From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 66 Recovery
After hurriedly finishing the last few pieces of mutton, Chen Zhou took down a pile of glass jars on the top shelf of the kitchen food rack, picked out the bottles that might contain plant seeds, lined them up next to the stove, opened the lids one by one, fanned out the scent with his hands, and sniffed them.

The scent of most seeds in glass jars is very slight and distinct.

Some seeds are spicy, some have a slightly sweet smell, some are very bitter, some have a moldy smell, and some even have a foul smell.

It is difficult for Chen Zhou to describe in words what the smell of these strange seeds is.

He could only say that the smell of these medicines was similar to that of Chinese herbal medicines, both of which came from nature and were full of primitive colors.

In addition to seeds with a distinct odor, there are also seeds that have no odor at all.

To deal with these "introverted" seeds, some special methods must be used.

Chen Zhou brushed a layer of oil on the wooden stick, then stuck the seeds on it and roasted them over a fire from a distance to prevent the seeds from being burnt.

When heated, the originally odorless seeds begin to emit a different smell.

Chen Zhou sat on a low stool and sniffed hard, recording the smell of each bottle of seeds in his notebook.

Based on his own personal experience, he separated the spicy, sweet and irritating seeds from other seeds and prepared to focus on cultivating them. Perhaps among these seeds there would be plants that could replace spices.

If the storage environment is clean enough and there are no insects to eat the seeds, the seeds will have a long shelf life.

As long as they are plump enough and have not been processed by stir-frying or pickling, theoretically they have the possibility of sprouting.

Find a few pairs of clean socks, take out the seeds and put them in the socks, soak them and put them in a glass jar, then place the glass jar in a warm place, and leave the rest to fate.

If you are lucky, the seeds will germinate and grow into plants in a few days.

If you are unlucky, you will get nothing.

But that wouldn't be a waste of resources.

The soaked seeds can be dried and the socks can be washed and worn again. Chen Zhou is very happy to do this kind of business.

……

During this week, in addition to firing pottery plates, catching goats, and soaking seeds, there are two small things worth mentioning.

自1月24日捕捉到提子，到3月3日已过去39天。

After a short period of confinement and a long period of being tied up, Tizi's temperament has become more and more like the domestic cat in Chen Zhou's impression.

It now defecates at a designated spot and is no longer so resistant to humans. Even if there is no food in your hands, you can gently stroke it or even pick it up.

At the same time, grapes have another advantage, which is that they are not guarding their food - at least that's the case when Chen Zhou is watching them.

Feeling that it was almost tamed, at noon on March 3, Chen Zhou untied the long rope around Tizi's neck, carried it into the bedroom, tentatively put it on the ground, and observed its reaction.

Coming to this place that was both familiar and unfamiliar, Tizi's tail was no longer proudly raised. It walked around the bedroom cautiously, sniffing here and there, but never made any move to speed up and run out of the room.

I followed Tizi around the house and all the way to the storage room. Tizi showed no sign of wanting to escape.

It is almost certain that, fed by humans, it has become accustomed to a life of carefree food and clothing and does not want to return to the wild and live a hard life of hunting for survival.

Even if we throw it out now, I'm afraid it will shamelessly come back.

When the new rat catchers joined the company, Chen Zhou put Xiao Huihui and Tizi together and, like their leader, he gave the two little guys a lot of encouraging words. He also made a promise at the end of his speech - if they perform well, he will treat them to shark meat in the future.

Of course, how good this performance is is not something they can decide.

It is hard to say when exactly that will be.

……

Tizi was released from prison after serving his sentence. Now he has his own cat house and the right to use the toilet freely, which is a big event that has happened in the cave recently.

Chen Zhou no longer has to clean up cat poop every day, so he has one less job.

But Xiao Huihui suffered.

From the moment the grape is untied, it loses the right to enter the kitchen - that is not its territory.

As long as Xiao Huihui dares to step into the kitchen, he will be attacked crazily by Grapes.

Don’t be fooled by Xiao Huihui’s fat and strong body. He weighs more than two kilograms more than Grape.

When a real fight broke out, it was no match for Ti Zi. It was hit by the cat's claws and kicked repeatedly, with its fur flying all over the place and it screamed in pain.

Chen Zhou was worried that Tizi would hurt Xiao Huihui, so he tried to be a peacemaker and dissuade his hot-tempered son.

However, his dissuasion was only effective during fights. Without his supervision, Ti Zi would still fight. In just one day, Xiao Huihui had several scars.

I have two cats. One I have raised for a long time and I have a deep affection for it. Although it looks fat and good-looking, it doesn't work.

The other one was raised for a short time, has little affection for it, is wild and has a bad temper, but can catch mice and birds.

The palms and backs of your hands are all made of flesh, you definitely can't use them to pick grapes, and you're expecting them to guard the house.

Then Xiao Huihui will have to bear the brunt of the situation.

Helplessly, Chen Zhou moved Xiao Huihui to a new home and moved its cat bed to the storage room.

There is a bedroom between the storage room and the kitchen. Grape's attack is limited to when Little Gray encroaches on its territory, and it will not take the initiative to attack.

Xiao Huihui was also happy to stay away from this tigress.

Now, it just wants to curl up in the cat bed and take a nap. After waking up, it fills its stomach and plays for a while at the entrance of the cave. It has lost all thoughts about the opposite sex.

……

While mediating the conflict between the two cats, Chen Zhou improved his fishing rod and made a small reel, which he installed on the longer and thicker fishing rod.

This reel has no bearings and uses a pure wooden structure.

Chen Zhou filled a lot of grease between the wooden blocks for lubrication, but the effect was not very good and the reel still turned sluggishly.

After a little adaptation, it can be used barely.

Anyway, this is just a little tool to kill time. He doesn't even know the fish and doesn't dare to eat them after catching them. He just wants to enjoy the process of fishing.

As the river rises at the end of the rainy season, the fish population also increases.

Chen Zhou planned to find a rainless day to return to the lake to fish and catch the guy who slapped him in the face to avenge his previous humiliation.

This time he learned his lesson and not only added a reel to the fishing rod, he also removed a piece of bright red plastic from the corner of the electronic wooden fish and made a float. He also bent the long needle and made several types of fish hooks.

In addition to these tools, he also made a fish guard with a broken fishing net. Together with the scoop net he made earlier, the only tools a fisherman might need are a small stool and bait for making nests.

It is said that poor students have more stationery. Even with so many tools, Chen Zhou still couldn't muster up the confidence to ensure that he could catch a fish.

He has always been very self-aware and has a good idea of whether he has the fishing skills.

……

3 month 5 day.

At noon, Chen Zhou pulled off the seal skin covering his head, scratched his head, and slowly got up from the bed. He had no dreams last night, and he didn't feel unwell or wake up by Grapes parkouring in the middle of the night. He slept very comfortably.

He touched his forehead and found his temperature was normal. He drank some water and repeatedly pressed his left and right nostrils to exhale deeply.

Both nostrils are clear.

My throat no longer hurts when I speak out loud.

"All right?"

Chen Zhou smiled happily, put on his clothes and shoes quickly, did a few simple chest expansion exercises, and did more than twenty push-ups in a row before jumping up.

His face was not red and he was not out of breath. His complexion was normal and his arms were very strong.

Now he was sure that the cold that had plagued him for more than eight days was indeed healed, and he was finally back to his prime.

“Oh, okay.

When you are ready, you have to work. It is not a good idea to sit idle all the time."

Talking to himself, he opened the bedside table, took out a notebook from the drawer, and looked at the to-do list on it. Chen Zhou's happiness quickly disappeared.

At the forefront of all matters is the transportation of cement.

After a week's delay, there were still more than forty bags of cement left on the beach.

It was because the rain was light during this period, otherwise the thick canvas and the layer of leaves on top would not be able to protect the cement.

Now, Chen Zhou has to do more than just move cement into the tent.

He also had to remove the original roof of the tent, cover it with a tarpaulin, and reinforce the entire tent to prevent it from being overturned by wind and rain and damaging the precious cement inside.

Not only that, he also had to build a frame inside the tent to suspend the cement above the ground - the risk of water soaking had to be nipped in the bud.

After carrying cement, the next task was to make wheelbarrows.

The wheelbarrow is a prerequisite for transporting supplies in the camp, and it is indispensable along with road construction.

This task was simple. Although Chen Zhou's work attitude was rather slack during his recuperation, and he spent the whole day either studying food or playing, he did not waste all his time. He carved the wheel intermittently for several hours.

Of course, the progress he made in these few hours of carving might not be as much as the previous two hours of focused work.

If I feel a little tired, I remind myself, "I am a patient, I am weak, I cannot be too tired."

If you work this way, it's impossible to achieve high work efficiency.

When talking about wheelbarrows, we have to mention Chen Zhou's temporarily shelved work of bending wood into wheels.

The bent wooden strips that had been baked with fire and heated with steam were thrown into the corner by him and were almost burned as firewood.

On March 3, he picked up the test products and took a look at them, and found that the effect was actually quite good.

Some parts of the fire-baked wood strips were deformed and cracked.

When sawing open the crack, you can see that the wood fibers inside are slightly torn due to thermal expansion and contraction.

But this situation is not entirely due to thermal expansion and contraction, but also the influence of the slipknot inside the wood.

Having cut down and chopped so many trees, Chen Zhou is now considered a half-wood expert.

According to his experience, knots inside wood can be roughly divided into three types.

The first type is a slipknot formed when new branches emerge during the growth of wood. The bottom of the slipknot is surrounded by a circle of hard wood. The structural strength is extremely high, but it will affect the internal fibers of the wood.

When the wood strips are heated, the wood fibers soften, but the wood around the slipknot and its base does not soften.

During the process of bending wooden strips, other wood fibers are stuck by these "green hands" and cannot be deformed and bent smoothly, resulting in tearing.

In addition to the strongest slipknot, wood also has two other types of damage: dead knot and insect holes.

Dead knots are mostly scars left by accidental injuries to trees during their growth, or they may be the roots of branches that have died after becoming sick. They are not as strong as slipknots, but the wood is more brittle and it is also a time bomb.

As for worm eyes, they are small holes caused by insect bites. They are relatively rare on living trees and cause the most serious damage to the structural strength of wood.

If you are choosing practical wood, it is best to choose wood with few or no knots.

Even a strong slipknot left on wood is a time bomb that may cause the entire piece of wood to break at the knot at any time.

The roasted wood strips reminded Chen Zhou that he should not just cut a piece of wood to use, but must check carefully whether there are any knots or worm holes on it.

Although the softened wood fibers are flexible, they are also fragile and can be damaged if not handled with care, thus affecting the strength of the entire wheel.

Looking at the steam-fumigated wood strips, they are in much better condition than the baked wood strips.

It may be that the moisture in the steam penetrates into the interior of the wood strips, causing a gentle softening effect, which is suitable for the slow bending process of the wood fibers.

There was no deformation of these wooden strips, and even tearing was rare.

“It seems that making a steam fumigation furnace is more feasible, but steam fumigation requires the successful manufacture of ceramic pipes, and successful pottery making requires charcoal burning, pottery furnace making, and clay screening.

The problem has come back again, hasn't it? "

"Forget it, I'll just use my solid wooden wheel..."

Chen Zhou got a headache when he thought about the labor and prerequisite technology required to complete a process.

Just as he was about to close his notebook, he suddenly remembered an important thing - the load-bearing capacity of the cave.

When he first erected these six load-bearing pillars, he had no intention of using them as permanent fortifications. He just hoped that they could withstand earthquakes and prevent the cave from collapsing.

At that time, the clay material had not been tested yet, and he did not have the right material to build load-bearing columns that were stronger than wood. He was also afraid that the cave would collapse, so he had no choice but to resort to this last resort.

Now that he has cement with extremely high compressive strength, he can build four new load-bearing columns in the cave to replace the wooden ones.

Indoor construction is not afraid of rain, as the various colored stones used for building walls are still piled outside. There are enough of them, more than enough to build four concrete pillars.

The only problem is where to get the right sand.

Sea sand definitely cannot be used, but river sand is available.

But it was the rainy season and the river water was high, making it inconvenient to dig sand. Moreover, the sand had to be sieved after digging, and he didn't have a sieve at all.

“It’s almost April. The earthquake happened on April 18th, so I have about a month and a half left.

If that doesn't work, we can only dig river sand first and then mix it with cement to build pillars without screening.

PO 52.5 cement, even if it loses some strength, is enough to support this cave house. It is cement that is only used for large bridges."

Looking up at the ceiling of the cave, Chen Zhou took out a pen and ink, and added another urgent project after moving the cement - the load-bearing column.

　Thanks to: book friends with the last digit 0698, Moonlight under the sky, Holy Light Waves, Dragon.Shang, Self-disciplined Xiao Zhang, The Dao is divided into two sides, book friend with the last digit 7564, Starlight Reflects the Sword Shadow, Zhihexin, Lord Yujin, Xiaofeng, The Dark and Windy UGig, CATLZMY, and book friend with the last digit 7230 for their monthly tickets. Thank you all for your support!

　　The double update on 10/15 has been completed.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)