From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 75 Earthquake is Coming
Before the sun set, Chen Zhou brought Lai Fu to the sunny platform to check the traps.

Due to the lack of maintenance for a long time and the influence of wind and rain, many of the nooses had been dislocated or the knots had been loosened, and he got nothing except a few wools.

While checking the traps back and forth on the hillside, Chen Zhou noticed that the sheep hoof prints on the ground were much sparser than before, especially the hoof prints left by the strong big rams, of which there were only five or six left.

Counting the days, it is now March 3th, and there is only more than half a month left until the end of the rainy season. It is expected that the flock of sheep will migrate to the island again.

Chen Zhou estimated that the end point of the goat migration should be not far from the riverside grassland next to the fruit tree valley.

Logically speaking, the riverside grasslands have inexhaustible water sources during the dry season, large flat pastures, and all kinds of fruits and vegetables. The living conditions are much better than those in the coastal areas. It is abnormal for the sheep to migrate on and off the island all the time.

Chen Zhou guessed that the sheep were running back and forth most likely to get more salt from the saline-alkali land by the sea, or to follow the freshest stems and leaves of plants.

There are no large predators on the island that primarily target sheep, and it is a beautiful place that seems like a paradise.

As long as they are not injured or sick, every sheep can live for seven or eight years, and will only die when their teeth are severely worn and they can no longer eat.

With such favorable conditions, under the leadership of the leader, they naturally do whatever they want.

……

“It would be great if they did migrate to the river valley plains on the island, so that I could build a fence there and keep them in captivity when I go to collect crops.

The coastal areas are not flat, with large elevation differences, and are greatly affected by the dry season, making them unsuitable for animal husbandry.”

“But the river valley plain is too far away from the cave dwellings, so it is inconvenient to feed salt, milk, breed rams, and take care of lambs.

In order to prevent the sheep from getting sick, it is not possible to let them stay on the plains to be exposed to the sun and rain. We have to build a simple shed for them..."

There are many families in the north that raise sheep and cattle, and Chen Zhou is very familiar with the breeding industry.

When he measured his own conditions against the standards of a modern rural individual breeder, the more he thought about it, the more headache he got. He felt that without the ability to clone himself, it would be impossible for him to take care of both the sheep in the river valley plain and the fields around the cave at the same time.

Not to mention the unfinished inner walls of the cave, charcoal kiln, pottery furnace, wood-bending furnace and outer walls, just building the sheds and fences is a huge project.

Compared with the development of science and technology, the improvement of productivity and weaponry, the importance of animal husbandry is obviously a level lower.

After thinking about it carefully, Chen Zhou felt that raising five or six ewes in the woods under the cave and replacing them with a breeding bull every year would be enough for him.

If the lambs are from ewes, they will be kept. Male lambs will be castrated and raised for only one year. When they are one year old, they will be slaughtered and eaten for meat. This way, both milk and meat can be obtained.

The number of sheep in the flock must be strictly controlled, and when the ewes in captivity get older and their milk production decreases, they are slaughtered for meat.

The wild goat herds are too large, so some have to be killed.

On islands with fragile ecosystems, without consumers such as wolves and lynx, sheep populations will simply expand indefinitely until they destroy the entire island's herbaceous vegetation.

In order to avoid this situation, he could only humble himself a little, act as a consumer, and eat more mutton to make up for the lack of the food chain.

……

I went home to rest with full disappointment.

Starting from March 3, Chen Zhou officially began to build a temporary shelter.

The shelter is about 500 meters away from the cave, so it is convenient to transport tools, but before starting construction, Chen Zhou still has to move all the building materials up.

This included a pile of cut wooden planks and bricks on the beach.

This is another torturous project.

In order to facilitate transportation, Chen Zhou took two days to carve his unfinished solid wooden wheel before heading to the beach.

He then spent another two days making the wheels and installing the axles and the bed.

The capacity of a wheelbarrow's cargo box is roughly equivalent to six wooden barrels. If you load it with soil or sand and pile it higher, the capacity can be even greater, but this will increase the wear and tear on the wheels.

Chen Zhou was sick when the wheel was not yet completed, and it was kept in the cave for almost a month. The surface was basically dry, but the inside was still a little damp, so it was quite heavy.

The heavy and clumsy wooden wheels and the nailed-together cart bed made the entire wheelbarrow look extremely ugly, like a toy made by a child in a handicraft class.

Wooden wheels without metal coverings loaded with stone bricks would always get embedded in a pile of stones when moving on gravel-covered mountain terrain.

After the stone fell off, a bunch of small concave holes were left on the surface of the wooden wheel. If these small holes encountered more stones, they would be further dug.

Wood has stronger resistance when subjected to greater lateral pressure, but it has basically no resistance to this kind of small stone with high pressure in a small area.

Over time, the small eyes will damage the structure of the wooden wheel, making it more susceptible to damage.

In addition to pebbles, Chen Zhou also found that wooden wheels made of solid wood would deform after long-term use.

When it was first manufactured, the entire wheel was not a perfect circle, but it was generally neat and tidy, with a diameter error of less than 4 mm from top to bottom and left to right.

After a few days of use, the wheel became visibly oval and was extremely difficult to push. If it hadn't been too difficult to carve another wheel, Chen Zhou would have discarded it long ago.

……

People cannot teach people, but things can teach people once and for all.

Every day I work hard to push the cart up the mountain, picking up small stones on the ground and cutting tree roots to clear a path. I encounter countless troubles during this period.

Having learned from his mistakes, Chen Zhou also gained a new understanding of wheel manufacturing.

He felt that wheels formed in one go from logs had little advantage other than requiring lower technical skills.

This type of wheel is heavy, has poor structural strength, and is not durable. Not to mention being used on mountain roads, it will not last long even if there is an asphalt road.

learn from mistakes.

If the wood-bending technology is still not mature next time he makes a wheel, Chen Zhou plans to cut out a large piece of wood, then draw two concentric circles on the wood, remove all the wood around the concentric circles, and take out the concentric wooden rings.

This wooden ring will be divided into eight or sixteen wooden pieces and reassembled after the spokes are inserted.

The split design helps disperse pressure, and if any part is damaged, it is easy to replace and repair, and the service life can be at least doubled.

In addition to the split design, Chen Zhou also plans to use the "super-time and space cutting machine" to cut the lead plate, make several lead strips, and embed them on the surface of the wheel to increase its wear resistance and further improve the strength of the wheel.

Of course, there is no time to realize these ideas yet.

After moving the wooden boards and bricks, Chen Zhou had to polish the surface of the bricks and planks slightly to make them rougher before they could be used in the construction of the new shelter.

Faced with the countdown to the earthquake, he returned to the state of carrying supplies down from the ship and was busy every day.

……

On April 4, he dismantled the old tents in the camp, took away the tarpaulins, built a small shack next to it, and properly stored the wooden boxes used for laying on the ground in the tents.

On the afternoon of the 5th, he selected a suitable tree at the edge of the woods, cut it down and peeled off the bark. In fact, if there is a choice, using dried masts as beams is far more suitable than fresh wood cut from the forest - wet wood will slowly rot inside even if it is painted.

But there were basically no masts left in the camp that were seven meters long.

By driving a load-bearing column in the middle of the shelter and then connecting two masts, a beam can be made to run through the shelter.

However, there were only 13 days left before the earthquake, and installing the load-bearing columns would waste another day, so there was no time to lose.

Many times, Chen Zhou is helpless because he knows what is the best way to do something but cannot do it.

……

On April 4, scaffolding was set up on both sides of the three trees. The peeled main beam was tied with ropes and pulled between the tree branches. Chen Zhou then began to lay wooden sticks on the beams.

After laying out the sticks, he picked up a wooden barrel and went to the forest to dig up a lot of moss to fill the gaps between the wooden boards. He then laid a giant waterproof cloth made of old waterproof cloth and cement bags on the wooden boards.

According to the plan, he only laid two-thirds of the sticks, and intended to reserve the remaining one-third to be built into a sunroom in the future.

On the morning of April 4, Chen Zhou completed the construction of the shelter roof and began to build the stove and chimney inside the shelter.

There is an opening on the roof reserved for the chimney.

He mixed some white mud and used polished bricks and stones to build the stove and chimney.

The chimney is about two meters high and has a waterproof cover on the top, which will not affect the use of the stove even on rainy days.

After building the stove, he lit a fire in the hearth to dry the white mud, and cooked some broth in a canned pot.

After a quick dinner and hanging the oil lamp under the beam, Chen Zhou nailed frames on both sides of the inside of the shelter. He then hammered down wooden stakes according to the height of the frames and laid the neatly repaired floor on top of the stakes.

He had to get up early to work the next day, so he didn't dare stay up late. When it was pitch dark outside, he blew out the oil lamp, lay down beside the stove, and fell asleep in the warmth of the embers.

On April 4, while continuing to lay the floor, Chen Zhou boiled an iron kettle of hot water to soften the fish bladder glue and fill the gaps in the wooden floor of the house.

When he returned to the cave, he poured water on the cement pillars for the last time.

Once the water dries up, the maintenance work of the cement column will be completely completed. In the future, as long as it does not encounter strong impacts such as earthquakes or gunpowder explosions, its stability can basically be guaranteed.

After working intensively for a whole day and laying the entire floor of the shelter, he hammered nails from top to bottom to secure the floor to the supporting columns at the bottom.

On April 4, Chen Zhou sawed out pieces of wood of different sizes and nailed them to the front door and back end of the shelter.

He filled and glued the gaps between the wooden boards with fish bladder glue, and after sealing them tightly, he installed the door frame and the front door, and two glass windows on the back wall.

At this point, the shelter began to feel like home.

Then, the busier moving work began.

The first ones to move into the temporary shelter were Xiao Huihui and the Totoro. Tizi had gone out hunting, and Chen Zhou couldn't find it for a while.

Immediately, muskets, crossbows and tools, food reserves and various important supplies were also transferred to the temporary shelter.

The shelter was not as spacious as the cave. After putting many wooden boxes in it, it was filled up so full that there was barely enough space left for a bed.

There were too many flammable materials. In order to prevent sparks from the stove from causing a fire, Chen Zhou built a low wall outside the stove to prevent fire and laid a layer of stone bricks.

……

Early in the morning of April 4, Chen Zhou returned to the cave, caught Grape, put it in a wooden box and moved it to the new shelter, and also pushed away the nearly scrapped wheelbarrow.

After the move, only some large pieces of furniture were left in the entire cave, and all the important supplies had been moved away.

He didn't dare let Grapes out of the wooden box directly, knowing that it had already recognized the cave as its home. Chen Zhou was worried that it would run back to the cave and be killed by rocks during an earthquake, so he decided to lock it up for eight days.

Anyway, Tizi has been in jail before and has experience with this kind of life in a box, so he won't have a stress response.

On the afternoon of the 10th,
Chen Zhou weeded the rice and wheat fields, then cut down a dozen trees, sharpened their roots and hammered them into the soil on the side of the platform facing the fields, in order to prevent landslides caused by the earthquake from covering the fields.

At this point, all the work to respond to the earthquake was completed, and Chen Zhou officially moved out of the cave and temporarily moved into a temporary shelter.

……

Early in the morning of April 4, Chen Zhou woke up in the shelter.

The first second after he opened his eyes, he turned his head to look at the wooden boxes stacked high beside the bed, sat up and pushed the long box on the top that contained the silver cutlery to make sure it was firmly placed before getting dressed.

Last night when he was undressing for bed, a large wooden cup suddenly fell from the top of a wooden box and almost hit him on the head. As a result, he is now very wary of objects on the top of the wooden box, fearing that he will be hit by a "club" and fall asleep.

The space is small, so the movements when putting on clothes cannot be too big.

Standing barefoot on the floor, he used a wooden stick to turn over a layer of wet soil covering the charcoal fire in the stove. Seeing that the charcoal under the soil was retaining fire, Chen Zhou broke off a few twigs and placed them on top, then bent down and blew air with his mouth.

Gray smoke drifted out of the chimney and dissolved in the drizzling sky.

Inside the small wooden house, the temperature rose along with the firelight.

Amid the sound of burning firewood, the meat porridge in the iron kettle exudes fragrance.

Lai Fu, who was lying at the door to rest, moved inside, sat upright, stared at the big iron kettle, then turned to look at Chen Zhou, his meaning was obvious - he wanted to eat.

Lai Fu has been too busy at work these days and the quality of his meals has plummeted. He has gone from a happy life of two meals a day with soup and meat to a piece of hard-wheat bread a day.

It is difficult to go from extravagance to frugality. The biscuits were dry and had no oil or fragrance at all, so Lai Fu had leftovers every day. When he finally smelled the familiar smell, he drooled.

The aroma of meat attracted not only Lai Fu, but also the even more greedy Xiao Huihui.

It meowed coquettishly, crawled out of its wooden box, and came to the stove. The soft fur on its chest was blown by the heat waves, swaying like waves of wheat.

Enjoying the warm environment and the aroma of food, Xiao Huihui rubbed against Lai Fu and tried to get close to the second eldest brother in the family.

Unexpectedly, Lai Fu's mind was filled with the meat porridge in the iron kettle. He was not as good-tempered as usual. He grunted impatiently and scratched Xiao Huihui with his big paws.

Lai Fu's claws were heavy and hard, which the cat disliked. Xiao Huihui was forced to give up his front position and jump onto the bed.

After driving away his competitor, Lai Fu moved his butt and took another step forward. He stuck out his tongue and stared at Chen Zhou. A crystal line hung from the corner of his mouth and dripped onto the ground.

Two greedy ghosts, one big and one small, were jealous of each other. Grapes, who was trapped in the wooden box, meowed and scratched the box, asking to be released temporarily.

The cabin suddenly became lively.

　I will start updating twice a day from tomorrow until the end of December.

　　Thanks to: Sailor volunteer, book friend with the last number 5200, The End of the Road, Aramus, Lotus is Not Lotus, Ideal is Like the Sun, Tomato 21, Unforgettable but Harder to Turn Back, Autumn Water, Lao Liu, Wandering in Africa, Daytime Paranoia, and Dislike for their monthly tickets. Thank you all for your support!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)