Chapter 991: Let the bullets fly a little longer: they will come to beg me

In September, the watermelon seeds began to be harvested, and people came to the acquisition station one after another to sell watermelon seeds.

Gu Bo Yuan asked Li Long about the acquisition price at the dinner table. Li Long told him that this year's acquisition price for watermelon seeds was 1.5 yuan for unflattened ones and 2 yuan for flattened ones.

Gu Bo Yuan collected according to this price. Of course, the standard was relatively flexible. For example, those that were cleaned relatively cleanly were slightly higher by one jiao or eight fen, and those that were not cleaned very cleanly and had many impurities were lowered in price.

Until it was almost the end of September, nearly fifty tons of watermelon seeds had been collected, less than last year, but Li Long felt this was a suitable quantity.

Last year, more watermelon seeds were collected because the price the year before last was good. The price of 3 yuan and 3.5 yuan made many people crazy. The income from planting one mu of watermelon was stronger than planting ten mu of wheat. Who wouldn't want to plant it? Even if the land wasn't good and the harvest wasn't much, harvesting half was still stronger than planting grain, right?

So they planted a lot last year, and harvested a lot.

But the price dropped all of a sudden last year. To be honest, if it weren't for Li Long collecting here continuously, many people's watermelon seeds would have been smashed in their hands and couldn't be sold.

The price of over one yuan wasn't that tempting relative to grain and other economic crops.

So the area for planting watermelon was much less this year. Taking the Fourth Team as an example, the area for planting watermelon this year was less than half.

Most people changed back to planting grain and economic crops like sunflower and sugar beet.

Although the price wasn't considered high, it wouldn't be unsellable.

After experiencing ups and downs, most people still chose to seek stability, and talk about making money after guaranteeing the capital.

Li Long wasn't in a hurry either. He hauled the collected watermelon seeds to the Fourth Team and let Xie Yun Dong and the others haul them back to their homes to flatten and dry them before collecting them back.

It was still a labor cost of 10 yuan per sack. With a flattening machine, this thing was very fast. For Li Long, the process was all familiar.

This evening, in Xie Yun Dong's courtyard, Li Long, Tao Daqiang, and others sat together chatting and drinking.

It had been a long time since Li Long had eaten with this group of people in the team who had good relationships. Today's occasion was called by Xie Yun Dong after the work of watermelon seeds was finished.

For this, Xie Yun Dong specifically slaughtered a lamb from his own home, made hand-grabbed meat, stir-fried lamb offal, and brought a few bottles of Gucheng Old Cellar, saying that the brothers should drink well together.

When he did this, Tao Daqiang felt a bit embarrassed. It should be said that his relationship with Li Long was the best, but he seemed to have gotten used to eating and drinking in the Li family over the years. He didn't have the consciousness of inviting everyone to eat a meal at his own home. Actually, if calculated according to family financial strength, he could rank at least in the top five in the Fourth Team.

But he just didn't think of it.

Thinking about it now, it was actually very simple, right? Slaughter a sheep, make a few dishes, notify everyone, and buy a few bottles of liquor.

Most of the people in the team had time; the one whose time wasn't certain was Li Long. This was also very easy to handle. Call Li Long at Li Jianguo's home, or if it wasn't troublesome, go directly to Li Long's home in the county, tell Li Long about this matter, set a time, and it would be easy to call others.

Not only him, actually, thirty or forty years later, many people would still feel that such things were troublesome. But many things, if the steps were really clarified and implemented step by step, were very simple.

Why feel it was difficult? Afraid of trouble, lazy.

Or maybe they hadn't done it before and had a fear of difficulty.

Just like four or five years ago, Li Long dared to run into the mountains alone to haul wood. Who else dared? Tao Daqiang followed once and felt it wasn't difficult either.

Li Long dared to take the initiative to go to the winter camp to ask others to exchange for food, and when he saw deer antlers, he also wanted to exchange. If it were someone else, would they dare to say this?

Li Long dared to smash ice holes, drag a sled to sell fish from house to house. Did others not have this strength? Wasn't it just that they were afraid that even if they smashed the ice hole and caught the fish, they wouldn't be able to sell them?

Thirty or forty years later, why couldn't the fish caught by those old fishermen be sold, yet they still bought boats and went to deeper places to cast nets? If the fish couldn't be sold, they ran to other people's restaurants, discussed prices with others, and if one family didn't work, they changed to another?

Wasn't it just that the path had been trodden out? If you weren't even willing to tread the last five hundred meters after others had trodden the ten-kilometer road for you, then you were destined not to make this fortune.

Tao Daqiang thought that he would also slaughter a sheep after a while and then invite everyone to eat a meal.

This sheep was still obtained from the livestock market on the west bank of the Mahe River with Li Long last year. It had been raised for almost a year, and the lamb had grown up.

"Eat lamb in September," Xie Yun Dong brought a plate of stir-fried tripe to the table, "Come, come, come, taste it first. This taste is good!"

He said to let everyone eat, but he opened the liquor bottle first and poured for everyone.

At this time, some old people in the village were still particular about using porcelain cups the size of a thumb and drinking warm liquor.

Young people no longer used them, directly using mouth cups or those 50-gram glass liquor cups.

A 50-gram cup, young people gulped it down in one go, which was powerful.

"This year is almost at the end," Xie Yun Dong said with a smile, "The harvest is not bad, everyone has earned quite a bit. Let's clink glasses. This life is getting better and better, and I also think it will get better and better in the future!"

"Clink one, clink one!" There were six people at the table: Xie Yun Dong, Li Long, Tao Daqiang, Jia Weidong, Liang Dacheng, and Liang Shuang Cheng.

Two of the three Liang brothers came; the youngest one couldn't drink and went to play in the reservoir by himself.

Xie Yun Dong proposed, everyone put down their chopsticks, clinked their glasses, gulped it down, then wiped their mouths. Some hurriedly drank tea to flush away the spiciness, and some used chopsticks to eat dishes with the liquor.

This grain liquor, the taste was just different.

Li Long sighed every time.

"Daqiang, how much sunflower did you harvest this year?" Liang Dacheng asked Tao Daqiang.

"Twenty mu of land, harvested less than three tons." Tao Daqiang said, "Sold for over five thousand yuan, enough."

He was not without pride.

Li Long wasn't in the village much. At the beginning of the year, he wasn't sure what to plant, so he simply ran to Li Jianguo's home to ask. Li Jianguo still planned to plant sunflower besides grain, and plant sugar beet on those alkaline lands, so he planted sunflower.

Although the harvest of sunflower wasn't high, it won in the stability of the price, and he still earned some money.

"My family planted watermelon." Liang Dacheng sighed, "It was all thanks to Little Long still collecting watermelon seeds. Now I hear that some families have planted watermelon for two or three consecutive years, and the watermelon seeds harvested per mu are less than 100 kilograms. This thing eats the land fertility fast!"

"There is an old saying, watermelons can't be planted in the same stubble, watermelon must be the same," Jia Weidong interjected, "Alright, alright, not bad. At least we have a lot of land, planting anything can earn some. In my hometown, one person has a few fen of land, and the grain planted is just enough to eat. There are people in my hometown who plan to go out to work—some want to go south to enter the factory, and some want to come to our side to be long-term laborers."

"Be a long-term laborer? Does the country allow that?" Xie Yun Dong asked, "Not very likely, right?"

As soon as he said this, everyone's eyes fell on Li Long.

Li Long carried the identity of a county people's representative and had national honors. Everyone felt he had achieved success, so naturally, they would ask him if there was anything.

"Be, it's still possible to be." Li Long actually liked this kind of atmosphere, where he didn't have to think about anything, just eat and drink. He hadn't been so relaxed for several years. Just now his brain was empty, and he didn't even notice the spiciness of the liquor—this liquor was 52 degrees!

"A few years ago, private individuals engaged in small enterprises, hired workers, and it was the same as us not being able to finish planting the land and finding people to help. We engage in a market economy. Didn't the country say it? We must take economic construction as the center. What does it mean? It means we must let some people get rich first.

We have so much land, how to get rich? Isn't it just planting well? Now that mechanization hasn't been popularized, don't we have to find people to help plant? So hiring long-term laborers isn't against the law. Of course, you have to find reliable ones."

Of course, you have to find reliable ones. There had been cases where hired long-term laborers abducted someone's daughter to the mountain gullies in Gansu Province. This kind of thing still had to be prevented.

"Hey, that's also true." As soon as he heard that he could hire workers, Jia Weidong became interested. His family didn't have much land, and the whole family could barely finish planting it; it was just a bit hard.

"You guys say, if you hire a long-term laborer, how much money is appropriate?"

"Just follow the current worker price." Li Long saw everyone looking at himself, "Ordinary workers work all year round, and the total wage they get is no more than seven or eight hundred yuan. If it's someone who works well, you give him one thousand, which isn't little. If it's someone who doesn't work well, you give him five hundred and still feel it's too much. However, in your hometown, earning five hundred a year isn't little, right? You still have to provide food and housing."

Five hundred yuan, for the people sitting there, really wasn't little.

Jia Weidong really had this intention. After all, his family had few laborers, and his own health wasn't very good. If he really found a long-term laborer, he could share a lot. Although he didn't say he was a ten-thousand-yuan household, the pure profit for this year wouldn't be too far off.

Finding one was finding one.

"If you guys want to find one, you must inquire clearly." Li Long saw that someone really had an intention and immediately said, "Don't recruit a bad guy. Not to mention teaching children bad things, stealing, and maybe even hooliganism, that would be troublesome." ===== CHAPTER 992 =====