Chapter 113 Raising Ducks
Brother Lin's wedding was in May, and Lin Qi smoked various meats in March. In late April, she began to mail the smoked meats to Zhoucheng. She went to the post office three times in total, and mailed out a total of 300 kilograms of smoked meats.
Every time she went to the post office, she would bring two pheasants or two rabbits for Yu Mingbo. The two pheasants or two rabbits together weighed nearly 40 kilograms of meat and could be sold for more than 20 yuan.
But when Lin Qi went to mail the items for the third time, Yu Mingbo gave Lin Qi two hundred yuan and said, "Your brother Yu is getting married on May 10th. You should find a way to get him some meat. Fish, chicken, and rabbit are all fine. We are not picky."
Lin Qi pondered for a while and agreed, "Okay. I'll deliver it to you on May 9th. But I also have a request. You get me some ducklings."
"How many do you want?" Yu Mingbo didn't ask what they were going to do.
Lin Qi thought about it. Her pond was two acres in size, and the planting area was relatively spacious, so she said, "Get two hundred."
Yu Mingbo was surprised, "So many?"
Lin Qi nodded, "Yes."
Yu Mingbo hesitated, "It's not easy to get so many ducklings."
"Just get as many as you can. It doesn't matter if there are more or less. If you give me more ducklings, I'll give you a whole sheep." Lin Qi put out the bait.
"Okay, no problem." Yu Mingbo agreed readily.
That night, Yu Mingbo mentioned this matter at the dinner table.
"We plan to host four tables for the banquet. This is the number of people after continuous reduction. We have invited the closest people and we can't reduce it any further." Yu Mingbo said. It's not that they can't afford more, but the policy does not allow it. "Even if it's four tables, we need to prepare a lot of meat. Today, Lin Qi promised to get us a sheep, which she said weighs nearly 200 kilograms. But the condition is that we find her some ducklings. She asked for 200 ducks. We will help her get some in the next few days."
"Two hundred kilograms of mutton is enough for us to hold a sumptuous banquet. It's just a little duck. We can use our connections to get it for her." Yu Mingbo's wife boasted.
Their son married the daughter of his superior, who was originally a lower-class woman. If they organized a good wedding banquet, it would also be a face-giving to the woman.
Yu Borui, the person involved, also said, "I will also ask my colleagues and friends to look for it."
On May 9th, Lin Qi came to the town carrying two baskets. Unfortunately, she ran into several of Yu Borui's colleagues.
These colleagues were so impressed by Lin Qi that they recognized her at first sight.
"Sister, we meet again." Several people surrounded Lin Qi and looked into her basket.
Lin Qi remained calm and took the initiative to explain, "These are two baskets of vegetables. My brother is getting married tomorrow, and I brought some vegetables to him. There aren't many other things in the countryside, but there is no shortage of vegetables."
When coming out, Lin Qi specially put a lot of vegetables on top of the basket to cover the meat underneath.
"There are so many dishes, my sister is so thoughtful!"
"Sister, do you need help? The brothers will help you pick it up."
When they learned that there were vegetables in the basket, several people lost interest. If it were someone else, they would have rummaged through the basket. However, this person was Yu Borui's sister, and Yu Borui was getting married tomorrow, to the daughter of their boss. Even if they had the courage, they would not dare to rummage through the basket.
Lin Qi rejected the kindness of those people and went straight to Yu Borui's house carrying the vegetables.
"It seems that this person is really Yu Borui's distant cousin, otherwise she wouldn't be so concerned about Yu Borui's marriage."
"She's so beautiful. Do you think I have a chance?"
"Are you crazy? She's an educated youth, unemployed, and you want to support her?"
"She's so beautiful, I'd like to keep her!"
"Tsk tsk, I think it's okay. Go and find out what Yu Borui has to say one day, it shouldn't be a big problem."
“........”
Lin Qi, who was being missed by others, sneezed in front of Yu Borui's door. There was no need to knock on the door, as the person inside came out to open it.
"Oh, Qiqi, you're here." Yu Mingbo's wife smiled happily.
Lin Qi also raised her lips towards the other party, "Auntie didn't go to work today?"
"I've asked for leave." Yu Mingbo's wife said, "Just put your things here. I'll go get you a bowl of sugar water."
Yu Mingbo's family of three all took leave. At this time, they were cleaning the house and putting up wedding characters. When they heard that Lin Qi was coming, Yu Mingbo and Yu Borui quickly put down their work and walked out.
Lin Qi was sitting on a stone bench to rest. When she saw the two of them, she pointed at the basket and said, "It's all in there."
Upon hearing this, Yu Mingbo and Yu Borui didn't bother to exchange pleasantries. They strode towards the baskets, one in charge of one basket, and quickly took out the vegetables from the top of the baskets.
hiss--
Yu Mingbo found a goat in the basket. "Such a big goat! Son, come and help!"
Yu Borui put down the vegetables in his hand and came to Yu Mingbo. The two of them worked together to lift a goat weighing two hundred kilograms out of the basket.
"This must be our local black goat. This is the first time I've seen such a big black goat." Yu Mingbo's wife was stunned when she saw this scene.
"It grew in the mountains. I don't know what it ate." Lin Qi said calmly.
"Qiqi, you have helped us a lot this time. You must come to the wedding tomorrow." Yu Mingbo was overjoyed. With so much mutton, tomorrow's banquet can be held in style. He asked his son to send half of the mutton to the bride's side in a while.
Lin Qi shook her head. "I just asked for leave today. It's not possible to ask for leave tomorrow. You guys clear out the other basket. I should go back now."
Yu Mingbo and his family of three thought that there were only vegetables in the other basket, but they found out that there were only a few handfuls of vegetables on the top, and there was a full basket of fish at the bottom, a total of fourteen fish. Each fish weighed more than ten kilograms, and the total weight was about one hundred and eighty kilograms.
"These fish are used to exchange for ducklings." Lin Qi explained.
"So many fish are enough to exchange for four or five hundred ducklings, but we only found two hundred and twenty-six ducklings for you. Moreover, these ducklings have just hatched a few days ago, so it's hard to say whether they can be raised." Yu Mingbo felt guilty for a rare time. Lin Qi was too honest, which made them seem a little unethical.
"It's okay if it just broke out of the shell." Lin Qi said indifferently, "The extra fish meat is a wedding gift for my brother."
When Lin Qi came out of Yu Mingbo's house, there were 226 more ducklings in her basket, more than a pound of wedding candy, and two pounds of egg cakes.
Lin Qi took the mountain road directly back to the planting area.
As soon as she entered the planting area, Lin Qi went straight to the cave. She first steamed a pot of rice for the ducks. Then she went to the pond to build a shed for the ducks, and laid a thick layer of soft hay under the shed. After building the shed, Lin Qi also made three narrow, flat feeding troughs with wood.
The food trough is ready and the rice is steamed.
Lin Qi poured the rice into the trough, placed the trough under the straw shed, and then poured the ducks out of the basket.
These ducks had just hatched a few days ago, their fur was still yellow and fluffy, and they looked like they could barely walk. Lin Qi was worried that they would die on the road, so as soon as she left Yu's house, she injected supernatural powers into these ducklings. As soon as the supernatural powers entered the ducklings, these languid ducklings instantly became energetic, chirping all the way back to the planting area. None of them died, and all survived.
Smelling the fragrance of rice, the little ducks didn't need any guidance. They surrounded the trough and pecked at the rice grains with their flat little mouths.
Lin Qi watched them eating and soon discovered something wrong. The rice was too sticky and a lot of it stuck to the ducklings' mouths, making it particularly difficult for them to eat the rice grains.
Lin Qi thought that next time she feeds the ducks, she could consider mixing some rice bran into the food. However, the rice jars made by pounding rice are a bit coarse, so she could use a stone mill to grind it into finer pieces before mixing it into the rice.
The ducklings, having eaten their fill, rested under the shed and did not dare to run around. But just because they did not run around now did not mean they would not run around in the future. To prevent them from running to other places and being trampled to death or eaten by other animals, Lin Qi grew a circle of vines and temporarily surrounded the shed and the area three meters around it.
By now, 226 ducklings had settled in the planting area.
In order to protect them, Lin Qi specially cleared out the weasels in the planting area. Even the large carnivorous birds nearby were killed or driven away by her.
When she returned from the mountains, there were some bird carcasses in her backpack.
When Xu Hexiao came back in the evening and found that dinner was all kinds of spicy fried bird meat, he couldn't help but be curious, "What happened?"
Didn’t we deliver meat to them today? Why are there several more kinds of meat on their table?
"A lot of large birds came to the planting area. To prevent them from eating my chickens, ducks and rabbits, I cleaned them out today." Lin Qi said.
Xu Hexiao immediately grasped the key information in the words, "Where did the duck come from?"
"I asked Uncle Yu to help me find it. Didn't I tell you about this?" Lin Qi asked puzzledly.
Xu Hexiao stared at her with his dark eyes, "There is a me living in your heart. You told the me in your heart, but not the me next to you."
Lin Qi: “…”
Halfway through dinner, someone knocked on Lin Qi's gate.
Lin Qi stood up first and said, "I'll go take a look, you continue eating."
As soon as Lin Qi left, Xu Hexiao also stood up and hid behind the door.
He showed up at her house late at night, and it would be bad for her reputation if it got out. Although she didn't care, she didn't want to be criticized.
"Sister-in-law, please get me some more bamboo rats." Brother Tan said earnestly.
Lin Qi was a little surprised. The last time she sold bamboo rats was two months ago. "Why are you here at this time?"
Brother Tan wiped his face and said, "The last time was the first time I sold bamboo rats, and the price was pushed down very low by those people. They didn't know the value of bamboo rats, and I was planning to keep them for myself in the future. But I didn't know that a leader liked to eat them, and now, two months later, he finally found me."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
