Chapter 87: New Farm (Part 1)

Since D-Day, the transmigrators had subsisted on rice and seafood. After a solid month of every conceivable fish preparation, enthusiasm had waned to near extinction. Even Wu De, who had originally championed seafood rice as the solution to their dietary woes, found himself thoroughly sick of it after two weeks. He had since spearheaded improvements—smoked fish, fish sauce, fish cakes—but some required long maturation periods, while others desperately needed seasonings they simply did not have. They had remembered to bring adequate salt, but in their pre-crossing wisdom, someone had deemed soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, cooking wine, and spices unnecessary weight. After all, these were low-tech products they could easily manufacture, grow, or purchase once they arrived. What they had failed to anticipate was the gap between arrival and availability—and the inconvenient fact that people needed to eat every single day.

The result was that whether smoked or caked, everything tasted strange and failed to excite the palate. Occasionally, the Cafeteria Office would supplement meals with canned goods from the reserves, but the quantities were laughably inadequate for their population. A single can of luncheon meat split between two people was nauseatingly rich; shared among ten, it might as well not exist.

One day, Wu Nanhai furtively slipped Wu De a smoked sausage. In another time and space, he would not have spared it a second glance, but now it seemed impossibly delicious, even without pepper and seasoned only with garlic. Wu Nanhai repeatedly urged secrecy, especially from Nick—this was horse-meat sausage made from his beloved "Blue Lightning." The Australian racehorse's remains had been quietly embezzled as the Agriculture Group's private stash. Nick still made occasional pilgrimages to the racehorse's grave, unaware that it lay empty; even the bones had been secretly collected. Wu Nanhai planned to grind them into fertilizer.

The dead horses dragged back after what everyone now called the "First Counter-Encirclement"—the Lingao Express had popularized the term—became their first real taste of meat in over a month. The six pigs sent by the local gentry became the cafeteria's most treasured delicacy.

But for Wu Nanhai's team, there was a slight disappointment. These pigs bore no resemblance to those from the other timespace; they were scrawny creatures with stiff bristles, looking more like wild boars than anything else.

"Don't look down on them," said Xiong Buyou, who had driven the pigs over. He gazed at the piglets while swallowing hard. "These are Lingao pigs—a famous local specialty, always exported to Hong Kong. You know Lingao suckling pig? This breed has thin skin, small bones, tender meat, and a special aroma..."

His greedy, wolf-like gaze roamed over the piglets. "These are thirteen or fourteen jin each—perfect age. Roasted, they'll be plump and tender."

"No scheming. I was planning to raise the piglets as breeding stock, and since you say this breed is so good, we're definitely keeping them."

"Slaughtering the big ones then?"

"Right—let everyone feast. I've consulted the Committee." Wu Nanhai eyed the pigs still obliviously rooting for food, unaware that their end was near. "Originally I wanted to kill two, but the Committee said if we're killing, kill all six. Rather than everyone getting one miserable slice, let everyone eat their fill—call it a reward."

Wu Nanhai had already calculated uses for all the gifts. The 200 jin of low-alcohol rice wine would serve as cooking wine or be converted to vinegar. The deer had arrived as a butchered carcass, so they would make jerky—an easy method that, while lacking spices, produced decent, portable, long-lasting food simply by boiling in salt water and drying. Sadly, the deer came pre-butchered, with no hide or organs to salvage. One of the cows was a female Yellow Cattle, which lacked sufficient draft power for southern paddies but would prove valuable as future beef and dairy broodstock. The six big pigs were market-weight meat animals with no use as breeders. Although they still had fattening potential, without proper feed they would only lose weight, so slaughter made the most sense.

The comprehensive utilization plan for these pigs left nothing to waste. Belly and ribs would all become braised pork. The pig-head meat would be braised as well—though lacking spices for now, it was stored alongside premium cuts like loin and tenderloin in a refrigerator salvaged from the Fengcheng's galley. Trotters and small ribs would go into soup; leg and shoulder meat would be ground; all fat rendered for lard; cracklings set aside for stir-fry; and bones reserved for broth. Brains and spinal cord were extracted separately. Blood and edible organs all became delicacies. The inedible parts—pancreas, bladder, gallbladder, spleen—had other uses and were frozen for later. Even the skin would be fried into pork rinds. Wu Nanhai desperately wanted the food complaints to pause, if only for a few days. The truly inedible waste went to him for drying into feed powder.

This ambitious plan hit one significant problem: no one knew how to slaughter pigs. For the transmigrators, pigs meant red meat on market boards or in supermarket freezers. How to transform live pigs into pork became an unsolvable mystery.

Wu Nanhai summoned Yang Baogui. Everyone naturally assumed that since he had successfully butchered and sectioned several dead horses for the Cafeteria Office, he could handle pig slaughtering. But the veterinarian shook his head—taking a pig's life was easy enough, but proper slaughtering was skilled work. Done wrong, you would ruin the meat. He cited the EU as an example: in the name of animal welfare, the EU had abandoned centuries-old slaughter methods in favor of humane electrocution, and now EU pork tasted terrible.

In the end, the Military Group veterans solved the problem. What military company did not raise pigs? Come the New Year's feast, their own mess squads organized the slaughter, and some had helped in the mess halls. Several veterans rolled up their sleeves, boiled big pots of water, and dispatched all the pigs with practiced efficiency.

Yang Baogui and Shi Niaoren formed an inspection team and performed on-site quarantine. The pigs were reasonably healthy—no serious parasitic infections—but they advised cooking all meat thoroughly as a precaution.

That evening, the cafeteria produced several enormous pots of braised pork. Seasoned only with salt, soy sauce—very poor solid soy sauce at that—and cooking wine, the braised pork earned unanimous praise. Even weight-conscious women who usually avoided meat joined the clamoring. Wu Nanhai saw someone weeping while eating.

"Meat is best." This became the unanimous verdict of transmigrators who had endured nearly two months of seafood.

But those pots of braised pork exhausted the last of the soy sauce from the ship's galley. Wu Nanhai planned to find somewhere to buy soy sauce and seasonings—he had fermentation cultures—but the Agriculture Committee now had far too much on its plate.

As the entire industrial center shifted toward Bairren Rapids and various supporting facilities neared completion, the Agriculture Committee's equipment also needed moving to Bairren Fortress. Wu Nanhai traveled daily between locations, organizing and transporting goods. Though a Committee member, he rarely commandeered the Beijing 212, usually hitching rides on farm trucks between sites. After the move, only one Cafeteria Office person remained at Bopu to guard the canteen, along with Chen Haiyang—former navy, now fisherman—managing the Fishery Production Group. Chen Haiyang had submitted a report to the Committee requesting permission to establish a navy around the Fishery Group's current ships and personnel, with fishing as a sideline. Bopu camp could be managed by the navy, and future maritime trade and shipbuilding could also fall under naval jurisdiction.

Navy! Wu Nanhai thought. They still had not solved their eating problems, and someone was already proposing a navy. Watching his tent of over a month being dismantled made him sentimental. He tossed the nylon nets Wu De had given him onto the farm truck. Wu De the fisherman was now happily running his labor-reform squad, daily tormenting natives with work and ideological conditioning. Had he stayed in the Fishery Group, would Chen Haiyang have suddenly proposed a navy?

The farm truck had a long string of two-wheeled carts—abandoned militia vehicles—hitched behind it, all loaded with the Agriculture Group's belongings: small tools, irrigation equipment, sprayers, complete agricultural experimental apparatus, veterinary instruments, seeds, cages of chickens, ducks, and rabbits. The farm trucks were becoming trains here. Wu Nanhai did not know much about vehicles, but surely this could not be right. During difficulties, they would make do—he only hoped the truck held up until everything was transported.

Yang Baogui waved a homemade whip, directing his six dogs as they ran front and back, driving the newly formed marching column: several pigs, a pair of donkeys, and three horses. These large animals did not get vehicle rides; they would walk to their new home. Because the breeding animals were precious, the Military Group had sent seven or eight escorts.

"Old Yang, hard work." Wu Nanhai fell into step beside him. "Let's walk together." Livestock farming was not his specialty; he wanted to pick the veterinarian's brain.

"It's far—over ten kilometers. Can your body handle it?" Yang Baogui eyed his somewhat pudgy frame skeptically.

"What's that supposed to mean? I'm younger than you." This dark-skinned man with black-framed resin glasses looked at least thirty-seven or thirty-eight.

"I'm a vet—a rural vet. Walking over ten kilometers daily is nothing. There are village-to-village roads now, but there's always only one vehicle—and it's always being driven by someone who's not making house calls." Yang Baogui shook his flat-topped crew cut with a rueful smile. Wu Nanhai noticed that his glasses' arms were tied with string around his neck—just like his own. This shared trait greatly increased his fondness for the man.

(End of Chapter)