Chapter 806 822: Tired and thin
When Zhou Huaian got home and saw Zhou Yiding who had just come out of the scale, he parked the tractor by the side and smiled at him, "Why are you so late today?"
Zhou Yiding took out a cigarette and gave him one. "Damn it, the rain at Sancha Road is even heavier than here. The water in the river has flooded onto the road. I almost couldn't get back home!"
"My brother and his friends almost didn't come back last night." Zhou Huaian told him about the road conditions in Baicaoping. "If the mushrooms are gone, they are gone. You must pay attention to safety."
Zhou Yiding nodded, "I understand! I'll go back first. My mother-in-law said my younger sister is back. She will go to Sancha Road to help us take care of Xiao Wan."
Zhou Daqing went to work at the forest farm, and Zhou Xiaomei had not yet had her holiday, so Zhou Yiding had to ask his mother-in-law to help take care of the family's livestock.
"Okay! Be careful on the road." Zhou Huaian saw him get on the tractor and leave, then went to help untie the tarpaulin.
After a while, Zhou Huaishan also came back on a tractor and gave Li Qiuyue a basket. "There are more than a dozen matsutake mushrooms and ginger taro powder in it. My eldest and second sisters asked Tiezhu and Xiaohu to bring it."
Li Qiuyue took the basket and looked at the matsutake wrapped in ginger taro leaves. "Mom has already prepared dinner. Put it in the wine cellar for tomorrow's meal."
Zhou Huaishan nodded, "Then take it and put it away quickly."
"Oh!" Li Qiuyue walked a few steps and remembered something, "How many mushrooms did they get out?"
Zhou Huaishan smiled and said, "First-class morels weigh more than 20 kilograms, and second-class ones weigh 35 kilograms. They are cut cleanly according to the requirements. I heard from Tiezhu that they were worried that they would get spoiled, so they were spread out on bamboo rafts to dry before they were cut."
Li Qiuyue thought about her two older sisters and their families asking her to borrow a hundred yuan. "That's right. Even if I make one yuan per pound, I can make dozens of yuan in profit."
"Not only that, I can also earn 20 to 30 yuan from big-foot mushrooms." Zhou Huaishan thought of the happy expressions on Tiezhu's cousins' faces when they got the money, and he also laughed.
"I heard from Tiezhu that mushrooms are worthless in the mountains, but he and Xiaohu collect them in the brigade, and the price they pay is about the same as in the town, so every household sends them to sell.
Also, I heard that Li Lao Er fell on the road and smashed all the mushrooms. People in Baicaoping laughed to death when they talked about it. "
"You deserve to die of laughter!" Li Qiuyue happily carried the basket back to the oven and gave it to Zhou's mother. "Mom, my eldest sister and second sister gave it to me. You can cook it and eat it."
"That's right! You guys hurry up and unload your things and eat. I'm going to give Xiao Jiu'er and Xiao Long a bath."
"Oh!" Li Qiuyue hurried towards the door, and everyone was carrying baskets of mushrooms into the yard.
The family had almost finished unloading the goods when the electricity came back on and the yard suddenly became bright.
Mother Zhou hurriedly brought out the dishes that were still warm in the steamer. "It's almost nine o'clock. Come and eat. Junzi, wait for Jiang Yu and the others to finish their meal and come over. Then we can wash the dishes together."
Zhou Jiaming and the others held their stomachs and said, "Grandma, we're already hungry. Is there anything delicious?"
"Chicken mushroom dumpling soup, stir-fried mushrooms, and potato shreds." Zhou's mother glared at them in disapproval, "Hurry up and help carry the bowls and chopsticks. You came back this afternoon and ate a bag of roasted corn, but your mother and husband were so busy that they didn't even have a sip of water!"
"Oh!" Several children went to get the dishes and chopsticks listlessly.
After the family had finished their meal, they called the children back to sleep, and the adults cleaned up and started to get busy again. Twenty or thirty people were busy until almost one o'clock before they finally sent all the mushrooms into the baking room.
Zhou's mother cooked a pot of Tremella soup, "Old Jiang, thank you for your hard work. Village Chief Qu sent some Tremella yesterday. I made a pot of it with coix seed and lily. Let's have a bowl each!"
Jiang Yu smiled and said, "It will only be hard for a few days. Once the rainy season is over, we will have some free time."
Jia Chunhong smiled and took a sip of the warm Tremella soup. "Guilan, I tell you, as long as I can drink Tremella soup, I will endure this hardship every day."
Zhou's mother said cheerfully, "I wish I could make Tremella soup for you every day, but it's a pity that mushrooms and truffles have to choose the right time to grow."
"Who wouldn't want to?" Jiang Yu leaned on the eight-immortal table. "If there were mountain products to be picked up and sold every day in the forest, the people in the mountains would become rich in less than two years."
"That's true. In the past two years, your family has harvested mountain products twice a year. Look, there are more and more large tiled houses in the village, and many bachelors have found wives."
"Hey!" Jiang Yu glanced at the old man who was drinking Tremella soup with Old Shrimp, and nudged Zhou's mother, whispering, "Do you know about the incident at Wang Chunming's house?"
"I overheard it yesterday." Zhou's mother whispered, "Who did Mrs. Wang catch?"
Jiang Yu gave a thumbs up. "Po Wang didn't catch him. I heard he ran away into the woods like a rabbit. Po Wang called Wang Chunming back that day and said she would put him in a bamboo cage and sink him in a pond if she caught him."
Zhou's mother understood immediately that they were talking about Zhou Huaixing from the first wife's house. "This is not the old society anymore. It's against the law to sink a body into a pond."
Jia Chunhong smiled and nodded, "That's right, I just want to satisfy my craving for it."
Another person said, "You don't know, this time is different. I heard that Wang Chunming came back very tough this time and beat Xu Feng so hard that her eyes were black. The Xu family didn't dare to say anything. Early this morning, Wang Chunming dragged her up the mountain to pick mushrooms."
Yang Chunyan and her sisters-in-law finished their Tremella soup while listening to gossip, while Zhou Huaian and his brothers also stacked all the bamboo baskets.
"Ouch!" Zhou Huaian rubbed his waist, "The meat that took several months to grow is gone after just ten days of hard work."
Zhou Huaishan said with a smile: "Why are you yelling? You're not the only one who's thin. Look, my belt buckle is two clicks loose."
Jiang Yu said with a smile: "Youngest, it's better to be thin. If you get fat, you'll have to have surgery."
Zhou Huaian looked at her with a smile, "Aunt Jiang, you can't say that. You compare a handsome guy like me to a pig!"
"Looks good but can't be eaten." Zhou's mother rolled her eyes at him in disapproval. "In the days of the collective, people were not as valuable as pigs!"
"That's right. During the famine, a bag of dried sweet potatoes could be exchanged for a beautiful girl." Jiang Yu pointed at himself and said, "I was exchanged for your aunt by your uncle's family. How is it different from picking her up?"
Zhou Huaian nodded honestly, "It's almost the same as if I had picked it up!"
The old man interrupted and said, "You can't calculate it that way. In those days, a bag of dried sweet potatoes could save the lives of an entire family."
Jiang Yu nodded after hearing this. "Second Dad is right. Thanks to that bag of dried sweet potatoes and the kudzu root that Rongfa secretly sent to my family, my two nephews didn't starve to death."
Jia Chunhong laughed and said, "Old Jiang, your family member said that on the first day you arrived at his house, you ate a pot of sweet potatoes and almost died of bloating. Is that true?"
Jiang Yu smiled and nodded, "Really? Now I feel like vomiting whenever I eat boiled sweet potatoes!"
When people talk about the past days, they all say that they are blessed to be alive today and to have enough food and clothing.
After sending Jiang Yu and the others away, Zhou Huaian told Yang Chunyan, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, about the provincial capital's request for several dozen kilograms of mushroom sauce. "I paid 500 yuan for 50 kilograms. Is that a big profit?"
Li Qiuyue curled her lips and said, "Five hundred yuan to buy fifty kilograms of mushroom sauce. These big bosses are really willing to spend!"
Seeing that she thought the same as he did, Zhou Huaian smiled and shook his head, "Third sister-in-law, it's because we don't have much experience. Wang Zhen said that if we give away this five hundred yuan mushroom sauce, we can get countless five hundred yuan in return."
"As the old saying goes, you can't catch a wolf without sacrificing a lamb. Isn't that true in business? Look at the things Chunyan sends to Mr. Zheng's family every year. They are worth a lot of money when added up."
Mother Zhou glanced at her sisters-in-law and said, "Chunyan put a lot of ingredients into those few cans of mushroom sauce, such as beef, aniseed, peanuts, sesame seeds... Otherwise, why would they give such a profitable business to our family?"
Seeing that Zhou Huairong and the other two were embarrassed, Zhou Huaian smiled and said, "It's okay. I got most of the things from the mountains. We are all brothers and sisters. It won't hurt us if we suffer a little."
Zhao Huifang blushed and said, "Youngest, Chunyan, we can't let you suffer every year. This year, the three families will buy the festival gifts."
Zhang Xiuxiang nodded, and Li Qiuyue said hurriedly: "Yes, the three of us will buy it, and Chunyan will teach us how to do it."
Yang Chunyan smiled and said, "Okay, we'll buy it together then."
"Yeah!" Zhao Huifang and the other two nodded in agreement.
Seeing that they had agreed, Zhou Huaian asked again, "Yan'er, tell me, how much profit can we make by buying 50 kilograms of mushroom sauce with the money given by Boss Zheng?"
Yang Chunyan thought for a moment, "To fry one pound of mushroom sauce, you need five or six pounds of mushrooms, four or five ounces of beef, rapeseed oil, star anise, cinnamon, bay leaves, peanuts, sesame seeds, dried chili peppers... Add it all up, plus the labor, and the cost of one pound of sauce is about two yuan."
Zhou Huaian thought that one kilogram would require five or six kilograms of mixed mushrooms, and fifty kilograms would require two or three hundred kilograms. Not to mention anything else, it would take some effort for the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law just to clean the mushrooms.
"It's less than half the profit, and I have to stand in the smoke and fire all day. It's not worth it!"
Zhou's mother glared at him and said, "How can it be uneconomical? We can earn several hundred yuan in two days, while those substitute teachers in the school only make fourteen or fifteen yuan a month. They have to work for more than a year to earn that much."
Yang Chunyan also said: "Yes, Huai'an, we use mushrooms and porcini mushrooms in fried mushroom sauce, which are all in the state of opening. They are cheaper than buds, and more than half of the profit is already very good."
Li Qiuyue thought about it and said, "Youngest, Boss Zheng bought so much mushroom sauce, are you planning to do this business?"
Zhou Huaian shook his head. "Wang Zhen said that Boss Zheng told him that the mushroom sauce we gave to his family was taken away by a friend who had returned from abroad. It seems that these were made for that fake foreigner."
Yang Chunyan thought for a moment and said, "I don't think so. If you want to make mushroom sauce in large quantities, you have to use canning bottles and machine-sealed packaging. We can only make some for ourselves."
Zhou Huaian thought so too. "Don't worry about it for now. Just do what Boss Zheng wants. If he really wants to sell this, he will naturally talk to Wang Zhen."
Zhou's mother also shook her head. "I don't think it's possible. Think about it. One pound costs more than ten yuan. Who would be willing to buy it?"
Yang Chunyan thought of the mushroom beef sauce in later generations. You couldn't even taste the beef in it, and a small bottle cost more than ten yuan. "Mom, those people don't pull it out like we do, packaging it in big jars. They use small glass bottles, and each bottle can only hold a few taels at most."
(End of this chapter)
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