Chapter 76: Rough Food
Aunt Li has been thinking about her these days.
Seeing Liu Yinyin coming to buy things again, Aunt Li led her in with a smile, and asked in a mumbling voice: "Little girl, I don't even know your name yet?"
Liu Yinyin: "My last name is Liu."
"......Ms. Liu, what do you want to buy this time?" Aunt Li brought her into the house.
Liu Yinyin refused to say more, and she didn't ask any more questions. It was normal for people doing this kind of deal to act cautiously.
Liu Yinyin asked her, "Auntie, do you have any grains to sell?"
Aunt Li read out, "Yes, we have cornmeal, brown rice, dried sweet potatoes, buckwheat noodles, and sorghum rice. What do you want?"
Liu Yinyin said directly: "Auntie, how many pounds of these coarse grains are there? If it's not much, I want to take them all."
The matter of buying food can no longer be delayed. If Jiang Cuihua doesn't want the food, Liu Yinyin will buy it and store it herself, and then sell it to her at the original price later.
At least it’s better than buying food after the price goes up.
Aunt Li was stunned for a moment, not understanding why, and asked, "Why do you need to buy so much food? Is there any difficulty at home?"
Liu Yinyin said casually, "It is said that the weather is abnormal this year. We don't know what the harvest will be like in our county. It is always good to stock up more food."
Aunt Li suddenly realized. Of course she knew that the weather was abnormal this year. People in this line of work are always well-informed.
In fact, she also knew that the actual situation was far worse than this. Aunt Li's son Li Chunshan was running around outside.
According to him, the abnormal weather this year is not limited to their county, many other places are also experiencing severe droughts.
If only one or two counties have a bad year, we can still transport food from other places. But if a large-scale drought occurs... one can imagine the future situation.
However, in Aunt Li's eyes, this did not matter much to the city people. After all, the city people had a fixed amount of commercial food every month, so they would not starve to death no matter what.
It's the country people who are going to suffer.
However, she couldn't say this to anyone else, for fear that it might cause chaos.
Aunt Li didn't know that Liu Yinyin was a rural girl. She hesitated and said, "...We should have bought more food. To be honest, if you had come a few days later, the price of food would have gone up."
Liu Yinyin's heart skipped a beat, but she pretended to be calm and said, "Auntie, are food prices going to go up?"
"......Yes." Aunt Li paused and sighed, "It's because of the abnormal weather. Food is hard to buy outside."
The grain here is also traded from the countryside. Some people noticed that the situation was not right this year and were unwilling to sell grain, and those who were willing to sell also raised the price.
Therefore, after this batch of food is sold out, the price of the next batch of food will definitely increase.
It's not just food. If it doesn't rain, other food prices will probably increase as well.
Liu Yinyin immediately asked with concern: "Auntie, can you sell me all the remaining coarse grains?"
She didn't worry about herself, as she bought all the coarse food for the Liu family.
Aunt Li replied, "Okay, I can sell them all to you. There aren't many left anyway."
"How much is a pound of coarse grain?" Liu Yinyin asked.
Aunt Li thought for a moment and said, "Corn flour and brown rice are 1.6 cents per pound, sorghum rice and buckwheat flour are 1.2 cents per pound, and dried sweet potatoes are 0.5 cents per pound. Add them together and there will be about 400 to 500 pounds."
Four or five hundred kilograms of coarse grain would cost dozens of yuan if you bought them all.
Liu Yinyin brought enough money, but she couldn't carry so much food back by herself.
Liu Yinyin discussed with her: "Auntie, can you keep all this grain for me? I can give you the money first, and I'll have my family come and get the grain later."
"No problem." Aunt Li would definitely make some money since she had money. To her, it made no difference who she sold the food to.
Aunt Li moved the coarse grains out of the cellar and weighed them. There were 60 catties of cornmeal at 9.6 yuan, 50 catties of brown rice at 8 yuan, 50 catties of sorghum rice at 6 yuan, and 80 catties of buckwheat flour at 9.6 yuan.
There was the largest amount of dried sweet potatoes, a full 200 kilograms, for exactly ten yuan.
The total weight of coarse grain was 440 kilograms, 43.2 yuan.
Aunt Li rounded off the decimal point and calculated the total to be 43 yuan.
After buying food, Liu Yinyin also bought a piece of pork belly and four apples. Today there were grapes, so she decisively picked a bunch.
Seeing this, Aunt Li asked curiously, "Miss, do you like eating fruit?"
Every time I come here, I see Liu Yinyin buying a lot of fruits.
I don’t know what kind of family dares to eat like this. Normal people would not buy so much fruit.
But it's quite strange when you think about it. You say her family is well off, but all she buys are coarse grains.
Liu Yinyin blurted out: "My son likes to eat."
Gu Yanyan has recently started eating fruits and has become a little averse to milk, but this is a good thing. I think it will not be difficult to wean him off milk in the future.
Aunt Li was shocked: "You...your son?"
Liu Yinyin looked to be about seventeen or eighteen years old, with a slim figure, and you really couldn't tell that she had given birth to a son.
Liu Yinyin nodded: "Yes, more than half a year old."
Aunt Li was suddenly upset. She had originally wanted to find an opportunity to match Liu Yinyin with her son, but she didn't expect that the girl got married and had children at such a young age.
It seems she is being overly sentimental again.
After buying things, Liu Yinyin rode her bicycle quickly back to the village and returned the bicycle first.
Then he went home and told Jiang Cuihua about going to the county town to get food.
Liu Yinyin took a sip of water and told her, "Mom, people have said that food prices will go up in a few days. Do you want these foods? If not, I will buy them myself."
Jiang Cuihua got angry when she heard that the food price was going to increase, and asked quickly: "Yes, of course, this is all the coarse food? Can't you buy more?"
Four hundred and forty kilograms sounds like a lot, but there are ten people in her family. Even if each person eats half a kilogram of food a day, they will consume one hundred and fifty kilograms in a month.
Four hundred and forty kilograms is not enough to feed a family for three months.
Liu Yinyin shook her head: "It's too late. The grains in the cellar have been moved out. This is all we have. The price will go up next time we buy it. I just don't know how much it will go up."
If the price doesn't rise too much, I can buy some more food.
Liu Yinyin's system can also be used to buy food, but she does not plan to use the system to smuggle large quantities of food.
The system's remaining balance is not much, and we don't know what will happen in the next three years, so we should keep it for future emergencies.
Besides, it would be difficult for her to find an excuse to smuggle food out to the Liu family.
Jiang Cuihua slapped her thigh, regretting her decision: "Oh! I wish I had listened to you earlier."
The family didn't have much savings, but Liu Mingyuan worked as a part-time worker in a steel factory for three months during the Chinese New Year and earned more than 70 yuan.
Adding what the family has saved over the past few years, we have about 300 yuan. How much coarse grain can we buy with that?
But it's too late to say anything now.