Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

While Xiao Kelaiti was helping to put the sheep into the water, Li Long was in a nearby ditch, bending over with a gun in hand, slowly moving up the slope.

The day before, Talihar failed to catch any prey and encountered a group of wild boars. It was difficult for him to hunt them, but Li Long became interested when he heard about it. After asking about the range of wild boars, Li Long went there today with a gun on his back and a sack in hand to take a look.

If you can kill the wild boar, kill it. If you can't, pick mushrooms.

Li Long didn't pick many mushrooms. After walking two ditches, he heard the grunting of wild boars.

Li Long is not sure whether these wild boars eat wild mushrooms, but there are many things they can eat in the lush forests. Wild boars have a varied diet and can eat moss, pine nuts, wild strawberries, wild apples and other fruits.

So usually, people find them when they are foraging, because after eating, the wild boars will go into the mountains and find a secluded place to lie down and rest.

According to Talihar, this group of wild boars is not small, with more than ten or twenty of them, and they are very loud, with both large and small ones among them.

"The biggest one I think weighs nearly 200 kilograms, almost as heavy as a yellow cow." These are Talihar's original words. "It's short and thick, with teeth sticking out of its mouth. They're curved and sharp like little knives. It looks very fierce!"

Wild boars often run in the mountains and forests, and their bodies are not as long as domestic pigs. If they were domestic pigs, they would be almost two meters long if they weighed 200 kilograms.

Wild boars aren't that long, they tend to be thicker - sows may be slightly longer.

Of course, the largest ones are those weighing dozens of kilograms, and those weighing over a hundred kilograms are rare.

After all, there are other natural enemies in this mountain.

Li Long had already heard the grunting sounds of the little wild boars. According to Talihar, there were seven or eight little wild boars in the herd, weighing more than ten or twenty kilograms.

There are also a few half-sized ones weighing forty or fifty kilograms.

Li Long thought that if he fought, he would fight with a size this big.

Although the ones that are too small are delicious and tender, there is too little meat.

If the meat is too big, it won’t taste good.

When he slowly reached the top of the slope, he bent his waist even lower, because Li Long heard the sound of a wild boar, not far away on the other side of the slope.

He slowly raised his head, raised his gun, and saw a group of wild boars gnawing on something on a gentle slope of two or three acres in radius.

This grassy slope not only grows patches of wild strawberries, but also other plants such as Codonopsis pilosula and Tianshan safflower.

But by this time, the wild boars had already made a mess of the wild strawberries. When they ate the wild strawberries, they would dig up the plants and eat them together.

Maybe the sound of Li Long's footsteps was drowned out by the sound of the wild boar digging up the grass, or maybe the wild boar was so engrossed in eating, or maybe the more alert big wild boar was just far away from Li Long.

So when Li Long raised his gun and aimed at a half-grown wild boar that was only thirty or forty meters away from him, the wild boars had not yet discovered him.

"Bang!" Li Long pulled the trigger calmly, and the wild boar fell down.

At the sound of the gunshot, the wild boars suddenly scattered and fled in all directions. Two little wild boars ran directly towards Li Long. When they were about ten meters away, they saw Li Long, then turned around and changed direction.

"Bang! Bang!"

Li Long fired two more shots, one of them fell down, and the other one stumbled, then quickly got up, ran into a bush, and disappeared.

Li Long was actually quite satisfied with it. It was a one and a half grown pig, weighing about 17 or 18 kilograms.

Just enough to eat.

Since Yushanjiang and the others didn't want to eat it anyway, they might as well clean it up in the mountains, put it in the jeep, and take it back.

I walked over with the gun in hand and looked around. The wild boars had dispersed and disappeared completely. These guys looked clumsy at ordinary times, but in fact they were very timid at times. When faced with danger, they ran away faster than roe deer.

After turning off the safety of the gun, holding the big wild boar in one hand and the small wild boar in the other, Li Long looked at the direction and then walked towards the winter den in Yushanjiang.

When he arrived at the winter den, Xiao Kelaiti and the others had already packed up the offal and were looking at the meat in the pot.

The naan made yesterday has been broken into pieces, wrapped in a clean bed sheet and placed on a wooden table.

The long table that Li Long placed outside the wooden house was quite practical, and Yushanjiang and his friends also followed suit and made a solid wood table. Although it was not as good-looking as the table that Li Long got from the furniture factory, it was still quite good to use.

The space in the winter den is relatively small. If a dozen people are to eat together, there is definitely no room for them to sit inside the house. It would be better for them to sit outside.

Seeing Li Long carrying the wild boar over, Xiao Kelaiti didn't care and even wanted to come over to help.

Li Long didn't give in. He threw the wild boar onto the grass beside the ditch instead of into the pool, planning to deal with it later.

"Our team leader said that one dollar and fifty cents per mu of land is too expensive, one dollar at most." After being scolded by the team leader, Xiao Kelaiti understood the situation this time and decided to talk business first.

"One dollar is fine." Li Long smiled. In fact, in his opinion, grassland is much easier to cultivate than wheat fields. Not to mention one dollar, even 80 cents is enough.

So he readily agreed on behalf of Yushanjiang and Talihar.

How much can they harvest in a year from grazing on the summer pastures?
The harvest from half a month of cutting grass here is more than that from half a year of grazing in the mountains.

Why not?
"How many acres of grassland do you have to cultivate?" Li Long asked another key question.

"One or two thousand acres?" Xiao Kelai was not sure, but in his opinion, the captain and the deputy captain must thresh their own pastures, and there is no need to thresh their own pastures manually. Now the money from picking wild mushrooms in two or three days is enough to pay for threshing.

How much easier!
Xiao Kelai has 300 mu of grassland, which is not big. In previous years, it would take one or two months to harvest mushrooms by himself. Now that wild mushrooms are so profitable, there is no need to spend that effort.

Leave it to the tractor!

Seeing that the meat was not cooked yet and Yushanjiang and his men had not returned from cutting grass, Li Long took a bag of salt, carried a knife and went to the stream below to start processing the wild boar.

Over the past few years, Li Long's skinning technique has gone from being clumsy to proficient. Although it is not as smooth as Yushan Jiang Halimu and others who slaughter sheep, the process is also very smooth. In no time, the skins of the two wild boars were peeled off and their internal organs were taken out.

Because of limited time, Li Long only cleaned the wild boar's stomach and intestines. Before he could clean them, Yu Shanjiang and the others came back.

When Yushanjiang and his men came over, Li Long smeared salt on the wild boar, put it into a sack and put it in the jeep.

After lunch, he cleaned up the blood and debris from the place, either by washing them away with water or burying them, at least to keep Yu Shanjiang and the others from having to see them.

The last step is to process the mushrooms from Xiaokelaiti.

"The mushrooms this time are good." Li Long opened the bag, looked at the clean mushrooms inside, nodded and said, "If they are all like this, then I feel relieved. As long as there are, I will take them, the more the better!"

Xiao Kelai was very happy. With Li Long's promise, he could feel free to find more people to pick mushrooms.

Li Long brought back not only the mushrooms from Xiao Kelaiti, but also three sacks of wild mushrooms picked by the herdsmen. Xiao Kelaiti thought that Li Long had paid for the mushrooms, so he felt relieved and left in a hurry to go back to work.

Fortunately, after being reprimanded, I knew to report to the team first what Li Long agreed to, and then go find someone.

Li Long told Yushanjiang and the others that the animal husbandry team offered them one yuan to help cut grass.

Yushanjiang hesitated, but Talihar and the others were very willing. Talihar had a tractor, but to be honest, what he brought back this year was not enough, so he had to collect money from others. If he wanted to pay it back as soon as possible, he could either cut more grass for others this year, or earn money to pay it back. Another way was to hunt more after returning to the summer pasture.

He planned to make some money first. Li Long bought the tractor for them, but diesel and other fuels still cost money, and he didn't know how much of this barrel of fuel he could use. Without fuel, the tractor couldn't run.

We must first earn the money for the fuel. Yushanjiang agreed after some hesitation. Anyway, using two tractors to mow the grass already saves time. The saved time can be used to mow the grass for the animal husbandry team.

He was originally worried that leaving his cattle and sheep with Halimu, and there was a tiger roaming around near the summer pasture, which would not be a good thing.

But now think about it, a few days earlier or later, in fact, will not change much. Halimu and his men have guns in their hands, and they have killed a tiger before, so they should not be afraid.

After confirming, just keep mowing the grass.

After Li Long returned to the county, he went directly to the big yard. He had to deal with the two wild boars first.

The little wild boar was left for their family to eat, and Li Xiangqian took a leg of the big wild boar, and the rest was taken to Team Four.

My eldest brother Li Jianguo is still harvesting wheat every day. Now that the wheat harvest for Team 4 has been completed, he is still harvesting in a nearby village.

Tao Daqiang and his colleagues were also harvesting wheat in various villages and earning the biggest money this year.

If you can earn half a tractor's worth by doing a good job in wheat harvesting, how can you not do such a good thing? It doesn't matter if it's a little hard, as long as you can make money. After all, you can rest for a winter and recover.

Wild boar meat was not only given to everyone, but also a wild boar leg was placed at Lao Mahao. After returning, several kilograms of meat were also placed at Sun Jiaqiang's place as a snack for him.

During the following period, Li Long went to the mountains almost every day. In fact, among the dozen people in the mountains, except for four people who took turns driving the tractor, two people who were responsible for security, and one person who cooked, the rest of them were hunting and picking mushrooms.

After finishing cutting the grass here, Li Long not only harvested four to five hundred kilograms of dried wild mushrooms, but also more than a dozen skins.

It’s quite a harvest.

After Yushanjiang and his team finished harvesting grass on their own pasture, they went to the pasture of the animal husbandry team with Talihar. In the meantime, Li Long gave them two barrels of diesel.

After ten days of mowing, the two men had become very proficient in the use of tractors and harvesters, and had no problem driving there by themselves.

What surprised Li Long was that the remaining herdsmen all stayed, waiting for the grass to dry and be bundled up and transported back to their winter homes. Then they either picked mushrooms or went hunting, and they were very happy doing it.

After Yushanjiang and his team finished cutting grass at the pastoral team, they drove the tractor to the purchasing station, and finally rode into the mountains and returned to the summer ranch. After Li Long took inventory, he was also very surprised. During this period, not to mention the income from the purchasing station, the income from the mountains alone exceeded 20,000.

Yushanjiang, Talihar and their colleagues conquered nearly 3,000 acres of grassland at the pastoral team's side, which was much more than they had expected.

The main reason is that tractors are very fast at mowing the grass, and the grass is very neat, and it is also easy to bundle after drying.

Although it costs a lot of money, some people can still afford it by pooling the money from selling wool and sheep in the spring.

Yushanjiang and his team can mow grass much faster than harvesting wheat. When harvesting wheat, you must be careful not to crush the wheat, so you drive slowly and steadily, but this will waste fuel and time.

It’s different when mowing the grass. You can just keep driving. The pasture is so big that it doesn’t matter if you mow a little crookedly. Just mow in the right direction.

Therefore, it is not possible to harvest a hundred acres of wheat in a day. After all, you have to visit several families and a lot of time is wasted on the road.

But if you cut grass quickly, you can cut 150 mu of grass a day. So when Yushanjiang and Talihar came back from the animal husbandry team with the tractor, they were tired and thin, but in very good spirits.

After deducting the cost of diesel, the two people each earned more than a thousand yuan.

Both of them were very excited to have real money in their hands, which they earned by driving a tractor. Even though Yu Shanjiang was nearly 40 years old, he was still very excited when he talked about this in front of Li Long.

"In fact, this happens every year." Li Long smiled and said to him, "Maybe we can make more money next year because more people will know the convenience of using tractors to mow grass."

Yushanjiang nodded, he believed it was true.

Although the tribe will still live in the mountains, they don't mind living a better life. With money, they can buy more and better food, daily necessities, and even some fodder when winter comes, especially concentrated feed, to prevent cattle and sheep from losing too much weight in winter.

In the past, when cattle and sheep lost too much weight, they had to be slaughtered or sold. But now, we have money and can buy feed to let the cattle and sheep spend the winter safely. Will we have more and bigger herds of cattle and sheep?
Before going to the summer pasture, they also used tractors to pull a lot of coal from the open-pit coal mine for each family. In some places where the winter camps could not go up, the coal was pulled to the doorstep of Talihar's house, and then transported by horse, which was much closer.

After Yushanjiang and his friends went to the summer ranch, Li Long went into the mountains less often.

I made an appointment with Xiaokelaiti to go into the mountain once every five days. Xiaokelaiti would dry the mushrooms. As August was approaching, the black tiger palm would soon enter the next season.

Huang Lei came twice to collect dried wild mushrooms. Now there are more than 400 kilograms of dried wild mushrooms in the purchasing station. Li Long judged that when this season ends, when Huang Lei comes next time, the purchasing station should be able to sell about 600 kilograms of dried wild mushrooms.

If there is any more, we will have to wait until next year.

When the wild mushrooms are out of season, the main thing the purchasing station will buy next is the skin. There are still a lot of Codonopsis in the mountains in autumn, but it is not as expensive as Fritillaria, nor as easy to find as wild mushrooms, so the final purchase quantity may be less.

Li Long also informed Sun Jiaqiang in advance that the subsequent acquisitions would not be as profitable as before, and the bonuses would not be as much.

"It's OK if I don't have any." Sun Jiaqiang is very content. "To be honest, I'm so tired of getting bonuses in the past month. The money now is enough for me to buy a yard in the county. It's so much, I'm really scared. It's normal if I don't get any later. My salary is high enough. To be honest, I don't mind if my boss doesn't pay me later."

It can be seen that Sun Jiaqiang did not become greedy because of the large amount of money he had received earlier, but instead felt a little nervous.

Li Long felt that he might have given too much before. He thought that he could spread out the funds for Sun Jiaqiang until next year, giving more when he was busy and less when he was idle, but not to the point of giving nothing. He couldn't give as much as before when he was busy, which would not be good.

One day in early August, Li Long was playing with his children at home. Then Sun Jiaqiang came over and said that Li Xiangqian called him to go to the supply and marketing cooperative.

During this period, Li Long was busy with the purchase station. Except for sending a wild boar leg to Li Xiangqian and a deer leg later, he never went to the purchase station again.

This time when Li Xiangqian called, Li Long could roughly guess what it was about.

Sure enough, when he arrived at Li Xiangqian's office, Li Xiangqian, who was sitting behind the desk, gave him a document.

"Look, this job is specifically for you."

"Thirty thousand? How can there be so many?" Li Long took a look and found that his prediction was correct. This time he was assigned the task of making big brooms for this year.

I just never expected that there would be so many this year!
"Well, Director Qian called and said that the big brooms in our county are registered with the leaders of the autonomous region. This year, we will send a batch of big brooms to our brother provinces free of charge. This is related to the reputation of our autonomous region, so the bulk of the big broom work will be given to us - there are a total of 50,000 brooms in the whole prefecture, and 30,000 of them are in our hands. How about it, do the leaders think highly of you?"

"Thirty thousand..." Li Long was not happy this time, but a little worried.

After all, there are only so many Stipa sphenanthera and poles. Although Meng Hai and Xu Haijun have prepared some, they are obviously far from enough.

Looking through the documents, it is required to deliver the goods in early September.

One month, it’s very urgent.

But Li Long knew that no matter how urgent it was, he had to ensure the quality.

However, he cannot be the only one to check these 30,000 swords. He needs to mobilize everyone in his family.

The most urgent task is to assign this task to the two villages first, so that we can cut the reeds and make brooms now.

Thirty thousand swords, if the unqualified ones are taken into account, that means we have to collect at least a thousand swords every day.

There are more than a hundred households in the two villages, which means that every household has to make at least ten bunches of silk every day.

Some families can do this or even exceed this. After all, Liang Dacheng has a large family and can tie it up quickly.

For some families, that may not be enough.

It seems that we need to mobilize people from other villages to join in - such as Liang Wenyu? (End of this chapter)