Chapter 1045

Li Long was intentionally testing Ke Youmu, wanting to see if this Uyghur young man with a Yudong accent could handle the large amount of meat he needed in just three short days.

To Li Long's surprise, Ke Youmu brought the first truckload of trimmed, pure beef and mutton the very next afternoon.

Although this truckload of meat was only four or five hundred kilograms, it fully demonstrated Ke Youmu's seriousness about the matter and his ability to handle this business deal.

"I went to the old street market at noon to ask around; currently, the wholesale price for mutton is one point nine, and beef is two point one," Ke Youmu reported to Li Long. "Should we calculate it based on this price?"

"That's fine," Li Long said. "Like I said, just go by the market price."

In winter, everyone buys cheap beef and mutton to eat. Now, not many families have refrigerators, so they can't store fresh meat, which makes fresh meat more expensive than in winter.

That's normal.

Ke Youmu and Li Long weighed the meat, and Li Long didn't delay, paying the cash on the spot.

With over a thousand yuan in hand, Ke Youmu instantly felt relieved. Actually, he had been a bit worried that Li Long would wait until all the beef and mutton were delivered before settling the payment, which would have been troublesome for him.

He didn't expect Li Long to settle on the spot, so his trouble was completely eliminated.

Happily shaking hands with Li Long, he left with his truck. Ke Youmu went back to continue his work; he had already told Li Long that the meat delivered tomorrow afternoon would exceed one ton.

Li Long only had Sister Yang here by herself. Fortunately, others didn't live far away. This time the meat arrived quite late, so when looking for people, they used those two temporary workers to call two more people over to help.

Li Long intended to finish processing all this meat tonight—working overtime.

With the raw material problem for the meat jerky solved, Li Long felt at ease. The rest was just waiting for Ke Youmu to come over every day for meat inspection and handover.

Over these years, Li Long had dealt with all kinds of meat, and he could tell that the quality of the meat Ke Youmu brought was very good—fresh, and not the kind from old cattle or sheep.

Therefore, Li Long didn't haggle over the price; he weighed it and paid directly.

Both sides were willing to make this business happen and had thoughts of long-term cooperation, so the matter was easy to handle.

In three days, Ke Youmu delivered all the meat Li Long needed. Besides paying the rancher for the raw materials, he earned over a thousand yuan himself.

Even just selling the hides—actually, calculating the price of beef and mutton from the rancher, after paying for the slaughtering and trimming, and then deducting transportation costs, he barely made much money.

But so many hides belonged entirely to him, plus the bones from the trimmed meat, and the offal—that was the money Ke Youmu earned!

He did a rough calculation: if he processed all these things, he could earn at least two thousand five hundred yuan!

This was the benefit of latching onto a big shot—this time there was risk, but the risk wasn't big.

Running a milk tea shop, he might not even earn this much money in half a year!

Ke Youmu was very tired; there was still a large pile of things in his courtyard at home that hadn't been processed, and he would be busy for at least another three to five days.

But it was really worth it!

He felt he could tie himself to Li Long's business and not change; as long as Li Long continued the meat jerky business, he would definitely follow him!

Of course, he still had to consider where to source the beef and mutton next—the livestock market was the base. If he couldn't find suitable people he was familiar with, he would look for them there.

Of course, Ke Youmu's intention was still to find people he knew nearby. For one, it helped the nearby herdsmen he knew earn some money, and for another, it made these people owe him a favor. Moreover, people he knew were quite easy to talk to at this time; slaughtering sheep, trimming meat, and so on were all half-sold and half-given, very cheap.

Li Long didn't know Ke Youmu's thoughts. After receiving the meat and paying the money, he left the remaining work to Sister Yang to coordinate.

The people were hired by Li Long, but he didn't interfere with how to allocate the work or how to make the meat jerky; he didn't need to manage that much.

Because Sister Yang had to handle the beef and mutton, Li Long took Mingming and Haohao and drove to the Fourth Team.

After the snow melted here, the green grass sprouts just started to emerge. In the reed ditch, thin, sharp reed buds were exposed on the cut reed stubble, looking like ten thousand arrows shooting toward the sky; it was quite fun.

Some naughty children went straight into the reed ditch, pulling out these reed buds to play with in their hands.

The water in the reed ditch had receded. Although the ground under the reed leaves was still wet, it wasn't sticky, so one could step on it.

Actually, there wasn't anything fun about it; a child would take a large bundle, hold it in their hands, and throw it like an arrow.

This thing was light at the head and heavy at the feet, so it couldn't be thrown far at all, but the children played with it tirelessly.

Li Long drove Mingming and Haohao to his eldest brother's house first. Du Chunfang and Li Qing Xia were both there, and they were incredibly happy to see Mingming and Haohao arrive. Li Long let the old couple watch over them while he drove to Tao Daqiang's house.

When he mentioned the beef and mutton matter, Tao Daqiang shook his head, saying he couldn't do it.

"Doing this requires a large courtyard. Buying cattle and sheep back and having a place to slaughter them is fine. Brother Long, your old horse corral would work, but my courtyard won't. Besides, the children at home are small, and I can't run around like I used to..."

Tao Daqiang had completely transformed into a good family man, considering the family situation in everything he said and did.

Li Long had actually thought of that; he just came over to mention it to Tao Daqiang.

When talking about other things, Tao Daqiang was quite happy. After all, the family conditions were good now, his father's health was fine, his wife was capable, and the children were slowly growing up and had started preschool; they were very well-behaved, and he was starting to look like a father.

"The kid will be six soon, and we plan to have another one then." Tao Daqiang didn't avoid Li Long when talking about this, being very frank. "Whether it's a boy or a girl, having two is better."

The policy was there, so they would have one if they could. Actually, according to Tao Daqiang and Yang Pingping's thoughts, even if the policy didn't allow it, they wanted to have one secretly, and of course, they would pay the fines as they should.

In the Northern Xinjiang region, here in Maxian, people still respected laws and regulations quite well at this time. And from top to bottom, starting from the township level, the implementation of this was quite civilized, and there were no incidents of tearing down houses or seizing cattle.

Of course, it was also because there was plenty of land, and they could earn money from the land, giving them the confidence to pay the fines.

Li Long chatted with him for a while, then drove to find Xie Yun Dong.

Xie Yun Dong was the same; he was too busy. He stated clearly that another thought he had was that he didn't want to be such a direct business partner with Li Long.

"You give us tasks, we do them, like making big brooms, getting paid by the piece—that way we feel clear-headed about it." Besides mentioning the same problems as Tao Daqiang, Xie Yun Dong also said this, "But if we were like business partners, it would be hard to avoid this or that conflict. We are all on the same team, and our relationship is getting better and better; how things will develop later, we don't know."

"But looking at the present, life will definitely get better and better. I don't want us to turn into enemies over some small issues later... That wouldn't be worth it."

Li Long didn't expect Xie Yun Dong to take this so seriously... Actually, he had already made it clear that regarding the beef and mutton, once his demand for raw materials for meat jerky increased, a supplier could earn several thousand a month just by providing the meat.

But Xie Yun Dong didn't consider the money issue first; he considered the relationship issue first.

"Actually, your old horse corral is so big, you could totally raise more. Then you could cycle it... I see that inside and outside the old horse corral, raising a thousand sheep wouldn't be a problem." Xie Yun Dong said, "Don't you still have some of those saline-alkali lands left uncultivated? Building another big corral wouldn't be a problem."

"Uncle Uncle Lao Luo and the others are still quite active. The current cattle and sheep can be taken care of by Yang Laoliu and two or three others. If you buy some more cattle and sheep and let them graze, and they lamb every year, getting two or three thousand shouldn't be a problem, right? By then, even if you get them from outside, you won't need many."

What Xie Yun Dong said was indeed a good path.

The newly built corral at the old horse corral hadn't been fully utilized. And because there was plenty of forage after spring began, most of the sugar residue Song Ming brought over had been dried and stored, and there was still quite a bit of surplus.

Uncle Uncle Lao Luo and the others had already started suggesting to Li Long whether they could sell this sugar residue as concentrated feed.

Even if they sold it for one or two mao per kilogram, that would be a large sum of money—mainly because they had stored quite a lot.

Li Long thought it was indeed possible to buy a few more batches of cattle and sheep from the livestock market. There was still plenty of wasteland in the wild, and grazing a few thousand cattle and sheep wouldn't be a problem—as long as they were separated and grazed in groups of a few hundred, it would be perfectly fine.

As for winter feed—a few thousand cattle and sheep, by the time winter arrived, would have consumed almost all of it.

This fell back into the original circle—in the end, would he have to do the slaughtering himself?