Rebirth of Bayi Fishing and Hunting in the Northwest

"…So recently we've mainly focused on preventing and controlling pests and diseases. Check the leaves to see if they have enough fertilizer. If it rains, there shouldn't be any accumulation of water…"

At noon, Li Jianguo came back driving the carriage. Li Long and his mother had already prepared the meal and the meat had been cut and stewed. The people who were working could eat directly.

While eating, Li Long told his elder brother the specific things that needed to be paid attention to when planting melons.

Melon cultivation is something the two brothers are very concerned about. Although they don't say they have great ambitions, at least they want to avoid losing money in this area this year.

The capable professor has taught us the method, so can’t we do it just by following it?

Unless you don't want to make this money.

Li Jianguo was a man of action. He asked Li Long to keep the paper. Li Long said:
"I am here to deliver the sheep today. I will go back in the afternoon. Tomorrow I will go to the county agricultural supply company to buy the fertilizers and pesticides I need and prepare them so that I can use them directly when I need them."

Li Jianguo didn't say anything else.

After dinner, Li Long drove the tractor to Gu Boyuan's house again.

"Why are you here again?" Gu Boyuan had just finished his meal. Although it was easier to cook for one person, it was also troublesome to clean up.

He has always been too lazy to do such complicated things by himself. Today, Li Long brought the meat to him, so he couldn't go to work in the fields. In fact, he was very happy in his heart, but he didn't show it on his face - even though he has been a farmer for many years, he would be happier if he didn't have to work in the fields.

After all, deep down, he is still an intellectual.

"Uncle Gu, I want to do something, and I think you can do it." Li Long said straight to the point.

"What's the matter? What do you mean I can do it?" Gu Boyuan was led astray by Li Long and forgot his original words of complaint.

"The county has gradually relaxed some restrictions on the sale of goods, and now ordinary people can slowly open shops." Li Long sat at the table under the grape trellis and poured himself a bowl of cold tea - cold tea in the literal sense, that is, brick tea that has already cooled down. He took a sip and said:

“Our county is an agricultural county, and I think the agricultural supplies business will definitely be a big business in the future.

Uncle Gu, you have a quick mind. Staying in the team and farming is really a waste of time. It is better to open an agricultural supply store in the county or township and apply for a license. I can handle the purchase of goods in the supply and marketing cooperative, and you can just run the store.

You can read books when you have nothing to do, and sell things when someone wants to buy things. You don’t have to cook for me. Xiaoxia and I always eat at Sister Yang’s house, and you can do the same. This way, you can see Xiaoxia every day, and it’s more convenient to do anything living in the county than in the team.”

"If you put it that way, it really can be done." Gu Boyuan listened to the radio every day and knew that private enterprises had been flourishing in the mainland for a long time. The first private license was issued in 1980, and now from the coast to the northwest, private shops are no longer a rare thing.

However, private stores selling agricultural supplies are indeed rare. Basically, private enterprises mainly sell daily necessities. That is, a considerable number of the former supply and marketing cooperatives' retail departments have now been converted into private stores.

But in the long run, the land will be owned by individual families. If they want to grow more food, oil and cash crops, they will need fertilizers and pesticides. This is something that even ordinary farmers can imagine, not to mention Gu Boyuan.

But few people dare to do it. First, they don't have the capital, and second, for ordinary farmers nowadays, they would be very happy to be a worker, but not everyone can make up their mind to open a store to sell goods.

Moreover, now that production quotas are assigned to households and land is contracted, they can have enough food to eat. If they work hard for a few years, they will be able to eat well and have a future. If they are really asked to start a business, they really don't have the mood to do so.

Most of them are like this.

But Gu Boyuan did not have this concern. He was attracted by the two points that Li Long said.

First, you don’t have to cook for yourself, and second, you can read books when you are free instead of working in the fields.

"Then why don't you let your father do it?" Gu Boyuan was a little puzzled.

"Don't you know my father's personality? He would rather go to the small lake to cast a net and catch fish every day than to look after the store." Li Long said.

"That's right." Gu Boyuan nodded. He was just a lazy person, and it was good for him to stay in the store without moving. But Li Qingxia had the opposite personality, and he would be very anxious if he was asked to guard the store.

"I can't give up my yard and my land." Gu Boyuan also had concerns.

"That's easy." Li Long smiled and said, "Just come back to the yard occasionally to check on it. If you can't, let my eldest brother take care of it. Just let my eldest brother and others help to plant the land. If it doesn't work, subcontract it out. Anyway, there are many people in the team who want to plant more land."

Gu Boyuan nodded, this was indeed a solution.

"This matter will not be completed in a short time." Li Long said, "I have been looking for places in the county recently. I will buy a suitable yard and build a store in the front and live in the back. If it is difficult to find, I will just find a store and you can live in our yard..."

"I'm not going." Gu Boyuan shook his head directly, "I want to live on my own and not get involved with you guys."

Gu Boyuan wants to save face. He feels that he is not old and does not want others to say that he relies on his daughter and son-in-law to make a living.

People at this time, especially middle-aged people, care too much about face.

"That's fine. I'll look for a yard slowly and buy it when I find a suitable one," said Li Long.

"Okay, just consider it as a loan from you first," Gu Boyuan said, "Look for a yard that's not too big. If it's too big, I can't take care of it by myself. But it would be best if I could grow some vegetables or something."

Li Long nodded. This place is different from Kuitun Construction and Installation Company. That small yard can't grow anything and the area is small. It is still easy to find the yard that Gu Boyuan wants in Ma County.

After the matter was settled, Li Long drove his tractor back to the county. When Gu Xiaoxia came back, he told her about the matter.

"Is the license easy to get?" Gu Xiaoxia didn't mind her father opening a store in the county. It was actually a good thing. It was hard to say whether her father could take care of himself when he was alone in the team. Now that he had the opportunity to come to the county, Sister Yang's cooking skills were also good, so it would be good for everyone.

"It should be easy." Li Long said, "We are not the first one. Someone has done it before. We just need to prepare the necessary procedures. I will go and ask around in the next two days."

Li Long came up with the idea of ​​letting Gu Boyuan open an agricultural supplies store on a whim, but as soon as the idea came out, he thought it was a good one.

If you want to expand in the future, you must have a foundation now. It will be difficult to enter the agricultural materials field later, but it is very convenient to enter now.

Of course, even if Gu Boyuan doesn’t want to develop in this area in the future, it is very simple. He just needs to run this store and he can be guaranteed to have food and clothing for the rest of his life.

After all, twenty or thirty years later, the most common complaint among the farmers in the team is that the prices of crops have increased but the prices of agricultural inputs have increased, while the prices of crops have fallen but the prices of agricultural inputs are still rising.

Anyway, I didn’t see anyone losing money.

Of course, it may just be on the surface. But as long as you don't take risks and behave in a law-abiding manner, you can make money. When the time is right, you can get a few good agricultural material agents, and then all you have to do is wait for the money to come in.

Such courtyards are usually located south of Wuyi Road, where Sister Yang and her friends are. The courtyards in the north are not very large, and most of them are company houses. Large courtyards like Li Long's are rare and hard to buy.

The next day, Li Long went to the supply and marketing cooperative and told Li Xiangqian about his plan to buy the yard, asking him to keep an eye out for it.

"Why do you have so many yards?" Li Xiangqian was puzzled. "Won't it be troublesome to clean them up?"

Li Long explained it to him and said that he was planning to have his father-in-law come over to open an agricultural supplies store, and that he would live there at that time.

Li Xiangqian understood this explanation. He said that there was no news in this regard at the moment, but he would help keep an eye out.

Li Long came out of the supply and marketing cooperative and took the skins and deer antlers that Halimu brought back this time to Chen Hongjun, and told him about these things by the way.

"Okay, I'll tell you when I have news." Chen Hongjun checked the skins one by one. Especially when he saw the lynx skin, he praised it emphatically. This skin was relatively complete and could be worth a lot of money.

After the final calculation, including the two deer antlers, the total sales amounted to more than 1,500 yuan.

Li Long signed and took the money, thinking that Halimu would be surprised if he knew that these things were sold for so much money.

But after thinking about it, he shook his head. For them in the summer pasture, money is not very important, but supplies are important.

But this money can be exchanged for sixty or seventy sheep. Halimu's sheep flock is so big, but there are only more than two hundred sheep.

Forget it, I'll talk about it after I get back from the summer pasture. The sheep in Halimu and Yushanjiang are mixed, with coarse-wool sheep, fine-wool sheep, and goats. Some sheep can give birth to three calves every two or three years. Maybe when the winter migration comes, the number of sheep will increase again.

When the time comes, count the money out to him and see if he will be shocked.

Next, Li Long went to talk to Zhong Guoqiang about buying the yard, and it turned out that Zhong Guoqiang had a friend who had a yard to sell.

However, Li Long shook his head after hearing the description. First of all, the location is a bit remote, in the northwest of the county, and transportation is inconvenient. Li Long's ideal location should be near the market, or at the exit of the city in the north. These two places have a large flow of people, and most of them are migrant workers from rural areas.

Of course, it would also be nice if it was near the bus station, but the housing prices or land prices there have gone up, and the yards themselves are not big, so it is difficult to find a suitable one.

I can only look for it slowly.

In the next month, Li Long went to find Captain Tang of the construction team of the county construction company. Then, under his assignment, he moved around various construction sites to pull bricks and sand, basically earning more than 30 to 40 yuan a day.

not bad.

Because of Captain Tang's assignment, Li Long basically did not encounter any difficulties when transporting construction materials, but he also saw some signs.

Those sand and brick fields still have invisible bosses. Some owners of animal-drawn carts that carry sand and bricks have to "pay tribute" to others, otherwise they may not be able to carry many carts a day, and their carts may not be fully loaded, so they will not make much money.

Li Long could see that a few of the hidden and not very clever local thugs knew that Li Long had a background, so they would not embarrass him. But the eyes they looked at Li Long were not very kind. Of course, if they wanted Li Long to be humble, Li Long would not mind letting them feel the warmth of the five or six styles.

As for those who were forced to "pay tribute", Li Long did not care. Nowadays, if you can't hold your head up, no matter how much help others give you, it will be useless.

As for what difficulties and reasons, Li Long didn't want to know, nor did he care to think about it.

This was 1983! Just like the years in later generations when the crackdown on crime was the most stringent, if someone's children were bullied at school, the parents could do nothing about it and could only blame the children for their bad luck.

After all, the path has been given to you. If you don't take action, no one can save you.

During this month, Li Long has visited the animal husbandry team once and sent some vegetables such as radish and potatoes. He plans to send more when tomatoes are in season. The Kazakhs don't eat many kinds of vegetables, and some of them are not edible, so it's better to send more of the vegetables they often eat.

At noon in June, Li Anguo and Yang Yongqiang took leave from Kuitun and returned. They had obtained their quota as formal workers and were now formal workers.

The next day, Yang Hua invited Li Long to a dinner party at home. Yang Hua got drunk that day. This was considered a big happy event for the family. The news spread in the village, and most young people envied Yang Yongqiang's good luck.

Many people turned their attention to Li Long - after all, it could be said that Yang Yongqiang's ability to become a worker was entirely due to Li Long's own efforts.

Everyone already knows that Li Long himself does not want to be a worker. After all, he earns more money than a worker. If he really had been a worker, he would not be as rich as he is now.

But he didn't want to, as there were many people who wanted to be one, so these days people would come to Li's house from time to time, trying to find out if there was any news of job openings anywhere else.

Li Long had no choice. He was not a god, so he naturally did not know where the recruitment information was. Any recruitment information in Ma County would have been notified by people with connections inside. By the time they knew about it, the positions were already full.

There will be more job openings in Shicheng and Wucheng, but they are far away and I don't have many connections, so how can I know?

Li Long could only be vague. If he really had it, he would tell everyone. If he didn't have it for the time being, there was nothing he could do.

Li Anguo had just become a regular employee and applied for a branch courtyard. Section Chief Ma Aihong also said that she would keep an eye on him, but for the time being, there was no such thing.

So my second sister-in-law Chen Lirong and her two children have to live in the team for the time being. But fortunately, there are more places to live here, so this is not a big deal. Besides, there is already hope, so there is no need to rush at this moment.

Before leaving, Yang Yongqiang came to see Li Long specifically, bringing with him wine, canned food and other things, as well as money, but Li Long took them back while scolding him.

However, Li Long accepted the wine and canned food and gave them to his parents. This was Yongqiang's thank-you gift, so he had to accept it.

Li Junshan did not come back with them. He had already been converted to a regular employee. The reason he did not come back was that he had a girlfriend over there.

The girl's parents, like Li Jianguo, came from the mainland to support the border areas. The girl followed them when she was young. Now she works as a temporary worker in a state-owned factory in KT City and has not yet been converted to a permanent employee.

The girl's uncle worked in a construction and installation company. Seeing that Li Junshan was down-to-earth and capable, he found out from other sources that Li Junshan was single and had no partner, so he introduced him to someone else.

According to Li Anguo, the girl is quite satisfied with Li Junshan and they are currently in a relationship.

The successive good news filled the Li family with a festive atmosphere. Li Long simply asked Uncle Luo to slaughter a half-grown wild boar to entertain his second brother and others.

The wild boars in Lao Mahao have been semi-domesticated and gave birth to two litters this year, with a total of fifteen boars.

There is a new generation of roe deer, and the largest male roe deer and the half-grown male red deer caught last year have all had their antlers harvested this year. This is the first income for the horse farm this year, except for the two fawns sold last year.

The two pairs of deer antlers were sold for more than three hundred yuan, which directly covered all the expenses of Lao Ma's account, including Uncle Luo's salary.

Although Uncle Luo kept saying that he was overwhelmed, when Li Long jokingly suggested finding him a helper, he immediately refused.

"You must be joking. There's no way I can't handle it. The feed and other things are all ready. Now you can just cut the grass outside. You can do half a day's work to take care of the animals. If the roe deer in your big yard are hard to take care of, bring them back. Our old stable is big, so we can raise a lot of animals!"

In fact, Li Long really considered bringing back the roe deer and fawns in the yard. They had grown a little big in the past two months and were not so cute anymore. The big roe deer even had a tendency to kick people.

Humph! If it weren’t for Gu Xiaoxia’s protection, Li Long would have killed it directly in the yard!
Li Anguo and Yang Yongqiang both had three days off. At noon on the third day, they took Li Long's tractor to Shicheng, bought tickets to Kuitun and returned to the unit.

There is no direct bus from Ma County Bus Station to Kuitun, so you have to drive in reverse to go to Kuitun.

Li Long continued to transport materials for a while. By July, he had paid all the freight and was ready to start another more important job.

Harvesting wheat.

The wheat in the team had been yellow for several days. They had already eaten roasted wheat, and the team members had long known that Li Long had a harvester at home.

But for now, except for his family members and the more familiar people such as Tao Daqiang, Yang Hua, Lu Yingming, Xie Yundong and Jia Weidong who clearly asked Li Long to use a harvester to harvest their own wheat, everyone else is just waiting and watching.

Li Long has already spread the word that he earns two yuan per acre of wheat.

The reason why he gave this price was because Wang Caimi also released a piece of news a month ago that after the autumn harvest this year, the price of one mu of plowed land had increased to four yuan.

The price increase is because prices are rising everywhere nearby. The oil price has not changed, but labor costs have increased, and machinery is not cheap.

The two dollars Li Long has is nothing compared to the four dollars for plowing the land.

After all, everyone knows that although harvesting wheat can be done by manpower, it is different from plowing the land, and that person has no choice.

But wheat harvesting usually takes place under the scorching sun, and the families in the team have a lot of food-grain fields, with at least ten mu of wheat planted, and some have thirty or forty mu. This makes harvesting really uncomfortable.

People who have never experienced it have no idea how painful it is to cut wheat under the scorching northwest sun.

Those wheat pickers really risk their lives to make money.

Besides, the sun in Shaanxi and Gansu cannot be compared with that in northern Xinjiang.

Harvester, maybe it's really good? (End of this chapter)