Chapter 761

When Li Long entered the mountain, he found that the snow in the mountains had become much thicker. It hadn't snowed down the mountain during this time, but there might have been a separate wind and snowstorm in the mountains.

Halimu's winter camp was much livelier; Nasen and Sasken were sitting outside on a homemade wooden sled, sliding down from the slope, having a great time.

The snow here was thick, so it didn't matter if the sled tipped over and they fell.

Sasken saw Li Long first and screamed as he rushed over, with Nasen following behind, running toward the jeep.

Sasken stopped halfway, turned his head, and ran back toward the winter camp, shouting something as he ran.

Li Long couldn't hear clearly inside the jeep. By the time he drove to the winter camp, Halimu and the others had already come out.

Even the old lady crawled out of the winter camp, bent over, wearing a headscarf, and looking at Li Long with a smile.

Li Long got out of the car and moved the newly bought saddles out of the trunk.

These saddles were made by that shop in the county. After Li Long's several suggestions, the saddles were now made more exquisitely, and the matching accessories were all complete.

Nasen cheered and came over to help Li Long move those things.

They were already on vacation and were currently in the stage of having fun—as for winter break homework, what was that? Usually, one only worried about it when school was about to start.

Seeing these two children so happy, Li Long was wondering if he should add some pressure to them. There were no "Five-Year Exercises, Three-Year Reinforcements" now, but it was still possible to give Halimu a slight hint to urge the children to do their homework in advance.

Forget it, let the children have an imperfect childhood.

Li Long moved the three saddles down and went into the winter camp with Halimu. While drinking milk tea, he explained his purpose.

"Need to slaughter more cattle and sheep? No problem." Halimu naturally had no problem with it. Now that his mother and children were back, there were many people in the winter camp, so he wasn't as worried as last time when going down the mountain.

Time was still a bit tight, so Halimu immediately prepared the horses, ready to go notify the others.

Li Long didn't stay either and drove the jeep back.

He also needed to prepare, as he would come to pick people up early tomorrow morning.

Back at the large courtyard, Gu Xiaoxia had already finished work. After dinner, when the two were in the bedroom accompanying the children, she asked:

"Can you rest for two days next?"

"No," Li Long said honestly, "Tomorrow I have to slaughter all the remaining fattened cattle and sheep, leaving only some small ones and the mothers that have offspring.

I just went into the mountains and talked to Halimu and the others; I'll be going down the mountain tomorrow and the day after. I'm thinking of just finishing this trip off and not waiting until the twelfth lunar month. Truly, plans can't keep up with changes!"

Gu Xiaoxia looked at her husband with some heartache and said:

"We have enough money at home, and this living condition is considered very good in the county; can't you not be so tired? Looking at how you slept yesterday, I thought, it's so hard... is it necessary? I know you're doing it so that I and the children can live better in the future. But if you tire yourself out, then I'd rather eat chaff and vegetables..."

"Yeah, I understand." Li Long smiled. He could feel the concern in his wife's words and took Gu Xiaoxia's hand, saying, "Actually, I also thought a bit too simply. At the time, I thought about fattening sheep, having Uncle Lao Luo and the others manage the sheep, and just calling Halimu and the others over when it was time to slaughter. The plan is still the same, but I can't stay out of it when it comes to implementation.

Don't worry, after this batch is finished, I'll basically be resting before the New Year; there won't be anything else to do. By then, I'll be able to rest well."

Hearing Li Long say this, Gu Xiaoxia felt a bit more at ease.

Because of running back and forth, Li Long had been sleeping and waking up quite early these past two days. After he got up, he set up the stoves in both rooms. Although Gu Xiaoxia had to go to work, the two children were staying in the room and couldn't catch a cold.

Children these days were relatively tougher than those of later generations; they wouldn't be kept wrapped up in the room all winter, but would be taken outside to play, look at the snow, and feel the temperature of winter. On sunny days, they would also bask in the sun and look at the blue sky.

Sister Yang had also gotten up to prepare breakfast. Her biological clock felt even more accurate than Li Long's; she woke up on time every day and started getting busy as soon as she woke up.

Subsequently, Han Fang got up to help her mother. They were also on vacation; after vacation, they did homework during the day and occasionally went out to play. With classmates nearby, Han Fang would sometimes bring little classmates to the large courtyard to play with knucklebones together in her bedroom.

Because of Li Long, Han Fang had over twenty knucklebones, which was considered the most in her class. In the eyes of her little classmates, this was a significant fortune, so it attracted many people to come and play with her.

Han Fang would also use ink to dye the knucklebones into various colors to distinguish each one, making them colorful and looking quite unique.

Sister Yang made a cloth bag for her to store the knucklebones to prevent them from scattering.

Seeing Han Fang helping in the kitchen, running back and forth, Li Long smiled and said:

"Xiao Fang, how about I get you a few more knucklebones today?"

"Okay, Uncle. By the way, Uncle, can I give two of my knucklebones to Wang Mei... she really wants them."

"Sure, the knucklebones are yours; you can give them to whoever you want, but it's best to keep enough for yourself to play with."

Today, he still had to slaughter dozens of sheep, get some knucklebones for Li Juan, Han Fang, and also save some for Hongqin, Li Xue Qin, and Xueping.

Girls all liked knucklebones; the boys in the plains here didn't play with knucklebones much now, as winter was mainly for playing with spinning tops.

Li Qiang had them, so he wasn't lacking.

After breakfast, when Sister Yang finished cleaning up and took over watching Mingming and Haohao, Li Long went to start the jeep.

Han Fang actually wanted to take over and help take care of the two little ones. However, the little ones were starting to get naughty, and Li Long was worried she couldn't handle it. After all, there were two of them, and Han Fang wasn't very old; it was inevitable that she would get flustered. If they really got bumped or bruised, not to mention others, Han Fang herself would probably feel guilty enough to cry.

When they arrived at the winter camp, Halimu, Yushanjiang, Talihaer, and others were already prepared. Li Long didn't stay either; after people got in the car, he drove toward the Fourth Team.

Uncle Lao Luo and the others didn't know that Li Long still had to slaughter cattle and sheep here; they had just finished feeding the morning feed, and the cattle and sheep were eating in the pen.

Seeing Li Long driving the jeep over from afar, Yang Laoliu, who was picking grass by the edge of the pen, joked:

"Having a car really is different. Xiao Long is also quite concerned about the cattle and sheep here, coming over every single day..."

Then he saw the jeep drive all the way over and stop at the entrance of the horse corral.

After everyone got out and saw those few minority faces, everyone understood.

It was time to slaughter sheep!

"Uncle Lao Luo, boil the water," Li Long said, "Same job, this time slaughter all the remaining fattened cattle and sheep—just leave those mothers and small ones to raise slowly next year."

Uncle Lao Luo immediately assigned tasks. Yang Laoliu cleaned up this slaughterhouse area, and he and another old man went to clear the stove and boil water, while Li Long went to call Sister-in-law and the others to help.

This time, he simply called Tao Daqiang and the others as well; anyway, knowing there was work, they would take the initiative to come over, so it was better to bring them all at once and get it over with.

Because they had done it once, they were familiar with the process; this time, the remaining sheep and seven cows were slaughtered in two days.

Because the quantity was too large, Uncle Lao Luo had to clear out another room to stack the beef and mutton—he was a bit worried; if this continued, the sugar dregs would really have to be stacked completely outside.

Li Long gave him an idea. Anyway, everything that needed to be slaughtered was slaughtered; after the warm pen that had been vacated in the new horse corral outside was cleaned up, it could be covered with plastic sheeting to stack the dried sugar dregs.

It was time to slaughter sheep at the old horse corral again; this time, many people in the team came to watch. Most of the children were on vacation, and they weren't afraid of the cold or the blood, so they just gathered around the horse corral to watch.

The first sheep was still boiled to eat. When the mutton was boiled, Uncle Lao Luo got an enamel basin, put some meat in it, tore it apart, and distributed a piece to each of these children:

"Come, come, come, each of you gnaw on a piece, add a piece of naan, and go play after you finish eating. Don't run around here; everyone is holding a knife to skin the sheep, it won't be good if you get hurt!"

It wasn't that he didn't want the children to play here; usually, Uncle Lao Luo liked it when the children came over to see the red deer, roe deer, and so on, but at this time, it was all bloody and messy, and he was worried the children would have nightmares after seeing it.

Not many people came to buy sheep heads and sheep hooves this time, so Li Long just happened to have time to do other things.

In two days, the newly built pen was suddenly empty, with only a portion of cattle and sheep left in the two small sub-pens, and the rest were all slaughtered.

In front of the new horse corral, this large area of blood had stained the snow red. For the subsequent sheep blood and cow blood, Li Long simply let every family that came to help take some back and distributed it.

After the cattle and sheep here were slaughtered, he went to the sugar factory to find Section Chief Hu. He mainly wanted to ask which factory specifically needed them, whether it was the tractor factory or the textile factory, so he could deliver them to the right place.

"I'll let Song Ming follow you to haul them; you just haul them directly to me," Section Chief Hu said with a smile, "They can come to me to get them when the time comes."

Li Long guessed that Section Chief Hu wanted to do a favor, but he didn't pay much attention to that. As long as the money was earned, that was fine, so he took Song Ming to haul the cattle and sheep.

At the old horse corral, when Tao Daqiang and the others were loading the vehicle, Li Long pulled Song Ming aside and asked him:

"Are you free this Sunday? I mean including the vehicle."

"Yeah, I can drive the vehicle out. Why, is there work?"

"Kuitun needs ten sheep, and I also need to haul a harvester back, so I need to make a trip."

"That's no problem," Song Ming said with a smile, "Should I come over early Sunday morning?"

"Sure."

The matter was settled just like that. This time when slaughtering cattle and sheep, some mutton was separated, unlike before where it was all carcasses. Li Long had the whole sheep that the factories wanted opened up, left a margin, and let Halimu and the others slaughter the rest and dismantle them into large pieces.

At this time, he could get some knucklebones; he planned to save some for Li Juan, and Han Fang, Hongqin, Xueping, and Li Xue Qin all had some.

As an uncle, the gifts for the younger generation had to be sufficient.

A vehicle of cattle and sheep was hauled to the sugar factory. Section Chief Hu had the logistics department settle the account for Li Long. This time, the beef and mutton didn't go into storage; Section Chief Hu had already called the related factories, and they would come to haul them in a while.

In this back-and-forth, the sugar factory didn't make money in the middle and even provided manpower, but it earned a huge favor.

Sometimes, factories in Shicheng also needed to exchange goods with each other; you owe him, he owes me, I owe yours. Sometimes, this thing is more useful than a contract.

Halimu and the others stayed here for two days, and after slaughtering, they returned to the mountains. Later, Li Long sent another batch of saddles for them to distribute.

Han Fang was very happy to receive the few knucklebones Li Long gave her, mainly because of Li Long's attitude.

After Li Long went to Shicheng to deliver the meat, he specifically went to deliver a few knucklebones to Hongqin, and Hongqin was also particularly happy.

On Sunday, not long after the sun rose, Song Ming arrived at the Fourth Team.

Li Long had told Uncle Lao Luo and the others about hauling sheep to Kuitun. This time, Song Ming didn't haul sugar dregs; Uncle Lao Luo and the others directly loaded the ten sheep onto the vehicle. This time, Li Long didn't drive the jeep; he sat in the passenger seat.

When he had the jeep, he basically drove it himself or hauled his family. Now that he finally had a trip where he could be a passenger for once, Li Long was essentially being lazy for once.

He calculated that there were currently one hundred sixty-six sheep and four and a half cows sold whole with scraps.

On average, each sheep had gained eleven or twelve kilograms of meat in these two-plus months, and the cows had gained thirty or forty kilograms.

Wiping off the fractions, according to the market price, plus the profit brought by the rise in mutton prices during this period, one hundred sixty-six sheep and two and a half cows brought him a profit of nearly four thousand yuan.

Among these, the main source of profit was that they were cheap when bought; buying in herds made it easy to bargain, and at that time, the price of mutton was less than one point two or three, and live sheep were even less than one yuan per kilogram.

The second was that he had a sufficient amount of almost free sugar dregs, which greatly reduced the cost.

If it were someone else, these two items alone would have raised the cost—there weren't many people who could buy livestock on a large scale during the transition of cattle and sheep in late October.

And there was only one person, Li Long, who could hoard and regularly haul so many sugar dregs.

Don't underestimate these sugar dregs; dozens of people surrounded the large pit at the sugar factory every day to haul them, so how much could each person get? And how time-consuming and laborious was it?

Individuals raising pigs and sheep basically gave concentrated feed in the winter, which was wheat tails, sunflower tails, or even sunflower heads. Occasionally, when a ewe gave birth to a lamb, giving some concentrated feed made of corn or wheat bran was already very good.

This method of raising sheep couldn't fatten them in a short time. Even if someone wanted to fatten them, wheat bran was a few cents per kilogram at this time, and there were almost no people willing to buy it and feed it to cattle and sheep every day.

They didn't have this awareness yet.

However, seeing Li Long earn so much money, it was estimated that some people in the team would imitate him next year. After all, this mutton was really fat, and this money was really earned.

Besides the cash earned, there were over a hundred hides at the old horse corral, as well as the meat distributed to everyone. These were all extra.

Calculating it, this profit ratio was actually quite high, and Li Long himself was startled.

It felt like this earned more money than weaving carrying poles.

It was just that he was busier.

The car drove to Kuitun, first going to the agricultural machinery factory.

Director Du knew in advance that Li Long was coming, and although it was the weekend, he still waited with several workers.

When the car entered the courtyard, Li Long already saw Director Du and the workers waiting in the courtyard to unload and load the vehicle.

"Come, come, come, see if this mutton is that fat." After Director Du shook hands with Li Long, he couldn't wait to say to the workers, "Our efficiency was good last year, and we're going to distribute benefits; we're going to distribute the best. Fat mutton... look, smell, it's not gamey at all, right? Look at this fat—hey, really good!"

The ten sheep were unloaded, and the workers also looked at them, and then smiles appeared on their faces.

It was impossible for mutton not to be gamey, but for those that ate the grass on the saline-alkali beach, that kind of gamey smell could almost not be smelled.

Li Long said to Director Du:

"How is it, satisfied, right?"

"Satisfied, satisfied," Director Du said happily, "Not bad, not bad, this meat is really good."

"Get the scale, weigh it, I have other things to do."

"Fine, fine." Director Du hurriedly asked people to weigh it, and he whispered to Li Long:

"Little Li, after you left a few days ago, I kept thinking about the air pump problem you mentioned; are you trying to make some kind of jet-type thing, but I just couldn't think of it..."

Li Long didn't expect Director Du to be so persistent, so he said:

"The timing isn't right to do that right now. But when the time comes, this thing, like the harvester, will be a bestseller for at least ten years."

"But this harvester already has imitations, and I feel unsure now."

Director Du was right. Li Long didn't sell many harvesters in '84, and he didn't know much about it; after all, it was just a side job for him.

But the agricultural machinery factory had sold hundreds of harvesters, and the efficiency was incredibly good.

But the side effects of a small factory also appeared; production couldn't keep up, so other agricultural machinery factories immediately followed, bought one to dismantle, and then imitated it.

At this time, don't talk about any professional laws; this thing didn't have much difficulty or technical barriers to imitate, so it was very easy to come out.

So by the end of the year, the sales volume dropped.

Director Du couldn't help but be anxious.

"Our factory was the first to produce it, so it definitely has a certain reputation, so even if there are imitations, there should still be sales here. Besides,"

Li Long thought for a while and said: "In the short term, there are no auxiliary machines worth doing. It's mainly because everyone has no money; even if you make good things, they can't afford them, and it's not a rigid demand, so you can't open the market. You might as well just produce handcarts; there are many people who need this thing now, and it's not expensive."

"Handcarts?" Director Du asked suspiciously, "Will it work?"

"Handcarts, tricycle bicycles, in a quite long period of time, everyone should buy them. After all, for those units, having a handcart is more prestigious than having a carrying pole to carry things, right?"

Director Du understood immediately.

Li Long was actually cutting off his own rice bowl here. The rise of handcarts would replace carrying poles.

But this was a matter of time; it wasn't that if he didn't do it, it wouldn't appear.

Rather than that, it was better to conform to the trend of the development of the times.

Moreover, he had many ideas for making money and didn't lack this one.

After the sheep were weighed, the ten sheep had a net weight of two hundred ninety-two kilograms. According to the current market price of mutton rising to two yuan, Li Long received five hundred eighty-four yuan.

Mutton would rise again before the New Year, and after the New Year, it would drop; it would be even lower after the spring—by then, another batch of culled sheep would flood the market.

The market is just like this.

PS: I took a look at the meat shop at the entrance of the residential area yesterday; mutton is sixty-one per kilogram, beef is fifty-one per kilogram, and steak is forty-five per kilogram—when did mutton become expensive again? How is it over there for you? (End of chapter)