Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

Chapter 1035 The Li family has done another good deed, so who can say anything "bad" about it?
As the weather gets warmer, the snow on both sides of the road is visibly melting. At this time, most of the roads are still gravel or even dirt, so once the snow melts, everything is muddy, making it very uncomfortable to walk on. After all, you have to clean the mud off your shoes every few steps, otherwise, like the official boots of ancient times, the soles of the boots get higher and higher, making it increasingly difficult to walk.

Li Juan and Li Qiang also had a hard time. When they rode their bicycles to and from school, even though the front and rear wheels were protected by treads, mud would still splash onto their backs and schoolbags.

Sometimes you have to attach a stick to the back seat of the vehicle, specifically to pry off the mud that gets rolled under the tires as the wheels spin.

Fortunately, Li Long's actions changed some of the situation. The road from the fourth production team to the central primary school and the township middle school was paved with gravel. Although there was still a lot of melted snow, at least the road surface wasn't all mud like it had been a few years ago.

A few years ago, this road was a dirt road. Once the snow melted or it rained heavily, the road surface became unusable. You could sink up to your ankles in the mud. Bicycles could not go more than fifty meters before the wheels and tires would be filled with mud, making them impossible to push.

At times like this, Li Long would sigh and say that it was absolutely true that if you want to get rich, you should build roads first. He thought it would be wonderful if this place could be paved with asphalt.

Of course, this process will take a long time, because in the previous life, it was twenty years before asphalt roads were actually paved to the doorstep of the house.

It was paved twice, once from the township to the central primary school, and then it was stopped. Due to lack of maintenance, the road quickly became full of potholes and was not much different from a gravel road.

Another time, they started something, and the gravel was already on the road and quickly leveled it. The preliminary preparations were done, but in the end, it all fell through. I heard that the money for road repairs was used up somewhere.

In the end, this section of road was incorporated into the ring road before it was actually paved. After it was paved, it was very convenient to use because it was constantly maintained. However, at that time, the three settlements were merged into one, and almost all the wasteland was reclaimed, so it no longer looked like it did in the 1980s.

Li Long drove his jeep to the Fourth Squad and, with a sigh, went to Old Ma's place first.

After the snow melted, there was basically no snow left in the wasteland, and the original grass was exposed. Now Yang Laoliu and his companions started herding sheep.

There are now many sheep in Lao Ma's sheepfold. There are more than 300 adult sheep, more than 200 of which are ewes with lambs, more than 100 lambs that grew up last winter, and more than 200 lambs. When they are let out, there are huge flocks of them.

It was only at this time that there was plenty of wasteland; otherwise, this large flock of over five hundred sheep would have been too large to fit in any wasteland forty years later.

Such a large flock of sheep requires at least two or three people to herd it together. There are more than a hundred goats in the flock, and these goats are very mischievous and naughty. If you're not careful, they will run into the wheat field and steal the wheat seedlings.

Thanks to the nourishment from the heavy snow in winter, the wheat seedlings in the fields look very beautiful now—although they haven't fully grown yet, the soil moisture is so good that even Li Long, a semi-layman, can sense that this year's grain yield will definitely increase—and of course, fertilizer is also essential.

The hoofprints left by the old horse stables stretched all the way to the south side of the road, disappearing beyond that point. Li Long's jeep pulled up in front of the stables, and Uncle Luo, hearing the commotion, came out of the yard.

"Little Long, look at your Jeep, how many mud spots are on it!" Uncle Luo joked. "Anyone who didn't know better would think you drove it to war!"

The battle between the two mountains is not over yet, and what Uncle Luo said is not wrong—it is said that an artillery unit from Ma County went there, and no one knows when it will return.

“This road is terrible…” Li Long complained. “It’s like this here, and it’s like this all around the county. It’s so hard to travel.”

Not all roads in the county town are paved with asphalt. At this time, the county town is truly poor and resources are scarce. In the past two years, the county town has expanded to the surrounding areas and development is gradually progressing, but road construction has not kept up. So unless the snow completely melts, this dirty state will continue for some time.

"Much better." Uncle Luo was in a good mood. "A few years ago, when the snow melted, if we wanted to go to the county, we had to walk through the irrigation ditches; it was impossible to walk on the roads. By the way, yesterday Xiao Song came over with some sugar residue and said that the dried meat you brought to Section Chief Hu was delicious."

He came over yesterday to collect the sugar residue and brought us dozens of new burlap sacks, saying we could use them for now.

Besides sending the dried meat he made to Zhao Hui and Huang Lei for wholesale sales, Li Long would send out some of the rest whenever he remembered, to see how the market was developed first.

Not only Section Chief Hu, but also Factory Director Du from Kuitun had some harvesters brought along by the truck that was selling them, so that everyone could try them out—of course, most of them were for Factory Director Du.

Although the Kuitun Agricultural Machinery Factory is producing fewer snowplows now, it still has quite a few orders. This is mainly because some companies found out late, but they felt it was better to place an order first, since snow removal is a major task every winter.

Factory Director Du originally planned to stop producing snow removal machines after the snow melted in the spring and switch to producing harvesters. However, he didn't expect that there would be quite a few orders for snow removal machines, so he decided to continue production. After all, why not make money when people are delivering goods to our doorstep?
Since the jerky was mostly given away, the feedback was generally good, and everyone said it was good.

As for whether it's really good, Li Long isn't sure anymore, since he doesn't eat it much anymore. It's okay to try it once in a while, but you can't eat it every day, otherwise your jaw can't take it.

However, the market in Kou really needs it, and Huang Lei and Zhao Hui called again, saying they still need it.

In other words, a batch of goods needs to be sent to Kou Li every twenty days or a month. Li Long's current situation is not good for going into the mountains. After all, the road to the village is at least gravel, but the road into the mountains is a dirt road, which is also dangerous. Floods are also gradually forming. Li Long thought he should slaughter a batch of his cattle and sheep in Lao Ma's place to deal with the emergency.

Whether it will work out or not, he came here to discuss it with Uncle Luo.

To be honest, Li Long's decision to start a meat jerky business was originally a spur-of-the-moment thing, since it doesn't make much money and is quite troublesome. He figured that now that things were on track, he might as well hand it over to Sister Yang and let her gradually take over, like a partner.

In that case, I would only be responsible for getting the mutton, and I wouldn't get it myself; it would either be from the mountains or from the livestock wholesale market west of the Ma River.

There are plenty of people willing to take on this task.

But now is a special time. The water level of the Ma River has increased, and the land is muddy. The wholesale market for wild livestock has been temporarily closed, and it is inaccessible into the mountains. So, the only option is to take care of our own cattle and sheep.

Upon entering the courtyard of Lao Ma's shop, Li Long saw several other people who were not in trouble separating and piling up the sugar residue that had been brought over yesterday, intending to dry it.

He greeted the elderly people, and then went to check on the roe deer and red deer in the enclosure—as well as the domesticated wild boars.

To be honest, Li Long only knew to bring the live animals to Old Ma's ship, and to skin, gut, and stew the dead ones.

Later, things became harder to manage, otherwise he would have at least raised a few gazelles or ibex—gallises were not easy to obtain, and ibex probably couldn't be raised successfully either, so the specialized breeding business just stopped there, neither here nor there.

Now, the entire inner circle of the old Ma ship, such a large area, has been given to these three things.

There were more than twenty red deer. Li Long looked them over and saw that they were quite evenly distributed, with almost half male and half female. Only the male deer had antlers on their heads, and all of them had been cut off. The fawns were still following their mothers, looking for milk.

The number of roe deer has increased significantly, with at least forty individuals. It's unclear whether this is due to rapid reproduction, low mortality, or the lack of slaughter in the past two years, leading to a sudden surge in numbers.

There weren't many baby wild boars, a few sows, and more than twenty half-grown wild boars. These things are slightly cleaner than domestic pigs, mainly because they can run, and the pen is kept clean.

This team seems to be quite large!

Li Long happily "inspected" his "team" and then discussed the slaughtering of sheep with Uncle Luo over the next few days.

"We can slaughter them. If no one can come from the mountains, we'll use the people from the team." Uncle Luo was very confident. "Those lambs from last year's winter can yield about 20 kilograms of meat now, which is just right. The team just cleared the irrigation canal a few days ago, so people don't have much to do right now and are just sitting around doing nothing."

Because of the need to support Yanjing last year, all the culled sheep in Lao Ma's shop were slaughtered. Now, what remains are the breeding rams, ewes with lambs, and last year's winter lambs. The rams among the breeding rams are Merino fine-wool sheep that he specially bought from the Ciniquan Sheep Breeding Farm. Each one costs several thousand yuan—it's expensive, but the lambs they breed produce have fine wool, which is better.

Originally, there were more coarse-wool sheep, so the wool wasn't very useful, but fine-wool sheep were different.

Some elderly women in the village would even come to ask for some wool after Li Long and his group slaughtered the sheep. They would wash the wool clean, twist it into yarn, and then knit it into wool socks or wool vests.

They didn't ask for much, and Li Long felt embarrassed to accept money from them, so he just gave them the money they wanted.

It's nothing serious.

“Alright, let’s find some people in the team to slaughter cattle and sheep, in batches. We can’t store too many now,” Li Long said. “I’ll go and notify people. Perfect timing, those who come to help, each family can get some offal. Anyway, we can’t eat it all in a short time, and it’s not worth selling it.”

As his business grew, Li Long no longer cared about the money from the sewage. Anyway, with the snow melting, no one in the team had anything important to do; they were just waiting for the snow to melt and the roads to dry before they could get back to work.

With that time, helping out at Old Ma's sheep slaughtering would be quite a lively affair. Of course, Li Long didn't intend to pay anyone. Those who came to help would receive a few sets of offal from each family as a way of repaying the favor, and the team members were naturally happy to come.

This matter doesn't need to be broadcast over the loudspeaker. As long as it's told to Xie Yundong and his family one by one, the village intelligence center will naturally spread the word to others.

Li Long drove his jeep to notify everyone, while Uncle Luo and the others started cleaning up the area. The stove and other equipment were easy to set up; they were already there, having been used when they slaughtered sheep last time. The only thing to do now was to clean up the area under the skinning poles in the new sheep pen, otherwise it would be covered in mud and impossible to work on.

Uncle Luo thought to himself, should he wait until this matter is finished and then discuss with Li Long about paving the area outside Lao Ma's place with bricks, so that when they do this again, they won't have to work on the mud again?

All we can do now is pull over the large plastic sheet from the yard and spread it on the wet mud. That probably won't be enough. We can also find some burlap sacks, cut them open, and spread them out. So what if they're wet? At least the mud won't seep out. We can slaughter the sheep, skin it, and gut it on top of that, and it'll be clean enough.

After informing everyone, Li Long went to his elder brother's house. He drove the jeep into the yard, but instead of going straight into the house, he went to the opposite side of the street to tell Lu Yingming and his sister-in-law about the matter and asked them to come and help out.

"Hey, I'll definitely go!" Sister-in-law Lu was overjoyed. Such big news! She wished she could grow wings right now and go tell everyone. Li Long said that as long as you go to help, you'll get a share of the wastewater.

Du Chunfang, who was still sunbathing in the yard, waited for Li Long to return and asked with a smile:
"Are they slaughtering sheep again?"

"Yeah, we need to slaughter a batch. People in the country demand a lot of that dried meat, so we still need to make it—we need to make money, we can't just sit idle."

"That's true... that jerky was too dry; my teeth aren't good, I can't chew it. Your old man, on the other hand, can eat a lot, he finds it quite delicious." Du Chunfang's teeth were bad; although she was only around sixty years old, she had almost lost all her teeth—

After all, I was born before liberation, and those years were very harmful to my health, including my teeth.

Li Qingxia is an exception among people her age. She has a full set of teeth, none of them are missing, and they are all neatly arranged, so she can eat anything without any problem.

According to Li Jianguo, pears are grown in his hometown, and they are said to be good for teeth. Moreover, when Li Qingxia had the means later on, she brushed her teeth quite diligently. In addition, she didn't like sour or spicy foods and avoided eating things that were bad for her teeth, so her teeth were fine.

Of course, genetics may also play a role.

Now, when Du Chunfang hears Li Long say that he will share the wastewater with those who help, she no longer has the same reluctance she used to have—sacrificing small things to make big money, she has gradually come to terms with this in the past few years.

Of course, more than anything, anyone from the village who came to their home treated her and Li Qingxia with great respect, bringing them gifts, and villagers would come to help with anything that happened at home.

According to Li Qingxia's private explanation, this branch of the Li family has settled here. People are being polite to us because of our sons, so we can't act arrogantly. As for the decisions our sons have made, they have all been carefully considered and don't need our "guidance"—which is basically just meddling.

Du Chunfang gradually came to understand that since the villagers were helping out of respect for her sons, she naturally had to repay them. They couldn't possibly eat all the waste, and it wouldn't fetch much money selling it anyway, so it was better to do them a favor.

She felt that her husband had the best attitude. Out of sight, out of mind. Whatever his sons decided was their business. She just needed to eat and drink well, cooperate as needed, and take good care of her health.

Think about it, with such good days, we should make the most of them—just like what an old man from the village, about the same age as his wife, said a few days ago when he came over to chat in the yard: "The past fifty or sixty years have never been as good as these days."

In the past, let alone landlords and wealthy people, even officials in the old society might not have lived as well as we do now, right? So why not take good care of your health and enjoy this kind of life for as long as possible!
Now, after listening to her husband and son, Du Chunfang drinks a small cup of the wine made with bones every day and feels that it's really not bad. She feels that her health is even better than it was back in her hometown.

So when Li Long said that the offal from slaughtering cattle and sheep would be distributed, she had no objection at all. She thought she would go and see the excitement herself, since staying in the yard every day was quite boring.

When Liang Yuemei heard Li Long mention this, she said she would go and help out. Li Long smiled and said that it would be perfect to have Uncle Luo cook more meat and offal, and that Sister-in-law could bring some back so that Li Juan and Li Qiang could eat when they returned.

Now, Li Juan and Li Qiang no longer bring cold steamed buns to school. Each of them has some pocket money every day. Both schools have canteens that provide meals for teachers and also sell snacks to students who are academically gifted. Li Juan and Li Qiang are considered academically gifted students.

Being able to eat hot food at school is something most people would envy, and of course, Li Juan and Li Qiang were used to it.

Their focus has long since shifted away from this aspect.

The next day, the slaughtering of sheep officially began. To Li Long's surprise, when he arrived in his jeep, the slaughtering had already started. There were thirty or forty people working and helping out, and it seemed that more people would be arriving.

What Li Long didn't know was that some time ago, Xu Chengjun held a meeting about flood control. Although Xu Youdao was scolded by him and stopped talking about it, the news still got out.

When some people asked Xu Youdao, he gave the same answer, and surprisingly, some people in the team actually supported his statement.

But most people still felt that Xu Chengjun was right. He had taken advantage of others and made money off them, so it was unreasonable to ask them to take care of Xiao Haizi themselves.

Of course, there are also some people who are just watching the show and don't express their own opinions.

Now Li Long is suddenly going to slaughter cattle and sheep and is asking the team members for help.

On the surface, it's about getting help from the team, but when you really think about it, everyone knows it's actually a way of giving the team members a perk!
If you come to help, you can get a share of the lamb offal. Only a fool wouldn't do that!
Now, even the few remaining people no longer have the face to speak ill of Li Long and the Li family—they've really gained quite a lot from the Li family over the years.

The Li family deserves much credit for the villagers of Team Four's current lifestyle; in fact, they deserve the lion's share of the credit.

It would be foolish to separate the Li family and the Fourth Squad at this point!
So everyone who came to help praised Li Long, and their help was genuine.

Tao Daqiang and Xie Yundong arrived in a tractor. Following Li Long's instructions, they were to unload the beef and mutton slaughtered that day and deliver it directly to the county's compound.

Sister Yang and the two men who did odd jobs were already prepared in the yard.

(End of this chapter)