The wind blowing into the house constantly takes away the heat inside. When it gets coldest, I'm afraid even if the stove burns all day, the room can only barely stay around seven or eight degrees above zero. The best situation is just not freezing people.
...
As for gathering pine nuts, that's obviously to make sure there's enough food when we can't go out.
Before setting out to search for salt, Chen Zhou and Paul extensively searched the mountains for tree hollows and rock crevices where squirrels store their food, digging up a large amount of pine nuts.
At that time, the pine nuts on the mountain hadn't matured in large quantities yet. The pine nuts they collected were abundant but lacked quality; they weren't exactly fresh. Some were old pine nuts that had dried and cracked, becoming hard even when boiled, with almost no oil and a poor taste.
Currently, the squirrels have significantly slowed down their activities, attempting to endure the winter in "standby mode."
