Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

Chapter 993 We'll keep working until it snows, we'll finish repairing the road to the scheduled completion date.

After leaving Jiang Zhiyu's place, Li Long remarked with admiration, "This female cadre is remarkable."

What Ma Xiaoyan learned from Li Long was about the major things he had done in terms of ethnic unity, such as the current road construction and the previous water supply to the winter settlements.

These kinds of things are easy to report, especially now that ethnic unity is being promoted in full swing, they are particularly likely to attract the attention of higher authorities.

Jiang Zhiyu's strength lies in her ability to grasp the essential points of what Li Long does and disregard everything else.

The fact that she could find the main plot, even with subtle foreshadowing, shows that she is a remarkable person.

Although Li Long hadn't heard of her eventually reaching a certain level in his previous life, he believed she wouldn't just stay in the countryside forever.

With that keen insight, he should at least be promoted to the county or prefecture level.

Li Long actually had two things he wanted to do. One was to contract land on a large scale, so that when a cooperative was established, he could live a simple life as a farmer and receive dividends every year.

The second thing is to buy high-horsepower wheeled tractors, sprayers, acetone, and even cotton harvesters early on, so that when drip irrigation becomes widespread, you can hire people to operate the machines and be a far-sighted boss.

That's it.

But now is not the time; the task is arduous and the road ahead is long. After all, a high-horsepower imported tractor costs tens of thousands of dollars right now, which he can afford, but there's no need for it.

With cotton production and prices not rising, large-scale land contracting doesn't really offer much value, so let's put it on hold for now.

Moreover, now that there is a purchasing station and he has been awarded the title of National Advanced Individual, there are many more things waiting for him. The development of agricultural mechanization here is slow, so he is not in a hurry.

Unexpectedly, Jiang Zhiyu discovered it.

So what if I discovered it? Anyway, this is the inevitable path in the future, so I'll just consider it a prediction.

After Li Long left, Jiang Zhiyu looked at all the notes in her interview notebook and went through them again. The article in her mind already had a framework and she knew how to fill in the details.

She planned to finish writing the article as soon as possible and then send it out—to be honest, Jiang Zhiyu now felt that Li Long's growth to this point was not due to luck, but because he was truly capable and talented.

She's now even looking forward to the pesticide spraying machine that Li Long is going to work on next, and what else he'll be working on afterward.

Before writing this article, she had interviewed many people, especially farmers who drove small four-wheeled tractors with harvesters and tillers, wanting them to talk about their views on these machines.

Despite its minor flaws, everyone unanimously praised it – it makes money quickly and weeds quickly.

Jiang Zhiyu decided to include these people's words as evidence, using Li Long's words to express the view that agricultural mechanization is an inevitable trend and a necessity.

To this end, she even went to a friend in the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps to retrieve some data on the Corps' mechanization as a reference.

When Li Long returned to the county from the township, it wasn't lunchtime yet. He went to the purchasing station to check on its operations.

Most of the supplies at the purchasing station have already been taken away. The remaining supplies are either unsellable or require screening of buyers, so Li Long is not in a hurry.

Moreover, acquiring these items is itself a way to attract customers, increase the reputation of the acquisition station, and highlight its professionalism.

Now, scrap metal collection stations have appeared in the county. In the past, people who dug up ancient coins and antiques would sell their items to scrap metal collection stations, but now most of them are brought directly to Li Long's place because of his good reputation and the slightly higher prices he offers compared to scrap metal collection stations.

There weren't many people at the recycling station today; only five or six people were queuing up in the courtyard with bags. The tea bucket by the window was still more than half full, and all these people were familiar faces.

middleman.

When they saw Li Long coming over, they all greeted him with smiles. Li Long noticed that most of them were selling leather goods, and some of them had sheepskins in their hands, so he asked about the current price of sheep.

"Sheep prices are low right now," the man said. "Some herders moved their flocks early, and they've culled their sheep. Now, there are flocks of them at the market over the Mahe River. Beef and mutton prices always drop around this time of year."

Li Long suddenly realized that he should buy another batch of sheep at this time.

Last year, the sugar factory ordered a batch of cattle and sheep, but because they were going to Beijing, we didn't contact them elsewhere. So, the number of cattle and sheep in my sheepfold is more than in previous years, and I need to prepare more fodder this year.

But Li Long was thinking that he wouldn't go to Yanjing this winter. He would have time to contact various places to see if they needed beef and mutton, so he needed to buy another batch of cattle and sheep to raise first.

It has been proven that sheep can be fattened using sugar residue, wheat straw, and sugar beets, so Li Long thinks it's possible to expand the breeding operation. Anyway, Uncle Luo, Yang Laoliu, and others feel that the herds of cattle and sheep are not big enough, and now Ma Jinbao is even able to raise sheep. This is all because his own Old Ma's company is not strong enough.

So after staying at the purchasing station for a while, when Li Long and Gu Boyuan went back to the compound for lunch at noon, he mentioned this matter.

"Then let's buy a batch, it's no big deal," Gu Boyuan said with a smile. "There's plenty of wasteland over there in the fourth team. Not to mention your sugar residue and beets, just the grass from the main and branch canals, plus some wheat straw, can raise cattle and sheep well." Although Xie Yundong, Tao Daqiang, and other families also raise cattle and sheep now, the number is not large, mainly for their own convenience in eating meat.

When Li Long heard about this at lunch, Gu Xiaoxia also supported it. He then said that he would go to the team in the afternoon to find Xie Yundong and the others, organize them, and then drive to Mahe to buy cattle and sheep.

Xie Yundong and his group had nothing else to do, so the next day they went with Li Long and the others to the livestock market by the Ma River to buy cattle and sheep.

Unlike last year when you had to queue up and find a broker to buy cattle and sheep, this year there are so many culled sheep, in huge herds, that the cattle and sheep brokers simply can't keep up with the demand.

Li Long and his group still chose for themselves.

The current market price for mutton is 2 yuan and for beef is 2.2 yuan, but these cattle and sheep are sold very cheaply. A sheep that can be slaughtered weighing 10 kilograms sells for 18 yuan, and a cow that can be slaughtered weighing 200 kilograms sells for 400 yuan.

Moreover, this one is being picked over and discarded, which clearly indicates that it's a buyer's market and the selling price won't be high.

Li Long's original plan was simply to make up for the cattle and sheep he slaughtered last year, but now that the prices are so low, he decided to buy more—mainly because the herders selling cattle and sheep looked rather miserable, and Li Long couldn't stand their expressions.

Thirty cows and more than three hundred sheep bought up a quarter of today's livestock market.

There are many more, but Li Long can't let them go—he has to keep an eye on this one; it will take five tractors a long time to get it done.

Fortunately, once the purchase was complete, the seller handed over the entire herd of cattle and sheep to you, and you simply took the money and left.

By the end of the day, they had filled most of Lao Ma's cattle and sheep pens. The happiest person was Yang Laoliu. When he came back from herding the sheep and saw so many cattle and sheep, the first thing he did was to find a bucket of paint to mark the cattle and sheep.

"Uncle Luo, is the material stored up enough?" Li Long asked.

"That's enough, that's enough," Uncle Luo said with a smile. "There's still plenty left. Some people in the team wanted to buy some materials from here, but I didn't agree."

Li Long wondered if he could wait until the time was right and cooperate with the sugar factory to set up a feed mill, using the sugar residue as feed.
It's definitely not profitable in the short term. The main reason is that the livestock industry hasn't taken off yet, and most people don't have the concept of large-scale fattening. For the small number of cattle and sheep raised in rural areas, feeding them wheat tails, sunflower heads, and sunflower tails in winter is considered a supplement; the grass harvested in autumn is their staple food.

Only the ewes that give birth but look somewhat thin can eat concentrated feed like corn.

It's rare to find someone like Li Long who feeds sheep sugar residue every day during the winter.

For them, sugar residue is also a good thing, and it needs to be fed to sheep at the right time, not every day.

Li Long then went to check on the roe deer and red deer in the old horse's hut, as well as a large herd of wild boars.

This year, the roe deer and red deer brought Li Long a considerable income, mainly from deer antlers. It was much higher than Uncle Luo's and the others' wages, even covering the transportation costs for Song Ming's sugar candy hauling business.

The rest is net income. As for the cattle and sheep, although we don't eat much of them, we mainly sell them before the New Year.

When Li Long brought the cattle and sheep back, he thought about how he hadn't raised any in his previous life, and how there had been a lot of weeds growing by the roadside back then. He had also bought a house in the county, and when the lawn in the community wasn't very clean, some sow thistle, lettuce, alfalfa, and other plants grew there very well.

Upon seeing this grass, Li Long thought it would be great if there were a sheep, or even a rabbit. It's such a waste to waste such good pig feed.

There are many weeds in the wasteland outside, but with so many cattle and sheep, these weeds can be put to use, right?

If the pen wasn't too small, Li Long was actually thinking of buying some more cattle and sheep. Mainly, seeing such large herds of cattle and sheep at such cheap prices at the market, and having the money in his pocket, it would have been a real shame not to buy some.

Just like in my previous life, when I went to the supermarket and saw many discounted items, I thought, "This tastes good and I want to try it, that tastes good and I want to try it too." There were also quite a few things that I thought were useful and were quite cheap. It just so happened that the cooperative was distributing dividends, and I received a lot of money, so I thought I would buy more.

In reality, their eyes are bigger than their stomachs, so they can't eat it all, and some things just spoil.

Same feeling.

After buying the cattle and sheep, Li Long started following the road construction team into the mountains every day, mainly to check on the progress.

After delegating authority to the team leaders, Meng Hai felt much more relaxed, and the efficiency of road construction increased significantly. On average, he could advance nearly one kilometer per day. Of course, this depended on the situation; in some places, the road conditions were more complex, so he could only advance seven hundred meters or even five hundred meters.

Li Long doesn't blindly follow numbers. As long as the job is done well, that's fine. He needs speed, but he values ​​quality even more.

On October 27th, the total length of the road under construction reached 33 kilometers, which is basically one-third of the entire pastoral route.

At this time, the mountains several kilometers ahead were already covered in snow, and when we came over in the morning, the streams along the roadside were already frozen.

This year's road repair work has now come to an end.

(End of this chapter)