Chapter 714

This was a piece of jade that was emerald green tending towards ink green, and judging by its size, it must be at least three or four hundred kilograms.

It wasn't small.

Li Long hurriedly welcomed He Yuqing and Meng Hai in and asked:

"Why did you bring such a thing over?"

Meng Hai and He Yuqing followed the horse cart into the courtyard one after the other. Meng Hai, who was leading the horse cart, specifically moved the cart closer to the east wing room to avoid the horse startling the children playing on the mat in the west.

"I saw this thing when I went to catch fish in the river the other day," Meng Hai said with a smile, "I knew it was jade, and thinking your courtyard is big and there's nothing displayed in it, I called a few militiamen to load it onto the cart and send it over. Finding a place to build a platform and putting it up would look good."

A small part of this jade stone's quality was exposed, while the majority was stone skin. Having been washed by water for years, it didn't have any sharp corners. Li Long hadn't figured out what it looked like yet; this needed careful observation.

However, judging by the exposed jade quality, no black spots like fly specks were found; it could be considered very high-quality jasper.

"Why didn't you take this to sell?" Li Long asked, "The quality of this jade is quite good."

"Sell what?" Meng Hai said with a smile, "I think it would be quite good displayed in your courtyard. Come, come, come, Comrade Li Long, move aside, let me see, if it doesn't block the way, it'll also look good... right here is quite good..."

He pointed to the north of the east wing room, which was the northeast corner of the first courtyard, and said: "I think building a platform right here and displaying it would be nice.

I came in a hurry today and didn't bring anyone. In a couple of days, I'll bring a few young fellows over to build a platform here, lift the stone up, and it'll be fine.

At the time, I took a look; if this stone is placed flat, it looks like a chubby baby lying on its side sleeping, it's quite good-looking."

As he spoke, he led the horse cart forward a bit more, and then he and He Yuqing rolled the jade stone off the horse cart together.

Li Long went over to help. That stone was extremely heavy; He Yuqing and Meng Hai couldn't lift it. They originally intended to roll it directly to the ground, but Li Long's courtyard was paved with bricks, so they were worried about breaking the bricks.

And when that big stone rolled to the tail of the horse cart, the shafts had already started to tilt, so Li Long said:

"Come, come, come, follow me, one, two, three—lift!"

Meng Hai and He Yuqing didn't know how they ended up lifting it along with Li Long, and then it was lifted!

The two men's brains were a bit stunned—but their hands were still moving mechanically, following Li Long to lift the jade stone and place it in the corner of the wall.

"Comrade Li Long, your strength is truly too great! If you went to participate in the sports meet, you'd have won a weightlifting championship, right?" Meng Hai said in hindsight.

"That wouldn't happen." Li Long shook his head, clapped the dust off his hands, and said with a smile: "I don't know anything about weightlifting. Thank you all, I think this stone is really quite good..."

"Heh, it's just a gesture, compared to the help you've given our team, it doesn't count for much." He Yuqing also clapped his hands with a smile.

Sister Yang had already brought the water over by this time, letting the three of them wash their hands, and there was tea poured over there too.

It was already October, the season for eating watermelons had passed, so drinking tea was just right.

"Have you eaten? If not, let's go out and have a good meal." Li Long asked.

"We've eaten, we've eaten." Meng Hai and He Yuqing said with a smile, "We made money from making big brooms this year, and we just ate when we got to the county seat. We just thought of coming over to unload the stone, chat a bit, and go back."

Li Long checked the time; it was still quite early, so let's chat.

"... Comrade Li Long, you don't know, those wild boars really come in groups, and a lot of the corn was ruined this year. If we hadn't applied to the township in advance to open the armory and brought the guns back for maintenance and training, I'm afraid there wouldn't have been any harvest of corn this year."

Li Long knew this was true. In later generations, in order to protect the environment, wild boars became "three-have" protected animals. At that time, a wetland park was built near the Little Haizi, and in order to enrich the wildlife, a pair of wolves and a pair of wild boars were introduced.

As for other rabbits, foxes, badgers, etc., they were originally there. For a period of time, they laid low, but after the wetland park was built, they became more numerous.

After one of the wolves died of illness, the remaining one wasn't seen much either, but foxes, rabbits, and badgers could be seen almost every day, and pheasants were flying everywhere.

The most troublesome were the wild boars. Locals said those wild boars came down from the mountains, not the pair that was introduced. A mother wild boar leading a dozen little wild boars rampaged in the wetland. Because there were no natural enemies and no one was allowed to catch them, the corn and wheat planted on the edge of the wetland suffered, and later no one planted corn in that vicinity at all.

Later, people in the team raised their own pigs to eat meat and had to buy corn from outside, which was quite awkward.

"Then did you catch any? By the way, are there still wild boars now?" Li Long asked.

"There are fewer now." He Yuqing shook his head and said, "After the corn was harvested, we haven't seen them for a while."

"It seems that the cornfield of the Qin family that didn't take away the poles said they saw a group of wild boars yesterday before it was bright, rooting in the field, and they ran back to the mountains before the sun came out." Meng Hai said, "Comrade Li Long, why are you asking this?"

"I plan to raise and fatten cattle and sheep in pens in our village, and I asked the team for a piece of land to build pens. At that time, I told the team I would give ten kilograms of meat to every household during the New Year as land rent. I have raised a dozen wild boars, but I was thinking, wouldn't it be better if I could catch some?"

As soon as he said this, He Yuqing and Meng Hai looked at each other, and then He Yuqing said:

"Then we'll go back and see, and notify you if there's any news."

"Good, good, good." Li Long thought that anyway, there wouldn't be much to do in the next period of time, and he didn't need to worry too much about the reed bundle matter, so he could go into the mountains to hunt and bring back the things he promised the team.

Li Long was quite confident about whether he could catch things. Although he wasn't as good as an old hunter, the things he caught in the mountains were worth counting.

Except for that Northern Xinjiang tiger, he had hunted all the big guys in the mountains.

He Yuqing and Meng Hai sat for a while and then left. Li Long teased the children for a while, then went into the room to take out the Type 56 semi-automatic rifle to clean it.

This gun had also performed meritorious service with him, and he planned to exert himself well again in the winter.

After eating the next day and playing a parent-child game with the children where "you don't understand me and I don't understand you," Li Long drove the jeep to the Fourth Team.

When he arrived at the Old Ma Hao, Li Long hadn't even gotten out of the jeep when he saw Wang Cai Mi and Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu standing at the main gate, and the Dongfanghong-75 crawler tractor was pushing the saline-alkali flat west of the Old Ma Hao.

The surface of the saline-alkali flat had a layer of grayish-white crystalline alkali soil, which made a creaking sound when stepped on. The saline-alkali content here was too high, and only plants that weren't afraid of saline-alkali, such as reeds and white thorn, could grow.

Watching the bulldozer push so easily, Wang Cai Mi revealed a trace of pride; this hundred yuan was easy to earn.

Li Long drove the jeep to the gate of the horse yard and stopped, turned off the engine, got out of the car, and walked to Wang Cai Mi and Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu.

"Working quite early." Li Long said proactively, "The commotion is really not small."

"This soil is easy to push; I originally planned to finish it in a week, but now it seems it'll be done in two or three days."

"Not necessarily." Li Long knew what Wang Cai Mi was thinking, and he pointed to the top layer that had already been pushed away and said, "The top ten centimeters is loose soil, but the ground underneath is very hard."

"It's fine, it's fine, since I promised you, I'll definitely do this job well." Wang Cai Mi said with a smile.

"This tractor's strength is really great." Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu sighed, "When we first reclaimed the land, there were no tractors; it was all people and horses pulling plows, the effort it took! How good it is now! Sitting on the tractor, moving hands and feet, with that rumbling sound, the land is pushed and plowed."

"By the way, Brother Wang, this patch to the west, the thirty acres of saline-alkali flat also belongs to me. After you finish pushing the place for the pens, how about plowing those plots too?"

"No problem." Plowing was the tractor's specialty and also Wang Cai Mi's specialty, so he naturally wouldn't complain about having too much work.

The commotion of the tractor pushing soil wasn't small, attracting many passersby to watch.

Ma Jinbao drove his sheep past, intending to go to the fields on the east side that had been harvested but not yet plowed to graze the sheep. Just in time, he saw the Wang family pushing pens for the Li family. In a bad mood, he whipped the sheep that were gnawing on the reeds by the roadside with a dark face and hurried away.

Li Long glanced at this person and ignored him. Amidst the sound of the Dongfanghong-75 tractor, he heard the sounds of other tractors.

Not long after, Xie Yun Dong and Tao Daqiang and the others drove their tractors over, and the tractors were also loaded with sand and gravel that were peaking out.

Li Long welcomed them and said with a smile:

"You all went to haul sand and gravel so early in the morning?"

"Nothing to do, thought I'd haul it early and finish early." Xie Yun Dong, Tao Daqiang, and Liang Dacheng all got down, and Liang Shuang Cheng, Liang Zhongcheng, and Jia Weidong were also sitting on the tractors. What surprised Li Long a bit was that Xu Haijun, Xu Dejun, and others were also there.

These were all people who had participated in the reed bundle compilation or were close to Li Long. Looking at them, Li Long felt warm in his heart. "Come, rest for a while, unload the sand and gravel here, and then go haul more." Xie Yun Dong proactively took on the role of organizing people, "Let's take it easy when hauling, don't tire yourselves out."

"Everyone has been working hard these few days, eat at the Old Ma Hao at noon. I'll slaughter a wild boar later, let's have a few good meals!"

Li Long originally planned to take it easy with this work, mobilizing the few households close to him, which might take a long time, and then send a wild boar to each family.

Now that many people had come, he couldn't handle it that way. He immediately changed his strategy; anyway, there were a dozen wild boars in the pen, so he would pick a fatter one to slaughter for meat.

Everyone was working hard, so he couldn't treat them poorly.

Wang Cai Mi laughed when he heard this; heh, working for money and also getting to eat a few meals of meat, really good.

"Good." Hearing there was wild boar meat to eat, Xu Haijun said with a smile, "Xiao Long is generous, we can't spare our strength either, let's go, unload the cart, and then go load it!"

Young people were easy to incite; a few nice words could get them fired up, and then they would start working.

Unloading the cart was very simple; pull out the pins connecting the cart box and the chassis, let the rear tailgate down, and then lift both sides, and the whole cart of sand and gravel could be unloaded.

The main gate of the Old Ma Hao was twenty or thirty meters away from the main road. Sand and gravel could be unloaded by the roadside, just pile it up. Li Long's intention was to wait until the bulldozer over there finished pushing the foundation, and then directly push this sand and gravel into the pit.

Having machinery was always better than manual labor—if there was an excavator, even if the bucket was a bit small, Li Long would accept it.

!

That thing was convenient to use—digging soil and sand and gravel were all first-class, although the labor cost was a bit expensive, it was always better than manual labor...

Li Long suddenly realized that wasn't necessarily true.

At this time, labor costs were actually the cheapest. Because most of the land hadn't been reclaimed yet, and there were many able-bodied young people, labor costs weren't as expensive as in later generations.

Until the beginning of the 21st century, most common people actually didn't have much cash in their hands, so they saved where they could, and basically wouldn't hire others to do what they could do themselves.

Of course, except for work like harvesting wheat—it was too tiring. Li Long truly admired those wheat harvesters; this thing was really top-tier uncomfortable among farm work.

After all, it was during the hottest time, doing the hardest work—the only things comparable were picking cotton and picking safflower.

In a certain place that self-proclaimed to be the largest Q&A community but turned into the most brainless novel community, Li Long often saw a post asking why one rarely saw people from Northern Xinjiang and the Snow Region going out to work.

Actually, there were some, just few. After all, these places had few people and much land. He wasn't clear about the cities, but in Li Long's area, there was much land per capita. As long as one could settle down and manage their own land, there was no problem reaching the average line from food and clothing to a moderately prosperous life.

It was just that for a period of time, some young people would rather do jobs in the city with a monthly salary of 1,500 to 2,000 than return home to do farm work, which was farm work that would yield a whole armful of money at the end of the year.

Getting off track.

Under the condition that economic conditions allowed, people were actually willing to use machinery to replace manual labor.

So it was quite contradictory.

Later, cotton pickers, sprayers, stalk crushers, etc., came out, and even tomatoes could be harvested by machines. It was just that currently, it seemed safflower couldn't be harvested by machines, which was more troublesome.

As soon as Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu heard about slaughtering a pig, he immediately turned and walked inside, saying to Li Long behind him as he walked:

"These wild boars raised at home just don't grow as fat as domestic pigs. One is okay, it can be slaughtered for sixty or seventy kilograms, it's been growing for over a year, nearly two years. Fortunately, it was castrated, otherwise the meat wouldn't taste good."

Slaughtering a pig was a big deal in the team, but here at the Old Ma Hao, Li Long and Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu could actually do it themselves.

Tao Daqiang, who had unloaded the cart, came over to help; he had handed the tractor over to his brother-in-law to drive and load sand and gravel.

Li Long and Tao Daqiang jumped into the pen. Those wild boars weren't afraid of people either, coming up to root, so Li Long kicked them all away one by one.

"That one, the one rooting at you right now—can you grab it?"

This wild boar's body was slightly long and not very big. Li Long bent down and, catching it off guard, grabbed the wild boar's leg. The wild boar immediately screamed, struggling violently while screaming.

Tao Daqiang wanted to come over to help, but Li Long hurriedly said:

"Go drive the other pigs inside, don't let them run out in the chaos!"

He felt that the wild boar was struggling with great strength; after all, its wild nature hadn't been fully tamed, and it was in its prime.

Unfortunately, it ran into Li Long, a human monster, and his strength wasn't something ordinary people could compare to—in his previous life, three or four decades later, it would take five or six people to barely hold down a pig during the annual slaughter, and that was just barely.

In those short videos, there were quite a few videos of annual pig slaughtering going wrong; after all, this thing had particularly great strength.

But Li Long pulled it and didn't let go, and he actually dragged this wild boar out of the gate.

The other wild boars saw this and rooted forward. Tao Daqiang picked up the stick Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu used to drive pigs from the wall and feinted, driving those wild boars into the warm pen.

These wild boars actually had a sense of shared hatred, all wanting to root forward together, seemingly thinking of saving that wild boar, or wanting to escape this place. Tao Daqiang no longer spared his strength, hitting a young wild boar that was rooting the fastest with a stick. The wild boar screamed and retreated a few steps, and the next stick landed on another wild boar.

Seeing Tao Daqiang really hitting, these wild boars were a bit scared and hesitated.

Taking advantage of this hesitation, Li Long dragged the wild boar out of the pen, and Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu immediately closed the pen gate.

"Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu, how could you lock me inside?" Tao Daqiang said, seemingly complaining, but actually joking.

"I know you can jump out, climb the wall." Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu replied seemingly heartlessly.

Tao Daqiang bent down, swept with the stick, scaring the wild boars into retreating a few steps, then immediately turned around, grabbed the wall with both hands, exerted force with his arms, and leaped up directly.

"Heh, quick enough!" Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu said with a smile.

"Can't compare to Brother Long, look, he's already pinned the pig down!"

Li Long was really outside the pen, having grabbed the wild boar's front legs, and then with a sudden lift and exertion, he put the wild boar down.

However, saying he pinned it down was a bit of an exaggeration; the wild boar was struggling a bit violently, and it felt like it could break free at any time.

Tao Daqiang rushed over to help press the pig down, and Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu went to get a rope.

"Tie it up first, no rush to kill it, still need to boil water." Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu said, "This wild boar needs to be skinned, right?"

"Right, skinned." Li Long said, "It's not easy to scrape the hair, better to skin it. I'll skin it, you come over to catch the blood."

Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu went over to get a basin, put some flour in it, added some salt, and also a rolling pin.

Li Long called Tao Daqiang, and the two of them lifted the wild boar onto the dirt platform on the side. He pulled out the knife he carried with him and wiped it twice on the hair of the wild boar's neck.

Tao Daqiang saw Li Long pinning the wild boar down, so he went to the pressure well to fetch a basin of water, washed the pig's neck, and said while washing:

"Don't get the blood dirty, that pig blood sausage is delicious!"

Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu brought the blood-catching basin over, Tao Daqiang helped Li Long press the wild boar, and Li Long stepped on the wild boar's shoulder blade with one foot, bent down, and stabbed the knife from the neck into the heart—slaughtering a pig wasn't directly slitting the throat, but stabbing inside.

A stream of viscous, fishy-smelling blood sprayed out.

Uncle Uncle Lao Luo Shu's movements were quite nimble, tilting the basin slightly to catch the stream of blood into the basin.

"Oww—!"

The wild boar's scream rang through the entire village.

Many people were wondering, what's going on? Why is this pig screaming so miserably?

And at this time, Wang Cai Mi frowned.

After the alkali soil on the surface of the saline-alkali land was pushed away, the ground underneath was extremely hard, and the tractor was emitting black smoke, moving extremely slowly.

This job might be a loss. (End of chapter)