Chapter 1106

Before dusk, the two little girls returned from school; as soon as Wang Li saw them, he went home to manage the livestock, and after Wang An chatted with his two little sisters for a while about school, he also started getting busy again; of course, the work Wang An was busy with was adding grass and feed for the livestock at home.

Just as Wang An finished adding grass and feed for the livestock and was pondering in his head how to persuade Wang Dazhu and his wife to sell some of these horses, Wang Dazhu and his wife, along with Shen Wei and Zhao Cuiyun, the four of them, returned.

Unsurprisingly, Wang Dazhu brought back another four-wheeled cart of wheat.

The reason Wang An wanted to ponder selling some of the horses was that ever since they bought the four-wheeled cart and the walking tractor, the large livestock in Wang An's family—that is, the mules, horses, and donkeys—except for the two Oroqen horses Wang An needed to ride when going into the mountains, all the other mules, horses, and donkeys were in a state of idleness; to put it bluntly, they were raising a group of freeloaders.

Of course, calling them all freeloaders wouldn't be right; after all, that large stallion was a stud horse, and a very excellent stud horse at that, so its value was still quite high.

Because starting from this spring, families in the village and nearby villages who had mares and donkeys took turns finding Comrade Wang Dazhu, wanting to use Wang An's family's large stallion to breed with their own mares or donkeys.

One must know that for things like finding a stud horse for breeding, money had to be collected; as long as the other party's mare or donkey became pregnant, a breeding fee of 2 yuan had to be collected.

There was no other way; raising a stud horse required keeping up with nutrition, which meant more grain had to be fed, and for every breeding session, extra feed had to be added separately, otherwise the stud horse would easily become weak.

So, in the final analysis, the large stallion was a horse that could earn money; although the money earned wasn't really much, it was, after all, earning money.

And besides the large stallion not being considered a freeloader, that white mare and the two blue mares, as well as the bay mare that came into the family together with the large stallion, these four horses couldn't be considered freeloaders either.

Because these 4 horses were all pregnant now, and by next year they would give birth to foals, and horses with foals naturally had value.

As for that large donkey, it had long since given birth to a small donkey and was now pregnant again, carrying the large stallion's offspring, so it could barely not be considered a freeloader.

In the end, only that mule and one gelded horse were redundant; besides occasionally being able to use them to pull the millstone, they basically had no other use.

It was just that for Wang An, besides those two Oroqen horses and those two bay horses, the remaining mules, horses, and donkeys should all be sold; the main thing was that the little money earned from raising them wasn't enough to cover the effort.

However, for some reason, Wang Dazhu and his wife just wanted to keep this group of horses, and nothing Wang An said worked; they wouldn't listen to anything, they just wanted to raise them, so regarding the matter of persuading Wang Dazhu and his wife to sell the horses, Wang An had no clue at all.

As soon as Wang Dazhu and the others entered the courtyard, they smelled the meat fragrance and seasoning fragrance permeating the yard; they saw Liu Guilan sniffing her nose while asking Wang An:

"What delicious food are you tinkering with at home again? Why is it so fragrant?"

Wang An smiled and said:

"You've all been working for a day, so I must prepare something delicious to reward you."

Turning his head, Wang An said to Shen Wei and Zhao Cuiyun:

"Sister Shen Wei, and that Sister Zhao, you hurry home and bring the children over; we're eating stewed meat tonight, and improving our food, hahahaha... hurry up, we'll start eating as soon as you get back."

As soon as Wang An finished speaking, Shen Wei said with a smile:

"We have meat to eat at every meal, and we're still improving our food?... giggle... then I'll go home and bring our family's Lai Zi over after I finish unloading the cart."

After Shen Wei finished speaking, Zhao Cuiyun said a bit embarrassedly:

"I'll just go home and eat in a while, you guys eat yours, hehe."

After finishing speaking, Zhao Cuiyun also gave an awkward laugh.

The main thing was that Zhao Cuiyun's relationship with Wang An's family was just a simple employment relationship, and Zhao Cuiyun had already exchanged the meals provided by Wang An's family for money; if she still kept eating at Wang An's family, it would be a bit unjustifiable.

One must know how precious grain was in this era!

After Zhao Cuiyun finished speaking, Liu Guilan took over the conversation:

"Oh, if you're told to come, just come, don't think so much; our family doesn't have that many issues; like this, just for the autumn harvest period, you just eat at our house every day, I've made the decision."

Hearing Liu Guilan's words, Zhao Cuiyun was at a loss and wanted to say something else, but Wang An laughed and interrupted:

"Alright Sister Zhao, my mother has already spoken, so don't be polite, otherwise my mother will get angry; I'm telling you, if my mother gets annoyed, that's a big deal, hahahaha."

Liu Guilan raised her eyebrows, immediately hit Wang An's arm, and scolded with a smile:

"You little brat, you dare to make fun of your mother, I think you're asking for a kick again."

Wang An took a slap, smiled, didn't take it to heart, and continued to say to Zhao Cuiyun:

"Alright Sister Zhao, don't just watch the fun, hurry back and pick up the children, otherwise our whole group will have to wait for you."

Hearing Wang An's words, Zhao Cuiyun then said with a face full of gratitude:

"Then... then... thank you, Proprietor."

Liu Guilan rolled her eyes at Zhao Cuiyun and said:

"What are you thanking for? Be more down-to-earth in the future; our family isn't short of two pairs of chopsticks for you and your daughter, go quickly and come back quickly."

Zhao Cuiyun agreed and then left with a face full of gratitude.

After unloading the cart, when Shen Wei went back to pick up the children, Liu Guilan finally couldn't help but point at the drying cowhide and ask Wang An:

"What's going on with that cowhide? Did you two brothers beat someone's old cow to death before noon?"

Hearing this, the smile on Wang An's face immediately disappeared, and then he looked at Liu Guilan with a very speechless expression.

It must be said that they say people who aren't of the same family don't enter the same house; Mu Xueqing and Liu Guilan's thoughts could not only be perfectly synchronized, but even the words they said and the tone they used were almost the same.

Wang An looked at Mu Xueqing, who was secretly laughing, and said to her with annoyance:

"Stop laughing there, hurry up and explain to our mother what's going on."

Mu Xueqing, who was originally just secretly laughing, saw Wang An's pathetic look and laughed even louder; fortunately, after she finished laughing, she still told Liu Guilan and Wang Dazhu about the bezoar matter.

After finishing, Mu Xueqing also led Wang Dazhu and his wife to see the bezoar, and Wang An also took a look on the way.

These bezoars, the two largest ones were as big as pigeon eggs, while the smallest ones were only as big as millet grains.

However, this thing was calculated by weight, so the size didn't really matter.

After seeing the bezoar, Wang Dazhu and his wife praised Wang An a lot.

One could hear Wang Dazhu saying:

"It has to be my eldest son; earning money is just a matter of having it in his grasp."

Liu Guilan immediately said:

"Yeah, this son of mine is much better than his father; his father doesn't earn much money all day, he only knows how to work hard."

Wang Dazhu said with great emotion:

"Indeed, my eldest son is better than me, the father."

Liu Guilan: "..."

Wang Dazhu: "..."

Taking advantage of Wang Dazhu and his wife being happy, Wang An took the opportunity to bring up the matter of selling the mules and horses, emphasizing that because of the four-wheeled cart and the walking tractor, the role of mules and horses in Wang An's family was becoming lower and lower.

This time, Wang Dazhu and his wife rarely didn't directly oppose it, but said to wait until all the mares gave birth to foals before selling, because one large and one small could sell for quite a bit more money.

(End of chapter)