The fierce peasant woman is busy farming

“There’s a deep pool down there, and it flows into that pool.

The pool is so deep that you can't see the bottom. Even in the dry season in spring, the water never runs low.

But when the water is highest in summer, it never overflows.

The old people in the village said, "This is called the state of not overflowing during abundant water and not decreasing during dry water," so they all called it Longtan.

It is said that during the severe drought, the river in the village dried up and even the wells ran out of water.

Not to mention crops, there is not enough water even for people to drink.

The villagers went there to fetch water to drink, and a round trip took more than half a day.

I can only fetch water twice a day at most, which is very hard work.”

"Oh, Brother Yuan, when we have time, let's call the village chief and go take a look together, okay?"

"Okay, let's go take a look, I've never been to such a far place.

You can also ask grandpa, he knows more. "

Yes, why don't you ask for advice from the teacher you already have, and instead seek something far away?

I decided to go back and discuss it with Old Man Ning, and then go to see the village chief.

After watching, the mother and son went home.

Qing Mo returned home and counted the ingredients. He saw that there was only a little fish left and the lard was almost gone.

It was really unexpected that so much lard was consumed.

Although the family didn't spend any money on the lard, they will have to pay for it when they fry fish and sell them next time.

When calculating the cost, the oil cost was underestimated.

Qing Mo ignored her tiredness and pulled Chun Niang, the "living calculator", into the house. She wanted to recalculate the cost.

It’s not like I don’t know, it’s just a shock.

When Zhou Yue and Yuan Mo returned home, they learned that Qing Mo had calculated today's profit.

But, unexpectedly, it sold out all day.

Surprisingly, I lost money.

If it weren't for the low cost and high profit of fried fish, we would lose more money today.

Qingmo became anxious and started crying.

Everyone was serving dinner when they heard Qingmo crying and hurried to see her.

Let everyone go to the yard, Zhou Yue and Qing Mo talk in the house.

After much analysis, the problem lies with the lard.

If we want to solve the problem now, we can either raise the price or make fried fish twice as expensive as crispy fish.

Or stop selling fried fish in the future.

But crispy fish is not worse than fried fish. If fried fish is too expensive, it will be difficult to sell it because of the comparison with crispy fish.

If we weren’t selling fried fish, we would have already sold it today. Everyone knows what it tastes like and will definitely come to ask about it next time.

Letting customers down is definitely not Boss Ning's way of doing business.

Then the only thing to do is to reduce costs.

In fact, vegetable oil is better for frying.

Although lard is fragrant, it solidifies once it cools and becomes sticky in the mouth.

Lard is now the main oil used in daily life, and it is so expensive, so it is definitely not cost-effective to use it for frying fish.

Zhou Yue was thinking while eating.

Suddenly she remembered that Xuan Mo had told her that there was a butcher in the village who specialized in slaughtering cattle and sheep.

Ask everyone, Qing Mo said: "No one likes to eat mutton fat and beef fat.

The butcher Wang once said that in fact, the smell of mutton fat and beef tallow is not as strong as everyone imagines.

After repeated heating, it becomes very fragrant. "

From Zhou Yue's scientific point of view, repeatedly heating oil is definitely unhealthy.

But here, no one has this awareness.

Zhou Yue also knew that if you don’t mention the quantity of anything, it would be useless.

If you eat the same kind of oil all day long, it will definitely be bad for your health.

But it's okay to eat it once in a while.

On weekdays, ordinary people would not be willing to buy food often.

Usually, the beef and mutton fat produced by the butcher Wang was sold mostly to wealthy families who kept dogs at home.

Although beef and mutton fat is cheap, ordinary people are reluctant to feed it to dogs, and they dislike its strong smell when they eat it themselves.

Therefore, his oil did not sell well in the village.

We can only wait for the servants of the wealthy family to come to the countryside to collect it, but that’s not certain.

He used to have a relatively regular client.

Later, several dogs in that family died of illness one after another.

The whole family, young and old, treated the dog as a family member. When the dog died, the old people and children cried uncontrollably and some of them were sick for several days.

The owner made up his mind not to keep the dog anymore, as dogs have a shorter lifespan than humans, but he could no longer bear the pain of separation.

Therefore, Wang the butcher has been saving all his oil recently.

The weather wasn't cold yet, he thought, and after a while, he would bury all the oil.

But you can't give it away for free. Not only will others not appreciate it, they may also dislike the smell and secretly throw it away.

Just say that if others eat it and feel uncomfortable or something, we cannot take this responsibility.

Moreover, if you want to sell it again in the future, you will hear a lot of sarcastic remarks.

Fortunately, it was just the beginning of autumn and he had just started slaughtering cattle and sheep, so the accumulated oil was not much, only about 20 to 30 kilograms.

People here only eat beef and mutton in autumn and winter.

Spring is the breeding season for cattle and sheep. After a winter of lack of food, they are skinny and have nothing to eat.

In summer, cattle and sheep eat grass, and their meat has a strong smell of grass foam, which is not suitable for eating.

In autumn, the grass has turned into seeds. The cattle and sheep eat the grass seeds, which is equivalent to eating food, and start to gain weight.

The beef and mutton are the most delicious at this time, with less mutton smell and firm and sweet meat.

Zhou Yue took Qing Mo to Wang the butcher's house to ask about the price of beef and mutton oil.

Before I even walked into the door of Wang the Butcher's house, I smelled a strong odor of mutton.

Outsiders can find his house without asking.

Hearing that they were here to inquire about the price of beef and mutton fat, Butcher Wang waved his hand and said:

"We only have sheep fat now, and we haven't killed any cattle yet. There aren't many cattle, and we're not allowed to kill working cattle. The only ones that can be killed are sick cattle or cattle that have fallen to their death.

I don’t have many sheep. I can only sell one sheep at each market, so I probably have more than 20 kilograms of sheep fat at home.

It’s not worth the money, you can take it back and eat it.”

"How can we take your things for free? We have to pay you the market price. These are not your pets. They were bought from traffickers. We have to pay for them."

The Wang family, like the Ning family, are outsiders to Fenghuangtai Village. There are not many people with the surname Wang, not even as many as the Ning family.

The most common surname in this village is Li, and it is said that they migrated here from under the big locust tree in Shanxi.

Some smaller surnames, such as Wang and Ning, later came here as refugees and gradually settled there.

The most recent ones also started to settle here during this dynasty.

The big surnames have a large population and strong family power, and they often bully outsiders.

Some families with small surnames often unite to fight against the big surnames.

The Wang family is close to the Ning family.

"I can't sell them anyway, so I'm going to throw them away. I really feel bad about this, so just give me ten cents for them."

"Okay, thank you, Brother Wang."

"Thank you, Uncle Wang."

"By the way, Brother Wang, how is the market for mutton this year?"

"It's just the beginning of this year, so we can't tell what will happen. However, the price of sheep in the mountain village is really not expensive this year."

The sheep that Wang the butcher slaughtered were bought by him personally from a village deep in the mountains.

People living deep in the mountains rarely come out to sell things because the roads are long and rugged and the environment is isolated.

They usually wait for the peddler to go to the village and exchange the things they grow, raise and pick for some daily necessities.

If there are more goods that need to be sold, for example, if you raise a flock of sheep, you don’t go out to sell them, but have to wait for the dealer to come and buy them.