Song Tan's Notes

Chapter 1664. Earthworm Feces from Yunyun's House

Qiaoqiao has been livestreaming a lot lately, while Yunyun from the village, who used to walk around the village livestreaming every day with her phone, has become quieter.

Yun Duo went over there after get off work and dinner—mainly because the food at her sister's house wasn't as good as the cafeteria food.

My brother-in-law isn't here as usual. With the temperature rising, he's been busy tending to his own land all day long, and he can't rest easy if he doesn't check on it at night.

The two sisters chatted for a while, and then Yunduo asked curiously, "Sister, didn't you want to open your own account and start selling products later when you become popular? Why haven't you updated it recently?"

Having worked for a while now, she has gained some experience: "If I have time, I can even manage your live stream."

Yunyun inevitably got a bit tanned this summer, but the two sisters still have pretty and pleasing appearances. Let's talk about her now:

"Don't try to apply your work experience from Qiaoqiao to me. There are so many people doing agricultural live streaming online, who is the same as Qiaoqiao?"

"Some people are just lucky, they have that kind of charisma that makes people like them, that's their talent. I've been doing random live streams for over half a year, and I haven't even gotten 1000 followers yet, what do I have to compare with them?"

Yun Duo laughed too: "Qiao Qiao's is irreplaceable, I can't replicate it. But when you're live streaming, I can help you read the comments."

Yunyun shook her head: "Now many of the beautiful places in the village belong to Qiaoqiao's family, so I didn't broadcast them in the spring—it's not how you do things to use other people's scenery to gain traffic. Besides, Song Tan even pointed me in a direction."

She sat down excitedly next to her sister: "Your brother-in-law's earthworm castings are almost ready to be sold. I'm hesitating whether to ask Qiaoqiao or ask Secretary Zhu to do that live stream in the village."

Before working on this earthworm castings project, Yun Duo had already done her homework and even talked to Secretary Xiao Zhu, asking her to help promote it in the live stream.

Farmers have found their own way to sell their produce, so it's only right that Party Secretary Zhu helps them.

but……

Yunyun was a little conflicted: "Your brother-in-law hasn't been able to sleep well at night lately, he's under a lot of pressure. I didn't expect the earthworm castings to actually produce so much, I'm afraid I won't be able to sell them all and recoup my costs..."

After spending the past six months together, Yun Duo's opinion of her brother-in-law, which she had initially looked down on, has indeed changed.

Regardless of what others are like, he's top-notch at hard work. And he's also top-notch at listening to his wife.

Take earthworm castings for example. Yunyun wanted to lend a hand, but he wouldn't let her. He was busy with it himself from morning till night.

It looks like other people's manufacturing factories have it easy, but that requires the use of machinery.

Their family is small and doesn't have many machines to save costs; they rely entirely on manual labor.

While others built cement pools, his brother-in-law bought bundles of bamboo to build a plastic shed.

It's not durable, and bamboo isn't as sturdy as angle steel, so it can't be built very high, and the ventilation isn't as good as other materials...

But let's talk about whether it's cheap or not!
While others use a food processor to grind up the earthworms' food scraps, his brother-in-law takes a cleaver and meticulously cuts them once or twice a day.

For earthworm breeding beds, which consist of a thick layer of soil, to maintain fermentation efficiently without harming the earthworms, most people use a compost turner.

He could flip through the pages from morning till night, turning this section today and that section tomorrow, being extremely careful, without taking a single day off.

The breeding beds need to maintain a certain level of humidity, but not too much, so a spray system is required.

His family only cultivated two acres of land. The installation of this spray system wasn't actually that expensive; it could only accommodate two spray sprinkler trucks or water hose faucets.

For gardeners, a set costing a few hundred yuan is quite good.

But in order to control costs, he carried a sprayer on his back in the sweltering heat and sprayed water over and over again.

If you happen to run into someone with even a modicum of sense, they might say, "Money should be spent wisely," and that this isn't worth it!

But for Yunyun's husband, it was all worth it!

All the flat ground in the house was used to work on earthworm castings. He turned over the earthworm beds just like he would dig the ground and weed.

Spraying is like applying pesticide.

Setting up a shed, which provides ventilation, drying, and protection from rain and cold every day, is just a bit troublesome, but it doesn't take much effort.

As for how tedious it is to grind food ingredients...

When farming, you also have to worry about whether it will rain or the sun will shine!

This is an alternative way of farming. If you invest too much money in farming, you'll lose a fortune.
Therefore, we only have three sets of machinery at home, which are truly irreplaceable.

A separating sieve is used to separate earthworm castings.

A low-temperature dryer is used to dry earthworm castings, otherwise they will be too wet and heavy, and also not conducive to preservation.

There are also packaging machines—just simple plastic bags that are sealed with a string. If you're not skilled at operating them, the string can easily be pulled crooked.

The biggest costs throughout the entire startup process were buying earthworms and buying food to feed them.

Fruit peels, vegetable scraps, sawdust, and cow, sheep, and rabbit manure were really hard to collect in this village, so he had to reluctantly spend money to buy them from people in the city.

But looking at the raw materials, you can tell it's really not expensive.

The key was that he bought a tricycle for easier transportation.

All these miscellaneous items added together, while not costing money, certainly cost quite a bit.

Now that the sale is almost here, the pressure has suddenly returned.

Although he listened to his wife, he didn't really understand the market for earthworm castings and couldn't figure out what price would be needed for anyone to buy them.

The couple pondered this for a long time, but there were so many different kinds of products being sold online, making it increasingly difficult to find a reliable source.

As a result, they become increasingly anxious about gains and losses, and their confidence dwindles.

The clouds were looking at her at that moment:
"Sis, is it really necessary to be under so much pressure?"

Yunyun patted her on the shoulder:
"What are you saying? Your brother-in-law can't have worked so hard for months for nothing."

"Besides, if we didn't use earthworm castings, how much money would we make growing vegetables on those two acres? Look at Teacher Qi's grandfather, that old man only has a small plot of land, but he can sell some bok choy and lettuce once a month. Six yuan a pound!"

Do bok choy and lettuce need any care?

Loosen the soil, then sow the seeds.

If you want the plants to grow more uniformly, you can simply sow the seeds more evenly and take some time to watch over insects and moths. It seems like making money is much easier than what they're doing.

If they lose money, it won't just be a loss of labor costs; they'll also miss out on several months of making money!

How could someone from a humble family not feel heartbroken?

The cloud laughed:

"You can't say that. For every person who makes money, there's someone who gets beaten up. Some vegetables become too old if they ripen on the tree for even one more day."

"No one's buying bok choy this week, but people will start picking it out next week. Although your business has been delayed for the past few months, the output is large. If you sell it all, you can have at least four or five sales periods a year. Isn't that great?"

People in the village used to grow okra, but I heard that many young people now love to eat it.

As a result, the okra on the vine would become too old if not picked within a day, but not every day someone would come to buy okra.

Later, having no other choice, they planted one crop, harvested it, and ate it themselves, but then no one planted it anymore.

Yunyun sighed:

"See, we've come full circle, haven't we? I'm just worried that we won't be able to sell them all in a short time." Earthworm castings have a large production volume, and if they're not sold all at once, they'll pile up, and then they'll have to pile up even more next time. They'll even have to set aside a special room to store them... It's a hassle.

However, Yunduo had little experience in selling earthworm castings.

A quick online search now makes me frown deeply:
Why are the prices so varied?

Yes.

Yunyun pointed to the shop in front of her:

"Look at this, you can buy twenty or thirty jin for 30 yuan. This one, on the other hand, costs four or five yuan per jin."

"Right now, I don't know how to price it, and I don't have a rough idea of ​​sales volume, so it's hard to negotiate prices with the courier company."

"Also, those large-scale earthworm castings can yield five or six tons per acre, or even more."

"Experts Yan and his team came to provide guidance, saying that the shed was not high enough and the ventilation was insufficient. Also, there was a lack of machinery, and the precision of manual labor was not up to par. If it were to be done well, all the necessary equipment would need to be prepared."

In addition, bamboo greenhouses are not wind-resistant.

The weather has been nice lately, so it's fine. But in the summer, if there's a thunderstorm and strong winds, it's easy to be blown away.

We'll have to invest more money again.

All these things, Yunyun just didn't want to do farm work, it's not that she didn't care about her husband—

If we make money, we can at least buy a few more pieces of equipment!

The two sisters were completely unfamiliar with this line of work. While Yan and his colleagues could find people in this line of work, it didn't make sense for them to introduce their clients to them as well!
Yunyun's biggest worry—

“My main concern is that your brother-in-law might lose heart if he doesn’t recoup his investment.”

Whether you're farming or doing anything else, having the right mindset is the most important thing. Once you lose hope, you'll start doing things half-heartedly, and things will only get worse and worse.

Yun Duo thought for a moment, then smiled and said, "Then let's just go and ask the boss."

"Even Qiaoqiao knows that if you don't understand something, you should learn it. We really don't understand, so asking questions or asking around isn't a bad thing!"

"If Qiaoqiao thinks she can help, sister, could you make him a gold pendant as a thank you? It's not much money, but it's the thought that counts."

"If it's inconvenient for him—we have to understand that, their products are just different, we can't just ruin the trust of our fans like that."

"Well, we also have Secretary Zhu's live stream to back us up."

"Think about it, with a leader like this in our village, isn't it much easier for you to start a business than for others who have to find their own way? Otherwise, why would you just think of doing it?"

"So what's the pressure? If there is pressure, let's just go through things step by step and figure them out."

"Where's my brother-in-law? Tell him not to work on the ground tonight. It's his business, he should listen to what needs to be heard."

As she finished speaking, she didn't forget to send a message to Song Tan to ask in advance.

After receiving the reply, she was about to give Yunyun a bright smile when she noticed that her sister's gaze was particularly complicated, and then she touched Yunyun's forehead.

"I told you you need to study! The more you read, the more you work, and you become more insightful."

She suddenly laughed again: "I used to help you guys out, now you help me out too."

……

Old Song's family had finished their meal and were strolling and chatting in the square. These days, the villagers spend their leisure time here, chatting endlessly about everything under the sun.

But none of these little musings are as interesting as earthworm castings!

Not to mention Yunyun and Yunduo were completely baffled by this, even the Song family had never encountered it before.

They only know that their fertilizer comes from composting and fermentation on the riverbank, but they don't understand the specifics of how it's done or the underlying principles.

Song Tan thought for a moment and then replied to Yun Duo: "We can ask Yan Ran and the others to discuss it together."

When it comes to professionalism, these guys are the best!

It was after get off work hours, and Yunyun's business was so good that she naturally came.

However, Yun Duo had already shown her favor beforehand, and now that she was asking for help, the three of them ran off in a flash—

Anyway, we're just idling around, and there's not much entertainment in the village.

but.

Earthworm castings! That's a great research topic!

The group gathered at Old Song's house.

If there's any improvement in life after having money, it's that Wulan is now more willing to spend money on air conditioning.

The central air conditioning is basically running non-stop, and we no longer have to be so stingy that we had to be quick and decisive when opening the refrigerator!

Everyone sat down in the living room, which was cool and comfortable. Although it was late, there wasn't much tea served, but there were various snacks and fruits available.

Fragrant melons, sweet watermelons, lotus leaf and plum tea to drink as much as you like, and even a pot of golden-brown fried rice with various diced meats and scrambled eggs inside.

Ulan was incredibly hospitable. Once everyone had arrived, she brought a bowl of melons to the kitchen, cut them in half with a snap, scooped out the pulp, and gave each person a spoon.

There's no need to cut it too finely; everyone can just bite into it with a spoon or gnaw on it directly, and that's enough to fill their stomachs.

Especially the aroma of the melon.

It's rich and sweet, and the smell alone is enough to whet your appetite.

Yanran and the other two exchanged glances, knowing that being diligent would bring them many benefits!

Yunyun was quite embarrassed, but she's never been one to mince words, and she knew that just saying thank you wasn't enough, so she got straight to the point:

"We've already collected some of the earthworm castings from our house, but we're unsure how to price them or whether we can even sell them."

After saying that, she nudged her husband again.

The honest 40-year-old man sat there, not saying a word, but opened his mouth upon hearing this.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Finally, he smiled sheepishly and said, "I'm good at working, so I'll just listen to Yunyun."

After thinking for a moment, he added, "It's okay if we can't sell them all. We can save up some and sell them slowly. We can bury the rest in our own field and plant vegetables next year. The vegetables will grow well, so we won't lose money."

Song Tan immediately laughed: "With this mindset, you'll succeed at anything."

Lu Chuan was also quite interested—rural life filled many gaps in his general knowledge, and now when he writes about characters, he is becoming increasingly impressive.

The first question should be asked at this moment:
"Do you have any general ideas in mind regarding this pricing?"

Yunyun pursed her lips, a little nervous: "I need to buy packaging bags and send it by express delivery. The express delivery cost will probably take up the majority of the price."

"I was thinking, could we get a price similar to the ones online, like 9.9 yuan for two jin?"

It's here! Surprise! We'll try to bring you as many surprises as possible this month!