Chapter 42: Every step forward is difficult

Chapter 42: Every step forward is difficult

The salt production is mainly done by Han Cheng, along with the children and the elderly, and women in the tribe.

The strongest members of the tribe, such as the Eldest Senior Brother, do not participate much because hunting alone to provide enough food for the tribe already consumes almost all of their energy.

They can take advantage of some rare free time to transport rock salt from the salt mountain to the riverbank.

This makes Han Cheng quite helpless. The issue of food is always a looming threat. If the problem of food could be completely solved, the productivity within the tribe could be greatly liberated, allowing more energy to be devoted to other tasks.

However, achieving this is easier said than done. In Han Cheng's previous life, with its long history, his powerful homeland only recently managed to eliminate hunger for the people.

Fortunately, the consumption of salt is not too large. With proficiency in salt-making, Han Cheng and his tribe can produce about ten pounds of salt per day, which is enough for the tribe to use for about a month.

With the salt reserves in the tribe exceeding a hundred pounds in five jars, Han Cheng no longer needs to be as tight as before. Instead, he reduces the salt production by nearly half every day.

During the salt-making process, they also fired two kilns of pottery, mainly casting items such as pottery basins and pots needed for salt-making.

With enough pottery in the tribe, under Han Cheng's advocacy, a decision was made to reform the pottery-making technology.

The focus of the reform is not the technique of making pottery but the kiln used to fire the pottery.

The advantage of using a simple clay kiln is that it is easy to build and master. The downside is that it is too troublesome. After each firing of pottery, it needs to be resealed with clay.

It's more convenient to use a kiln built with bricks. Of course, a kiln built with bricks is initially cumbersome, especially in kiln construction. Han Cheng only knows a general idea about it.

Apart from overcoming difficulties such as digging underground, making bricks, designing shapes, mastering firing temperature, and others, it requires a step-by-step exploration and summarization of experience.

However, it doesn't matter. The development of any technology has gone through such steps.

If one is afraid of this trouble and another is afraid of that trouble, the world will come to a standstill.

In the future, the Green Sparrow Tribe can only use simple clay kilns, and pottery technology will stop here.

Heiwa's confidence comes from his achievements in pottery, which has increased his fondness for pottery. He couldn't sit still when he heard Han Cheng talk about better pottery-making methods.

Digging pits and making clay molds are what he is most passionate about.

According to the rules of the tribe, Heiwa is now an adult. If it were in the past, he would need to join the Senior brothers in daily hunting.

However, things are different now. The appearance of salt and pottery has made the Senior Brothers realize the importance of these things to the tribe.

As Heiwa is good at pottery, he is not sent to hunt but instead focuses on making pottery and boiling salt.

While doing these things, Han Cheng did not neglect the rapeseed. More than ten days ago, he led people to temporarily stop making salt and transported the mature rapeseed back.

During this process, Han Cheng specifically instructed them not to touch the rapeseed pods too much.

Han Cheng did not wait for the rapeseed to dry completely before harvesting, as it would be difficult to recover them. Instead, he brought them back when there was dew. Even if the rapeseed pods were touched, not much would be lost.

The harvested rapeseed is placed on a small piece of cleared ground near the tribe's entrance for drying.

This area was opened a few days ago under Han Cheng's guidance.

In addition to removing the weeds and small trees, Han Cheng instructed people to use flat stones to compact the approximately 11-12 square meters of ground by hitting it twice, making the soil solid and embedding small stone particles into the soil.

This way, when it's time to beat the rapeseed, the soil won't float, and there won't be more small stone particles than rapeseed.

Don't be fooled by the small size of this area. To clear it up, Han Cheng and the others have spent a lot of effort.

Because of the lack of tools, clearing away the weeds and some small trees and shrubs took a lot of effort.

It was still challenging despite there were no large trees. If there were large trees, they would have been left helpless.

To fall a large tree, relying solely on stone and bone axes, even with everyone working together, it would take a whole day and night to struggle against it.Updated from novelbIn.(c)om