Chapter 171: Xiao Ju’s Little Baby, How Long Until She Comes Out
After the third snowfall of this winter, in Gray’s words, it had already reached the coldest time in the year’s time.
This snow lingered without melting, and inside the forest also began to have frequent winds.
At this time, when Su Ran went out again, just wearing thickened clothes was already insufficient to resist the cold wind outside.
She used the thickest four-eared ox hide to make a large cloak.
Every time she went outside the house, besides the clothes she was wearing, she had to put on the cloak, put on the hat, scarf, mask, gloves completely, before she could go out.
But Gray was doing okay.
He didn’t wear the cloak much, but changed the single-layer coat he wore to a style with a thin layer of cotton inside.
Only the inner clothes were still single-layer animal hide autumn clothing and single-layer sweater and trousers.
A few days ago, A Jin came again, exchanging prey for some frozen fish to take back.
When leaving, Su Ran gave him an animal hide cloak to bring back to Xiao Ju.
The winter here was so cold that even inside the bird’s nest, no matter how windproof, it couldn’t block the chill in the air.
Although A Jin and Xiao Ju had prepared animal hide blankets themselves, blankets were ultimately not good to wear, not as good as a cloak that could wrap the whole body.
She was thinking whether to give one of her own sets of clothes to Xiao Ju, but after thinking about it, she decided against it.
She hadn’t prepared many sets of overwinter clothes for herself, she still didn’t have enough to wear. Moreover, her trousers didn’t have tail holes, so Xiao Ju couldn’t wear them.
“Gray, how long until Xiao Ju’s little baby comes out?”
“One winter, a little more woo~”
Gray thought about it and answered looking at Su Ran.
One winter meant about five and a half months, a little more would be six or seven months, or even a bit more?
In any case, it should be a bit shorter than human pregnancy time.
Su Ran nodded, lost in thought.
The winter with nothing to do seemed exceptionally long in day after day.
But no matter how long, it always had an end.
When the cold wind receded, and brilliant sunlight shone high above the forest, the frozen snow accumulated for half a winter began to gradually melt.
At the very beginning, under the thick snow layer, there began to be traces of melting water softening the underlying soil layer.
Su Ran’s house was built on the open river beach, because it could fully contact the warming sunlight, the snow water around the house had melted first, bit by bit seeping into the soil.
And at this time, the ice layer in the river also began to show signs of melting at the edges of the banks.
However, although the sunlight was abundant, probably because of the accumulated snow and ice surface melting, the temperature at the river beach hadn’t warmed up much.
Melting snow and ice was a long process.
From the first snow pile starting to melt, until the ice layer in the river melted into a narrow water flow on both sides near the riverbank, more than a month had passed.
And from this time, the melting speed of the river water suddenly sped up.
The rapidly rising temperature made Gray take off his coat and the animal hide autumn clothing inside.
Su Ran also changed the cotton-padded sweater inside to a single-layer sweater.
But she hadn’t taken off the cotton-padded coat yet.
The scene on the river beach was still desolate, but Su Ran felt that in the warming temperature, she could already smell the scent of grass and trees growing in spring.
By this time, the food stored by the beastmen for one winter had mostly been consumed.
The beastmen gradually began to resume their lives of going out hunting.
Gray also went hunting a few times.
But the prey hunted back were mostly small animals.
They all looked quite skinny.
After one winter, the fat on animals’ bodies had just been consumed and hadn’t had time to fatten back up.
And those large animals were still hiding deep in the forest, not back yet.
The food stored by Su Ran and Gray actually still had a little left uneaten.
Mostly white bean fruit and green soap fruit powder in storage, there was some meat left, but not much.
The meat pickled before winter had all been eaten up, Su Ran decided not to prepare too much for next winter.
Because food made from pickled meat, Gray didn’t like to eat much, and she herself couldn’t eat much.
As for the pickled housheng vegetable and wild cabbage, each had a small half jar left, actually adding up to just over a dozen pieces, so Su Ran ate very sparingly.
And those frozen meat, Su Ran counted, there were a total of five red-skinned pigs, four four-eared oxen, six white-headed sheep.
The other small animals had been eaten up, and the remaining frozen meat was enough to eat for about a month.
But Su Ran was now a bit worried that if the weather warmed too fast, these meats might spoil before they could be eaten.
Besides that, the various dried fruit and dried blue worms stored at home as snacks had long been eaten up.
However, the green vegetables, chili fruit, vinegar fruit, and finger onions grown by Su Ran inside the house could be eaten.
But planted in small amounts, the yield wasn’t much.
Before spring arrived, the forest had its last snowfall.
Compared to the ferocious, earth-covering heavy snow in deep winter, this final snow was gentle like a spring messenger.
This snow wasn’t heavy, just up to ankle height.
The snow fell for one night, but the air didn’t have that dry cold feeling of cold winter. When the morning sun rose high, the newly fallen accumulated snow began to melt quickly.
The air was full of the wet, fresh feeling after the accumulated snow melted.
A thin ice surface on the river surface slid downstream with the water flow, and on top of the ice surface, there was still unmelted accumulated snow.
Gray threw the wooden bucket tied with vine into the river, then pulled back the water bucket filled with water.
At this time, Su Ran carried a backpack of dry grass with white bean fruit to the back to feed the four-eared oxen.
Now the small animals still being raised at home were only that half-grown red-skinned pig, over a dozen wild chickens, and two four-eared oxen.
The calf among the two four-eared oxen had now also grown to half size.
But since it was a bull, Su Ran didn’t plan to keep it long.
Raising these two four-eared oxen, she originally planned to keep them for milk.
But during winter, the weather was too cold, and the big cow weaned itself.
Now that spring had arrived, Su Ran planned to wait a bit longer, until the small animals in the forest migrated back, then catch a bull to breed with the cow at home.
As for this little bull, when it grew to about the right size, just pull it out and slaughter it to eat!
Otherwise, this little four-eared ox and the big cow were mother and son themselves, couldn’t breed, keeping it would waste time and energy.
After all, feeding a four-eared ox full was much more troublesome than feeding a red-skinned pig!
There are some things these two days, so today and tomorrow should be single updates, sorry everyone~
