Song Tan's Notes

In Yunqiao Village, Party Secretary Xiao Zhu spends his days writing reports and processing applications, and when he has free time, he also writes summaries.

In short, she has now become quite adept at writing reports, so regarding the cooperation between the Yunqiao Village government and General Manager Yang's Group, she simply used a template, made some modifications, and got the report done.

But it was already noon, and with the sun blazing down, it wasn't suitable to send any more goods to the county or city.

After thinking for a moment, she decided to focus on efficiency, so she rode her electric bike to the entrance of the convenience store again.

Lifting the heavy plastic sheet, the air conditioner in the convenience store was blowing a cool breeze, and the proprietress was watching a short drama with a furrowed brow.

This made her laugh: "Oh, you're really willing to do this now, you even dare to turn on the air conditioner."

This time last year, people were only using fans!
When asked, the answer was that the convenience store only makes a pittance every day, and the electricity bill for the air conditioner isn't even covered.

The proprietress also laughed, recalling the same incident from last year:

"We've made a little money this year, but everywhere we go people are talking about heatstroke and sunburn... We have to pay the electricity bill anyway."

"Come on, Party Secretary, pick whatever you want."

Party Secretary Xiao Zhu pushed open the freezer door and, without even choosing, directly selected an old-fashioned popsicle.

But she didn't leave.

Gossip always travels the fastest in the village, and this little shop is connected to the village's activity square. If there's any news or gossip, the shopkeeper will spread the word in advance so she doesn't have to explain it in detail later.

Therefore, he said directly:

"I just overheard them making a suggestion at Old Song's house—aren't they going to Baiyu County to help farmers sell grapes? They're planning to reduce production there and have disposed of all the grape seedlings. These seedlings are excellent; a single vine can yield 30 to 50 jin of grapes every year if properly managed."

"Well, I figured we couldn't easily buy such good grapes, so I asked if anyone in the village wanted to plant a few vines. We'll collect the information and bring them back together."

Grapes?
Rural people are interested in all crops that can bear fruit, and they especially love to eat grapes.

The proprietress, unaware of anything amiss, simply smiled and said:
"Then give me two or three trees, and I'll plant one in front of this little shop too."

After thinking for a moment, he sighed again, "I probably won't even get to eat any of these plants."

If anyone comes to buy something, I'll pick up a couple along. The grape season coincides with summer vacation, so if anyone brings their kids over for a few visits, there will be sparrows and birds around. It's a bit of a stretch if we can eat them all ourselves.

Anyway, it's not worth much, so let's just have some fun.

Party Secretary Xiao Zhu didn't point it out:

"Sure, why don't you plant them all at home and take good care of them? When they bear fruit, put bags on them. If they're ripe and tourists come to buy vegetables, why don't you help promote them a bit?"

She implied, "If you put your heart into it and don't use pesticides, and if it tastes good enough, selling it for 10 yuan a pound shouldn't be a problem, right?"

The proprietress's eyes lit up immediately.

She grows her own vegetables, and she even gives directions to people who come to buy things.

Whose dish is the best? Whose dish is the best? City people love listening to her chatter away.

If there are grapes, those who want to pick them can do so; otherwise, she can just leave a bunch there...

Money!

How can you not make money when it's offered to you?

Then, Secretary Zhu continued:
“If you’re talking about 10 or 20 trees, then you’ll have to put in some effort. But if it’s just three or five trees, you can plant them in a suitable spot along the wall and you don’t need to worry about them much.”

This subtle shift in perspective, from two or three trees to three or five, went unnoticed by the proprietress.

Instead, she was coaxed into thinking that growing this stuff didn't require any effort at all—

People coax the land, and the land coaxes their stomachs—this is a principle passed down for thousands of years.

But comparing these two scales here, it does seem like you don't need to take care of two fruit trees that you usually grow at home.

If you do the math, it seems like apart from the cost of buying the seedlings, there's zero other cost!
Even if we don't sell them, we won't lose anything by keeping them for ourselves.

The proprietress, who had gone from casual to serious, emphasized again:
"Secretary, please register me first. My family needs three...five trees! No, six!"

"Okay."

Having completed his task, Secretary Zhu paid for the ride, and Old Popsicle, with a sip of his drink in his mouth, rode off to the nearby village office.

The proprietress sat back down, picked up her phone, and was about to continue watching videos when she thought for a moment and then shouted twice in the group chat:
The village secretary asked if we wanted to plant some good grape seedlings. We're tallying the numbers later; it seems like it's a good deal whether we want to eat them ourselves or sell some. My family is planning to plant six vines. Do you want some?

Since we're just killing time anyway, why don't we chat about something?

The feeling of being the first to know and spread the latest news, and then having everyone asking about it, is really great!

At Old Song's house, Song Sancheng took off his straw hat, washed his face, and sat inside enjoying the air conditioning, saying to Song Tan:

"We've contacted all the fishermen, and the fishing nets are all ready. We only sell big-eyed fish; we don't sell small ones. So, what time do we start work tomorrow?"

Logically speaking, we should have started today, but shouldn't we still prepare for Boss Chang's whole fish feast?
We're waiting for him here.

With the temperature rising, the fish in the pond are growing fast, multiplying rapidly, and surviving at a high rate; they've already become quite densely packed.

If we continue raising them like this, I'm afraid the flavor will change.

Putting everything else aside, even if you peel off the corn leaves and throw them into the pond every day, there won't be enough for the fish to eat.

The corn is nearing maturity, and we'll harvest it at the end of the month. The corn stalks won't last, so we'll have to find other food for the fish.

It's not that there's nothing else to eat besides corn leaves, it's just that we planted a lot of this stuff this year—last year we almost had to start pre-sales for 365 days.

We must make good plans for this year!

Wow, there's a huge quantity of this stuff!

Song Sancheng also sighed.

Working in the sweltering heat is the worst thing, but when you think about his new car, his house, and the joy he gets from walking all over the village, isn't it only right that he does some work?
Song Tan frowned slightly.

She thought for a moment and said, "Let's keep the same time tomorrow, start work at 4 a.m. when it's barely light. The refrigerated trucks will be waiting, and as for the corn..."

She pulled out her phone and pretended to check the weather: "It looks like it'll be rainy for the next few days..."

Song Sancheng said nonchalantly, "Hey. When have summer forecasts ever been accurate? It looks like it's going to rain now, but it might be sunny later. We don't even know if it will rain at all."

But Song Tan could sense that this continuous moisture was unlikely to stop after just one or two days of rain.

It's one thing if the rain affects tea picking, but if no one picks the buds, the ones that grow later will be thin and the leaves will be small. By the time the rain stops, the summer tea will probably be ruined.

Let's just cut it! It's also a good time for them to rest and recuperate during the summer vacation.

She silently made a mental note of it.

There are still quite a few crops at home that will ripen in July.

Vegetables are replaced quickly and consumed in large quantities. Continuous rain will at most affect replanting, and seedling cultivation in greenhouses will be slightly affected, but it is not a major problem.

As for the fruits, they're not ripe yet, so we'll just have to wait it out.

There's also corn.

Sweet corn and glutinous corn are far from ripe, but because there are many cattle and sheep in the family, silage corn accounts for the majority of the planting area. This stuff has a large yield, and it was originally planned to be harvested in August or September...

Looking back now, I realize we can't delay any longer.

Just a few days before the rain, I wanted them to grow a little longer, just like tea leaves.

Otherwise, if it rains, even if the machine at home is designed for small hills, it won't be able to be used at all.

Harvesting by hand would be quite a challenge.

"Have the silage silage silos over the riverbank been cleaned up recently? Dad, could you arrange for a few people to help clean them up as soon as possible?"

"And that feed fermentation tank, see if we can get one ready as soon as possible. I'll contact someone to install a wrapping machine. Let's ferment the crushed silage corn in the silage tank first."

Since cattle and sheep also need to be fed hay in winter, there is no shortage of shredders at home.

However, there are no baling and wrapping machines needed for large-scale silage fermentation.

I need to hurry and find out where there are any around the city.

"By the way, try to move the dried vegetables and other things drying over there to the rooftop in the next couple of days to free up space. When the corn is harvested, we can just pile them there for crushing and packaging."

Thinking about it, although building the factory cost a lot of money and most of the space was idle for a long time each year, it was really useful when it was needed!

As these tasks were being arranged one by one, Song Sancheng was still contacting people when he saw Song Tan had already posted a message in the village group chat:

[Hiring 20 tea-cutting workers, 300 yuan per person per day]

Song Sancheng: ??! Twenty people?! (End of Chapter)