the way, they were attracted by many environments, but ultimately decided to reach their final destination.
Since there was no bridge, the two families could only converse across a river that separated them.
Wen Qian had so far met four out of the five members of their family, with the remaining person being the children's Grandma whom she had not yet seen.
The new neighbors were busy and had to quickly build a house and prepare for the winter.
