Chapter 1014: This chapter has no name

The Li family was preparing to eat when they heard the sound of a tractor, and Li Jianguo walked out.

Seeing that it was Li Long driving the tractor, and there was a strange thing in front of the tractor, he said:

"Little Long, hurry in and eat." Saying this, he shouted to the inner room:

"Yuemei, Little Long is back, serve him rice!"

"Little Long is back, hurry in." Liang Yuemei responded, and hurriedly went to serve rice for Li Long—lunch was rice, Li Qing Xia followed Tao Jian She and the others to smash ice holes, and got a few fish back in the morning.

Li Long turned off the fire. When getting off the car, he said to Li Jianguo:

"Drove the tractor back today, this is a snow-clearing machine on it, I cleared the road to the residential point outside, it will be more convenient for the children to go to school later."

"Hey, exactly. After the snow fell, every family swept the road inside the residential point, but no one cared about the snow outside." Li Jianguo shook his head, "Now people's hearts are scattered, and they can't be organized."

Li Long smiled, patted the snow on his body, and followed Li Jianguo into the house.

Li Qing Xia and Du Chunfang had already arrived at the door of the room. Seeing Li Long come in, their faces were full of smiles.

Both of them were a bit deaf, and at this time they asked Li Long together why he didn't come earlier.

Li Long told the reason why he came over. Li Qing Xia nodded, but Du Chunfang complained, saying that the road should have been organized by the team to sweep, how could Li Long do it himself.

Li Long also smiled and didn't speak. When Liang Yuemei served a bowl of rice and handed it to him, and everyone started eating, Li Long pointed to the stewed crucian carp on the table and said with a smile:

"Haven't eaten such fresh fish for some days."

"Hey, there are not many fish in the Small Haizi either." Li Qing Xia shook his head and said, "Dug for a whole morning, only got two or three kilograms of small crucian carp, didn't see a single big fish."

"Small crucian carp is fine." Li Long picked up a crucian carp less than a palm wide, put it on the rice, and said while eating: "There is still some oxygen in the water under the Small Haizi now, those big fish can breathe, so naturally they won't appear. After January, the ice will be thick enough, and the reed tubes won't be able to pass air down, then the fish will have to find ice holes to change air."

"But this fish is indeed not as many as before." Li Jianguo said, "How much money did the fish in the Small Haizi sell for over the years? Big fish need to grow for several years to grow up, one less for every one caught. There are so many fish, and they can't stand being fished like this."

Li Long knew that there must still be big fish under the water of the Small Haizi, but it was indeed much less than before.

Wanting to get rich by catching fish was not going to work—he, as a pioneer, had already taken away the best piece of dividend.

During the meal, Li Long told Li Jianguo about the snow-clearing machine. Li Jianguo nodded and said:

"Right. You are a national advanced individual, so you must pay attention to your image, and when you should do good deeds, you must do them. Junwazi is lazy, otherwise, if he organized the labor force in the team, what is sweeping snow? He doesn't organize, and what we village representatives say is not enough."

Du Chunfang was still a bit dissatisfied that her youngest son was working for the public for free, but now hearing her eldest son say that her youngest son was a national advanced individual, she immediately understood. Some things, once you have this name, are things that must be done, and how many people are watching.

"Don't worry, this snow-clearing machine is placed here. When it snows, I will drive the small four-wheeler to clear the roads to the residential point." Li Jianguo smiled and said, "It doesn't cost much oil, nothing to do in winter, and I can get a good reputation."

The younger brother became a national advanced individual and took himself to Beijing to buy a house. Li Jianguo went out for a trip, and his pattern also opened up. Some things can't just look at the present. Although it is a false name, it is still useful when necessary.

After lunch, Li Long taught Li Jianguo how to use the snow-clearing machine. After teaching, he unloaded the machine and installed it on Li Jianguo's small four-wheeler, and then drove the small four-wheeler back.

The students hadn't finished school yet. I guess when they came back and saw that the snow on the roads to each house had been cleared, they should be very happy.

Driving the tractor back to the courtyard, Li Long felt his legs were a bit stiff when getting off the car. It was almost the winter solstice, and the outdoor temperature was more than twenty degrees below zero during the day, and even thirty degrees below zero at night, which was very cold.

When Sun Jia Qiang went home for lunch, Tie Lanhua asked him how the sheep collection was going recently.

"Every day we can collect dozens of sheep, more and more people know, and more sheep are collected." Sun Jia Qiang washed his hands and ate, saying while eating: "This morning alone, we collected more than sixty sheep, and there might be quite a few in the afternoon."

"Looks like collecting sheep makes money." Tie Lanhua had already eaten and was looking at the baby sleeping while saying softly: "If it weren't for Hui, I would want to go collect sheep..."

"You raise and take care of the baby well first," Sun Jia Qiang didn't want his wife to run out and work hard in this freezing weather, "My salary is not small, and the boss gives bonuses every once in a while, enough to support you and the child."

"You should just focus on resting and taking care of the baby for now," Sun Jia Qiang said, not wanting his wife to go out and toil in this freezing cold. "My salary is not small, and every so often the boss gives out bonuses; it's enough to support you and the child."

"Who would ever complain about having too much money? I was thinking of hiring someone to look after Hui, and then I could go out and run around to collect things to sell at our acquisition station. The money earned would definitely be more than the cost of hiring someone, and the rest could be saved. When we have a son, we'll have to buy him a house by then..."

"How can you think that far ahead?" Sun Jia Qiang shook his head. "We have to save up Hui's dowry first."

He could feel that his wife had an obsession with having a son. In fact, having experienced so much, Sun Jia Qiang felt that whether it was a son or a daughter, it was about the same. Here in northern Xinjiang, especially in Maxian, there wasn't such a heavy preference for boys over girls. Now with the national policy, which didn't allow for having so many children, he didn't feel an urgent need for a son at the moment.

But Tie Lanhua was different; she was determined to have a son.

Tie Lanhua had a talent for business and was particularly sensitive to money, so Sun Jia Qiang felt that his wife would definitely be a strong, career-oriented woman in the future.

Fortunately, she usually listened to what he said and respected him at home. The point was that many of the decisions she made were, in Sun Jia Qiang's view, very correct. So, on the surface, it was actually Tie Lanhua who made the decisions most of the time in this household.

However, Sun Jia Qiang definitely did not agree with her leaving their daughter behind in winter to go out and collect sheep. The child was only a few months old and was at the stage of nursing and growing; how could it work if the mother wasn't by her side?

It definitely wouldn't work.

Seeing Sun Jia Qiang insist on not letting her go out, Tie Lanhua stopped talking about that matter and instead gently served Sun Jia Qiang food and rice, letting him eat more.

At dinner time, Gu Bo Yuan told Li Long that the number of sheep and cattle in the warehouse had already reached over five hundred, and one warehouse could no longer hold them. He had Sun Jia Qiang and Liang Shuang Cheng clear out another warehouse for storage.

Li Long had no better solution at the moment. After Zhao Hui transported the hides away, he hadn't called back, and it was unknown whether they needed the beef and mutton from here. Li Long calculated that what they had collected now was the limit of what he could sell in Maxian, Shicheng, and Kuitun.

If they collected any more, he really wouldn't know what to do afterward.

However, as the snow disaster continued to worsen, the number of sheep and cattle brought in by the middlemen every day actually increased. Even though Gu Bo Yuan had hardened his heart and lowered the price once, with mutton dropping to 1.8 yuan and beef to 2 yuan, there were still many middlemen coming to sell.

Clearly, the forage in many herdsmen's homes really couldn't hold out anymore. After all, the grass in the winter pastures could usually sustain them, but this year it was completely covered by snow. The grass in the pastures was buried under a meter of snow, and the cattle and sheep couldn't dig it out at all. Even if people helped them dig, how much grass could they really uncover?

So it was better to simply slaughter the culled sheep, keep the breeding sheep, ewes with lambs, and strong adult sheep, and take good care of the lambs born this year, so that they could continue to develop next year.

Gu Bo Yuan told Li Long about this, and Li Long thought that since the word had already gone out, they had to collect them.

Anyway, there was still more than a month until the New Year. If they kept at it for another half a month, the impact of the snow disaster should be at its minimum. By then, they would stop collecting and find a place to sell them.

If it really didn't work out and they didn't make money, they could have a clearance sale before the New Year, which should also be able to sell them off.

At this moment, Li Long thought that whether they made money or not didn't matter; the brand couldn't fall.

Two days later, Zhao Hui called. The people on his side were quite interested in the mutton from here, but because the merchant they were talking to wasn't very strong, they didn't dare to ask for too much, needing two hundred sheep and ten head of cattle.

As for the price, it was actually higher than Li Long had imagined: 2.5 yuan for mutton and 2.8 yuan for beef. Zhao Hui would pay for the shipping, and he planned to transport them together in one truck when he came to pick up the hides at the end of December—this saved on the cost of a train car.

Li Long knew this was testing the waters, but two hundred sheep would also clear out quite a bit of inventory, so Li Long was still quite happy.

It was a small profit, and as he said, it also helped the small-scale herdsmen solve their troubles.

It could be considered a double blessing; Huang Lei also called afterward, saying that the supply of beef and mutton from Inner Mongolia was less than in previous years. He had reached an agreement with the wholesalers there to try supplying a batch first, and he also wanted two hundred sheep. Of course, he actually wanted the whole sheep, including the offal.

According to Huang Lei, the sheep stomachs and intestines were also quite popular on their side.

It was just that Li Long found these things troublesome when collecting, so he hadn't taken them.

The price Huang Lei gave wasn't as high as Zhao Hui's, at 2.4 yuan, but he was also responsible for the transport. According to Huang Lei, renting a separate train car wasn't cost-effective, so he was sharing it with others; after all, two hundred sheep couldn't fill an entire train car.