1994: Vegetable farmers strike back

Chapter 216 Brewing
"Director Chen, there really is 200 million. If you don't believe me, look, it's a total of 201.89 yuan."

Late at night, under the light of Huang Chuan's flashlight, Xu Yao held a calculator in her hand. Seeing that Chen Jiazhi was somewhat surprised, she handed it to him to take a look.

"Hmm~"

After thinking for a moment, Chen Jiazhi said, "Give me a detailed list of each group for the past few days."

He has only focused on the total amount these past two days, without delving into the details of each group.

"Uncle, it's almost 12 o'clock, it's about time to go."

Yi Long stood in front of the Yuejin light truck and urged, having become familiar with the Jiangxin vegetable market after being there for a while.

Ao Deliang was standing next to him.

"Wait another 10 minutes."

Before long, Chen Jiazhi had grasped the current situation and found that the cumulative sales revenue had indeed exceeded two million yuan.

Besides the soaring price of Chinese kale, other vegetables are also quite expensive, with bok choy at 3.2 yuan per jin, and Chinese cabbage and water spinach at 2.8 yuan per jin.

Another pleasant surprise is that the yield of bok choy is higher than expected, currently exceeding 2000 jin per mu!
The young bok choy plants are mainly concentrated in Group 2 of the southern section, which is managed by Guo Mancang.

The yield of water spinach was slightly low, but still within acceptable limits.
After reviewing the vegetable output over the past two days, Chen Jiazhi believes that the Dongxiang vegetable market can also harvest kale tomorrow afternoon.

Jiangxin vegetable market has only 20 mu of kale left.

The Dongxiang vegetable market has a total of 10 mu of kale, with an estimated yield of 12 to 13 tons. It would be appropriate to sell it all over two days by taking advantage of the Jiangxin vegetable market.

Jiangxin Vegetable Market can also close at the same time.

In terms of quantity, Dongxiang vegetable market could operate independently for a whole day, but Dongxiang doesn't have enough manpower, and there are still bok choy to be harvested, so the harvesting task cannot be completed.

"Xu Yao, remember to check on the payment!"

"it is good!"

Today was efficient; all the trucks destined for Hong Kong have been delivered. When Chen Jiazhi drove off in his light truck, only Xu Yao, Tong Gang, Yi Dinggan, and a few others were still in the yard.
There was another person on the bus, Ao Deliang.

He has been arranging land preparation these past few days, and the progress is quite fast. This afternoon, he approached Chen Jiazhi and offered to help out at the market.

However, after getting on the bus, Chen Jiazhi assigned him another task.

"Deliang, you won't be selling vegetables tonight. Just stay at the Dongxiang vegetable market. They should be collecting kale tomorrow. Go with them and keep an eye on it. It'll be packaged the same as at the Jiangxin vegetable market. I'll call a truck over, and you can go back to the Jiangxin vegetable market with it tonight."

After thinking for a while, Ao Deliang understood: Boss Chen was trying to use someone else's resources to his advantage!
We sell vegetables from Dongxiang Market through the channels of Jiangxin Market.

This is considered doing private work.

But Ao Deliang agreed first before asking for some details.

...

A few hours ago, at the Dongxiang vegetable market, the sunset was as fiery as fire.

Li Xiu, with her hair in a ponytail and wearing a white crew-neck T-shirt, walked into the vegetable field with Peng Guozhen, each carrying a bucket of mung bean soup.

Actually, Li Xiu wanted to carry the two buckets of mung bean soup out by herself, but her mother-in-law was in high spirits and insisted on helping, so they each carried one bucket out.

Not only were her hands tired, but she also had to keep an eye on her mother-in-law to prevent her from falling.

The paths in the vegetable fields are quite narrow. Fortunately, there has been little rain recently, and there are fewer and fewer vegetables in the fields. As far as the eye can see, there are only empty plots of land, with vegetable leaves and stalks still remaining on the ridges. Naturally, there is no need to water them.

This keeps the country paths dry, making them safer to walk on.

The two arrived safely at the last four or five acres of vegetable fields, where nearly 20 people were scattered around, bending over to harvest the vegetables.

"Take a break, everyone, and have a bowl of mung bean soup~"

"Take a break, take a break."

The weather was still quite hot. Li Xiu was sweating after walking this short distance, but no one came even after she called out several times.

She wasn't in a hurry either.

At first, she thought it was because the food didn't taste good, but later she realized that these people simply didn't want to waste time and would only come over after they finished collecting all the dishes.

After waiting for a while, people started coming over to drink mung bean soup.

They walked briskly, moved nimbly, and drank in large gulps.

"Drink slowly, drink slowly, no rush~"

Peng Guozhen kept talking from the side, secretly praising them in his heart: Wow, these people are really fierce!

She actually loves to nitpick, and her favorite thing to say is that someone in the village is not good at work and is not as good as her.

But after arriving at the Dongxiang vegetable market, she discovered that everyone there was incredibly capable, and each person was more enthusiastic than the last in their work.

In the past, you would have to get full work points every year!
After finishing one bowl of soup, Zhao Yu scooped out another and called out, "Guihui, come quickly, I'm bringing it to you."

Lai Guihui jogged over.

Seeing this from the other compartment, Huang Juan shouted, "Guihui, why are you making it look like a war?"

Lai Guihui didn't stop either: "I haven't seen you slow down either?"

Huang Juan: "I wouldn't dare. If I slow down, you'll have to collect a few more kilograms of vegetables. If you collect a few more kilograms, I'll have to collect a few less. When we settle the accounts at the end of the month, I'll have less money than you."

Lai Guihui: "You're quite something, woman!"

The two were competing, and so were the others. Li Xiu knew exactly what was going on. One night, while taking a walk, Jia Zhi had told her that commission was only the first step, and group commission was the second step. However, he had delegated the group commission step to Ao Dehai.

Jiazhi can motivate the vegetable workers and improve the efficiency of vegetable collection by adjusting the daily vegetable collection volume.

For example, the results in the past few days have been very obvious. After slowing down the pace of vegetable collection, the daily amount of vegetables collected has decreased to 220 pieces. With 19 vegetable workers in the market, the average amount of vegetables collected per person is more than 300 kilograms.

This amount is a lot for vegetable workers who earn a fixed salary, but for professional vegetable collectors, this amount is just a drop in the ocean, as Cantonese people would say!
This is one method of management.

Although Jia Zhi was not at the market and asked her not to interfere too much with Ao Dehai's management, Li Xiu knew that the market was still under Jia Zhi's control!
It’s really awesome!
But his abilities went far beyond that. After delivering the mung bean soup, Li Xiu and Peng Guozhen went back together. The sun had set, and Chen Shaochang was pushing a stroller around the yard. Li Xiu went up to greet him, played with her son for a bit, and then went back inside to take out an account book from the table.

Looking at the data from each of the vegetable-collecting groups, I started calculating again.

Jiazhi said that after selling this batch of vegetables, he wants to pay the wages as soon as possible, and then take a few days off so that the whole family can go on vacation for a few days.

I couldn't help but recall him touching me while saying that, mentioning staying two nights in a high-end hotel and enjoying the hotel's king-size bed.
Pshaw~ There's never a serious moment when I'm with her. She always veers into that kind of thing when we're talking about work, even though she's kind of looking forward to it.

Are high-end hotels very expensive?
She didn't know how much money she had made during this period, as she hadn't kept the money at home, and Yi Long wasn't home either, so no one in the market knew what was going on.

Apart from her, everyone else thought that the bok choy was only 55 yuan per piece, which was the price seven days ago.

The price of bok choy has now risen to 70 yuan per piece.

The price is also in line with expectations, as if Jiazhi had anticipated this market trend at this time of month.

How can he be so amazing!
Li Xiu propped her chin on her hand and wrote down long, thin numbers and characters. Jia Zhi joked that it was "telephone pole style," because everything she wrote looked like a telephone pole, which made her so angry she wanted to bite someone.
bite……

She recalled how Jiazhi had pestered her one night, saying he wanted to be bitten. At first, she didn't understand, but after she did, she found it difficult to say it.

*Swish* My face inexplicably turned red.

Li Xiu quickly shook her head, dismissing any inappropriate thoughts, and continued doing the accounting. But looking at the numbers, she thought to herself that Jia Zhicun must have quite a lot of money.

Staying two nights at a high-end hotel seems like an option; the beds there should be even bigger and softer, right?
...

When Chen Jiazhi saw Li Xiu again after getting off the bus, even though it was dark and the lights under the eaves were dim, he felt that she was different.

A little shy?

It just feels weird.

After giving a brief greeting, I opened the car door and let the workers start loading the vegetables; tonight's load was 220 pieces as usual.

This batch of bok choy was sown between September 16th and 22nd. We planted 4 mu (approximately 0.67 hectares) per day, and normally we should produce about 270 pieces of bok choy per day.

Chen Jiazhi deliberately slowed down the pace.

Because vegetable prices are higher later on, the workers at the Dongxiang vegetable market won't have to work as hard, and the competition will make them more efficient.

Ao Deliang and Yi Long also got out of the car one after another. Ao Deliang greeted Ao Dehai and the others with great excitement.

The other cooks were also very curious.

"Deliang, how's it going at the Jiangxin vegetable market?"

"Does Jiangxin Market have any vegetables for sale lately?"

"Is the salary you're paid high?"

"I heard you became a team leader. How many acres of land and how many people are you managing?"

One question after another floated towards Ao Deliang. He smiled, took out a cigarette, and offered it to everyone.

"Hurry up and pack the vegetables, the boss is waiting to sell them. We can talk about it tomorrow."

Ao Deliang temporarily suppressed his desire to show off, greeted everyone, and called out Lai Guihui's name at the door before opening the door for him to enter the house.

"I feel like Tokuryan is a little different."

"Yeah, the cigarettes he's smoking look like some kind of fancy stuff."

Several male workers who were packing the vegetables were still discussing it.

Chen Jiazhi then told Ao Dehai about the task of harvesting kale tomorrow, which is the afternoon of the 18th.

"Harvest half of the kale first, Dehai, estimate how many kilograms we can get?"

"Half harvested?!"

Ao Dehai subconsciously raised his voice, attracting the attention of the others, and Li Xiu also walked over to the two of them.

Chen Jiazhi laughed and said, "I have other sales channels, so I can sell the kale in two batches. Deliang will tell you how to pack it tomorrow."

Ao Dehai understood, did some quick calculations, and said, "I estimate we can harvest 27000 jin."

The yield was about 2700 jin per mu. Chen Jiazhi was surprised: "That high?"

Ao Dehai smiled and said, "Thanks to the several truckloads of peanut bran you bought, boss. With enough base fertilizer, this batch of kale has a long bolting period. Some kale have bolted 30 or 40 centimeters long and haven't even flowered yet!"

"..."

Turtle~
How can I be so lucky?

Chen Jiazhi then asked, "Then we can only harvest a little less bok choy tomorrow, since there aren't many left anyway."

Half of the Chinese kale yields about 13500 jin (6,250 catties), plus 220 pieces of bok choy, which is 6600 jin (3,300 catties), for a total of 20100 jin (10,500 catties), averaging over 1,000 jin (500 kg) per person.

This is really tough!

Ao Dehai nodded in agreement: "If we prioritize the kale, we can only harvest as much bok choy as we can; I'll try to harvest it as early as possible."

Let's arrange it like this for now.

After assigning tasks, Chen Jiazhi and Li Xiu headed into the pitch-black vegetable field.

"Xiu, guess how much kale costs?"

"3 yuan?"

"It's four yuan per jin!"

"install?"

Li Xiu stopped in her tracks, tilted her head slightly, and after confirming that she hadn't misheard, she felt a chill run down her spine, as if she could stay in a luxury hotel for two more nights.

(End of this chapter)