After eating the persimmon cakes given by her neighbor, she thought they were not bad. However, they declined the things brought by Wen Qian.
Then Wen Qian explained that they had previously sent some jam, and they accepted these as a return gift, but they only wanted to make more to send to her if she liked them in the future.
As they spent more time with Wen Qian, they also realized that she was a person who didn't like to take advantage of others. Although she appeared a little cold on the surface, she was actually a good person.
As for these peanuts, they kept a little for themselves to eat, and could save the rest as seeds to grow some more.
After seeing the persimmon cakes that they had sun-dried at their home and inquiring about the production details, Wen Qian went back home and prepared batches by peeling the skins.
She also tried making apple chips, and the taste was not bad.
She didn't continue to go out hunting or process the simple crops she had harvested earlier, as she hadn't even threshed the soybeans and straw she had dried before.
Next, she had more important things to do, digging a cellar. Many places dug cellars in the winter.
In the northern regions, many households even had particularly large cellars specifically for storing their winter food.
Wen Qian didn't need one that big, but she felt she should still have one, so she prepared to dig a small one for herself.
To avoid the risk of the cellar collapsing when spring came, she also planned to add pillars for reinforcement inside.
There were naturally methods for digging cellars in the books, but she was a bit worried that she might hit rocks, as she couldn't really judge whether the spot she chose could be dug up or not.
Not digging also made her uneasy, so she started digging down on the empty land beside the storage room, just like digging a well at first.
Afterward, she dug toward the left and right sides, where she could set up pillars or build walls. The cellar wasn't large; it would be enough to store the sweet potatoes and cabbages she had harvested.
So she spent half a day digging the cellar every day, and after a week, she finally finished digging and supported it with pillars.
After digging it, she didn't plan to start using it right away, but still put some straw inside to stuff it.
Wen Qian found a square stone slab to place over the cellar opening, and as for building walls, that could wait until later.
For now, she didn't need to use it, she had just dug it as a backup.
The persimmons gradually shrank and dried, and she needed to squeeze them from time to time.
By the time frost set in and the leaves outside turned yellow, the persimmon cakes were almost done too.
When the weather turned cold, Wen Qian used the dried persimmon skins to line the bottom of the jar, placed the persimmon cakes she had sun-dried and squeezed into shape inside in a layer, and spread another layer of persimmon skins.
Since she had space, Wen Qian always made and stored food on a rather large scale.
Just these persimmon cakes alone, she didn't know how many years and months it would take her to eat them all.
Winter came around the same time as last year, but the temperature seemed to drop faster than the previous year.
It didn't feel like autumn and winter were gradually transitioning, but rather winter had just directly arrived.
While chopping trees near the forestry station, Wen Qian happened to come across two children from her neighbor's family setting up small hunting traps nearby.
The sunlight was still decent at the time, and the ground had thawed, but because of the extreme cold, the soil outside would freeze hard every morning when they woke up.
The neighbor's family didn't allow the Old Lady to go far, and only let the four young people go out hunting or gathering firewood when the temperatures were a bit higher each day.
When Wen Qian saw them, she chatted with them and asked if they had enough food stockpiled for this winter.
The children were unguarded and immediately said their family had stored a lot of food.
Their brother didn't stop them either, because he knew this auntie's family definitely had more food than theirs.
Wen Qian was a bit worried that this winter would be too cold, so she told them about her concerns, but it seemed they were also prepared.
Thinking about it, it made sense - they were all people who had survived through abnormal weather conditions, so she figured their elders would have made preparations.
When they heard Auntie Wen Qian was worried that spring might be delayed and their rabbits would starve, the two children took this question home to ask the adults.
They did raise rabbits, which the two brothers had been raising, but when the temperatures dropped, they killed all the rabbits.
Because in winter, many animals couldn't fatten up even if fed, so it was better to kill them early to eat the meat, and then catch more rabbits to raise in spring.
The children were worried that if spring really was delayed by one or two months, would their family not have enough to eat?
They asked the adults, and the answer they got was that before it became completely impossible to go out, they should hunt more. So the children suspected that if spring really did come late, they would go hungry.
In reality, their family wouldn't reach that point. If this had happened before, they might have had a very hard time getting through the long winter.
But this year when the new year started, they had exchanged potatoes and sweet potatoes with Wen Qian to grow, and these were relatively high-yielding crops. They had also grown the beans Wen Qian had given them before.
So they had enough food, but only if the amount they stored far exceeded their own family's consumption could they feel at ease.
After all, during the volcanic winter period, they had experienced crop failures and shortages caused by abnormal weather conditions.
Therefore, out of the five people in their family, except for the Old Lady who stayed home to process the hunted game, the other four were all out hunting or chopping firewood.
If it really turned out as Wen Qian had worried, then besides stockpiling more hunted game, they had no other choice.
Although their cellar was filled with radishes and cabbages, they would also spoil if time dragged on for too long. If they didn't have any meat to eat on top of that, it would be even more troublesome.
They had stacked up several rows of firewood, and had also hammered wooden railings between the woodpile and their home, worried that they might get lost in the wind and snow when going out to fetch firewood.
This was also something they had learned from their exchanges with Wen Qian, after all, Wen Qian had railings or ropes from her house all the way to the front gate and to the riverside.
At night when the temperatures dropped even lower, Wen Qian had set out some sliced tofu outside on the walkway to freeze overnight.
Before sensing the weather was changing to bring snow, Wen Qian had also sent them a few pounds of tofu and dried tofu sheets that she had made, as a dish for them to add for the new year's celebration.
After all, by the time new year's came around, it would be difficult for the two families to even visit each other to give new year's greetings, so they might as well just send early greetings.
After sending over the food, the Old Lady gave her a rabbit fur hat in return, which looked quite cute with the ear-shaped flaps on the sides to cover the ears.
Come to think of it, Wen Qian also had rabbit fur and pelts from other wild animals, but she had always stored them in her spatial bag, intending to make things out of them when she had time.
However, an entire year had passed and every time she thought about it, it seemed too troublesome, so she never did make anything out of them.
Perhaps it was also because Wen Qian herself did not lack warm clothes, so she spent her time doing other things.
Wen Qian was wearing a hat, thinking that she would try making one herself next year. If there were any problems, she could ask her Neighbor.
If Wen Qian had not delivered tofu to them, they would have let their children help deliver the hats.
The Old Lady always said that Wen Qian had helped them a lot, and they wanted to give her something, but they realized that most of the time, they had fewer things in their home than Wen Qian's, both in variety and quantity.
After all, they had more people in their family, so they consumed more. Thus, they thought of making a hat for her.
If they could catch animals with better fur this winter, they could make something else for her too.
The Old Lady felt that they could not just keep accepting things; there should be a give and take, as that would be the way to maintain a lasting relationship.
As for the thousand sheets of tofu made by Wen Qian, they boiled the tofu with fish, and the thousand sheets with meat, both of which made excellent dishes.
Coincidentally, they also had soybeans, so they planned to grind the soybeans at home and make some tofu themselves.
