1994: Vegetable farmers strike back

Chapter 232 A Twist from Heaven
The lights were still on in the upper floors of the two-story building by the roadside, and when they heard the car returning, the lights on downstairs also turned on.

As soon as Chen Jiazhi got out of the car, he saw Peng Guozhen open the door and put on a coat.

"You're back, Jiazhi. Did everything go smoothly?"

“Smoothly, I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” Chen Jiazhi said. He also saw Li Xiu’s figure upstairs.

Peng Guozhen asked again, "You weren't making any noise. Have you eaten? Do you want me to cook you something to eat?"

Chen Jiazhi said, "I've eaten. I ate with my third sister and the others. You guys go to sleep first. I'm going to wash up."

Peng Guozhen: "Okay, there's water boiling in the pot. The fire was just put off not long ago, so it should still be hot. Do you want me to get you some water?"

"No need, it's dark in the yard, I can do it myself, you go to sleep."

Chen Jiazhi shook his head and went inside. As soon as he reached the bottom of the stairs, Li Xiu brought him a change of clothes.

"Still not asleep?"

"Well, I'll wait until you come back."

"Then wait a little longer, I'll be done in a minute."

After taking a comfortable hot shower, Chen Jiazhi went upstairs to the second floor. He glanced at Yi Long's room and saw that the light was on, so he went over and knocked on the door.

"Xiaolong, what are you doing? You're still awake? It's past ten o'clock!"

"Go to bed right away."

The door wasn't open, and he didn't know what Li Xiu was doing inside. Chen Jiazhi turned around and went back to his room, where he saw that Li Xiu wasn't asleep either, and was reading a book.

"What are you looking at?"

Learn Mandarin.

Li Xiu showed the cover of the book to Chen Jiazhi: "Three Thousand Commonly Used Words in Standard Mandarin".

"Can you understand it?"

“It’s a bit difficult,” Li Xiu shook her head. “I listened to the radio with Xiaolong during the day to learn Mandarin, and it worked a little better.”

"Xiaolong is learning too?"

Chen Jiazhi was surprised. He glanced at the sleeping Chen Zhengyun and then quietly got into bed.

Li Xiu whispered, "Xiao Long is going to school soon. He's been quite excited these past few days. He's not only practicing Mandarin, but he also keeps taking out books to read. You said he wasn't asleep outside the door earlier, so I guess he's secretly reading."

Chen Jiazhi absentmindedly gave an "oh," and his hands began to wander, touching the smooth breasts.

Li Xiu scolded, "Stop fooling around, let me remember this line."

"Which sentence? Let me see it." Chen Jiazhi took the book and casually placed it on the bedside table.

"I don't need to read any books, I can teach you to speak Mandarin!"

Are you trying to teach me Mandarin?

"It's the same, it won't cause any delay~"

...

In the middle of the night, Chen Zhengyun started crying again, waking Chen Jiazhi up. When he remembered, Li Xiu told him to go back to sleep and took the baby out for a walk by herself.

Early in the morning, Chen Jiazhi rummaged through a pile of miscellaneous items and found two plastic bags.

"Thank goodness, thank goodness, it's not wet."

"What is it? I can tell you've been looking for it for quite a while." Yi Dinggan squatted at the door, smoking, waiting for him to leave.

"Seeds~"

Chen Jiazhi stacked all the seeds of the large-bone green gourd, ridged loofah, and bitter gourd that he had previously saved on a high place, and then took out a few small packets of seeds.

Previously purchased from a state-run supply and marketing cooperative were imported Italian lettuce seeds, as well as leafy green vegetable seeds sent by Hong Zhong from Shanghai.

"Let's plant a little bit at the market and see how it goes."

Yi Dinggan took the seeds and looked at them. "You really like to tinker."

How can you know if something is good or bad if you don't try it?

In fact, Chen Jiazhi's previous understanding was wrong, or rather, he was misled.

Lettuce has been grown in China for several years now, but the cultivation is still relatively limited.

As mentioned before, the United States and Taiwan dominate the high-end vegetable market in Hong Kong. Taiwan's representative vegetable is snow peas, while the United States mainly produces lettuce.

Especially from May to September, Guangdong cannot produce lettuce, and American lettuce almost monopolizes the high-priced imported lettuce market in Hong Kong.

It's not difficult to regain this market share; we can build a base in Yunnan and Guizhou after a few more years of transportation infrastructure development.

American lettuce lost its competitiveness.

Lettuce is one of the four kings of leafy vegetables in Yunnan.

Chen Jiazhi had just seen the seeds at the supply and marketing cooperative and bought them to give it a try.

After getting the seeds, I went to the market.

The team leaders worked overtime yesterday afternoon to assign the construction sites.

This prompted some diligent vegetable workers who wanted to earn money to go to the vegetable fields to prepare the ridges before dawn.

When Chen Jiazhi was inspecting the fields on his bicycle, he saw many vegetable workers carrying shovels and ropes tidying up some of the flat ridges.

A rough estimate suggests that the efficiency is far greater than that of large-scale collective operations.

After inspecting the fields, Chen Jiazhi asked Qi Yongfeng to call over a few workers to take out the snow pea seeds and dry them for 3-4 hours.

I won't post pictures of the bok choy; I'll just sow it later.

After drying the seeds, Chen Jiazhi gave the lettuce and Shanghai bok choy seeds he had brought to Ao Deliang, who mixed the seeds with sand and sowed them himself.

Chen Jiazhi watched for a while, then couldn't help but shake his head.

If it's bok choy, this sowing method is not only slow, but the seedling thinning efficiency may be even lower later!
Chen Jiazhi tolerated the last batch of bok choy, but now that he's decided to work hard, he's starting to think of solutions.

The first thing that comes to mind is a hand-push type seeder specifically for Chinese cabbage.

Before his rebirth, he bought one of these machines online. It was small, lightweight, easy to use, fast, and produced even seeds, requiring minimal thinning work afterwards.
There probably aren't any now.

The only option is to try and find someone to build one themselves.

Around noon, the seeds, which had been drying in the sun for several hours, were almost ready. After a rough weighing, they were divided into small piles, ready for seed mixing.

"Jiazhi, how much of each of these two medicines should be added?" "0.3% of the seed weight."

Yi Dinggan stood in front of the pile of seeds, holding two bags of pesticides, and asked again, "0.3% for all, or 0.3% for each?"

Chen Jiazhi said, "I've calculated it all out, just add one packet of carbendazim and chlorothalonil to each batch. You can just add them directly."

Yi Dinggan: "You should have said so earlier. Why did you have to say 0.3%? Does it make you seem so great?"

Chen Jiazhi: "I just wanted to help you understand more, and I'm wrong to say that?"

Yi Dinggan instinctively wanted to argue back, but then he immediately remembered the deputy director he always talked about.

In private, you can address each other as brothers, but in the workplace, you must address each other by their job titles.

"I've learned a lot, Director Chen!"

"..."

After a flurry of activity, the mixed seeds were packed into buckets, sealed, and stored in the warehouse. They can be taken out and sown two days later.

...

In the afternoon, Chen Jiazhi held a pen, stared at the blank paper, and was completely bewildered.

"How was it drawn again?"

He wanted to draw a sketch of a hand-push type seeder specifically for Chinese cabbage.

But knowing what's going on, drawing it seems like a different story.

Nope!
He only knew the general structure and principle, and after drawing several diagrams, he realized that his drawing skills were indeed lacking.

Chen Jiazhi had no choice but to give up for the time being.

Then I thought of Zhang Hua from the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Maybe we can cooperate with the Academy of Agricultural Sciences or the university in the future.

Chen Jiazhi kept this in mind.

After putting down his pen and drinking a cup of tea, Chen Jiazhi walked out of his office and onto the corridor, leaning against the wall to watch the busy scene in the vegetable field.

Time passes day by day.

The planting work at Jiangxin Vegetable Market is progressing more smoothly every day.

In just three days, more than 3 workers completed the preparation and mulching of 300 mu of snow pea fields.

On November 2, the first batch of 100 mu of snow pea seeds were sown at Jiangxin Vegetable Market.

On November 3, another 100 mu were sown.

On November 4th, the last 100 mu (approximately 11 hectares) of snow peas were also planted.

Meanwhile, Chen Jiazhi repeatedly delayed the planting of Chinese cabbage.

From the beginning of November until November 10th, the Chinese cabbage seeds were still not sown.

Similarly, the Dongxiang vegetable market is also like that.

The workers on both sides were bored and complained frequently because they wouldn't get paid if they didn't work.

After Xu Wenxiang, Huang Jianyuan, and several other shareholders visited, they were also puzzled.

The land has been prepared, but no planting is being done, and the workers are idle. Isn't this all a waste of time?
Chen Jiazhi took the initiative to admit his mistake.

Miscalculated.

After two days of cool weather, he thought that Huacheng should be entering autumn by early November, but these past few days have felt like summer again.

The temperature has rebounded to above 30℃ for several days in a row, and I still have to use a fan to keep blowing when I get up in the middle of the night.

If the weather is good and the Chinese cabbage is planted too early, it may bolt and flower before the cold wave arrives, and if it is not harvested in time, it will miss the market.

Chen Jiazhi was not happy.

After preparing so meticulously for so long, if I miss the market trend again, I'll regret it terribly when I look back later.

Therefore, he gritted his teeth and waited.

Instead of autumn arriving, two helpers came first.

"Director Chen, please take your time. I feel that this cabbage planter will be ready for use after a few more optimizations and improvements."

"Okay, thank you for your help, Director Zhang."

"Hey, don't talk about trouble. This is good for both of us. At least we can get an article published."

In the experimental field of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Chen Jiazhi bid farewell to Zhang Hua and another man who worked at the agricultural machinery factory before hurriedly leaving.

Although these days are not suitable for planting Chinese cabbage, they have given him time to improve his idea for a hand-push special seeder.

The ingredients themselves are quite simple.

With the help of connections at the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, samples were produced in just two days.

At the same time, because of the long waiting time, the seeds sprouted after two consecutive trial sowings, and there was still time to make improvements.

It's barely usable at the moment.

Fate dealt him a blow, but he didn't come away empty-handed. With this machine, subsequent sowing and thinning would be much easier.

After leaving the experimental field, Chen Jiazhi started the Yuejin 131 parked by the roadside and drove towards the train station.

"Brother Chen~"

"Little Uncle."

Not long after, he met two men who were about his age. They were his brother-in-law Li Cai and his nephew Chen Zhengxu, who had come from his hometown.

Chen Zhengxu is not tall, about 1.7 meters, but he is quite strong and has a decent appearance. He is 22 years old this year, one year older than Chen Jiazhi, so calling him "uncle" feels very awkward.

Li Cai was the same age as Chen Jiazhi, and slightly taller than Chen Zhengxu. Thanks to his father-in-law's genes, he was also quite handsome.

Like Li Xiu, Li Cai is also a looks-oriented person. His primary requirement for finding a wife is that she must be beautiful. His father-in-law has introduced him to several women with good qualities, but he hasn't liked any of them.

Chen Jiazhi was pleased to see the two travel-worn individuals and led them, carrying large and small bags, to the light truck.

Upon seeing the car, their eyes seemed to light up.

Chen Jiazhi laughed and said, "Get in the car first. Once you've learned how to drive, you can drive it!"

(End of this chapter)