Chapter 153 152: Plan
"Hmm!" Yang Chunyan quickened her pace. "I heard that the price of chicken mushrooms has gone up a bit these days. If we pry all of them together, they will probably weigh more than ten kilograms, and can be sold for more than ten or twenty yuan!"
"Yes! The price of chicken mushroom is still good!" Zhang Xiuxiang pried up a flower neatly and put it aside, "Chunyan, sister-in-law has an idea and wants to talk to you!"
Yang Chunyan pried up a cocklebur and said, "You say!"
Zhang Xiuxiang said, "I think there is no future in growing corn and sweet potatoes. I want to use the land behind our house to grow herbs after we move to the new house. Do you think it's feasible?"
Yang Chunyan said sincerely: "Second sister-in-law, to be honest, Huai'an and I also have this plan. I think it would be better if the four of us could open up the whole area behind the house to plant medicinal herbs.
When the amount of herbs we grow reaches a certain scale, we won’t have to send them out, as the drug dealers will naturally come to us to order them.”
Zhang Xiuxiang said happily after hearing this: "I knew you would have this plan. But the hill behind the house is at least 200 to 300 acres. Will the brigade agree to open it all up to grow herbs? Even if the brigade doesn't care, what will we use to pay the public grain if we grow herbs all over it?"
Yang Chunyan: "That's easy. Sell the herbs and buy sweet potatoes, potatoes and corn!"
"You're really quick-witted. I never thought of buying it to pay the public tax." Zhang Xiuxiang put the chicken mushroom into the basket and said, "What kind of herbs do you think we should plant? Can we plant the Magnolia officinalis we peeled off the mountain last time?"
Yang Chunyan: "You can plant it, but the growth cycle of Magnolia officinalis is long and the profit is slow. In the first few years of planting, not only will there be no income, but you will also lose money."
In her previous life, she heard from the people in the team who contracted the barren hills that as long as they got the acres of land to reclaim, they could be exempted from agricultural taxes for several years.
What she wanted to do was to contract the land first, dig up the Magnolia officinalis trees, plant them, and collect the seeds to raise seedlings for planting.
These days, it is easy to find Paris polyphylla. First, collect the seedlings and seeds, and then collect the seeds of common and easy-to-grow herbs in the mountains, such as Ligusticum chuanxiong, Lobelia chinensis, Rhizoma Cynomorii, and Rhizoma Cynomorii... Go back and scatter the seeds in the woods.
These common herbs have a short growth cycle. Although their prices are not high, the money can be made quickly, so the returns are not bad.
Moreover, going forward, the countryside will be full of pesticides such as glyphosate, and the leaves and half flowers can only be found in the mountains. By then, the price of herbal medicines will have increased tenfold.
Since the 1990s, people in the Ninghe area have started to grow greenhouse vegetables, and the mountain people in Funiu have also followed suit.
Those who just started growing greenhouse vegetables made good profits and most of them lived a good life.
But one still depends on luck. When the market is good, the income is good. When the market is bad, not only will one's work be in vain, but one will also lose money on seeds and pesticides.
"It's okay if the money comes slowly. As long as the crops survive, there will be a day when we can make money." Zhang Xiuxiang scraped the mud off her hands on the stone and said, "Chunyan, I see that more and more people are working on the land reclamation. We have to start early."
Yang Chunyan recalled that in her previous life, there were several families reclaiming the land behind her house. "How about we go back and ask the old man to go to Secretary Xu to decide on the land reclamation first?"
Zhang Xiuxiang nodded, "Yes, let's take it first!"
Yang Chunyan thought for a moment and said, "I think even if Secretary Xu agrees, there must be a time limit. With so much land, we can either hire someone to do it or rent a tractor to plow the land."
"I'll discuss it with the old man and the others when I get back for dinner."
"Do you know what my sister-in-law is thinking?"
"I talked to my second brother about it, and he said I was daydreaming. Seeing that he didn't agree, I didn't mention it to my eldest sister-in-law."
"I think it would be better to talk to my eldest brother, his wife, and my third brother first, and understand their ideas, and then tell my mother and old man about our plan. This way it will be better."
"Okay, let the youngest one talk to them tonight."
The two of them worked as they talked, and soon only a small amount of chicken mushrooms were left.
Yang Chunyan stood up, straightened her back, then squatted down and continued to work hard.
Picking mushrooms is also very hard work. You have to squat all the time, and your legs will become numb and sore after a long time.
Zhang Xiuxiang looked at the pile at her feet and said, "Chunyan, put the ones on the ground into the backpack and cover them with some grass to make it look better."
"Okay!"
Yang Chunyan put the chicken mushrooms into a backpack and cut some grass to cover them. Zhang Xiuxiang had already pried out the last dozen or so chicken mushrooms.
The two sat on a rock and drank a few sips of water before continuing to move forward. When they reached the patch of stinking peonies, the sun was already high in the sky, and the stinking peonies were blooming even more beautifully after the rain.
Yang Chunyan called Zhang Xiuxiang, "Second sister-in-law, let's pick the stinking peony leaves and take them back."
Zhang Xiuxiang looked at her in surprise, "Are stinking peony leaves also herbs?"
"Well! The leaves of stinking peony are picked in summer and the roots are dug in autumn. Both the roots and leaves are herbs that have the effects of dispelling wind and detoxifying, reducing swelling and relieving pain." Yang Chunyan said as she put down the basket on her back, bent down and started picking.
Zhang Xiuxiang followed and said, "Chunyan, how did you memorize the uses of these herbs? Can you prescribe medicine?"
Yang Chunyan laughed and said, "How can I do that? To prescribe medicine, I need to take the patient's pulse and diagnose the disease. I haven't even touched the threshold of medicine."
These were all memorized after she dug herbs in her previous life. At this time in her previous life, she could only recognize some herbs.
Zhang Xiuxiang picked a handful and put them in her basket. She sniffed her hands, wrinkled her nose and said, "It stinks, just as bad as the chicken shit vine. No wonder the flower is so beautiful but is called the stinking peony!"
"I think it grows like this on purpose to prevent us from plotting against it." Yang Chunyan glanced at her and said, "Sister-in-law, pick off the leaves at the bottom and leave the leaves near the buds and petals."
"That's right. If all the leaves are picked, they probably won't live long."
It took the two of them more than ten minutes to pick all the leaves of the stinking peony. Yang Chunyan gathered the leaves and put them in her backpack, then walked towards the Selaginella growing on the big rock in front.
The Selaginella blooms with vitality after the rain.
Selaginella grows mostly on sunny hillside rocks in mountainous areas, or in dry rock crevices. It has strong vitality and strong drought resistance.
The leaves of Selaginella are in the shape of curled segments, the branches are flat and branched, green or brown-yellow, curled inward, and the branches are densely covered with scaly leaflets.
It reproduces by spores. Once it loses water supply, its roots can separate from the soil by themselves, and the branches and leaves will curl up like a fist, move with the wind, and be reborn when it encounters water. The roots will drill into the soil again to find water, and then stretch out the branches and leaves again, becoming emerald green.
Because of its unique survival skill of being able to live with water and "die" without water, it is also known as the Nine-Lives Grass.
The Nine-Lives-Resurrection Grass, doesn’t it sound magical, like the magic herb in martial arts novels.
Selaginella: neutral in nature, pungent in taste. Enters the liver meridian and heart meridian. Has the effects of promoting blood circulation, removing blood stasis and stopping bleeding. It is a blood-activating and menstruation-regulating drug under the category of blood-activating and blood-stasis-removing drugs.
(End of this chapter)
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