Anyway the boys thought that with their spades they would be able to dig down fairly deep; and then, if they were to lay the soil around the top as they dug it out, they would make the walls higher.
Joe said it would be great fun to have a real fire and collect acorns and roast them to see how they tasted. But Uncle John said they would not find many acorns in the Christmas holidays: the rooks and the squirrels would have taken care of that. But David said they could have some chestnuts from home and pretend they were acorns. He said he thought they would be nicer to eat than acorns, anyway. “Acorns are so bitter,” said he, “I wonder anyone could eat them at all.”
“Yes,” said Uncle John. “But if they were pounded up and put into a vessel with water, the water would take out much of the bitter taste; and then the water could be poured off and the acorn meal dried and mixed with corn meal, as we read, for either corn-cakes or porridge.”
Then David asked why the people didn’t keep larger herds of cattle, so that in the long winter, when there was no other food, they could be sure of having beef in plenty.
“Well,” said Uncle John, “now that’s a question—who can think of an answer?”
Dick said that wolves would come and kill the cattle; and Joe said that enemies would come and steal them.
“Those are both likely answers,” said Uncle John, “for, of course, it is harder to guard a large herd than a small one—but, can’t some one think of a better?”
David said he expected it was hard to keep cattle in the winter, if the people had no byres for them, and no hay to feed them with.
“That is a good notion,” said Uncle John, “the people couldn’t take a cow down the passage into a pit-hut, though no doubt they built cowsheds of some sort inside the wall of the village. But cows can’t live on nothing but fresh air, any more than human beings can; and it must have been a difficult matter to collect winter forage for even a small herd in days when nobody made hay. And then, I daresay, it was not easy to rear large herds, for the cattle which the people had were only partly tamed; and some would be apt to stray away into the forests; and the more a man had, the more he would lose, both in this way and from the attacks of wild animals, as Dick says.