Chapter 610: Wolf meat is meat too; it

There was too much stuff, and Li Long couldn't haul it all at once, so he had to make two trips.

On the first trip, he packed the fifty sets of sheep offal into bags directly; otherwise, the tractor's trailer wouldn't be able to hold them.

Each bag could only hold two sets of sheep offal, and then he stacked them up in the trailer.

Fortunately, Li Long had brought enough gunny sacks, and thanks to the times he went to the sugar factory to haul sugar dregs, they would give him extra bags. After dumping out the sugar dregs, these new gunny sacks were very convenient for packing things.

This time, the stack of bags on the tractor wasn't as high as the sheep from last time, but it wasn't low either. Li Long greeted Ha Ha Li Mu and the others, saying he would come back in the afternoon to haul the wolves, and then drove the tractor out of the mountains.

Although it wasn't as high as the sheep last time, he was still quite careful on the way back, needing to go a bit slower. The snow had filled in some of the pits, making them invisible to the naked eye. If he were to accidentally drive into one, with no village in front and no shop behind, there would be no way to find anyone to help pull him out.

Fortunately, there were tire tracks from the way in, so Li Long slowed down, chugging along the original path until he reached Qingshuihe, only then daring to step on the gas and head toward the county seat.

Seeing that the time was still early, he drove the tractor to the county woodworking factory first.

The woodworking factory was half an hour away from getting off work, and the departments with less work had already started tidying up.

When the tractor chugged inside, He Changming was discussing year-end benefits with the deputy factory director. The sheep offal was one part of it, and other things had to be prepared as well.

However, since the sheep offal counted as "hard goods," other things like gloves and laundry detergent would suffice to go with it.

Just as they were discussing it, Li Long drove the tractor in with a chug-chug-chug. He Changming was a bit puzzled, but over there, Qi Xinzhi had already recognized this tractor and hurried out from the warehouse.

Li Long parked the tractor in the woodworking factory courtyard, got down, and shook hands with Qi Xinzhi.

"Comrade Li Long, you are..." Although Qi Xinzhi had already guessed, he still asked.

"It's about the sheep offal matter I discussed with your factory director yesterday; I've brought it over now." Li Long pointed to the vehicle and said, "It's not time to get off work yet, right?"

"No, no."

"Then call the director over to inspect the goods and unload the stuff." Li Long was also in a hurry; he still had to make another trip in the afternoon.

He Changming had already walked out by this time and also recognized Li Long; he hadn't expected Li Long's efficiency to be this high.

Li Long shook hands with He Changming, then climbed onto the tractor trailer, first unloaded one bag, and untied the opening to let them see.

"This is the entire sheep's offal—heart, liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines have all been washed, plus the caul fat. This platter... it should be about seven kilograms." Li Long took one out from inside and said.

He Changming naturally wouldn't do it himself; Qi Xinzhi took it over, held it with both hands, weighed it, and said:

"About right."

Seeing that the frozen offal didn't have too much water content and the color was bright, it was definitely fresh goods. He Changming nodded.

"Find a place; I'll unload the stuff. I need to keep the bags to pack other things." Li Long explained, "I still have to go haul wolves in the afternoon; time is tight."

"Alright." He Changming nodded, then looked at Qi Xinzhi.

Qi Xinzhi understood in a second and immediately called out a few times. A group of young, strong men came out from the workshop and office; they were all able-bodied laborers, and unloading these things was very fast.

The place for unloading was in an empty warehouse with a red brick floor. They had temporarily spread a layer of wood shavings on the ground, so the sheep offal wouldn't get dirty when dumped on top.

With the platters of offal arranged, He Changming counted them himself. After the twenty platters were unloaded, seeing that Li Long still had more on the tractor, He Changming actually had the thought of letting Li Long unload a few more.

However, Li Long didn't give him that chance. He gathered the bags onto the trailer, asked He Changming to write a receipt quickly, and then drove the tractor out himself.

He Changming felt a bit of regret, but these twenty platters of offal were enough to distribute.

Seeing those young men who had just moved the offal looking at these things with eager eyes, He Changming waved his hand:

"Everyone prepare to get off work first, don't be anxious! Our year-end benefits aren't just this; there are other things. After the procurement is finished, we'll distribute them to everyone together!"

Although they had the heart to move the sheep offal back now to add some oil and water for the old and young at home, since the factory director had spoken, they would just have to wait.

However, it looked like this sheep offal was definitely going to be distributed. The people in the factory were all in a good mood, and they were much more energetic working in the afternoon than in the morning.

When Li Long drove the tractor to the large courtyard, they were already eating dinner there.

Hearing the sound of the tractor, Han Fang was the first to run over to open the door, and then the others came out as well.

Seeing Li Long haul half a tractor of stuff, the others weren't surprised. During the meal, Gu Xiaoxia had already told them about Li Long going into the mountains to haul sheep offal and wolves.

Li Long was often elusive, and everyone was used to it. Since he was back at noon, Sister Yang had also cooked extra food, so there was no worry about not having enough to eat.

After getting off the tractor, Li Long first went to change his clothes, wash his hands, and eat, and incidentally told them about going into the mountains.

"You said you killed sixteen wolves in one night?" Gu Bo Yuan was also shocked hearing this. "So many? Was anyone injured?"

"No, it's just that some old people and children were scared." Everyone hadn't expected the winter camp over at Yushanjiang's side to be attacked by wolves, which was why such a situation occurred. Fortunately, it ended without danger.

"That's really fierce—sixteen wolves. If they appeared on the plains, the village would probably have suffered a disaster." Gu Bo Yuan sighed. "The herdsmen in the mountains really have it hard!"

"That's for sure. If a wolf pack really came out on the plains, the militia would have gathered for target practice long ago." Gu Xiaoxia had also been a militia member; she said while eating, "No matter how powerful these wolves are, they wouldn't dare come to the village."

"That's true." Gu Bo Yuan also felt his imagination just now was a bit unreliable, smiled, and continued eating.

"Uncle, are those wolves big?" Han Fang asked curiously.

"The alpha wolf is big, like a large calf." Li Long reached out and gestured. "The other wolves are as big as large dogs."

There weren't many pet dogs at this time; what could be seen were basically local dogs, Chinese rural dogs, and even the smallest ones were several sizes bigger than those little Teddies or little Bichons of later generations.

"Then they really are big!" Han Fang exclaimed.

"It would be beautiful if this could be made into a specimen," Gu Bo Yuan said.

"That's true, but it's too late. When I got there, they had already skinned them, and the stuff inside the belly had all been cleaned up."

Li Long said, feeling admiration in his heart. Speaking of these friends in the mountains, they were really something. After the wolves were killed, the skin was peeled, and they even processed the internal organs.

What else could he say?

He hadn't looked closely at that wolf king, but he imagined the wolf teeth should be quite good, right?

After eating lunch, Gu Xiaoxia didn't let Li Long send her off, and Gu Bo Yuan originally wanted to stay in the courtyard to help, but Li Long didn't let him either.

The remaining thirty-plus platters of offal were all in the bags. He carried the bags on his back and stacked them one by one in the side room; these would be hauled to Shicheng to be sold in a couple of days.

Of course, they had to keep some for themselves to eat; that went without saying.

Originally, Li Long wanted to let Gu Bo Yuan haul a platter of offal back, but Gu Bo Yuan didn't want it, saying he ate both lunch and dinner in the large courtyard, and having the small crucian carp there was enough; there was no need to get offal.

After unloading the offal, Li Long rested in the room for a while, only then filling the tractor with oil and water, and drove toward the mountains.

When Li Long arrived at the winter camp in the mountains, Ha Ha Li Mu and the others had already finished lunch. Nasen and Sasikan were helping Ha Ha Li Mu clear the grass that had been gnawed by the cattle and sheep in the pen.

In winter, herdsmen would originally let the cattle and sheep out on sunny days to gnaw on the grass pressed down by the snow.

But the wolves had been quite arrogant these past two days, so this matter was skipped. Anyway, they had harvested plenty of grass in the autumn, so they mainly fed them.

Li Long's tractor arrived, and Ha Ha Li Mu and the others stopped their work to help Li Long load those wolf skins and wolf meat onto the vehicle, and also loaded the sheep heads and sheep hooves that had been unloaded a couple of days ago.

Sheep heads and sheep hooves are delicious when prepared well. In his previous life, when Li Long was in his forties or fifties, he was very fond of eating spicy sheep heads and sheep hooves.

As for those "pouring" kinds of talk, he wasn't used to it. It was better to clean the sheep heads and sheep hooves and stir-fry them himself. It was clean, reassuring, and the taste was good too.

His cerebral hemorrhage was mostly eaten out.

Of course, cleaning them up was very troublesome. Cleaning sheep heads usually meant burning off the hair first, not peeling the skin, and then using a red-hot iron rod or iron hook to scald them, burning off the hair roots, and then scraping.

The dirty stuff in the sheep's nose had to be boiled and washed away, a layer of skin had to be peeled off the tongue, and so on.

Anyway, cleaning them was very troublesome. After all, blowtorches weren't easy to find at this time—looking at the mountain-like sheep heads and sheep hooves, Li Long planned to go buy a blowtorch at the hardware store when he got back.

Anyway, using a Jeep, there was gasoline at home.

In winter, there wasn't much left to do before the New Year; his father and older brother could handle it.

After cleaning them, peeling the meat off, cutting the spicy peppers, spicy sheep heads and sheep hooves... hmm.

Li Long wiped his drool, pretended not to see the surprised expressions of Ha Ha Li Mu's family, and first loaded the sheep heads and sheep hooves into the trailer, putting them together with the wolf skins. Next was the wolf meat.

As for those wolf heads and such, he didn't let them go either; these were all meat.

In this day and age, there weren't many families in the countryside that ate meat like Li Long's family. Most people mainly relied on the pig raised at home to eat meat. Those who didn't raise pigs would carefully calculate the money at home before the New Year, set aside the money for farming after the New Year, and then sparingly weigh a few jin of meat.

So even if wolf meat didn't taste good, it was still meat!

Wolf heads and wolf hooves were all covered in meat. If there was meat, then it was better than vegetables!

No matter how bad it tasted, could it be worse than eating pickled vegetables every day? Li Long liked eating pickled vegetables and couldn't get enough of them in a lifetime, but he didn't eat them every day. Stir-frying them two or three times a week still required adding meat and using plenty of oil to make them taste good.

If he really fished the pickled vegetables out of the jar, washed them clean, and cut them up, that bland taste was something he couldn't eat many mouthfuls of either.

So he was certain that if this wolf meat were really sold for one yuan per kilogram, there would definitely be people scrambling to buy it.

Reform and opening up, dividing the land, contracting production to households, land contracting—although the land's yield hadn't come up yet, it was generally better than the previous two years.

So the price of meat had clearly risen a bit. The price of large meat, which was originally one yuan sixty or seventy, had risen to two yuan.

The price of mutton, which was originally one yuan ten or twenty, had risen to one yuan sixty or seventy.

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Eggs, on the other hand, hadn't risen, as every household raised quite a few chickens, and commercial chicken farms had also sprung up.

So Li Long wasn't worried at all that these things wouldn't sell.

At present, it was far from being a buyer's market; materials had always been in short supply, especially meat.

The meat supply for food factories required meat coupons, supplied by coupon, which only indicated one problem: there wasn't enough meat.

This was also why the free market could flourish—the planned materials were insufficient, so they had to be supplemented by the market.

It was the New Year; Xi'er's father wanted to buy a red hair tie for Xi'er. In the following ten years, everyone knew to use dumplings to talk about the Spring Festival Gala. Who didn't want to have a good meal at home for the New Year?

If I can't afford the good ones, can't I afford the cheap ones that don't require coupons?

Why was there often "panic buying?"

Wasn't it just caused by the lack of things in those years? Of course, this trend of panic buying slowly disappeared in our country, and then it went to the north and the west. After all, our country's ability to manufacture things was still very strong. Forty years later, speaking of it, the whole world couldn't compare.

Loading the wolves, wolf skins, wolf heads, wolf hooves, sheep heads, and sheep hooves, Li Long felt he couldn't load any more stuff; if he loaded any more, the tractor would protest.

Entering the room to drink a bowl of milk tea, Li Long mentioned the furniture matter, telling Ha Ha Li Mu that if he ran into others, tell them to wait a bit; the furniture could be hauled over after the New Year.

Ha Ha Li Mu nodded, and his wife smiled after hearing Nasen's translation.

She wanted a cabinet; the cabinet for cooking and putting things was old, and the boards inside were about to break. She wanted a new one.

After drinking the milk tea, Li Long drove the tractor back.

From Ha Ha Li Mu's winter camp all the way out of the mountains, Li Long didn't hear any more wolf howling.

Were they really wiped out?

Not necessarily, it was just that these wolves had become stray dogs and couldn't be arrogant anymore.

After exiting the mountain pass, while Li Long was driving back, he saw a group of yellow sheep running in the gaps of the red willow bushes on the right side, which was the east.

If he were to get out of the vehicle now and chase after them with a gun, there was a high probability he could hit one or two.

However, Li Long didn't get off the tractor and continued driving away.

There was plenty of meat at home, and he wasn't lacking food. Moreover, he was tired now and didn't want to hunt.

When the tractor drove to Qingshuihe, the dogs in Qingshuihe village all started barking.

Originally, Li Long's tractor passed back and forth here. At first, the dogs barked quite fiercely, but later they slowly stopped barking, getting used to it.

At this moment, these dogs suddenly started barking all at once, and many dogs even ran out of the courtyards, gathered in groups, and barked wildly at the tractor.

This barking startled many people out of their rooms, carrying sticks and iron shovels, wanting to see what was going on.

When they saw Li Long driving the tractor hauling a cart of meat, they were also a bit strange.

When someone looked carefully and saw those wolf heads, they understood.

So the dogs were barking because of the smell of these wolves.

Someone shouted at Li Long:

"Did you hunt that wolf meat from the mountains? Is it all wolves?"

"It's all wolves." Li Long slowed down; it would be fine if he could sell a few here.

"Are you selling?" Someone else saw Li Long slow down and immediately followed to ask.

"Selling, one yuan per kilogram." With nearly twenty wolves and a weight of over eight hundred kilograms, Li Long thought that selling a little was better than nothing.

That person was a bit tempted upon hearing one yuan per kilogram.

"Eh? Isn't this Comrade Li Long?" A familiar voice rang out.

Li Long looked and was happy.

It was Militia Company Commander Meng Hai, who had eaten chicken at their house.

Li Long parked the tractor on the side of the road, turned off the engine, got out, shook hands with Meng Hai, and said:

"Company Commander Meng, are you free?"

"Not really free, just finished taking the militia to the township for a competition." Meng Hai smiled, pointed to the wolf meat on Li Long's tractor, and asked: "Just hunted?"

"Yeah, hunted by friends in the mountains. The wolves in the mountains have been a disaster during this period, daring to attack herdsmen in broad daylight, so I brought them some bullets, and we set an ambush the night before last."

"Good fellow, not bad!" Meng Hai looked at so much wolf meat and exclaimed, "This is really not a small amount! Are there so many wolves in the mountains? The wolf howling has been quite frequent during this period, and there have been scattered sightings of wolves on the south slope, but they haven't formed packs, and they haven't dared to come to the village."

"That's for sure. If they really came to the village, wouldn't they become targets for your target practice?" Li Long joked, "Wolves are cunning things."

Others also recognized Li Long, and those who didn't know him had it explained to them that he was the person who collected broom grass in the summer.

"Then Comrade Li Long, are you... planning to sell this wolf?"

"Yeah, planning to haul it to Shicheng to sell." Li Long said truthfully, "It's almost the New Year, after all. This wolf meat isn't as delicious as mutton or large meat, but it's still meat. We'll sell it a bit cheaper, and I imagine there should be people buying it."

"Alright, I'll help you shout it out." Meng Hai immediately said, "Old He isn't here, I'll go to his house and shout a few times with the loudspeaker. You go to my house and rest for a while first."

"No need, no need." Li Long looked at the sun, which was still more than a pole high, and felt that driving to the county seat would take another hour, so it was better to go back early.

"What's the hurry? You have a tractor and you're carrying a gun, what are you afraid of? At worst, I'll take the militia to send you back later. Comrade Li Long, we never saw you when you went into the mountains usually, but now that we've seen you, if we don't keep you for some hospitality, Old He will scold me when he comes back."

Meng Hai wouldn't let Li Long go, and Li Long couldn't leave, so he had no choice but to drive the tractor to Meng Hai's house.

Meng Hai was afraid Li Long would leave, so he accompanied Li Long in the courtyard, and then called another militia member to go to the village director's house and shout a few times on the large loudspeaker.

Li Long thought that at most a few people would come over to buy wolf meat, after all, wolf meat wasn't as delicious as mutton. Qingshuihe village was also by the mountains, and the militia had guns, so it wasn't difficult to set rabbit snares or hunt yellow sheep in winter.

Who could have imagined that in the time it took to drink a bowl of tea, more than ten people came to Meng Hai's courtyard all at once, and others were still coming one after another.

Meng Hai was still chatting with Li Long, but seeing this, he couldn't care about that anymore, and asked his wife to find the scale, starting to sell meat on the spot.

"Everyone, the wolf that Comrade Li Long hauled here was hunted in these two days. Wolf meat is the same as dog meat; it's a great tonic in winter. Everyone pay attention when eating. This thing is hot-natured; it's a good thing."

Meng Hai knew his stuff and first advertised for Li Long, then said:

"The meat is frozen now and hard to cut, and Comrade Li Long is selling it cheaply—one yuan per kilogram, as everyone has heard. So I'll say something: let's combine a few families to buy a whole wolf; that way it's easy to calculate. As for how to divide it when you go back, calculate it yourselves. How about that?"

Him saying this saved Li Long some trouble. He only had two knives on hand; it would be quite troublesome to cut the wolf meat bit by bit.

With Meng Hai saying this, the others had no objections, and then they went to form "small groups."

Li Long gave Meng Hai a thumbs up. (End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 611 =====