1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 370: Going to the Shrimp Pond to Buy Shrimp

The song coming from the TV was attractive in itself. Lizhi and Xiaohai were playing somewhere else, but they came running over like a gust of wind and surrounded the TV, looking left and right.

Xiao Hai is usually a smart guy, but he also has stupid moments. At this time, he gets confused and pokes at the TV screen with his hands, as if he can press the villain to death with his fingers.

Lizhi walked around to the side of the TV and stuck her head behind the casing to look. She seemed to think that the little people swaying around must live in the casing...

Liang Ziqiang said a few words to Lizhi, but it didn't have much effect. In the end, he warned her not to touch certain places, such as electrical plugs and TV switches...

Fortunately, Lizhi Xiaohai was only curious about the machine for a while, and was soon attracted by the plot on the screen. He sat on the stool and began to watch the plot.

It was rare for the projection team to come to the village to show movies throughout the year, but now they could watch it while sitting at home, and the plot was quite exciting. The two of them were so glued to their stools that they couldn't move away.

While watching, they also interacted with the TV. Lizhi cursed the villain in the TV show as a big bad guy, and Xiaohai didn't need to do anything else. He followed Huo Yuanjia in the TV show and played some moves, occasionally throwing a few "mysterious punches" at Lizhi.

The two were making so much noise that Chen Xiangbei couldn't concentrate even if she wanted to take a look.

On the other hand, his son Jingcheng was extremely calm. Probably because he didn't understand the Chinese characters at all, he was quite excited at first, but soon his eyelids started to droop.

When the theme song of another episode, "Awakening from a Hundred Years of Sleep", sounded, Liang Jingcheng fell into a coma without making a sound...

After a while, Liang's father and mother also came back from outside. When they saw a TV in the main room, they were curious again. They looked left and right and asked questions.

After asking, he moved a wooden stool and sat down to take a look at "Huo Yuanjia".

Whenever Liang's father had time to sit down, he would get the urge to smoke. Now he took the bamboo tube and lit it up.

"If you want to sit down and watch TV, don't smoke. If you want to smoke, go outside! It's fine if you smoke by yourself, but you also come to choke my two grandsons!" Liang's mother was closest to the chimney, and she angrily drove the man out.

Liang's father knew he was in the wrong, so he dragged a stool to the door and sat there to smoke. While smoking, he occasionally looked up at the TV from the side, but the angle was very odd, so it was very difficult to watch.

In fact, Liang's father and Aqiang didn't have much free time to watch TV. After sitting for a while, the father and son had to get up and go to the shrimp pond in the east of the village.

He walked a few steps to the new house next door, called Liang Tiancheng, and the three of them carried buckets to the shrimp pond together.

When they reached the village road, they saw a figure walking towards them. He looked quite excited and greeted them repeatedly:

"Brother Fu, it's you three? That's perfect, I was just about to go look for you!"

The person who came was Zheng Liu. The temperature in December this year was not higher than last year, but Zheng Liu no longer wore the big cotton hat to cover his face, nor did he tell everyone that he was afraid of the cold like he did last year.

"Zheng Liu, what good news are you looking for me?" Liang's father stopped and asked.

"That's definitely a money-making business! Brother Fu, A Qiang, I passed by the east of the village a few days ago and took a look. I found that the shrimps you raised have grown up and are quite big. I have to remind you that the shrimps are already this big. If you continue to raise them, they won't grow much bigger. Now is the Chinese New Year, when will you take action? After the Chinese New Year, the price will probably drop. You may as well sell them all quickly!" Zheng Liuba was thinking about the Liang family father and son with all his heart, and he was anxious and sincere.

So that's what he was doing. Liang Ziqiang didn't expect that Zheng Liu was so omnipresent and unwilling to miss any business opportunities. In the winter, he couldn't get fish from the villagers, so he set his sights on the prawns in the ten-acre shrimp pond.

Since Liang Ziqiang bought a large steel boat to haul fish in the deep sea, he never sold his catch to Zheng Liu again, but went directly to the purchasing station at the county fishing port. It is said that Zheng Liu complained to Liang's father about this, but later he didn't say anything. He must have understood that Liang Ziqiang's catch was not enough for him to eat.

Now that the Little New Year is just a few days away, Liang Ziqiang estimated that the price of prawns should have increased a lot. A month or so ago, Lao Xiao at the fishing port said that the price had increased to three yuan, and now he didn't know how much it had increased. Liang Ziqiang forgot to ask when he was selling fish recently. He originally planned to go to the fishing port tomorrow, the 11th, to take a small amount of prawns to try selling first, and then make a decision. Unexpectedly, Zheng Liuxian came to solicit business before he went to the county town.

"That's true. I'm planning to go out and sell a batch of shrimps around the New Year. What price do you plan to charge? If the price is right, I'm too lazy to run far!" Liang's father put down the bucket and the shoulder pole, and stood on the village road to talk to Zheng Liu about the price of shrimps.

"To be honest with you, the shrimps have seen the biggest price increase recently! How much were they a few months ago? One dollar and twenty cents, one dollar and fifty cents, and now they have risen to four or five dollars! Of course, the five dollars are for wild shrimps from the sea, and yours are farmed, so there's no comparison. I'll give you three dollars! Three dollars for farmed shrimps, that's good enough, right?!" Zheng Liu gave a price.

As they were talking, a few villagers passed by. I don't know if they heard their conversation, but Jin Sheng suddenly shouted to Liang's father:
"Defu, are you still feeding the shrimps? Sell them quickly during the Spring Festival. The day before yesterday, I went to the county town to buy some things and heard that the purchase price of shrimps has risen to eight yuan. I couldn't believe it at the time!"

Eight. Zheng Liu said four or five a few seconds ago...

After Jin Sheng finished speaking, he walked forward without stopping, leaving Zheng Liuchu standing in the north wind with a disheveled face.

"Zheng Liu, you keep calling me 'brother' and I almost believed you!" Liang's father said unhappily, "You said you wanted three dollars, but they're charging eight dollars outside. How can you justify that?"

Zheng Liu coughed twice in embarrassment, and his expression suddenly became surprised.
"Eight dollars now? Is Jin Sheng kidding me? It was only five dollars a few days ago. It can't have suddenly jumped that high, right? Besides, brother, even if it's eight dollars, it's still wild shrimp. You can't get the same price for farmed shrimp!"

Liang Ziqiang disagreed and said immediately: "You should have seen the shrimps in the shrimp pond, right? The size and quality of the shrimps in our pond are not the same as ordinary farmed shrimps, but similar to wild shrimps. Uncle Zheng, if you really want to buy them, the price should basically be the number that Jin Sheng just mentioned!"

"Seven or eight yuan?!" Zheng Liu was as if he had been burned. "How can farmed shrimp be sold at that price? I really can't afford it. At most, I can raise it to four yuan. No one will offer more than what I offer!"

The deal obviously failed, and Zheng Liu left in disappointment. The Liang family, father and son, also picked up their buckets and continued to the east of the village.

As usual, the single-cylinder diesel engine water pump was started to replace one-fifth of the water in the three shrimp ponds.

After changing the water, I fished out some Artemia worms from the abandoned salt fields and fed them to the shrimps along with some peanut bran I had just picked from home.

When feeding the shrimps, they also deliberately opened the plastic film in several places. From the beginning, there was a plastic film tent above the shrimp pond, which was mainly used to block the sun and reduce the water temperature in summer.

After winter came, not only did Liang Ziqiang not remove the plastic film, he also took advantage of the rest time to enlarge the film tent to cover a larger area above the shrimp pond in order to appropriately raise the water temperature in the pond.

If he didn't lift the plastic film, he would have to bend down to get in.

After feeding the fish, Liang Ziqiang used the large hand net he used to catch Artemia to catch a few large shrimps.

After a closer look, I found that these shrimps had indeed grown to a size suitable for the market. Each one was very long and large, with flat sides and a smooth and shiny shell. The shrimp bodies were transparent, but with a lighter blue-green hue, and the chest and abdomen were slightly red.

In short, except for the slightly lighter color, there is almost no difference in appearance from wild shrimp.

"Dad, brother, let's catch dozens of shrimps from each pond and cook them tonight!"

Just looking at the appearance is not enough, Liang Ziqiang decided to catch a few dozen and taste them at home first.

Whether the shrimps raised with Artemia can be sold at a high price or not, we have to taste them to know.

(End of this chapter)