Chapter 1032

The excitement caused by the call from the leader's secretary didn't subside until the purchasing station opened on the eleventh day of the first lunar month.

The purchasing station officially opened. Gu Bo Yuan reluctantly came out of the village on the tenth day of the first lunar month, arrived at the courtyard in the afternoon, and called Liang Shuang Cheng and Sun Jia Qiang to clear the snow together.

Between New Year's Eve and the tenth day of the first lunar month, the county had two more snowfalls. Fortunately, the snow wasn't very heavy, and the three of them spent less than an hour clearing the front and back yards—with the snow-clearing machine, pushing the spacious areas was relatively easy; the main trouble was clearing the snow pushed to the corners of the walls out of the courtyard.

The snow would melt in twenty days or so, and this snow couldn't be left in the courtyard, otherwise, when it melted, water would flow everywhere, which would be very troublesome.

Li Long was doing the same thing at home. The disadvantage of having a large courtyard was just this; usually, you could sweep the snow to the walls, or even use the accumulated snow to build a snowman or a snow wall for Mingming and Haohao.

But with the snow about to melt, it had to be cleared out, or at the very least, the remaining snow had to be piled into the vegetable plots or flower beds, so that when it melted, it would go directly into the mud.

On the eleventh day of the first lunar month, the purchasing station opened. Li Long went to help after breakfast, and the scene gave him a huge shock!

Outside the large iron gate, there were at least twenty or thirty people gathered, most of whom had come by bicycle, and some on foot—some might be neighbors like Tie Lanhua before, and some might have come directly from other places by bus.

These people were either carrying a bag, or holding a roll of pelts, and some were sitting on tractors, with several bags loaded in the tractor.

After resting for less than twenty days, these people were actually so impatient?

Sun Jia Qiang had arrived early. He and Liang Shuang Cheng were preparing things in the room—mainly hot tea.

This was an old habit. A bench was placed under the windowsill, with a large basin on it filled with golden brick tea water, and enamel bowls placed beside it.

After setting these up, Sun Jia Qiang went to open the door, shouting to the people outside before opening it:

"Line up, line up to come in. We're all ready, and we collect things very quickly. Don't crowd, don't be chaotic. There's no difference between being first or last, let's not hurt our harmony."

After the people outside responded, he opened the door, while Liang Shuang Cheng maintained order at the entrance of the purchasing room inside.

The two cooperated very well. Li Long followed them in and walked to the front, seeing that Gu Bo Yuan had already set up the notebook in front of the counter, placed the platform scale underneath, and the money in the drawer was also neatly arranged. Everything was ready.

Coming here to help, Li Long mainly collected things with Gu Bo Yuan. Liang Shuang Cheng and Sun Jia Qiang's eyes were slightly less sharp, so they were doing odd jobs, moving the collected things inside—today, there was no distinction between inside and outside; there were many people coming to sell things, so they all worked together.

Once they got busy, they didn't stop. When they first opened the door, there were twenty-something people outside. After Li Long collected quite a few things and straightened his back to rest, he looked up and found there were still twenty-something people outside... damn, people kept coming in.

It was a good thing; in less than a morning, they had collected more pelts and medicinal herbs than in a single day before the New Year.

There was basically no beef or mutton—they only collected one sheep carcass. According to that middleman, this was collected before the New Year. Originally there were two, but when he came here to sell them, the purchasing station was closed, so he could only keep them at home. As a result, he couldn't resist during the New Year and ate most of one, so he simply came to sell the remaining one.

The decrease in beef and mutton collected meant that the herdsmen had basically passed the most difficult period, and the remaining forage was enough to last until the snow melted and the grass in the winter pastures appeared.

This snow disaster had basically passed.

Because there were too many people, they took turns eating lunch. This time, Liang Shuang Cheng didn't act pretentious; he didn't even have time to cook for himself.

It wasn't until the sun was about to set that the people coming to sell things finally stopped.

Li Long and Gu Bo Yuan breathed a sigh of relief in front of the counter. Neither of them got up, just chatting idly.

Li Long talked about the phone call from Yanjing, feeling quite proud.

"How did they know it was you who first provided the beef and mutton to the supply and marketing cooperative?" Gu Bo Yuan asked curiously.

"I don't know. I guess the leaders have been paying attention to things here. Maybe our state cooperative reported me when they made their report."

"Mm, possible." Gu Bo Yuan nodded.

Actually, the secretary had also told Li Long that when he gave him the news, he was thinking of letting him notify the herdsmen that the snow disaster was severe and persistent, so they should slaughter what they could. Slaughtered livestock still had value, which was better than freezing to death.

Neither he nor the leaders expected that this would give Li Long an opportunity. It could only be said that Li Long's unintentional act of kindness had instead achieved a good thing, which could be considered as making a name for him.

What the secretary didn't tell Li Long was that the leader could even praise Li Long when chatting with old friends. After all, the problem with the beef and mutton supply in Yanjing had a wide impact, and the fastest response came from the farthest Northern Tianshan region, which was quite famous.

It could be said that it served as a benchmark, which was no wonder the leader's secretary would specifically call.

"So you turned all the remaining beef and mutton into air-dried meat?" Gu Bo Yuan asked.

"Mm, from the fourth to the tenth day, I've been dealing with these things these past few days." Li Long said with a smile, "Several flavors."

He had managed to turn air-dried meat into something that felt like beef jerky and mutton jerky.

It was actually quite good.

The good thing was that it tasted much better than the original; there were cumin, spicy, and original flavors.

Because the raw materials were cheap, the finished product wasn't expensive. Ordinary local people might not be able to afford it, but it was a very good gift to give to others.

Over these five or six days, Li Long and Sister Yang had turned most of the remaining venison, yellow sheep meat, wild boar meat, and so on at home into air-dried meat or jerky.

The remaining beef and mutton were kept for eating during this period; there wasn't much left, actually.

Because the method was relatively novel and they hadn't eaten it much before, even Mingming and Haohao would hold a strip of meat and chew hard on it when they had nothing to do. This stuff was just a bit hard on the jaw.

Fortunately, it was delicious, and that alone made up for the shortcoming.

Gu Bo Yuan knew that Li Long had just made a casual move, so he didn't think much of it.

After all, the main beef and mutton had already been sold, and he didn't care about the little bit left. Making it was fine, and it was easy to store, which was a good thing.

Li Long didn't mention one thing: because everyone liked eating what they had made these past few days, Gu Xiaoxia had joked that when Sister Yang opened a restaurant later, she should just sell this jerky; someone would definitely buy it.

Li Long was also thinking about whether to make this a business. After all, in the coming decades, jerky would be more like a long-term best-selling snack than melon seeds.

And it was relatively high-end, the kind that ordinary people couldn't afford or couldn't eat in large quantities.

High-end ingredients, after all.

Sun Jia Qiang and Liang Shuang Cheng sorted the things collected today and put them into the warehouse; the work was temporarily finished.

As for cleaning and processing, that was a matter for tomorrow and beyond. According to Li Long, starting from today, for at least a week to ten days, every day should be roughly this busy.

So after a week, Sun Jia Qiang and Liang Shuang Cheng would start taking turns to do the subsequent work according to the original division of labor.

"Today we collected a total of eighty-seven large pelts, including twenty-seven full pelts, and the rest were somewhat damaged. One hundred and sixty-seven rabbit pelts," Gu Bo Yuan took inventory, "Among the medicinal herbs, ninety-two kilograms of fritillaria, seventeen kilograms of codonopsis, one hundred and nineteen snow lotuses, one sheep,..."

The numbers were roughly what Li Long had guessed.

Just today alone, nearly ten thousand in working capital went out. But calculating the profit for today, it was over three thousand yuan.

Very impressive.

In the evening, Sun Jia Qiang was hosting a dinner at his home. Sister Yang was currently helping to cook at Sun's house.

As for Mingming and Haohao, Han Fang was taking them to play, and Gu Xiaoxia would come straight here after work.

According to Li Long, he was supposed to host the dinner as an opening banquet, but Sun Jia Qiang had said early on that he should be the one to host. It was mainly because everyone had been good to him, and after he got married, they had supported him in settling down.

Sun Jia Qiang actually knew clearly that if he hadn't relied on Li Long, his wife's family wouldn't have stayed so quiet and not come to cause trouble.

Everyone in the county who paid a little attention knew what kind of character Li Long had—he was extremely protective of his own.

If the Tie family wanted to cause trouble for Sun Jia Qiang, they had to be prepared for Li Long to keep them in mind. Don't look at how heartless the Tie family was to Tie Lanhua; if they had to face Li Long, they really wouldn't dare.