Before Yang Chunyan finished digging Jerusalem artichokes, Zhou Huaishan came back. "Chunyan, Doctor Wang asked me to tell you that the family that collects truffles arrived in Ning'an a few days ago. They rented the house of the big pharmacy Fang family and built a baking room. The house is next to the Li family on South Street."
"I know. My cousin came over just now and said that the people there were planning to rent their house as a purchasing point."
"You bastard!" Zhou Huaishan couldn't help but curse, "There are a lot of truffles in the neighboring Yun Province, why don't you go there to collect them, instead of squeezing in here and competing with us for them?"
Yang Chunyan also felt strange. Why did these people want to crowd in here to compete with them for the supply? After thinking for a while, she thought that it might be because of the inconvenient transportation these days?
Zhou Huaishan went to the woods to help pick firewood, muttering dissatisfaction.
The useless wood in the newly acquired forest had been cleared away. They found dozens of honey trees, a few small Eucommia ulmoides trees, and some herbal seeds in the forest.
When Zhou Huaian and Zhou Yiding were not going to the mountains to collect the goods, they would go to the quarry and pull back a lot of waste slate. They took the three older ones to the woods to make a lot of beehives for the little bees. Today, the two of them took Zhou Huairong and Zhou Huaijun to the mountains to place beehives.
Some people in the village followed their lead, while others thought Zhou Huaian was daydreaming and wanted to get rich by renting out the mountains and raising bees.
Zhou Huaishan felt that what the youngest brother did was definitely not wrong. Those people had no idea that the doctors who made good medicine used different kinds of honey when making pills with different efficacy.
They knew how to dig honey before, but they had no idea that there were winter honey, spring honey and summer honey, and that winter honey fetched the best price among these types of honey.
And eating those flowers is good for the body. It seems that when I was a child, I went all over the mountains to find the stamens and sucked the sweetness inside, which is also good for the body.
He walked along the newly dug path, about one meter wide, and arrived at the woods. He saw an old man sawing wood with an oil saw. He cut the straight and thick wood into pieces and piled them in separate piles.
The youngest one said to leave the wood here, and when the work was done, he would ask a carpenter to build two wooden houses to be used for guarding the forest in the future.
The tree stumps and branches were sawed off and used as firewood. The old man had already tied up several bundles of firewood and piled them on the open space. When he saw him coming, he moved the firewood onto the chicken cart.
"Grandpa, you put it there and I'll do the stacking." Zhou Huaishan hurriedly stepped forward to stop him and looked at the remaining wood. "If we work for another day today, can we finish all the wood?"
The old man nodded and said, "Keep working hard, we should be able to finish it before dark."
"Oh!" Zhou Huaishan quickly piled the firewood on the chicken cart, tied the rope with the old man, and said to Zhou's father, "Old man, you push the chicken cart back, and I will saw it."
Father Zhou turned off the chainsaw and handed it to him. "This thing is fast, but it shakes too violently. If you don't have the strength to hold it, you can't hold it."
"We have to do this!" Zhou Huaishan turned on the chainsaw and started working with a "sizzle".
Zhou's father pushed the chicken cart, and the old man also picked up two bundles of firewood. The father and son carried the firewood down the mountain and piled it under the eaves at the back of the new oven house.
The chopped firewood filled up the steps behind the houses of several families. The old man also built a pile of firewood in the woods behind the house, and all the firewood could not be burned in a year.
Mother Zhou came out of the medicinal field carrying Xiao Jiuer on her back and a basket full of pea tips. She said to Father Zhou, "Go one more time and come back, then come home for dinner."
"Great!" Father Zhou put the basket and the shoulder pole on the bus and left with the old man.
When Zhou's mother came down the mountain carrying a basket, Lai Fu came to greet them, wagging his tail. Xiao Jiuer waved his little hands at Lai Fu, babbling in a language that only the two of them understood.
She took a piece of pork belly out of the cupboard, washed it with hot water, scooped the water and poured it into the gutter, and also poured the water used to wash the pot into the gutter.
When you buy pork from outside, you cannot pour the pork washing water into the pig manure to feed the pigs, because you don't know whether the meat is infected with plague. By pouring away the water used to wash the meat, you can prevent the plague from being transmitted to the livestock at home.
After Zhou's mother sliced the meat, she began to mince it to make meatballs. Yang Chunyan carried a colander into the kitchen and said, "Mom, I washed some Jerusalem artichokes. You pickle them."
"Okay!" Zhou's mother took the basket and asked, "Have you finished digging the Jerusalem artichokes by the pond?"
"We've finished digging. I soaked the Jerusalem artichokes in the ditch. Go wash them later!" Yang Chunyan picked up Xiao Jiuer who was sitting in the sedan chair and sat in front of the stove to help light the fire.
Zhou's mother put the chopped meat into a ceramic bowl, scooped some sweet potato flour into it, took an egg, tapped it gently on the chopping board, picked a hole in the broken eggshell, poured the egg white into the meat paste, and stirred it clockwise with chopsticks.
"Chunyan, your husband and I are worried. You have hoarded so many Coriolus versicolor, Ganoderma lucidum, and other good medicinal materials. What if the price drops in the future?"
Seeing that she was so worried that her eyebrows were knitted together, Yang Chunyan smiled and comforted her: "Don't worry, the price has already increased a little now. When it increases a little more, I will let Huai'an send Ning'an to sell it."
Ever since Zhou Huaian gave Lao Yin one thousand yuan to buy the old mountain ginseng, they brought all the herbal farmers there to Bailing Mountain to sell herbs.
There are a lot of good stuff there. Almost all the cash in our family has been invested in herbs during this period. Once this batch of goods is sold, the income will be considerable.
When the old men saw that the wine cellar was full of good herbs, they were worried that the price would drop in the future. The old man also told them several times to sell the goods to Laningan while there was still profit to be made.
After hearing this, Zhou's mother felt more at ease. "Tell him to keep an eye on the youngest and not to be too greedy."
"I understand." Yang Chunyan fed the child and put him to sleep in the cradle. "Mom, I'm going to wash the Jerusalem artichokes."
"Go! Come back later for dinner."
Yang Chunyan arrived at the ditch. The water in the ditch had already turned yellow due to the yellow mud. She went down, stepped on the stones, and used a straw brush to scrub away the excess yellow mud.
This year, we harvested several thousand kilograms of Jerusalem artichokes, including those grown in the woods. These Jerusalem artichokes were sliced, dried, and stored. When cooking pig feed, we can just grab some and cook them in the slop water before feeding them to the pigs.
After she washed the Jerusalem artichokes and carried them into the yard to start slicing them, Zhou Huaian came back with two wooden barrels filled with honeycombs.
"Is the beehive ready?"
"Yes!" Zhou Huaian put the wooden barrel away, "We also brought back two beehive barrels. Yiding and the eldest and second brothers went to the forest to release the bees."
Seeing that he didn't go to the woods, Yang Chunyan said, "Third brother came back and said... Sister Xiaoxue also came and said..."
"Come if you want to! I said I would come a long time ago. It would be strange if you didn't come!" Zhou Huaian took out the tools for filtering honey and started filtering the honey.
Yang Chunyan remembered what she had asked Yang Xiaoxue to find out. "I'll go to Sister Xiaoxue's house this afternoon and ask them if they have set up a purchasing point over there."
"You can go and ask." Zhou Huaian looked at her, "You've already told me to focus on acquiring Bailing Mountain, Baicaoping and Sanchakou this year.
Last time I went there, Lao Yin told me that they had already spread the word in Chuancheng, and even notified their relatives in the neighboring county that borders them, and said that everyone was waiting for us to go there to open the market and receive the goods. "
"I know, but I'm a little worried that they will open the market early to collect the goods."
Yang Chunyan was worried that the situation would change again like before, where vendors would start selling truffles a week earlier or half a month earlier in order to grab business. In the end, in August, as soon as the truffles started to grow, some people would open the market to buy them.
The result is that in the end, when truffles really reach the season of maturity and marketability, there are no truffles left to harvest.
"The market will open in ten days, and they haven't even decided on a purchasing point. What's there to worry about?" Zhou Huaian curled his lips. "They hired people to help with the purchase at two yuan a day. It seems that they think all the mountain guys are honest people!"
Yang Chunyan thought for a moment and asked, "You mean, if they hire someone to collect the goods, the quality can't be guaranteed?"
Zhou Huaian smiled and nodded, "Of course it is! Think about it, the three nearby villages are all relatives. If you say a few good words, the people who receive the goods will be a little more relaxed, and the second-class goods will become the first-class goods."
Yang Chunyan thinks they won't do that. "They have been doing business for a long time. I don't think they will just sit back and do nothing. They will definitely be like us. Each purchasing point is mainly run by their own people."
"Think about it, with our family, Uncle Xu's family, Uncle Datian's family, and Yiding, how many people are working in total? How many people can they bring with them from the provincial capital?"
Zhou Huai paused for a moment, "Also, Doctor Fang from the big pharmacy was able to get involved with someone like Xiong Laoyao, and in the end, Xiong Laoyao suffered the loss. That person is not an easy person to deal with!"
After hearing this, Yang Chunyan thought about it and realized that it was true. The most taboo thing in doing business together is intrigue and small-mindedness. You won't go far this way.
"We relied on you to come up with a hassle-free screening method this year, so we only had enough manpower. It turns out that you have a good brain!"
That day, Zhou Huaian saw his mother sifting millet and picking out several grades of truffles from the potatoes at home. He asked his grandfather and father to follow her example and make a set of bamboo sieves for sifting truffles.
When you collect truffles in the future, you only need to sort them out from the lowest grade, and the ones left at the end are the first grade and special grade.
They tried screening several times at home and found that this method was much more convenient. The work that previously required several people could now be completed by two or three people.
"That's right!" Zhou Huaian said smugly, "Don't you see what kind of man I am? My wife is so smart, how can I marry a fool?"
"I don't want to bother with you!" Yang Chunyan thought it was funny, "I think you are the only one in the three nearby villages who wants to praise yourself after less than three sentences!"
"When others praise you, you are a flower; when you praise yourself, you are a rotten melon!" Zhou Yiding slapped him, "Rotten melon, you have praised the cows to the sky."
"Get lost!" Zhou Huaian kicked him with a smile, "The people over there are already here, and they've built a roasting house next to the Li family in the county town. Did Third Brother tell you?"
Zhou Yiding said nonchalantly: "I told you! Come if you want to, I'm not afraid of him!" (End of this chapter)
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