By linking my account to the check-in system, I became a leisurely traveler.

Chapter 197 Making Pottery [First Update!]

After finishing making the ghee, Li Younan was indeed a little tired. He had traveled a long way during the day to bring back a female goat, and had been working on it all night without taking a break.

He lay in bed, and drowsiness quickly overcame him.

The sleeping bag was lined with a grass-like plant that he found in the forest, which had good flexibility after being dried.

If we go back 20 or 30 years, many rural earthen beds were covered with straw, and then cotton wadding was laid on top instead of a mattress.

However, to be fair, this "mattress" could be further improved in quality by weaving it into a complete mat and then stacking it several times, which would make it even more comfortable to sleep on.

The bed I'm lying on also needs an upgrade. Right now, I'm using a few thick wooden stakes as a base, and then laying horizontal beams on top to make the bed. When I have more time later, I'll try to use my woodworking skills to make a more decent bed.

In addition, the furniture in the house also needs to be replaced.

The only decent piece of furniture in the room right now is a small wooden table. Besides that, there are only two wooden buckets and the tools for churning butter, which are made at night.

There are still some necessities to make. First, we don't have enough tableware, so we need to buy more.

However, to be fair, making small tableware is actually the most difficult thing for woodworkers, because due to the limitations of tools, things like small bowls and plates are actually not easy to make.

Containers cannot be made using the hoop method; they can only be carved.

His only wooden bowl was very ugly. It was made by hollowing out a section of wood about the size of a bowl. The process was time-consuming and laborious. Because he lacked polishing tools, he used a pebble to polish it for a long time before it was barely usable.

Li Younan couldn't help but think that the plan to make pottery needed to be put on the agenda.

Once you start firing pottery, the problem of making utensils will be much easier. In addition, you can also fire some cooking utensils, which will make cooking even more convenient.

In conclusion, pottery is a must-have for those who want to further refine their lives.

Next, the most important piece of furniture is the bathtub.

Bath tubs are actually quite easy to make. Large wooden furniture like these is easier to make than small furniture. They can be made using the same method as tub hobbing. The only difference is that they require more wood.

All these things will be made one by one, but right now the factor that's preventing me from doing it is the food.

Ultimately, the main reason we don't have much time to make these tools and furniture is that we need to spend a certain amount of time gathering food every day, so naturally we don't have much time to make furniture.

As Li Younan pondered this, he grew increasingly sleepy and soon fell asleep.

……

Li Younan was awakened by a start.

The night was deep, and all was quiet. However, the restless bleating of the ewe by the back door jolted him awake.

At first, he didn't realize what was happening and just assumed that the ewe was in pain from her wound.

But soon, he became alert—the cry carried a clear sense of fear, not just simple pain. He rolled out of his sleeping bag, and almost simultaneously, he had the hunting knife in his hand.

He was holding a flashlight—equipment provided by the production team, powered entirely by a solar charger. He usually didn't use it much, but he had to rely on it for lighting at this moment.

He crawled out the back door and immediately shone the beam of light on the ewe. Seeing that she was kneeling on the ground with no obvious wounds, he breathed a sigh of relief.

But the next second, his keen hearing picked up on a sound in the distance.

He turned around abruptly, and the beam of his flashlight swept across the scene—in the pitch-black night, two eerie green lights suddenly lit up and then quickly went out.

It was the reflection of some kind of feline eye; startled by the beam of light, it quickly disappeared into the dense forest.

Li Younan gazed in the direction the animals had fled and slowly narrowed his eyes.

Judging from its size and reflectivity, it is not a large feline.

There are no large predators near the lake; the most ferocious carnivore is the black bear.

If he wasn't mistaken, that was a lynx, clearly eyeing the little ewe.

The alert little ewe sensed the danger early on and cried out for help.

Li Younan thought for a moment, then bent down, picked up the little ewe, and brought it into the house.

They added some more firewood to the nearly extinguished fireplace, and the flames flickered again, making the room warm and cozy.

The little ewe, seemingly feeling safe by the firelight, stopped trembling and lay down on the ground, showing no fear of the fire whatsoever.

Li Younan found it somewhat amusing and reached out to pat its head: "Luckily you barked, otherwise my butter plan would have been ruined."

He examined the ewe's broken leg again, and at this point there were no signs of infection or inflammation.

Since it wasn't afraid of fire, Li Younan simply gave it a name: "From now on, I'll call you Little Fire Dragon."

After all that commotion, I'm wide awake.

I looked out the window and realized that it would only be an hour or two until dawn. I had slept for seven or eight hours last night and was still feeling quite refreshed.

He simply sat down by the fireplace, watching the leaping flames and the little fire dragon lying quietly at his feet, and began to think about how to ensure the little fire dragon's safety.

Although a fence with spikes was installed in the sheep pen in the afternoon, it certainly wouldn't be enough to keep out lynxes, a feline species.

After thinking for a while, the sky began to lighten, and the chirping of unknown birds started to drift in. Dawn broke quickly. A new day of work was about to begin.

The first task of today's work is to ensure the safety of the little dragon.

After much thought, Li Younan decided to build a protective sheepfold right next to his house, which would save a lot of timber.

He used black pine wood to build a thick little house by arranging thick wooden stakes about a meter high. The top of the house was sealed off with equally thick wooden stakes, leaving only two detachable wooden stakes as entrances and exits.

To ensure the sheepfold was sturdy, Li Younan sharpened the bottoms of the wooden stakes and hammered them into the ground one by one with the flat side of an axe.

In this way, even an animal like a black bear wouldn't be able to harm the little fire dragon inside.

During the day, when you're in the sanctuary, release the little dragon out, and at night, when you're sleeping or out hunting or looking for food, put it back inside. This way, you can be completely safe.

It wasn't that Li Younan hadn't considered putting the little dragon inside the shelter, but sheep need to defecate, and he didn't want his shelter to become difficult to clean, so keeping it outside was the best option.

After finishing this task, Li Younan went fishing by the lake again to solve his protein problem for the next two days.

After finishing his work, it was already afternoon. This afternoon, Li Younan planned to start working on pottery.

Making pottery in the wild and primitive environment is not easy.

The first thing is suitable clay. Clay is the foundation of all pottery; without clay, nothing else matters.

Not all soil is clay; you need to look for soil that is sticky and malleable.

The simplest test is to take a small pinch of soil, add water to form a dough, roll it into a thin strip, and bend it into a circle. If it does not crack or only cracks slightly under these conditions, then it is ready to be fired into pottery.

Fortunately, Li Younan had already discovered when he was building the earthen wall that the soil near the lake had the potential to be used for firing pottery.

But that alone is not enough.

Because the soil in the wild contains a lot of impurities such as sand, gravel, and plant roots, it needs to be further refined.

Li Younan dug a large pit with finer soil at the bottom, and then used a wooden trough-shaped container he had made earlier to fill it with the clay he needed.

Among the supplies distributed by the program team were eight or nine pairs of socks of various sizes and uses. In order to filter out the clay, Li Younan had to sacrifice one pair of socks.

He made a sieve for filtering using a sock and a branch, then mixed water to make a slurry, and used the sieve to remove coarse impurities.

Next, pour all the clay into a wooden trough container and let the mud settle.

Because Li Younan possessed pottery-making skills, he performed these steps with great skill and meticulousness.

Some athletes attempting wilderness survival have tried pottery making, but without these preliminary steps, their pottery would inevitably crack.

About two or three hours later, Li Younan took out the thick mud from the bottom layer, patted it directly onto the wooden board, and began to knead it repeatedly to remove air and make it uniform in texture.

Li Younan felt with his hands—many people believe that the key to preventing pottery from cracking is the firing temperature. While the firing temperature is important, it is actually only the final step. If any step before that goes wrong, the pottery will most likely fail.

The subsequent shaping is quite simple; no tools are needed, you can just shape it by hand.

Li Younan's hands have been enhanced by many skills, making them extremely stable without the slightest deviation. He can create pottery with uniform texture and thickness using only his hands, and uniform texture is also the key to successful firing in the next step.

Li Younan made a bunch of tableware, including small pots and pans for individual use, and also made an earthen hot pot.

The process of hand-shaping pottery is extremely stress-relieving.

Li Younan moved all the pottery he had made into the shelter, since it rained there from time to time.

The next step is to patiently wait for it to air dry.

Unlike rammed earth walls, pottery must be completely and thoroughly dried in the shade before firing. If there is any moisture inside the clay body, it will rapidly vaporize and expand during firing, inevitably causing the pottery to crack.

To fire pottery, you need to patiently wait for it to air dry for at least a week.

During the waiting period, Li Younan could make some pottery every day.

Li Younan then finished the last bit of construction on the shelter before dark. Although the earthen walls on the top of the shelter had not yet dried, his shelter was already complete.

In the evening, Li Younan milked the little dragon as usual, and the amount of milk was significantly more than yesterday, reaching more than two liters.

Still at night, all the goat milk was made into ghee. And because there was some spare time, Li Younan calculated the time and, when he got up in the middle of the night to add firewood, he put all the remaining skim milk into a pot and boiled it.

When I woke up the next morning, the skim milk that had been simmering on low heat for several hours had indeed completely coagulated into curdled milk curds. The heat control was very precise.

Li Younan was overjoyed and collected all the milk curds, taking them outside to dry—milk curds are an ideal source of protein and can also be eaten as a snack.

Two or three days later, the little dragon recovered quite well, and its milk production increased significantly.

Li Younan hunted two more rabbits in the forest. Although there were still no large animals, it was still a welcome improvement to his diet.

Thanks to the presence of ghee, even rabbit meat, which has almost no fat, is extremely delicious when fried.

Li Younan didn't plan to go out today, as it was time for her weekly physical examination.

(End of this chapter)