Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

Facing Dong Zhichao who was smiling, Li Long spread his hands and said:

"Manager Dong, I didn't lie to you. I sold all 40 tons of melon seeds to Manager Bai. I don't have any left."

Dong Zhichao and Bai Lanlan arrived in Ma County a week after Bai Xiuming left. When he arrived, Li Long was playing with Mingming and Haohao in the big yard.

Yesterday, a man who collects antiques came to the purchasing station. This time he didn't seem to be testing the market. He spent 15,000 yuan to buy the set of gold-plated horse harness and also bought a few pieces of ancient jade.

This was considered a big success for Li Long Antiques. He made back all the money he had earned from collecting antiques and even earned several times the profit.

Li Long gave Sun Jiaqiang a bonus of fifty yuan, but Sun Jiaqiang was too embarrassed to accept it.

However, Gu Boyuan told him to keep it with confidence, saying that he deserved the money.

The division of labor and responsibilities at the purchasing station is very clear. Gu Boyuan is responsible for purchasing, Li Long is responsible for selling, and Sun Jiaqiang is responsible for miscellaneous tasks.

Jia Tianlong did not follow Dong Zhichao and Bai Lanlan this time - he had done his best last time. He introduced them well and established connections, but Dong Zhichao and his friends were unwilling to form a long-term cooperative relationship.

Of course, last time it was Jia Tianlong who begged Dong Zhichao and the others to come over, so the initiative was in Dong Zhichao's hands.

This time, Dong Zhichao actually hoped that Jia Tianlong could come along. After all, Jia Tianlong and Li Long had a good relationship. With such a person following them, if the talks did not go well, at least there would be room for maneuver.

But now Jia Tianlong's mind is all on his wife. Although she hasn't given birth yet, her belly is very big now, which is considered a critical period, so he postponed the pregnancy.

Dong Zhichao had no choice but to come here with Bai Lanlan. When they arrived at the purchasing station, Gu Boyuan knew that they were here to buy melon seeds.

He knew the whole story, but Gu Boyuan did not send the two people away directly. Instead, he asked Sun Jiaqiang to call Li Long.

When Li Long arrived at the purchasing station, Dong Zhichao came up to him enthusiastically and shook hands with him. Li Long didn't want to offend someone so smiling, so he invited him to the reception room in the backyard.

I know they are purchasing melon seeds, so I said the sentence at the beginning.

Dong Zhichao is an old employee who once worked in a state-owned enterprise. In his opinion, coming here to ask Li Long for help is already a big concession. His self-esteem prevents Dong Zhichao from saying anything more conciliatory. He looks at Bai Lanlan.

"Comrade Li Long, we really hope to be able to buy your melon seeds." Bai Lanlan said sincerely, "We are willing to raise the price, how about three yuan per kilogram? We will also pay for the freight, and our purchase volume is large."

"I really have no stock here." Li Longxin said, I am telling the truth, why don't you believe it?
"Three dollars and fifty cents!" Bai Lanlan gritted her teeth. This was the price Dong Zhichao had discussed with her when she came here, and it was also the highest price the snack factory could offer.

"Three dollars and a half is fine, but I really don't have any on hand. If you want it, you'll have to wait until the fall. And I've already agreed with Manager Bai that they have priority. If they also offer three dollars and a half for the fall melon seeds, I'll give them priority as well."

When Jia Tianlong was not around, Li Long just talked about business and didn't care about any friendship - they didn't have much of a friendship to begin with.

Back at the guesthouse, Dong Zhichao frowned. He thought for a while and suddenly asked Bai Lanlan:
"Lanlan, what do you think if our factory develops a machine that can flatten melon seeds, and then flatten the harvested melon seeds before frying them?"

"We research?" Bai Lanlan asked in surprise. "Our technical department is researching how to improve the taste and shelf life of melon seeds. We don't have experience in this area. If we recruit more people, the cost will definitely increase from scratch. It would be best to outsource the research to a machinery factory, but the cost..."

Yes, there is no getting around the cost issue.

Before coming, they had calculated that the maximum purchase price for melon seeds in northern Xinjiang was RMB 3.50. After all, they had to be shipped back and the freight was not small.

If we outsource the machines and bring them back to the factory, we will definitely have to increase manpower, electricity costs, and time costs.

They don't know how the melon seeds are flattened, and it's hard to say whether they can make such a machine.

If Li Long was in Dong Zhichao's position, he would have many ways. All of them have been verified by later generations and are very effective. However, this is a dimensionality reduction attack, which many people in this era cannot even think of.

Li Long remembered that there was a very famous breeding case in later generations.

Further north in the northern Xinjiang, in the area where the Golden Mountain is located, the state has provided support for a goose breeding project, with a funding of 5 million yuan for this project.

But you must see results, that is, the state will invest five million a year, and you must produce 100,000 geese during the state inspection and acceptance.

Someone took a fancy to this project, worked on it for two years, and then gave up.

One hundred thousand geese, how big a pen would be needed, how many people would be needed, as well as feed, space, etc. Moreover, this place is close to the north, and wild birds carrying viruses from foreign countries occasionally fly over from the north or northwest. An outbreak of avian influenza might wipe out everything.

Just when the project was about to fail, a young man came over to do it.

It was done successfully.

The method is very simple. At the beginning of the year, he bought 200,000 goose seedlings and distributed them to farmers in a county. After signing a contract, these geese were distributed to these people for free. However, when the state inspected the production, he needed to drive these raised geese to the breeding farm he built for state inspection.

After acceptance, the geese will not be returned to the farmers.

Each family was given 50 goose seedlings, and by autumn, 70% to 80% of them would survive. So the task of raising 100,000 goose was easily accomplished.

The young man has a deal with each family. If the farmer wants to eat the goose himself, he doesn't care. But if the farmer wants to sell it, he will buy it back for fifty to seventy yuan per goose.

The young man only built a breeding farm and then set up a goose processing factory.

At the end of the year, not to mention the government subsidy projects, this goose processing factory alone makes a lot of money - these geese are raised using purely traditional methods, so they are considered green products and are very popular.

The higher-ups knew that this was a trick, but they didn't stop it - after all, it was killing two birds with one stone, as it not only raised geese, but also boosted the farmers' courtyard economy - more than 100,000 geese were raised every year, and the effect was achieved, so that was enough.

Later, this model was also adopted in the fourth team. The higher-ups raised chickens in the form of a cooperative, with each farmer being given 40 half-grown hens, and the cooperative recycling eggs for one yuan each - but they could not use eggs from outside as counterfeit eggs.

But you have to pay a deposit of 1,000 yuan, which is quite annoying.

But no matter what, at least we have eggs to eat at home. After all, eggs from farms are completely different from eggs grown by farmers themselves.

There was also a joke. Someone was sick and the fourth team went to visit him. They stopped at a supermarket near the hospital and thought they would buy some free-range eggs, which were nutritious. But when they bought the eggs, they found that the label on the eggs looked so familiar. Aren’t these eggs produced by their own farm?
Hey! I sell an egg to the cooperative for one dollar, and buy it home for three dollars. That’s a big loss!
Having said that, if Li Long were Dong Zhichao, he would be more generous and find farmers who grow melon seeds in the county or city where the roasted nuts factory is located, sign a contract with them, provide them with machines free of charge, and then collect all the processed melon seeds himself.

If the price is raised, the melon farmers will definitely be willing to process it. However, Dong Zhichao didn't know how the melon seeds were flattened, and he didn't have the idea - giving the melon farmers the machine for free? How could it be possible?

This is not the way to make concessions!
Dong Zhichao had no choice. He and Bai Lanlan went around several nearby counties but couldn't find any flat-mouthed melon seeds. Last year, the planting area of ​​melon seeds in northern Xinjiang was small, but this year it is more, but it is obviously not the purchasing season yet.

I can only go back and think of a solution. Bai Lanlan wanted to persuade Dong Zhichao to come earlier in the fall. Obviously, if he didn't come this fall, the market occupied by the roasted nuts factory would inevitably be occupied by the food company where Bai Xiuming worked.

There is no win-win situation with this. It's a zero-sum game. If you don't enter, someone else will.

But Dong Zhichao has been working for so many years and has been relatively successful. He has developed a stubborn and self-willed character and refuses to listen to advice.

Li Long has lived two lives and has many successful cases in his mind, but he has not taken the initiative to turn these cases into actual actions - except for what he has done now, all of which have been pushed forward step by step.

Those can only be used as memories at most, or maybe when you are forced to do something else at some point and suddenly have an idea, you can pick them up and use them.

With a peasant mentality at heart and little education, his horizons, while broader than those of people today, were still limited.

After seeing Dong Zhichao off, Li Long continued to live a "peaceful" life.

The wheat season has finally begun. Outside the residential area, the harvest has begun in the large golden wheat fields. This year, Team 4 has at least eight tractors with harvesters running in all directions to harvest the large wheat fields.

Expanding the view further, there are the Corps companies in the north, the mountain villages in the south, Shicheng in the west, and all the way to the outskirts of Wucheng in the east. Small four-wheel tractors with harvesters are cutting down the wheat and stacking it neatly.

The owners of these lands wore straw hats or headscarves and tied up the wheat with straw ropes or reed ties. Behind them came horse-drawn carriages, donkey carts or small four-wheel tractors. Some people carried the bundles of wheat on their shoulders and loaded them onto the carts. The wheat was then transported to the threshing ground, where each family piled the wheat into large piles and took turns threshing the wheat.

If you go to the countryside at this time, you can see the scene of tractors threshing or winnowing wheat in the fields.

At this time, many popsicle sellers would go around the wheat fields - threshing and winnowing is very hard work, and it has to be done under strong sunshine and wind. In this situation, one can either eat melons or popsicles.

Watermelons haven't come down in large quantities yet, so popsicles are pretty good. People who come to play at this time usually buy dozens of popsicles. At this time, a few cents is worth spending.

The popsicle vendors especially like to go to the Fourth Squad. Although it is far away, the people here are really generous and rich. After visiting the seven or eight wheat fields in the three settlements of the Fourth Squad, a box of popsicles is basically empty.

When the wheat was harvested and threshed, Li Long returned to Team 4.

My parents, as well as my eldest sister-in-law, were all in the threshing field. The Lu family next door was also there. This year, the main force in the threshing field was the elderly and women. Li Jianguo and Lu Yingming both harvested their own wheat first and brought it back to the threshing field before going out to harvest the wheat.

Li Long's tractor was parked at his eldest brother's place. Li Qingxia and Tietou of the Lu family took turns driving the tractor to pull the iron rollers for threshing - the reason for making iron rollers was that the Fourth Team could not find any stones to make stone rollers within a radius of dozens of kilometers except in Nanshan.

Of course, people here are used to using local materials. Since we can't get stone rollers, we'll use iron ones.

I haven't seen it, which only means that the world is different.

Li Long wanted to come over to help thresh the wheat, but was driven away by the Li family. Every family worked in the wheat field, and the people were similar, two or three people from a family, threshing together and picking grass.

First, Li Long hadn't done this kind of work for many years, so he was not very good at it. Second, there were three people from the Li family. Although Du Chunfang didn't work much, she could still pick wheat straw. She couldn't winnow the wheat, but she could still knock it down.

Winnowing means that the wheat is pressed out from the wheat ears. After being piled up, the wheat husks need to be winnowed away when there is wind. During the winnowing process, the wheat falls and the wheat husks, that is, the wheat tails are blown aside by the wind.

At this time, it usually takes two people to cooperate, one person winnowing, and the other waiting on the side with a large broom made of sedge. After the wheat falls, the person winnowing will flick the wheat grains and prepare to throw them up, while the person knocking them down will quickly and gently sweep away the wheat grains, wheat debris, and some impurities and stones that have not been blown away.

The sweeping force should not be too strong, it should float lightly on the wheat pile. It is not good to sweep too lightly, or the impurities will not be swept away. It is even worse to sweep too hard, or the winnowed wheat grains will be swept away, resulting in grain loss.

Of course, the wheat tails and miscellanea that are swept away will be winnowed again and screened again.

At this time, the advantages of the Achnatherum splendens broom are revealed.

However, Li Long is not very good at winnowing or threshing now, and his family doesn't need him to do these jobs anymore, so they let him go back to the county, as they don't need him anymore.

Li Long went back home and stayed for a while. Gu Boyuan and Sun Jiaqiang were watching over the purchasing station. During this busy farming season, there were quite a few people coming to the purchasing station every day, but the items collected were few, so the medicinal materials had to be collected for another half a month before a truckload was enough.

There were even fewer skins, and now was not the time for hunting, as everyone was busy harvesting wheat in the fields.

The only thing that was harvested in relatively large quantities was dried mushrooms – although the morels were out, the black tiger’s paw mushrooms were out, and it was the peak season.

Huang Lei came twice more, and each time he took away several hundred kilograms of dried mushrooms from Li Long. Of course, he also kept a lot of money.

There is another good thing here at the purchasing station. A telephone has been installed.

Although it still requires multiple layers of switching, at least I can make calls and receive calls.

Li Long stayed at the purchasing station for a day and called all his connections one by one, including Director Du, Director Qian, and Jia Tianlong and Zhao Hui, whom he mentioned.

After finishing the work, Li Long stayed at home anxiously, so he went to the market to buy a sheep, cut it in half, and brought some rice and flour to the pastoral team's stay-behind point.

Then the next day, he went into the mountains early.

When I passed by Qingshuihe Village, I saw that threshing was also going on there. The branches of the trees on the roadside that were suitable for making poles had been cut down, and there was a lot of bark piled up in front of some people's houses, which should have been cut off for making poles.

Li Long didn't go to Meng Hai's place, but he could guess that there must be a lot of poles piled in the Meng family's yard.

After entering the mountain and passing through the soil and rock mountains where there was no hair on the outside or only a thin layer of vegetation, when the vegetation on the mountain became dense, Li Long felt the heat on his body dissipate all of a sudden.

He first went to Halimu's winter home and found that no one lived there, and Halimu and his friends did not go down the mountain.

There were a lot of dirt and leaves in the sheep washing pool, but Li Long didn't clean it up. This thing will not be used until next year, so he will clean it up then.

There has not been any change in the Yushanjiang family's winter home either. No one comes here, so the house is considered new. I think Yushanjiang and his family will be very happy to see this house when they come back.

Turning back to my own wooden house, there was no change here.

Since Xie Youcai was captured last time, the door has been locked. Now there are only a few claw marks on the wooden floor at the door.

The chain was not broken and there were no footprints nearby, which shows that few people come here.

Li Long went to the hot spring again with his gun on his back.

For some reason, no animals have come to the hot spring for a long time. Li Long looked around and didn't see any paw or hoof prints.

The hot spring water was very good, with smoke floating above the pool. The pool that had been repaired by Li Long was also normal.

Li Long was thinking about whether he should bring his family here to soak in the water.

If parents don’t want to come, then bring Xiaoxia, Mingming and Haohao over. It’s nice to hang out and have some fun here.

Anyway, there is nothing important to do in the Education Bureau at this time. The half-year summary has been completed, the school has been on vacation, and they are relatively free.

Okay, that’s settled.

After walking around the familiar place for several times, Li Long still didn't encounter any fighting animals.

In desperation, he took a sack and went to pick black tiger paw mushrooms.

There is no other way, we can only use sacks, because there is too much of this stuff as long as we find some. One piece can weigh more than ten or twenty kilograms, which is why the purchasing station can collect hundreds of kilograms of dried goods every few days.

There are really a lot of them. They are large in size, can be dried and shipped, and grow in clusters. Their growing season is longer than that of morels, so there are naturally more of them.

When Li Long returned, he pulled two sacks of black tiger palm mushrooms into the jeep, but they still had no roots, as he had cut them off. There was also a large bag of wild strawberries, which have a long growing season. On sunny slopes, they may have grown in mid-June, and on shady slopes, they may still be ripe by the end of July.

When leaving the mountain, Li Long heard wolves howling in the mountains, and then hesitated again. Should he take the child into the mountains? If he went into the mountains, would he only have to stay at the wooden house? If he went to the hot springs, would it be dangerous for women to take a bath?

Li Long was thinking about hesitating for a while, but he didn't expect that before the weekend arrived, Meng Hai rushed to the county and told Li Long that Yushanjiang and others had gone down the mountain.

Why is it so early this year? (End of this chapter)