Li Long did not expect that his second brother and brother-in-law planned to come and settle down.
He once again changed the life trajectory of some people.
But Li Long was worried about outside at the moment, because it snowed heavily all day and all night.
At dawn and the snow stopped, Li Long left Lao Mahao's house and started shoveling the snow. Yesterday, I shoveled once during the day when the snow was halfway down, and again before dark. So although the snow outside is thick now, the snow in the yard is only a handful thick, which is quite easy to shovel.
Uncle Luo was cooking in the kitchen. Hearing the commotion, he opened the door and took a look, smiled, and continued to work on himself.
If you want to live here by yourself, the snow might not be finished in a day.
Li Longting misses how fast his second brother and brother-in-law could shovel snow when the four of them were here.
He used a large push snow board, which was nailed in the autumn. The ground in Lao Ma's yard was relatively flat, so he could push it more easily. Even so, when Uncle Luo called him, he only finished pushing it. one third.
Fortunately, the snow was pushed outside during the snow clearing yesterday. The terrain of Lao Ma is relatively high, much higher than the surrounding areas. The snow can be pushed outside and piled in the wasteland on both sides. There is no need for secondary cleaning.
After breakfast, Uncle Luo went to feed the guys in captivity. Li Long finished pushing the remaining snow and then went to his eldest brother's house.
Li Jianguo's family is shoveling snow. Li Jianguo and Liang Yuemei used push boards, Li Juan used iron shovels, and Li Qiangqiang used wooden shovels.
With Li Long joining us, the snow in the yard was quickly cleared and the doorway was cleared. The snow on the road was pushed away from the door of each house. Lu Yingming and Tietou also came out, cleared the snow from the two houses side by side, and pushed it into the ditch on the roadside.
By the time we finish all these tasks, it’s almost twelve o’clock.
Every winter, snow clearing is a big event, not only in rural areas, but also in cities.
Li Long was thinking that Gu Xiaoxia probably didn't have time to clear the snow in Da's yard now. She would clean it up when she took Tao Daqiang and the others to sell fish and then came back.
Is Sister Yang Xiulan also clearing the snow?
While his thoughts were diverging and then brought back, Li Long heard his eldest brother Li Jianguo chatting with Lu Yingming:
“It’s snowing heavily, and the wheat should be good next year.”
"It should be. This year Maigaisan Lay a quilt and sleep with a steamed bun next year. This snow will make the whole field a good place next year.” Is the hole in the ice broken?" Lu Yingming looked at Li Long again.
If there is something going on in the team, it will spread quickly. After all, there are not many other entertainment activities in the winter. If there is a slight disturbance, it will soon spread throughout the village. Therefore, everyone knows that Li Long and the others caught and harvested the fish.
"It's okay. It won't freeze much in one day. We'll go over and have a look in the afternoon. It's snowing heavily and the reeds are covering it. The fish underwater are even more deprived of oxygen. But in this snowy day, it's hard to pry the rabbit That's the most suitable thing."
"Uncle Xiaolong, can you take me with you?" Lu Jiatietou suddenly asked with hope.
"No, I'm too tired. I plan to put down a few condoms in the afternoon. This is easier."
The previous condoms must have been covered by snow, and Li Long planned to use them again. Some condoms. In heavy snow, most of the things rabbits can eat are covered, and they need to find food again. The new marks left at this time are the best time to set traps.
Li Long had lunch at his eldest brother's house at noon. While Li Jianguo and the others were pushing snow on the road, Liang Yuemei was already at home preparing to cook. In winter, the main thing for ordinary people is to stay at home, and visiting each other is fine. However, given the current family situation, each family does not have many houses, so visiting depends on the environment at home.
The Li family's situation is a bit special. They also feed pigs and horses, which requires at least three more meals for the animals every day.
Fortunately, these things are symbols of wealth. Although "a family with a lot of wealth does not count those who vent their anger", the wealth represented by a horse, a carriage, and a pig is not comparable to that of later generations.
After Li Long had dinner at his eldest brother's house, when he returned to Lao Mahao to prepare wire covers, Tao Daqiang and Yang Yongqiang rushed over together.
"The Zhao family has gone to Xiaohaizi and continues to break holes in the ice." Yang Yongqiang said as soon as he entered the door, just like he was asking questions.
"Some people in the team went out to the east. It is said that they were trying to pry the rabbit." Tao Daqiang also told the "intelligence" he had obtained.
"Don't worry, get more rabbit traps. Let's put the traps on first, and then go to Xiaohaizi to clear out the snow."
There are some fish collected in the past two days, but not enough to one hundred kilograms. Li Long had no intention of going to Shicheng just like that. If you want to go, get a few hundred kilograms anyway, otherwise it won't be troublesome enough to make a trip.
Tao Daqiang and Yang Yongqiang saw Li Long playing with condoms, so they followed suit. Soon, the three people walked to the east of Hongliu Beach with dozens of rabbit traps.
Just after crossing the cultivated land and before reaching Hongliutan, Li Long and the three of them heard shouting and screaming from the east, and then they saw someone running out of Hongliutan. In front of them was A jumping gray rabbit. The rabbit jumped very high, but it was very laborious - the snow was too thick. Every time it jumped, it would sink deeply into the snow when it fell. Soon the rabbit was caught by the people behind.
There were four or five rabbit chasers. Everyone had a rabbit in their hand, and some had two in their hands. The harvest was not small.
Seeing Li Long and others coming over, someone shouted:
"Li Long, come with us to catch the rabbits! There are a lot of rabbits here!"
"Big Qiang, come on, let's see how much we have done, this thing is really fat!"
"Go ahead, let's go east and set up a trap." Li Long waved his hand. We are all in the same team. No matter what our relationship is in normal times, if someone takes the initiative to say hello now, it is natural to respond well.
Seeing that Li Long and the others did not join, several others were a little regretful. This rabbit chasing activity is not only chasing rabbits, but also an entertainment activity. You can release stress by shouting and running, and you can also run to vent excess energy. In this day and age, amateur cultural life is really rare and boring. Catching a rabbit once in a while can be regarded as a way to regulate the body and mind.
Li Long has experienced too much in his last life, and his threshold for entertainment activities is too high. It is difficult for ordinary activities to impress him. Only reading, which has no upper or lower limit no matter what era, can satisfy him. Bar.
After all, I’m not married yet.
The three people went to find the original rabbit traps first - to Li Long's surprise, these traps were not all empty, there were three rabbit traps that were trapped under the snow.
Carrying the rabbit and retrieving the covers that had been buried under the snow, Li Long and the others continued to walk eastward until they reached the easternmost part of Hongliutan, where there was a large ditch with three to four hundred meters wide and stretching for dozens of kilometers. Floods pass through here every year. After the floods, the weeds and shrubs here become lush. Although it has just snowed, there are many rabbit tracks here, scattered horizontally and vertically, and they are unusually clear and obvious. It can be seen that it was stepped on only today.
Just put the condom on.
Here is Sibuli. Less than one kilometer to the east is the Hu-Ke Highway. There are no villages within a few kilometers to the south and north. To the east, three or four kilometers away from the highway is the company of the Corps. There are few people here, so it is a good place to set a trap.
It’s just that it’s quite far away from home, the straight-line distance is nearly three kilometers.
Carrying the three rabbits back to the village, the three people immediately went to Xiaohaizi with their tools.
On the way to Xiaohaizi, there were already footprints in the snow, and there were also many rabbit and pheasant paw prints.
When they arrived at Xiaohaizi, they found that some people were clearing the snow on the ice holes and breaking the holes again, and some people had already started to fish.
Li Long and the others also rushed to the south of Xiaohaizi. The snow on the ice here is at least thirty to forty centimeters, very large and thick. The three people cleared the snow from the ice hole and found that a thick layer of ice had formed on the original ice hole.
Smash it.
That day, when the sun went down, Li Long and the others returned to Lao Ma with seven or eight kilograms of fish.
Uncle Luo has stewed the rabbit and is waiting for them to eat.
Early the next morning, Li Long asked Tao Daqiang and Yang Yongqiang to play rabbit traps.
“Yesterday they chased twelve rabbits.” Yang Yongqiang said on the way. “They also caught a few alive and tied them directly to the sheep pen, saying they would keep them until the Chinese New Year.”
“You can’t feed yourself, He was so angry in a few days," Li Long said, "Wild rabbits are not domestic rabbits, they have strong tempers."
Many wild animals are very angry, including some adult birds, and they cannot be fed. , without eating or drinking, and then died.
Of course, some are possible. For example, the Night Pockmarked Eagle is very lazy and doesn’t even build a nest properly in the wild. Instead, he digs out a pit in the wasteland and uses it as a nest. The two eggs hatched like that, and if they really encountered a fox or something, they would become food. This thing's scientific name is nighthawk. It's difficult to see clearly when the sun sets. It can fly more than ten meters and is easy to catch. Li Qiang caught one, fed it fish and meat, forced its mouth to open and fed it, and after raising it for a while, he accidentally let it fly away. That's too far.
It was almost an hour when they arrived at the place where the rabbit trap was set. But I gained a lot - I walked towards the place where I put the trap, and there was a rabbit not far away, and even further away, I picked up seventeen and a half rabbits along the way - it felt like a great harvest!
This area is simply a rabbit nest!
Li Long also speculated that the young people in the team made too much noise to pry the rabbits yesterday, which drove all the rabbits in the red willow beach here. In addition, there is more grass in this area. , there will naturally be more rabbits.
But with more rabbits, there are also more carnivores. Seventeen and a half of them were seen, and two rabbits in the traps had only one leg left to eat. I don’t know if they were foxes or other animals.
Seventeen rabbits are a lot, Yang Yongqiang said with a smile:
“Fortunately I brought the bag, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to go back to get it!”
Seventeen rabbits, Li Long It means that each person takes two back and keeps the rest to sell. Yang Yongqiang and Tao Daqiang mean to sell them all. If they can't sell them, they will take them back to eat. Li Long divided one piece each, and the rest was stored in the horse number, waiting to be sold.
In the next two days, Li Long, Tao Daqiang, and Yang Yongqiang were lucky enough to get thirty or forty kilograms of fish every day.
The harvest of the three brothers of the Liang family has also increased. Li Long guessed that the heavy snow must have blocked the possible ventilation holes in the reed marshes on the ice. The snow was thick and the air could not go down, so the holes in the ice that were opened would be It has become the inevitable way for fish to find oxygen.
Not only were there many fish, but there were also big items. Li Long saw that there were twenty or thirty fish weighing more than two kilograms, mostly carp and grass carp, and a few less five-stroke black fish.
He picked out five carp of relatively even size and planned to take them to the big meat canteen when they were sold.
Since you have agreed to Manager Zhong, you must keep your word.
On the afternoon of the third day after the heavy snowfall, after returning from Xiaohaizi, Li Long went to Li Jianguo's place, picked up No. 76, hitched the carriage and pulled him to the horse number.
They planned to go to Shicheng to sell fish early the next morning.
The fish accumulated in the past few days amounted to more than 200 kilograms. Including another rabbit trap, there were a total of 24 rabbits, which was quite a lot.
Early the next morning, before dawn, Li Long hitched up the carriage and loaded bags of fish into the carriage.
As soon as he started, Tao Daqiang and Yang Yongqiang rushed over.
Both of them were wearing cotton coats and cotton hats, which were very thick. Watching Li Long do what he was doing, they also moved everything into the car and put two bales of grass into the car. Uncle Luo also prepared a simple breakfast.
Baogu batter, sweet bean rolls, fried pickles.
After eating, Li Long found three sticks from the house and put them in the car. After thinking about it, he took out five or six sticks, loaded them with bullets, closed the safety, put them in the holster, stuffed them under the fish bag of the carriage, and then The three of them drove the carriage to Shicheng together.
The snow on the road from the village to the countryside has not been completely flattened, there are only traces of a person walking, and the carriage makes a creaking sound as it presses on the thick snow. No. 76 was also working hard. Li Long and the others did not sit in the car, but followed directly. It was not until they turned from the countryside to the county that the road conditions improved. The snow on the road was solid and smooth.
"Come on, let's get in the car and wait until the county to buy steamed buns to eat."
It took more than an hour to get to the county. The sun only showed the horizon at this time. They went to the big meat restaurant to buy some. Baozi, Li Long wants to give those fish to Manager Zhong by the way.
Before Manager Zhong arrived, Li Long left five carps in the canteen and asked the waiter to give them a receipt.
The three of them ate steamed buns and headed towards Shicheng, occasionally encountering trucks and buses going back and forth.
"Brother Long, do you think we can sell this fish?" Yang Yongqiang is still a little worried, after all, things are different now.
"Yes, definitely possible." Li Long is very confident that the market will only get bigger and bigger. After all, there are more and more people, and the Chinese New Year is approaching, so it has become a habit to save things for the Chinese New Year, even if it is no longer In the past thirty or forty years, whether in urban or rural areas, people still had the habit of stocking up on goods before the Chinese New Year.
But in fact, by that time, large supermarkets and restaurants were not on holiday, and you could buy whatever you wanted to eat at any time. Young people no longer had the habit of stocking up, but the older generation still persisted.
So at this time, when selling fish, meat, etc., there will basically be no slow sales.
After all, you still need meat tickets to buy meat at a butcher shop, and no one has many tickets. But there is no need to buy fish in the market. Anyone can figure out the transaction.
After crossing the Mahe Bridge, passing through the stuck point, and walking along a road with poplar trees on both sides, we arrived at the urban area of Shicheng.
By the time we got to the old street, it was already very lively. Li Long scanned around and found that it was difficult to find a suitable stall inside, so he said to Tao Daqiang and Yang Yongqiang:
"I'll park the carriage outside first, and let's split up. Where are you two?" , one person carries a bag of fish, and one person carries a bag of fish A few rabbits went inside to find a suitable stall. Someone must have closed the stall and left. I will lead the carriage and set it up outside. When you sell out, come to me to get it."
"I'll sell it. Fish, get used to it," Yang Yongqiang said eagerly.
"Then I sell rabbits." Tao Daqiang didn't argue and asked, "Brother Long, how do you sell this rabbit?"
"The important ones are for five yuan, and the lighter ones are for three or four yuan. A big butcher shop "One kilogram of pork ribs costs eight pieces, and pork belly costs two. If we sell rabbits for one kilogram, it's not expensive," Li Long said.
“What about the fish?” Yang Yongqiang asked.
“One piece of carp, if you pick the crucian carp, it will cost you 90 cents, if you don’t pick it, it will cost you 80 cents if you shovel it into the pile.” Li Long thought for a while and said, “The five black ones are also one piece, and the silver carp will cost 90 cents.”< br>
After the price was set, Yang Yongqiang carried the scale and Tao Daqiang walked into the market carrying a bag of seven or eight rabbits.
Here, Li Long tied No. 76 to a tree on the roadside. He wiped his sweat first, then got a bag of fish from the car, laid out a plastic sheet, poured it on top, and placed it next to it. Several rabbits shouted loudly when they were ready.
Li Long found that there were many people in the market, but most of them were in a hurry. There were two more administrators in the market, four of them, patrolling back and forth in pairs of two. When the patrol officers left, there were sneaky guys following the pedestrians.
Very suspicious.
The management staff collected a management fee of 50 cents from Li Long and left. Before leaving, he reminded him:
“Pay attention to finances when selling things. When you find something suspicious, Shout and we will arrive in time.”
Li Long reacted immediately.
It’s been eighty-three years.
The location he chose was on the outskirts of the old street. The flow of people here was not large. Fortunately, Li Long’s voice was loud enough. After shouting for a while, people came one after another to watch the fish.
After hearing the price quoted by Li Long, those people quickly started picking.
This made Li Long seriously suspect that his quotation might be low.
Sure enough, after a while Yang Yongqiang came over with a bag and hurriedly told Li Long that there were still fish sellers in the market, but the average price of the fish they sold was between one yuan and one yuan, and it was indeed cheaper here.
But since the price has been marked, Li Long said to Yang Yongqiang:
"We will sell it like this today. We won't suffer any loss. We will come back as soon as the sale is finished. Look at the market, this There are quite a lot of people buying fish for a while, so we can seize the time to make a profit.”
I came here just to test the waters, and now it seems promising, so I will naturally make more money. Let’s see if we can get another TV set before the year ends.
The fish was sold quickly, and the rabbits were also open. A middle-aged man who was obviously well-dressed picked two rabbits, happily gave them eight yuan, and left with the rabbits.
Li Long guessed that this man should give one to his own family and one to his father-in-law's family. Of course, such a family is not short of money.
Li Long took the time to put a bundle of fodder for No. 76. When the fodder was not half eaten, Yang Yongqiang came back again, and then Tao Daqiang came back too.
Fish are significantly more popular than rabbits.
But fortunately, it seems that the goods should be finished before noon today.
After a while, when Yang Yongqiang came over, there was blood on his face. Li Long was startled and asked hurriedly what was going on.
"I met a thief!" Yang Yongqiang didn't care, "We had a fight!"
Hey! (End of this chapter)