Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

The weather is getting hotter and hotter. Even in the mountains, you can feel the power of the sun at noon.
Fortunately, as long as you hide in the shade, you can avoid the physical damage caused by direct sunlight, and even feel a little cool.

Lunch was simple, with some cold mushrooms, steamed bread slices baked on the stove in the house, venison soup, and boiled meat.

Li Long was full and didn't want to move. However, the stewed meat and oil had to be served, otherwise they would be stuck in the pot and difficult to take out.

The cooked meat was simply taken out, rubbed with salt and hung on a rope to dry. Air-dried meat was originally mostly made from raw meat, and Li Long made it cooked meat just to make it easier to eat. Even if it was difficult to light a fire, you could just tear off a piece and eat it.

After finishing all these things, he took a chair and sat against the wall of the wooden house to rest.

Li Long sat here for more than an hour in the afternoon. Seeing that it was almost time, he stood up and walked around.

No one comes, which means this mountain is really empty.

In fact, he could leave now, but these finishing touches made him feel that he should continue.

When the sun was about to set, Li Long began to collect the meat and Fritillaria. He thought that he would stay one more day tomorrow, and he would leave no matter if there were still people coming.

He has pretty much done all he can, and he needs to go home and enjoy life.

When I finished packing up and was about to go back to the house, the sound of horse hooves was heard in the distance.

Li Long looked to the east and saw Bolati.

He trotted up to the cabin, dismounted, and took two tied bags from the saddle.

"That's all they have left," said Bolati. "We stopped them on the trail when we were patrolling the mountain. They were smart and left after sunset. They thought we had left them alone. But they didn't think twice. If they left like this, what would happen if there were wolves behind the north mountain? What if they got bitten? Would they not want to die?"

Li Long shook his head. There are many people who take risks. Eighty percent of people in the world may have a lucky mentality and think they are luckier than others.

He opened the bag and looked at it, somewhat surprised.

On the surface, these two bags of mother-of-pearl are quite clean, probably washed. Grab a handful and squeeze it in your hand, it is about 80% dry, and only needs to be exposed to the sun for another day, and it will be basically dry.

Even if I take it to a purchasing station now, I guess the staff will be willing to buy it. The price will be a little lower, but it is definitely better than selling it here.

"Alright, alright, weigh it quickly, I have to hurry back." Bolati said, "This is the last time. I don't think there will be any more later."

"Well, I'll be back to the county tomorrow and the day after tomorrow." Li Long went to get the scale and said as he weighed, "Come back to the mountains when you have time. I'll find you at the forestry team then."

"Okay. Change all of this into money."

Li Long gave Bolati five hundred yuan for two bags of Fritillaria weighing thirty-three kilograms.

"So much?" Bolati didn't expect that these two bags of fritillaria could be sold for so much money.

"Yeah," Li Long smiled, "It's relatively clean and has been exposed to the sun."

"Here you go." Bolati took out a large piece of silk and handed it to Li Long. "Exchange it for a basket of wine! If there are so many, I have to treat everyone to a drink! Oh, and some meat too! What kind of meat is this?"

"venison!"

"Okay, okay, venison is good!" Bolati took out another big unity and gave it to Li Long, "Give me a few pieces, are they cooked?"

"Cooked."

Li Long found a bag, put some venison in it, and brought him a basket of five liters of wine.

"Okay, let's go. Li Long, my good friend!" Bolati smiled, picked up his things, jumped on the horse, waved the whip, and galloped eastward.

Li Long carried the Fritillaria into the house, stood at the door and looked around. Seeing no one, he closed the door, latched it, and prepared to go to bed.

The next morning, Li Long got up at dawn. He felt a chill as soon as he opened the door. Even though it was May, the temperature difference between morning and evening was still huge in the mountains.

Li Long tightened his clothes, went to the toilet to pee, and then came back to wash.

He lit the stove, boiled some water, then locked the door, picked up his bag and carried his gun into the woods.

This time I came out not for hunting, but mainly to get some precious ingredients, otherwise it will be difficult to get them if I want to eat them in the future.

In May, the morels in the mountains should come out.

Morels are unfamiliar to many people outside the mountains. Even in Li Long's village, which is only a few dozen kilometers away from the Northern Tianshan Mountains, most of the people there really don't know about their existence or what they look like.

It is normal for information to be so closed. After all, before the explosion of information on smartphones and various online platforms, this information was mainly spread by word of mouth. Some things were transmitted incorrectly, and some things were hidden by everyone at a certain link, interrupting the spread. Then the message was equivalent to being cut off and gone.

Some people don't believe that people in the mountains know that some things are rare but don't use them to make money. This really shows a misunderstanding of the actual situation at the time.

To give a simple example, before the beginning of the 21st century, Kazakh herders basically did not eat wild vegetables or mushrooms. These things were basically not in their diet.

Even in the 1990s, some local herdsmen still mocked the Han people who went into the mountains to pick wild vegetables as herbivores.

At that time, they did not understand why Han people ate mushrooms. In their eyes, morels, which were worth thousands of yuan per kilogram and once sold for two or three thousand yuan, were no more valuable than a few kilograms of potatoes or sprouts.

That’s how most people see it.

But the information is in the hands of a few people, and some of those who have this information have made a fortune with it, while others don't care about it at all, so the spread of information becomes narrower and narrower.

The saying goes, "You may not mean what you say, but you may mean what you listen to." In fact, this is what it means at some point. Some of the information you say may be useless to you and can only serve as a topic of conversation, but in the eyes of others, it is good information that can be converted into money.

Some people become rich not just by luck, on the one hand, but also because they seize business opportunities.

In the 1990s, on the Qorma section of the Duku Highway, a few years ago when northern Xinjiang tourism was not yet open every year, several herdsmen's children would wait by the roadside with horses, and when tourists came, they would shout loudly, "Twenty for a horse ride", and they could earn tens of thousands of yuan in one vacation.

Don't other kids know? Can't they imagine?
Sorry, I really can’t think of it.

There is a grassland in Jingmusi Township, NLK County. The main plant in the grassland is poppy, also known as wild poppy, commonly known as Tianshan safflower. Every June when the safflower blooms, it fills the mountains and fields, which looks particularly beautiful.

The pasture is surrounded by barbed wire, the main purpose of which is to prevent cattle and sheep from coming in to graze, because this pasture is used to cut grass in July and August in preparation for the winter.

But the tourists don't care. They just stop the car to enjoy the beautiful scenery. Some of them even crawl through the wire fence to take pictures in the grassland, which naturally tramples the grassland.

The owner of the pasture was very angry, but he had no choice but to ride his motorcycle here to watch over it and not let anyone in.

Later, someone gave him an idea: let them in, and give him 10 yuan per person to take photos. The herders thought that those people would not pay.

However, there are a lot of people who want to spend money. After spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to travel here, do you still need this little money to take pictures? Such a beautiful scenery!

Then the herder discovered that the money he earned from taking photos of safflower in one season was more than the money he earned from all the fodder on his pasture combined.

This is still a plain area in the mountains.

What about the herders in the mountains? Maybe they only communicate with a dozen or so herders in their own tribe every year or every three to five years. There are not many sources of information, so it is difficult to update their ideas.

Radio is a good thing, and it has begun to change the fate of the tribe. This is the benefit of information flow.

So, sometimes smartphones are really good things. They spread a lot of information, and then everyone knows how to make money. The herders in the mountains know that mushrooms can be sold for money. From the initial sale of a fertilizer bag of mushrooms for 50 yuan, later they knew that a kilogram of Bachu mushrooms could be sold for 100 yuan.

At first, vegetable vendors in the county town went to the mountains to pick morels, bought the fresh goods from the herders at 20 yuan per kilogram, and then sold them in the county for 150 yuan.

But with the popularization of mobile phones, various mushroom picking experts and herders communicating with each other, they realized that those things in the mountains that seemed useless to them were actually very valuable.

It will take another thirty years to reach that point, so now Li Long can pick morels easily.

Like Fritillaria, Morchella is a seasonal "crop", but Fritillaria is purchased by the purchasing station, and the demand is high. Fritillaria is also easy to find in the mountains. A month ago, as long as you find a ravine rich in Fritillaria, the whole ravine will be full of Fritillaria, and you can dig for a whole day without moving.

But morels are different. Although they also grow in clusters, if you can find 20 to 30 of them in a cluster, that's already a lot.

So to find this you need to run all over the mountains and fields, maybe even a whole day, and you might only find a few kilograms at most.

The purchasing station also offers a price that is not as high as that of Fritillaria, so ordinary mountain people who dig Fritillaria will not go out of their way to look for it even if they know that it is a good thing.

Not worth it.

Li Long didn't care. He was waiting to harvest Fritillaria cirrhosa anyway. He probably wouldn't be able to harvest much in the next two days. He had harvested enough in the past month. Now he hoped that no one would come to deliver Fritillaria cirrhosa so that he could pick mushrooms for two days and bring them back to show off to his family.

Most of the morels in the mountains grow in pine forests, and their shapes are different from those grown in poplar forests on the plains. The ones in the mountains have pointed heads and are slightly black, while those on the plains are mostly round heads and grayish white.

This is Li Long's own experience. He brought a small knife with him, and when he saw morels, he would use the knife to cut them off from the ground, which would be cleaner.

In later generations, merchants would like to take all the soil from the roots with them when they pick morels. In fact, everyone who has eaten this stuff knows that it is very troublesome to wash morels with soil on them, because morels have many wrinkles, and it is difficult to wash out if a little soil gets in. Moreover, this stuff is very fragile when it is fresh, and it will break if you use too much force when washing it.

waste.

Before the sun rose, wild rabbits occasionally passed by in the pine forest, and ran away in fright when they saw Li Long. He put his gun on his back and found morels in the moss under the forest floor where he had searched last year.

Morels, like other mushrooms, grow in fixed locations. Usually, unless the mycelium underground in one place is completely destroyed or the environment changes completely, you can pick it in the same place every year.

Li Long saw that this patch of morels was undisturbed. The largest one was as big as an adult's fist, but it was a little overgrown and the top was a little dry.

Morels are similar to Bachu mushrooms. They will die when they get too old. Unlike straw mushrooms, they will be eaten by insects when they get too old. Insects don’t seem to like morels.

There are more than 20 of them in this area, all of different sizes. Li Long cuts them one by one with a knife, and he is very satisfied when he sees that the fungi are clean.

You can just take it home, wash it, and cook it. It’s very convenient.

More than an hour later, when the sun rose, Li Long walked back with satisfaction, carrying half a bag of morels.

Is this considered hunting? After all, the mountains are truly unowned now, and the forestry team is mainly protecting forestry resources. And those who go to the mountains contracted by others under the name of hunting to pick persimmons and kiwis, is that considered stealing?

When I returned to the cabin, no one was there. It is also possible that someone came over, did not see anyone, and left.

Li Long didn't care about that. He opened the door, took a basin, washed the morels, and hung them on the handle to dry. The water on the stove in the house was already boiling, so Li Long scooped the water into the thermos, then added more water and started to cook porridge.

I was active for an hour in the morning and felt hungry, so I decided to have a heartier breakfast.

He poured oil, chili peppers and vinegar into a bowl of sauce, cut some cooked venison and offal into a plate, and then took two steamed buns and put them under the stove to roast.

Morels are suitable for stewing soup, not for cold dishes. He had enjoyed eating cold dishes of mushrooms for the past two days, so he went to the grassland again, picked four or five freshly grown straw mushrooms, washed them at the spring, and put them on the table. He lit a fire on the stove outside to boil water, and the water would be ready after a while.

It took more than half an hour to prepare breakfast. By the time it was ready, Li Long had swallowed his saliva several times.

On the table outside the house were porridge, sliced ​​meat, dipping sauce, golden baked buns, and cold mushrooms.

The vinegar taste was quite strong, but Li Long liked it. He took the steamed bun and started to eat. Although he tried his best to eat slowly, he actually ate it like a whirlwind. He finished two toasted steamed buns, a large plate of venison and offal, a plate of mushrooms, and finally a bowl of porridge.

It took less than twenty minutes and was clean.

The sun rose, and the world was quiet, as if he was the only one there.

Go take out all the Fritillaria and hang them up to dry in the sun. Hang up the dried meat as well. They can be dried today. If nothing else, go pick some mushrooms tomorrow morning and then you can pack up and go home.

At the end of the day, only one person came to sell two kilograms of Fritillaria at noon. He asked for money, then took the money and carried his bag to the North Mountain.

Another person left. Li Long didn't know how many people were left in the mountain, but it was definitely getting fewer and fewer.

Taking advantage of his free time, he finally put the wood he had cut last time into the truck bed. He originally planned to build a scaffold directly, but considering that he would not be able to enter the gate of the county compound after building the scaffold, he could enter through the gate of the village, so he thought of pulling the wood back and building the scaffold when he needed to pull bundles of wheat.

Now he was packing up. He also packed up some of the things in the cabin. He had to take the Fritillaria back with him. He had to take most of the dried meat back with him, and leave some of it here, so that he would have something to eat when he went up the mountain later when he was not hunting.

You should also keep some of the stewed meat sealed in animal fat, just like the air-dried meat. As for other supplies, leave two bags of food here, and also some salt, tea, sugar cubes, etc.

The remaining materials used to exchange for Fritillaria will be taken back. There is no point in keeping them here. If we have to do this again next year, we will see then. The less things we leave here, the less possible losses we will suffer.

After all, you can't expect the people in the mountains to be well behaved. There were some unruly people before, and Li Long and Bolati dealt with them several times, so these people are relatively well behaved. But if they find that no one is here for a long time, then they will definitely not mind opening the door and taking things from here at will.

After packing up all the things and drying the bedding, Li Long waited for tomorrow morning.

In the afternoon, still no one came to deliver Fritillaria, so Li Long knew that this Fritillaria season was completely over.

The next morning, Li Long ran to another forest and started picking morels, just like yesterday. There was no shortage of meat at home for now, but these ingredients were not eaten much, so he made more.

I was lucky this morning as I saw several patches of lush morels, both large and small. In the end, Li Long simply stopped picking the small ones and focused mainly on the big ones.

In less than two hours in the morning, Li Long finished half of the urea bag of morels.

The feeling of a great harvest!

If this happened in later generations, many people would be envious. He vaguely remembered that at that time, someone felt very lucky to pick a few morels, after all, they could make a pot of soup.

I am exaggerating a bit.

These days, no one knows about these things. It is really a blessing for someone like me to be in such an environment.

Carrying morels, he returned to the cabin like a victorious general. This morning, he was not so meticulous. He quickly finished breakfast, opened the stove lid, put out the fire with water, and then moved the supplies onto the tractor one by one, fixed them, locked the door, and then Li Long started the tractor and drove out of the mountain.

It may not be long before we have to go back into the mountains, but at least in Li Long’s mind, this Fritillaria season is completely over.

Although he went to the mountains under the name of being a weaver, Li Long knew that although weavers really made money in the eyes of the villagers, what he actually got the biggest share of the profits was the Fritillaria.

The three bags of Fritillaria in the tractor can still be sold for a thousand yuan, and these are the last two days.

Think about how much money we had to make when there were more Fritillaria in the past!

The tractor rumbled along the country road, and Li Long looked calm, feeling relieved. This was the end of a mission, and he had no specific plan for what to do next, but he could finally take a break.

Gu Xiaoxia and I had already agreed to have a child, but since we were apart so often, there was no big move. (End of this chapter)