Chapter 709: Prosperity leads to decline; the watermelon has reached its peak

The year 1984 seemed to pass faster than previous years.

Li Long's time for collecting big brooms was shorter than usual. After Li Jianguo and the others cut the poles back, the speed of tying big brooms in the Fourth Team increased. Added to the ones from Qingshuihe, Li Long would send a batch of big brooms to the supply and marketing cooperative almost every two or three days.

8,000 big brooms took a total of less than 20 days. This speed made Li Xiangqian, Director Wei, and the others exceptionally surprised.

At first, Li Xiangqian suspected that the quality couldn't be guaranteed if the big brooms were tied too quickly, but after the inspection and verification by two levels of technicians, the quality of these big brooms was up to standard.

In particular, the State Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives specifically called over. Of the 8,000-plus big brooms, there were no unqualified ones. If one had to be picky, it might be that a few reed grasses were broken during transportation, or the shapes were flattened.

Because there was a margin, this batch of big brooms was completely qualified. The procurement section that received them at the State Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives praised the county supply and marketing cooperative quite well. They said that the acceptance team from the autonomous region specifically looked at the situation of these big brooms and gave positive opinions.

In any case, face was saved. At least for the next few years, the order quantity for big brooms would not shrink.

This big broom job brought Li Long a net income of 12,000. Although everyone knew that Li Long must have earned quite a bit in the middle, the people in the village, especially those in Qingshuihe Village, were still exceptionally grateful to Li Long.

Of the 8,000 big brooms, Qingshuihe did more than 3,000—at first, they could have more than 300 qualified big brooms every day, but it slowed down later.

The reed grass couldn't keep up, and the poles couldn't keep up.

On the contrary, the Fourth Team was the main force in cutting and drying reed grass when Li Jianguo and the others were cutting poles. Later, once they exerted effort, the output went up.

Li Long remembered that in later generations, machines had already started to be used for tying big brooms, and he didn't know if they could be developed now.

However, he didn't think about letting the agricultural machinery factory research it. If this thing were researched, it wouldn't be a good thing.

Unlike the medicine pot for spraying medicine. If the medicine pot were made, spraying grass for crops would save effort and labor.

Making a machine for tying big brooms was equivalent to concentrating the money for tying brooms that Li Long originally thought of giving to everyone into the hands of a few people.

It was different from his initial idea.

So, forget it. His line of thinking was that the harvester was already mature and was slowly spreading in the Northern Frontier, even infiltrating into the Southern Frontier. So, the next step was to look at the research on the medicine spraying pot.

Now that the household contract responsibility system had been in place for two years, the mobile land of each production team was becoming less and less, and the land distributed and contracted to each household was becoming more and more.

The land was their own, everyone's enthusiasm for work was getting higher and higher, and they were constantly reclaiming wasteland.

Just planting grain could no longer satisfy the farmers' yearning for wealth, and planting cash crops had been put on the agenda.

The Fourth Team's cash crops were mainly watermelon seeds. The village where Liang Donglou was planted green onions, and some places also planted watermelons, hops, and other crops.

At first, they were all slowly exploring, and many were following the steps of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.

It had to be said that in terms of agricultural development in the Northern and Southern Frontiers, the Corps was truly a pioneer; planting cash crops, such as cotton, watermelon seeds, etc., all started from the Corps.

And mechanized planting and the use of tractors also started from there. At this time, the Corps actually had quite a lot of combines; at least one regiment farm had more than one, and there were even more Dongfanghong-75 crawler tractors.

In Li Long's impression, high-horsepower wheeled tractors were also first used by the Corps. By the 21st century, when cotton was planted on a large scale, the Corps was also the first to enable cotton pickers, including other related equipment.

Last time, when Xie Yun Dong, Tao Daqiang, and the others finished harvesting wheat in other townships, they heard that some townships had already started planting cotton.

Although it was a small area, it was a good start.

As long as cotton started to be planted on a large scale, the dibblers and seed drills used for planting cotton would become popular. Later, auxiliary machines such as stalk-cutting machines and medicine spraying pots would be invented one after another. Finally, there would be cotton pickers, which could be considered the final limit, directly wiping out the hundreds of thousands of cotton-picking troops coming from the interior every year.

Although the price of watermelon seeds was okay at present, the market was only so big. Li Long estimated that the price of watermelon seeds might drop this year. By next year, when more people planted them, let alone more than 3 yuan, even a price of more than 1 yuan might not be guaranteed.

So Li Long had to take precautions and give his family a heads-up in advance.

Not long after the big brooms were collected, the watermelons started to be picked.

After Li Long rested for a few days, he went to the team to help his eldest brother's family.

Last year, the watermelon harvest on 10 mu of land took several days, and they still hired people. This year, with 20 mu of land, and many other households in the team also planting, it wasn't realistic to hire people to pick watermelons.

Plus, the family didn't raise many pigs, so Li Jianguo simply did the same as last year: pulled the big pot to the field, pressing while picking. After pressing for a day, he would pick a cartload and pull it back.

Going back, he couldn't be idle; he still had to spread out the filtered watermelon seeds and press them flat.

Otherwise, the roasted food factory wouldn't accept them.

Li Long drove the jeep to his eldest brother's courtyard and found no one in the courtyard, not even his mother, Du Chunfang. He knew the whole family had gone to the field.

He drove the jeep toward the watermelon field again and met Tao Dayong, who was pulling a donkey cart, halfway.

Tao Dayong was pulling a cart of watermelons. When he saw Li Long's jeep, he waved his hands vigorously.

Li Long parked the jeep on the side. Tao Dayong had already taken the initiative to come over, took out a box of Tianchi cigarettes that had been pressed a bit flat from his pocket, took one out, and handed it to Li Long with a smile.

"I don't smoke. Dayong, you smoke. How is it this year? I think this watermelon is not bad."

"Good." Tao Dayong said happily, "To tell you the truth, I didn't even think it could be this good. Last year, when I asked your brother to buy watermelon seeds, your brother said the seeds were shriveled. I looked at them at the time and thought they should be able to grow.

At the time, I thought even if the output was reduced by half, harvesting 70 or 80 kilograms per mu, at 3 yuan per kilogram, it would still be better than planting grain. I didn't expect that looking at it now, it can harvest more than 100 kilograms of watermelon seeds per mu."

"That's good. You can earn quite a bit of money this time." Li Long said casually, "Work hard."

"It's still thanks to you all. If it weren't for you, our team couldn't have these watermelon seeds. If it weren't for your eldest brother, I wouldn't know how to manage it the first time I planted it, and I wouldn't know how to spray when there were insects. Tomorrow, after selling the watermelon seeds, I must thank your family properly."

Tao Dayong was sincere when he said this. Li Long just listened and told him to collect the watermelons first.

Rushing to the watermelon field, he indeed saw a tractor parked at the edge of the field, and there was a big pot in the field. His eldest brother, sister-in-law, and mother were all picking watermelons and sending them to the side of the big pot.

Li Long parked the jeep under the shade of a poplar tree by the tractor at the edge of the field, took a straw hat from the passenger seat, put it on his head, took a pair of gloves, put them on, and walked into the field.

There was already a pile of melons by the pot, but he couldn't press them alone, so he followed his eldest brother and the others to pick melons.

When they had picked a few, his sister-in-law, Liang Yumei, said: "Without Xiao Long, you and your eldest brother go press the watermelon seeds. You have great strength, and the seeds will be pressed clean."

"Alright." Li Long hugged three melons and walked toward the pot.

Li Jianguo also hugged melons and came over.

Two boards were already crossed on the big pot. Li Long waited for Li Jianguo to come over, then placed a watermelon between the two boards.

The two of them exerted force together, and the watermelon was crushed. The seeds and juice flowed into the pot together.

"Eldest brother, we probably can't plant so many watermelons next year." Li Long said while pressing the seeds, "The roasted food factory only accepts so much a year. According to the output, our family alone is enough for half of it, and one more family is enough."

"I remember someone agreed to come and collect watermelon seeds from us last year, right?" Li Jianguo was a bit puzzled. Of course, there was also a bit of reluctance to give up the income from this kind of watermelon—after all, the harvest from 10 mu of land could be exchanged for a tractor. Who wouldn't want to do that?

If most of the seeds hadn't been sold to the roasted food factory last year, the other households in the team could have bought the rest.

Just this, plus the ones outside, there were already several hundred mu of watermelons planted in the whole team.

"That can't collect much either." Li Long shook his head, "The market is only so big. People are still used to cracking sunflower seeds. These watermelon seeds are just a novelty, not the mainstream.

Our surrounding area can have a market of more than ten tons, which is full. If we add the seed market, it will be thirty tons at most. According to this method this year, looking at the harvest, there will be thirty or forty tons. The market is saturated, and the price cannot be maintained.

This year, everyone sees us earning money. Next year, there will definitely be a large number of people planting this. By then, let alone three or five hundred mu, there will be three or five thousand mu. By then, the price of these seeds will definitely fall, and the trouble is that it might fall to the point where no one collects them." Li Long analyzed it logically, and Li Jianguo couldn't help but nod. It was this principle.

"Then what to plant next year?" Li Jianguo was a bit worried, "It's not easy to have something that can make money. If we don't plant it next year, and go back to wheat, I'm a bit unwilling."

"Then just ask around more. I heard that the Corps side has people planting cotton."

"That's true," Li Jianguo picked up a watermelon, placed it between the boards, and greeted Li Long to press it together. While pressing, he said, "Han Laoshi said that they started planting cotton over there a long time ago, but the output is not very good, and it requires manual picking, which is very troublesome."

At this time, picking cotton was indeed a big trouble. Planting a small amount wouldn't form a scale and wouldn't make money. Planting a large amount required labor to live at home for a long time to pick flowers, which was a tiring job.

And the later it went, the more expensive it was to pick. In the end, there were even bizarre things where the manual picking cost was higher than the price of cotton.

Li Long vaguely remembered that two years before cotton pickers became popular in his previous life, the manual labor cost for picking the second round of flowers was 3.5 yuan, but when the old man in the team pulled the cotton to the processing factory, the purchase price given by others was 2.9 yuan—

Because cotton was bloomed after the cotton peach was cracked by the sun, the cotton peach could not bloom at the same time, which produced the first round of flowers, the second round of flowers, and even the third round of flowers.

The first round of flowers had the best quality and was usually the largest in quantity. The second round of flowers was considered a repetition. Because the harvestable quantity was small, the labor cost would be higher.

In September, in order to let the cotton peaches bloom as much as possible, farmers would spray flower-promoting agents, but some cotton peaches were not mature when the flower-promoting agents were sprayed, allowing more cotton to bloom, and there would be more first-round flowers.

(No content lost, read it all!)

Forcing the cotton peaches to crack and bloom like this, the cotton seeds were not mature, the weight of the cotton was light, and the fluff was not long. In industry terms, the lint percentage was not enough.

Very contradictory.

Digressing.

"If we can plant scientifically, the output of cotton can still be increased." Li Long pressed down hard, pressed the seeds out, then hugged the broken melon skin and pulp, threw them aside, hugged another watermelon, placed it in position, and while pressing, said:

"Now we are all planting upland cotton. I heard that if we plant cotton with plastic film, the output will increase. However, this is just one kind. We can also think about others, such as planting chili, green onions, etc."

"That's even worse. Planting vegetables in the big field, how can we manage it? A plague of insects, and it's all over."

When Li Jianguo first became a professional pig farmer, the 5 mu of feed land allocated to him by the team was the land originally specifically for planting vegetables in the team. He had managed those vegetable fields and knew that planting vegetables in the big field was not an easy thing. It was not as extensive as planting grain; it was too troublesome.

The two of them chatted and explored together. After all, this was related to the direction of planting in the next few years.

Although Li Jianguo had also earned some money in the past two years, except for the money from selling watermelon seeds last year, everything else seemed too illusory to him. Not to mention a one-off deal, generally speaking, it was still not safe.

A lifetime of farmer thinking, so Li Jianguo felt that planting land was the safest. As long as he found a good path, getting rich by planting land was not a dream.

At least from the path of planting watermelons, he saw hope.

The path was very important. He hadn't had the opportunity to try before, but now he could not only try, but also had the confidence to resist failure—his family foundation was not small now. Even if he planted some cash crops, failure wouldn't hurt his bones.

So, he thought more about what to plant specifically than Li Long, and was even thinking about planting medicinal materials, planting cabbage, etc.

In this regard, Li Long quite admired his eldest brother. He himself was no longer a pure farmer, but his eldest brother had experienced so much and still regarded planting land as very important.

For the next few days, Li Long came back every day to help his eldest brother collect watermelons, but he only did this. After going back at night, Li Jianguo's family still had to press the watermelon seeds flat. Li Long couldn't do this, so he was driven back by his mother, eldest brother, and sister-in-law.

After all, there were two children in the big courtyard. It wasn't a thing for this father to be outside all day.

In ten days, the Li family's watermelons were collected. The average harvest per mu this year was lower than last year, but 20 mu of land still harvested more than 3,300 kilograms of watermelon seeds.

These watermelon seeds were all pressed flat and bagged, and were only piled up in the Li family's idle house for two days, and then they were bought one after another.

They didn't even send the goods to the roasted food factory.

Actually, before selling, someone came to ask Li Jianguo and the others. It was mainly Tao Daqiang, Liang Dacheng, Xie Yun Dong, and these people.

The watermelon seeds collected by each of their households were not small. Like Tao Daqiang and the others, they learned from Li Jianguo and the others and pressed the watermelon seeds flat; Team Leader Xu Chengjun thought this was troublesome and didn't do it.

At that time, as soon as the watermelon seeds were collected, someone came to buy them under the guise of buying seeds. The private roasted food seller who came last year also drove a tractor over to buy them, but the price he gave was not high, 2.6 yuan.

Most people didn't sell at this price because they knew the Shicheng Roasted Food Factory would definitely give a higher price. And once this person came, everyone knew watermelon seeds were easy to sell, and there was no need to go out to have someone collect them. So, people in the team, other villages in the township, and even other townships all came to buy seeds.

So they came to ask Li Jianguo and Li Long.

The opinion given by Li Long and the others was that it was worth selling if it could reach 2.8 yuan. After all, it was much more profitable than planting wheat.

Li Jianguo's family was the first to plant watermelons, and their fame was the greatest. Others buying seeds found their family first.

Li Jianguo didn't raise the price this year, and even lowered it a bit, selling the seeds at 3 yuan.

Tao Daqiang and Xie Yun Dong followed the Li family closely and went at 3 yuan.

It was Xu Chengjun who thought about wanting a high price and hesitated. Tao Dayong originally wanted a high price, but after being scolded by Tao Jian She, he didn't insist anymore.

It was just that his reputation wasn't that good, plus he and his wife were a bit lazy and didn't press the watermelon seeds flat, so not many people went to their house to stock up.

In the end, he simply hitched the donkey cart and pulled the watermelon seeds at home to the county private roasted food factory and sold them for 2.7 yuan.

Li Jianguo's family's watermelon seeds sold the fastest. 20 mu of land sold for nearly 10,000 yuan, which shocked everyone in the team.

Those who hadn't bought watermelon seeds went to buy them from other households one after another. This time, Liang Wenyu's family also took advantage and solidly became a 10,000-yuan household.

When Liang Wenyu came to Li Jianguo's house to report the good news, he was also full of enthusiasm, saying he would strive to plant 30 mu of watermelons next year.

"Watermelons will definitely drop in price next year, so you can't plant that many." Li Jianguo hit his brother-in-law's enthusiasm, "Think about it, this year's watermelon seeds were all sold by farmers. Next year, there will definitely be a large area of watermelons. Who will sell them to by then? If they can't be sold, they can only drop in price..."

Liang Wenyu understood it all at once.

This year, he planted 20 mu of watermelons in his own team, and more than 3,000 kilograms of watermelon seeds were basically sold to the team and surrounding small teams.

Calculating by this quantity, it was estimated that there would be two or three hundred mu of watermelons planted around his small team next year, more than all of this year.

The Fourth Team side was naturally more.

Actually, when Li Jianguo was selling watermelon seeds, he also reminded those people that it was best not to plant too many.

Some listened, but some said sour words behind their backs:

"Your family got rich planting this, are you afraid that others will get rich, so you say that? People can't be too selfish!"

Later, hearing these words, Li Jianguo was so angry that he didn't say anything anymore.

Plant if you love to plant.

Good words are hard to persuade the ghost who is going to die.

Li Long had the same idea. Some things were clearly explained, but some people only saw ten centimeters in front of them. If it was further away, even if you pried their eyelids open, they wouldn't look.

Don't worry about it.

After the watermelons were collected, the Li family still had to collect corn and oil sunflowers. Li Jianguo didn't let Li Long do these trivial jobs and told him not to run back for nothing. Collecting watermelons was no way; there wasn't enough manpower. Now there was no need for his help, so he should take good care of his family.

Li Long was also happy to be idle.

Then Li Qing Xia would be coming back soon. (End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 710 =====