Li Younan never planned to drink goat milk from the start... even if he did later, it was just incidental.
Rewinding time about half a year back, he went to Western Sichuan several times, Kangding, Jiuzhaigou, Shijiu Line... In these places, the natives are mostly Tibetan people from Western Sichuan. Among their foods, there was a kind of dairy product that Li Younan could see everywhere... butter.
Butter is almost the most common food in the Tibetan Area.
For a traditional Tibetan, a bowl of butter tea must include butter and tsampa, cheese dregs, and with the development of modern times, some people also add peanuts, walnuts, and other seasonings.
In the wilderness, the role of butter is simply superb.
Qualified butter is 99% fat, can be preserved for a long time, and is rich in almost all essential vitamins, with an extremely high smoke point, reaching above 250 degrees Celsius.
Its refining process solves the problem of fresh milk being difficult to preserve, and through high-temperature refining, it enhances nutritional density, meeting the needs of a nomadic lifestyle.
Butter can be eaten directly, but for Li Younan, direct consumption is the most basic use.
The uses of butter are incredibly wide-ranging, making it the perfect wilderness survival material.
Firstly, it perfectly solves the problem of fresh milk not being able to be preserved for long; secondly, it can reduce the unpleasant taste of goat milk.
Because of its high smoke point, butter is a perfect substitute for cooking oil. With butter, Li Younan can fry food, even vegetarian dishes will become very delicious.
This is extremely important for Li Younan. He has been eating fish these days and it has been difficult. Although the ingredients are top-notch, without any cooking seasoning, even with top-notch cooking skills, he could only dry fry on stones, boil, or roast, and actually, fish isn’t suitable for these cooking methods.
He is someone who has a demand for quality of life.
But with butter, the situation changes greatly. Any food, as long as it is rich in carbohydrates and fats, won’t taste too bad.
With carbohydrates and fats, Li Younan can make full use of his cooking skills; even in such a wilderness, he can cook a variety of different foods... naturally finding some enjoyment as well.
Thinking of that time, if the other contestants were a bit luckier, they might have hunted a large animal to have something to eat, but most contestants, even just having something to eat would be good, while he might even be having hotpot and singing songs... ahem ahem.
And the uses of butter are not just limited to cooking; butter contains a variety of vitamins and oils that can be applied to the face to ensure it doesn’t become frostbitten in winter.
The high-altitude environment of Tibetan areas is more severe than here; herders used to rely on butter for skincare.
Even if there’s mishandling resulting in spoilage, it can be used as a butter lamp to utilize residual heat.
However, making butter is not an easy task; first, you need tools to make butter, but this is not difficult for Li Younan.
He sighed slightly. His shelter is not yet fully formed, but there are still many things to make, various furniture like dining tables and chairs.
Currently, the bed is dealt with, but it’s very simple, just a wooden frame with a layer of soft plant fibers spread on top.
In the forest, Li Younan found grass with a high fiber content. After drying, he spread it on top; along with a sleeping bag, it could work for sleeping.
However, if conditions allow, it would be ideal to find a whole animal hide to cover it later.
But right now, the priority is to first make a tool for making butter.
The butter-making tool is mainly divided into two parts; the first part is the container, the shape is not important, but it must match the churning device.
The churning device can be simply understood as a piston with air. By pouring the goat milk into the container and continuously pressing, the fat in the goat milk can gradually be separated, the principle is very simple.
The difficulty in making butter lies in the relatively lengthy churning process, which takes thousands of presses to churn out the butter.
Compared to Tibetan yaks, this kind of mountain goat milk has less fat content, and the butter output ratio will be much lower.
Li Younan estimated that the fat content of this goat milk is about 6%, meaning that about one liter, roughly 1 kilogram of goat milk, considering the loss, can only produce about 50 grams of butter.
At night, he ate the beggar’s chicken, compared to domesticated chicken, this mountain chicken has noticeably less fat content, and the taste is a bit woodier in comparison.
Although for wilderness survival, this can already be considered a top delicacy, Li Younan couldn’t help but think that if he had butter before making the beggar’s chicken, the texture could be improved by more than one fold.
Thinking of this, he became more determined to make butter.
This beggar’s chicken wasn’t finished, about half was left. Li Younan hung it in his new home.
Although the new home hasn’t been fully topped yet, there is a roof, making it quite comfortable to live in.
The fire in the fireplace isn’t big; there is already a stack of firewood beside which Li Younan has chopped. Just adding one when there’s no flame is enough to keep it from going out.
Admittedly, this kind of black pine is really durable for burning. Adding wood just once a night can ensure a spark remains all night, and the next day, under the gray-white plant ash, the charcoal fire often burns quite vigorously.
Today is his first night settling in; the walls still have some moisture.
Li Younan laid two layers of birch bark at the contact point between the bed and the wall, effectively reducing the impact of the moisture.
Before officially resting, Li Younan went out and used a long shot to capture the scene of his little cozy wilderness home.
In the shot, the small house in the pitch-black wilderness, with faint light from the still unsealed walls, flickering slightly, the dragon at the fireplace occasionally dances, looking incredibly cozy.
The spacious area has its greatest advantage in that using fire here doesn’t require worrying about accidentally setting his shelter ablaze.
And with the use of fire, the nights are illuminated; for Li Younan, it offers a way to solve boredom and allows him to utilize his time more efficiently.
For him, the early stages are quite hectic. It will only become relatively leisurely once various supplies and tools are fully prepared, while the current busyness lays the groundwork for the mid and later stages.
In fact, several tools have been crafted during nighttime over the past few days.
Creating tools for churning butter is relatively simple for Li Younan.
He continues using spruce wood, assembling it into a rectangular container through mortise and tenon joints, then makes a piston-churning tool without needing it to be airtight, just effective for churning goat milk.
It’s worth noting that goat’s milk output falls far short of that of cows. Tonight there’s only slightly over a liter of goat’s milk. Even when the goat recovers, it can only produce 2 to 3 liters of milk daily at most.
Currently, it’s summer, with temperatures rising over 20 degrees during the day and dropping to single digits at night.
Milking at night allows the milk to stay overnight, but once temperatures rise the next day, it quickly risks spoiling.
The ideal approach, thus, is to milk at night and spend an hour or two churning it into butter.
Moreover, milking in the evening has an added advantage: milk obtained at dawn tends to have less fat, whereas nighttime milk has relatively higher fat content.
Once the churning tool is complete, Li Younan eagerly starts churning the butter.
The churning method is simple—continuously compressing the goat milk using the piston inside the container.
Since daily goat milk production doesn’t exceed three liters, Li Younan’s container isn’t large, making the tooling relatively lightweight.
Next comes a rather tedious churning process.
Thankfully, after several rounds of systemic body reinforcement, Li Younan isn’t overly tired despite thousands of pounds.
By the firelight, Li Younan gradually sees a layer of pale yellow, crumb-like solids forming on the surface of the milk inside the container.
The effort is paying off. He confirms this is indeed butter.
Li Younan shakes off his slightly sore wrists, then filters the butter out using a pre-prepared wooden container.
The remaining goat milk has now become very pure, turning into completely skimmed milk, although most nutrients, primarily various vitamins, have been extracted into the butter.
Thinking it over, he pours it out and cooks it in an iron pot.
He suddenly recalls that the skimmed post-butter milk could be further processed into another dairy product, milk curds.
Milk curds are mainly composed of the protein and carbohydrates found in goat milk, offering equally high nutritional value compared to butter.
More importantly, milk curds also have a long shelf life.
He thinks herbivores are truly incredible; they eat grass and give milk.
However, today he doesn’t plan on making curds as there’s too little milk left, not worth the effort.
He then proceeds with further processing the collected butter residues.
The butter needs additional treatment; he uses the remaining limited clean water to wash the butter chunks, effectively ensuring the butter doesn’t spoil.
After kneading and squeezing forcefully, he finally obtains a butter block slightly larger than a contact lens case.
Although small in amount, managing to produce it successfully on the first attempt greatly excites Li Younan.
He carefully cuts off a tiny piece using his hunting knife and savors it. Butter itself lacks much flavor yet offers a rich fatty taste that’s much fresher than cooking oil, with a strong dairy aroma, while any gamy flavor is virtually negligible.
With this, goat milk has become a long-term storable resource.
Today, due to the limited milk yield, only a small amount could be made. Once the goat’s milk increases, he’ll be able to produce around 150 grams of butter daily; if successful, even accounting for losses, he’ll have several kilograms of butter available before winter arrives.
Regrettably, without catching a milk-producing cow, a single cow’s weekly yield could provide him with substantial butter.
Thinking here makes Li Younan chuckle silently, realizing his greed; having one goat already is quite fortunate.
After this ordeal, Li Younan starts feeling a bit fatigued.
Checking the time on the satellite phone reveals it’s only 9 PM, which seems quite early for someone in modern society, yet in the wilderness it feels exceedingly late.
Before going to sleep, Li Younan drinks the warmed skimmed goat milk, then heats the last bit of clear water for a foot bath.
At this point, it’s already been over a week without a hot bath.
Not bathing makes Li Younan rather uncomfortable.
To the camera, he says: "Everyone, it’s been over a week without a bath. Once my shelter construction is mostly complete, becoming relatively easy-going, we must find a way to get clean. Taking a hot shower is a must."

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