Chapter 235

Qin Huaimin really started inspecting as soon as he got his hands on them.

In each pile, he would randomly pull out five or six large brooms, weigh them in his hand, sweep them on the ground, and then reach out to tug at the reeds.

Li Long's expression carried a hint of mockery.

"Xiao Long, your expression... I see that Old Qin's inspection has no problems, right? They're all quite detailed, why do you look at him like you're looking at a layman?" Li Xiangqian had sharp eyes; seeing Li Long's expression was off, he pulled him aside and asked in a low voice.

"Section Chief, we're our own people, since you asked, I'll tell you the truth. Section Chief Qin's inspection method is indeed fine for ordinary brooms, and it looks like he knows what he's doing, but inspecting reed brooms this way, there won't be any problems one hundred percent of the time.

We ourselves checked out fifty or sixty that had problems. If we let Section Chief Qin inspect them, every one of them would be a qualified product, but we won't let such brooms go out."

"Then how should they be inspected?"

"You see, he mainly looks at the reeds. When he inspects, he shouldn't just inspect the reeds, he also has to inspect the handles. If there's a problem with the reeds, it's not just about whether they're sturdy, but also whether they're brittle and easy to break.

Whether the handle is bound straight, whether the wire loop is twisted tightly, and whether the burned and chopped parts at the tips of the reeds are long enough.

Inspecting this way is mainly to prevent problems like the reeds breaking after the broom is used for a while, even if they don't necessarily fall out, or the broom handle falling off, or the wire loop coming loose.

Some people will pass off inferior goods as superior, using reeds that aren't long enough to bind the brooms. To make the broom look good, the burned tips are only a small section at the top, so the reeds in the sweeping part of the broom aren't tough enough and break easily..."

Li Long explained in a low voice, and Li Xiangqian understood.

"Then these brooms of yours..."

"Section Chief, rest assured, we are all experts; the unqualified ones were directly cleared out. We won't hand over that kind of broom."

"That's good... Xiao Long, doing it this way, I'm truly relieved!"

After Qin Huaimin finished inspecting a circle, he walked back with a smile on his face and said:

"Not bad, not bad, the quality of these large brooms is very up to standard. Old Li, the village you chose, the people binding the brooms and the people responsible for inspection all have a very strong sense of responsibility, truly not bad!"

Li Xiangqian thought of the details Li Long had whispered earlier, smiled, and said:

"Naturally. Fine, since the spot check is qualified, let's load the truck. It's not easy for the villagers to bind brooms; let's count and take them away as soon as possible so we can settle the accounts."

Upon hearing about settling accounts, the villager representatives' eyes lit up.

They could get money, and this time almost every family had money; who wouldn't be happy?

Having money arrive before the end of the year, and not a small amount, meant that any difficulties at home could be solved in time.

"Xiao Long, you come with us to the cooperative," Li Xiangqian said, "Let's settle the accounts for the ones being taken away this time. By the way, the rest..."

"The rest will definitely be finished tomorrow!"

"That's good, that's good. Then this time we'll take two thousand back first," Li Xiangqian said, "This way it's easier to settle the accounts."

The villager representatives worked together to stack the large brooms onto the truck, while Li Long went back to bring both bicycles and also put the semi-automatic rifle into the holster and carried it on his back.

The money for these two thousand brooms was a huge sum; Li Long couldn't guarantee if any accidents would happen.

Two thousand brooms were taken to the supply and marketing cooperative, and Li Long followed Qin Huaimin to get the invoice and then collect the money.

He put the thick stacks of banknotes into his satchel and then took them to the bank.

Two thousand brooms, of which one thousand was his commission, plus the one thousand remaining from selling the snow leopard last time, plus the four thousand yuan in even money from selling fish, fritillaria, deer antlers, and other things these past few days, he deposited into two certificates of deposit. The snow leopard skin was on one, and the rest of his own money was on another.

Li Long still had a few hundred yuan in small change on him, just in case of emergency.

There were six thousand yuan in the satchel; Li Long no longer felt the excitement he had when he first got the money.

He was still a distance away from his goal.

His five thousand yuan was already enough to buy a walking tractor or a small four-wheeled tractor, but he didn't need one yet; the horse cart was enough.

To buy a tractor, he would have to wait until after the team's second round of land distribution and the first round of land contracting. At that time, each family would have more land, and the horse cart wouldn't be as suitable, so he could buy a tractor then.

Carrying the gun and riding back to the team, nothing happened. He went directly to Xu Chengjun's house.

To Li Long's surprise, the villager representatives were all there, and even the accountant was there.

When these people saw Li Long riding back on his bicycle, their eyes all widened!

Li Long parked the bicycle, took off the satchel while carrying the gun, and said to Xu Chengjun:

"Team Leader, I've brought the money back. Since the accountant is here, shall we count it and enter it into the accounts?"

"Good, good."

The three of them entered the room together, and the meeting began to count the money.

The six stacks of ten-yuan bills were neat and tidy, and the paper bands hadn't even been removed, but the accountant was still very responsible and counted them one by one.

After writing the receipt, Li Long put it away, and Xu Chengjun said:

"Xiao Long, we'll settle the money for your poles now."

"Good, just in time for me to take it and distribute it," Li Long said with a smile, "Do I need to sign?"

"Definitely need to sign," Xu Chengjun said with a smile, "How can it work without signing?"

After Li Long signed, he took a stack of money, put it in his satchel, and went out the door.

Xu Chengjun followed him out and began calling the villager representatives one by one to distribute the money.

Li Long first went to find Tao Daqiang and told him about his money distribution plan.

Tao Daqiang still felt he had received too much, but Li Long waved his hand and said:

"We worked together, and since we didn't calculate it by count, it means we trust you. We won't do all that; we'll just distribute it equally. If you accept this distribution plan, then take the money."

With two hundred and fifty yuan suddenly in hand, Tao Daqiang felt like he was truly dreaming!

Tao Jian She was also very excited, but Li Long didn't worry about that; he still had to go back and distribute money to his parents.

"Then I'll take this money?" Li Qing Xia said with a smile, "Money is really easy to earn in Northern Xinjiang..."

"If it weren't for Xiao Long leading the way, could you earn so much? Look at how much money people earn after working hard binding brooms all day?" Du Chunfang knew Li Qing Xia was getting carried away as soon as she heard him, and she retorted, "Don't you get cocky..."

Li Qing Xia chuckled.

Li Long handed the remaining five hundred yuan to Liang Wenyu:

"Sister-in-law, this is my brother's share and the horse cart's share, you keep it first."

"So much?" Although Liang Wenyu already knew, the feeling of holding a thick stack of ten-yuan bills in her hand was still quite shocking.

In this life, this was the first time she had held so much money in her hand—and it was their own!

"It's not much, it will be more and more in the future!" Li Long said with a smile.

Yes, life would get better and better in the future. By noon the next day, the remaining brooms were all bound, and each family had some left over. Xu Chengjun directly notified them that for the final surplus, they could either use them at home or take them to the market to sell.

Li Long knew that the price of three yuan and fifty cents for a large broom would not rise again within seven or eight years.

Because starting next year, the market would become more active, and more people would be able to bind large brooms, and the market would directly suppress the price of large brooms. Although it was impossible for every village to bind so many in a short time—after all, the poles were limited—they could still bind a few dozen or a hundred.

This was a matter of market capacity.

It wasn't until the nineties that the price of large brooms was pushed to ten yuan, and by the new century, it slowly rose to twenty yuan, and then it maintained that level.

Mainly because after the first decade of the new century, binding brooms no longer required manual labor; there were specialized machines where you would stuff the reeds in, and with a click and a press, the wire would be wound, and the broom would be bound.

It was convenient and fast, and manual labor only required simple operations.

This industry supported many people and could be considered a long-lived industry.

Unlike the carrying pole, which began its countdown to history when donkey carts, horse carts, and tractors began to become popular.

Of course, that was all in the past.

Li Long once again put the bicycle on the truck, followed the truck to the supply and marketing cooperative, and then got the invoice and settled the accounts.

!.

This time Li Xiangqian wasn't there; according to the procurement section staff, he had gone on a business trip.

Li Long settled the accounts, first took out five hundred for himself, took the remaining money back to the team, handed it to the accountant, and then received his own five hundred yuan.

He had another thousand yuan.

He wouldn't deposit this thousand for now; he put it away.

The task of binding brooms was completely finished, and every household in the team had money distributed—even Old Luo had found time to bind a few and earned some pocket money.

Every household was full of joy, and some even ran to Li Jianguo's house to ask if they were going to slaughter the pig; if so, they wanted to buy some meat.

Li Jianguo directly laughed and scolded them away; the pig was less than forty kilograms now, how could they slaughter it?

However, this also showed that everyone had some money in their hands now and wanted to live a better life.

Those with nets at home would go to the small lake to catch some fish to improve their meals. Tao Daqiang came over to ask Li Long, and Li Long directly handed the cast net to him, saying they wouldn't sell fish for these two days. Tao Daqiang happily took the cast net and went to practice.

The threshing floor needed several days, and the team would also coordinate to release water from the small lake to water the threshing floor. Near the threshing floor belonging to the Li family, Li Jianguo had a horse cart, and two other families had donkey carts, which was enough for pressing the floor.

However, the original stone rollers belonging to the team had been distributed when the sub-teams were divided, so Li Long volunteered. While the threshing floor was being watered, he drove the horse cart to the township early in the morning, intending to make an iron roller.

The reason for driving the horse cart was to transport two logs. He first unloaded the logs at Carpenter Qu's place, asked him to make a small table, and then build a high-low cabinet.

Carpenter Qu agreed, and Li Long went to the agricultural machinery repair factory to make an iron roller.

The iron roller was relatively simple: eight thick iron plates, each 1.2 meters long, were welded into an octahedron, filled with stones and iron scraps, sealed at both ends, and then welded with an iron rod, fitted with bearings, and equipped with a traction wire rope or steel bar hook, and it was done.

Because everything except the filling was iron, it was relatively expensive.

Li Long paid twenty-five yuan to make this iron roller (roller) and came to pick it up in the afternoon.

After this was done, he drove the horse cart directly into the mountains. On the way, he ate a bowl of mixed noodles in the county town, then entered the mountains, and familiarly went to pull two wind-fallen trees, sawed them into segments right in the mountains, and carried them onto the cart one by one.

Li Long admired himself—now, loading seventy or eighty kilograms of things onto the cart really didn't feel like much effort. Unlike his previous life, when he was forty or fifty years old, his waist would ache just from carrying a bag of thirty or forty kilograms of corn.

Pulling a cartload of wood, Li Long led the horse and walked back. He felt that he was still adapted to the climate in the mountains—although the sun was bright in the mountains, it wasn't scorching. When he reached the threshing floor at noon, the heat wave hit his face, which could make a person dizzy.

When he arrived at the township with a cartload of wood, the iron roller was already finished, so Li Long hung it behind the horse cart and pulled it home with a rumbling sound all the way.

The sound of the roller was very loud, attracting students returning from school to follow behind, shouting and yelling. Li Long was afraid the roller would crush the students or that flying stones would hit them, so he waved his horse whip to scare them away.

It wasn't until they were close to the reed ditch that he saw Li Juan and several classmates walking back together, so Li Long called out to her.

"Juan, do you want to ride the horse cart?"

"Uncle, I won't ride," Li Juan looked at her classmates and said, "I'll go back with them."

"That's fine, you all move aside, I'll drive past first."

The ditch inside the reed ditch had no water now. Because the horse cart was carrying the roller, it couldn't go over the cement slab, so Li Long drove it across the shallow beach on the side.

After he crossed the reed ditch, he thought about whether he should talk to the team about repairing this road after the autumn harvest when they were free, and then building a bridge or something. Otherwise, this road would always be interrupted by floods.

Of course, that was just a thought; how to actually do it would depend on later. Li Long also knew that he was a bit like a protruding rafter now and couldn't show off anymore.

When he arrived at his door with the iron roller, the rumbling sound attracted his family and neighbors.

Li Jianguo came out, saw Li Long had brought back another cartload of wood, was surprised for a moment, and then smiled:

"You're something, the wood even reproduces. You took two logs when you left, and brought back six when you returned; this is worth it for you!"

He looked at the iron roller again, nodded, and said:

"This is good, this looks more durable than the stone roller."

Li Long knew that this iron roller could be used until tractors became common. Iron things were sturdy, unlike the old-fashioned stone rollers that required a wooden frame, which was easy to break.

After unloading the wood, Li Long led the horse cart to the horse pen. Li Jianguo, Lu Yingming, and Li Qing Xia, the three of them, pulled the iron roller's wire rope and shouted slogans as they pulled it into the courtyard and set it down.

"This thing is good," Lu Yingming said, "It can be used for many years."

"I heard someone in the township has already bought a walking tractor, that's a grasshopper leg, that thing is really powerful when pulling this iron roller!"

"Over three thousand for one, not cheap!" Li Jianguo had obviously inquired about it long ago, "We'll talk about it later; for now, we have a horse cart to use."

"That's true," Lu Yingming was just thinking about it, "I wonder whose family in our team will be the first to buy a walking tractor."

"Probably Wang Cai Mi," Li Jianguo stepped on the iron roller and said, "He earns quite a lot of money plowing land. That Dongfanghong 75, I reckon it'll be his in another year or two."

"Your Xiao Long isn't bad either," Lu Yingming said with a smile, "Selling fish every day earns quite a lot of money too."

"It's alright," Li Jianguo said with a bit of pride, "Enough to get by."

"When are you getting engaged? I heard the one from the Wu family is getting married soon," Lu Yingming said in a low voice, "It's this month."

"Really?"

"Really."

(End of chapter)