Chapter 1697 End of the Year Trivia
The pigeon meat that had been boiled for hours had no chewiness at all, so it all went to the dogs in the circle.
After stuffing a few more buns into his mouth, Yang Dongxu prepared to go to the street to get some eight-treasure porridge or drink some soup. Drinking tea early in the morning always feels too light, so it’s better to go to the street to find something to drink.
When buying soup, I saw that bean curd (thousand sheets of tofu) and fried dough sticks were very tasty, so I ordered one. Two bean curds and a large fried dough stick, put coriander, garlic juice, some pickled vegetables and diced radish, and an egg for only two yuan.
A total of three yuan plus soup is really too cheap. You should know that soup is made with boiling chicken soup and eggs, so it’s really a good deal for breakfast.
“I don’t have to cook at night. I can have all kinds of fish and meat at noon, and some chicken soup bean brain at night is also good.” Yang Dongxu couldn’t help thinking while biting the chewy bean curd and fried dough sticks in his mouth.
"Why did you come out for breakfast today?" Just after finishing the bean curd and fried dough sticks in his hand and preparing to drink the last mouthful of soup, he happened to meet Daliang leading his son out for breakfast.
"I didn't cook enough porridge this morning, so I wanted to come out for a bowl of soup. I saw that the bean curd and fried dough sticks were good, so I bought one." Yang Dongxu finished the soup in the bowl and stood up to pay, "Pay for what you eat together."
"I'll pay for you. Your meal is three or two yuan." Daliang said with a smile.
"Okay, I won't be polite with you. I'll go to the pig pen to take a look. It's probably very busy today." Yang Dongxu said with a smile.
Although the pig farm doesn't sell big pigs anymore, the piglets will be sold according to the number of sows produced. After so many years of breeding, the piglets in Yang's pig farm are of very good breed.
At the end of the year, the big pigs in each pigpen should be sold or slaughtered. The pigpen is empty, so choosing a few piglets has become one of the purchases at the end of the year.
This year, the spring came early. The Spring Festival falls on February 7th in the Gregorian calendar, and the beginning of spring begins on February 4th before the New Year.
So it is not very cold after the New Year. The piglets can be brought home at this time, adapted to the pigpen, and grow meat after the late spring cold.
Raise them for more than half a year, and catch two more piglets before the wheat harvest. In this way, the big pigs can be sold before or after the autumn harvest. The piglets caught before the wheat harvest can be raised until the end of the year. They can be sold or slaughtered during the Spring Festival. In this way, two batches of pigs are raised in a year to subsidize some household expenses.
After all, there are few pigs raised in rural areas now, and the cost of feeding is not high. What platycodon, corn stalks, small sweet potatoes that cannot be sold during the autumn harvest, pumpkins, etc. can all be fed to pigs.
"Don't forget to leave two for my family."
"Got it." Yang Dongxu waved his hand.
The two pigs left by Daliang's family are not raised by him and his wife. He is now working in a truck company in the county, and his wife has no time to raise pigs and sheep because she is in charge of the store.
These are all raised by the older generation, that is, Yang's father's generation. With the passing of their grandfather's generation, breeding and farming have basically become the main business of Yang's father's generation.
That is to say, the development of Chinese herbal medicine cultivation in rural areas is relatively good now, otherwise it is basically impossible for young and strong laborers like Daliang to farm at home.
Because farming alone is now impossible to support the whole family, only when the couple goes out to work and the children are left to their parents, the family's economic environment can be improved. The era of only digging food from the land is over.
When I came to the pig farm, many people came to buy piglets. Two or three families in a village drove a three-wheeled battery car with bamboo or rattan baskets on it and wheat straw inside. One car pulled five or six piglets, and also pulled two or three people and a lot of New Year goods back.
"Why are you here now?" When he arrived, Zhou Ya had already come.
"The buns are a bit greasy, so I went to the street to drink some soup to moisten my stomach. I saw Daliang and chatted with him for a while. You go out, I'll catch them, you don't have enough strength." Yang Dongxu said as he returned the rubber shoes next to him.
Although the pigpen is quite clean and there is no accumulation of pig manure. But if he goes into the pigpen to catch piglets for a few hours, the soles of his shoes will smell bad for several days when he returns home.
"Then you do it." Zhou Ya took off the rubber gloves in her hand and handed them over.
Before Yang Dongxu came, Zhou Ya had helped catch several piglets. Although the piglets were not big, they were very strong.
If the old people in the company she used to manage saw the usually elegant and virtuous Queen Zhou, she would be so fast, accurate and ruthless in catching piglets, and she would definitely break their worldviews.
The piglets sold to the outside are generally about 30 kilograms and have been weaned for more than half a month. 26 or 7 kilograms are more common, and at most they are just over 30 kilograms.
It is more cost-effective to buy a piglet of this weight. If it is bigger, about 30 or 40 kilograms, the farmer who buys it will lose money. After all, the price of piglets is generally three times the price of large pigs. The bigger the piglets are, the more disadvantageous it is to buy them.
They cannot be too small. If they are too small, they cannot eat well and are prone to illness. So about 30 kilograms is the best. The piglets at this time are basically 40 to 50 days old.
15-day-old piglets can basically be fed in small amounts. After a full month, they can be fed in large quantities and reduce milk intake. Now that they have been weaned and fed completely for a period of time at 40 to 50 days old, their stomachs have adapted and it is easier to raise them at home.
Yang Xu and Yang's father were catching piglets in the pigpen. A group of people stood outside the pigpen to pick them. They pointed at the one they wanted, grabbed the front and back legs directly, tied them with straw ropes, and carried them to the side to weigh and pay.
Under normal circumstances, families that are not particularly poor will not buy on credit, and basically all transactions are done in cash on the spot. After all, the Chinese New Year is coming soon at the end of the year.
At this time, the creditor Yang Dad may feel that it is nothing to owe money, but the debtor feels a little uneasy during the Chinese New Year. After all, this debt is dragged from the end of the year to the next year, which is equivalent to the family owing debts for two years, which is considered quite unlucky by many people.
Therefore, many times at the end of the year, many people who owe debts will sell pigs, sheep, etc., to clear the family's debts and have a good year.
It has been busy all morning, especially around 11 o'clock in the morning, when people who go to the street to buy New Year's goods come to take one or two piglets home after buying everything, and line up a long line.
Originally, forty or fifty piglets were prepared to buy for two or three days, but they were all sold out in one morning.
The piglets after the Chinese New Year will not be sold to the public, so that when the half-grown pigs in the pigpen are grown and can be sold, the piglets after the Chinese New Year will also be half-grown, so that the pigs in the pig farm can continue to be slaughtered.
There is no need to sell the pigs in batches, so the farm is empty all of a sudden. The workers are busy for a while, and then they are bored and have nothing to do for a while.
"Okay, you guys go back, take the money bag back to check the accounts, your mother and I will clean up here." After the piglets were sold, Yang's father waved his hand to let Yang Dongxu and Zhou Ya stop here, go back to check the accounts and prepare lunch.
In addition to the Yang family, grandpa also came to help today, but he only helped to maintain order, and he couldn't work, after all, he was over 70 years old.
The piglets struggled hard, so it was impossible for him to catch the piglets, so most of his work was chatting with people who came to buy piglets, or helping to weigh them.
Today is the market day, my uncle's family is selling goods on the street and didn't come to help, grandma is helping over there, and the two sons have one old man helping each family.
"Okay, what do you want to eat at noon?" Yang Dongxu greeted Aunt Hua, and he had to look at her to cook. He and Zhou Ya can do the big dishes, but there is also an old man Xuan who knows how to eat at home.
Some odd jobs, such as washing vegetables, cutting vegetables, and making soup, he was too lazy to do them anyway, so he needed Aunt Hua to help.
"Just make some, the piglets are out of the market, and the half-grown pigs are fed in the middle of the night. Let's prepare some hard dishes for lunch." Yang's father said.
The "just make some" he said was obviously a casual courtesy, and the next sentence stated his own requirements.
The pigs in the pig farm are fed twice a year, one in the morning when they get up, and another meal in the middle of the night, that is, at five or six o'clock in the afternoon. For meat growth, some feed is added.
So at noon, get a little tipsy and take a nap, and get up at three or four in the afternoon to prepare pig food. Don't live a good life.
"Okay, got it." Yang Dongxu responded.
He and Zhou Ya left the pig farm and walked towards the old house. The old house is not popular all year round, so people basically choose to cook there at the end of the year.
"I'll talk to my aunt and tell them not to cook at noon. Let's eat at our house." Zhou Ya said after leaving the pig farm.
"Okay, let's prepare a few more dishes. By the way, find Wenchen. I don't know where he went. He didn't know to go home without finding him for lunch."
"He should be playing with Jiejie. I'll find him later." Zhou Ya nodded.
In the past two years, the family almost had a big conflict because of whether Jiejie should go to a good school in the city.
In the past two years, the little aunt basically didn't mention it, because first during the high school entrance examination, this kid relied on connections to get into the No. 1 Middle School with less than 500 points.
The little aunt rented a house next to the 11th Middle School to watch Jiejie go to high school. As a result, this kid is already 17 years old and in the third year of high school. It's hard to describe his grades.
Even if he went to the affiliated middle schools of Yanjing and Modu, he would have no hope of entering the university if he didn't find connections, donate teaching buildings or infrastructure to the school.
So the little aunt simply gave up, and seemed to realize that her child was not a good student at all.
The current consideration is that 18 years old is still too immature. If the college entrance examination is not smooth next year, should this kid find a technical college to learn some skills, or go out to work directly.
However, although Jiejie's academic performance is not good, he has good communication skills. Although he can't be a class monitor with poor grades, after all, class teachers and students have to save face, but he has been a sports committee member from the first year of high school to the third year of high school.
In school, he is not a one-call-all response, but this kid is an active participant in any activities held in the class and any sports meeting held in the school, and he does a good job in everything he is assigned to do.
So if such a character and communication skills are cultivated, he will definitely be a first-class sales talent, and then cultivate management experience, and his future prospects will be no less than that of going to college.
It's just that parents still attach great importance to college diplomas, as if to make up for the regret that they can't go to college.
But in fact, in today's society, academic qualifications are certainly a stepping stone, but ability is also very important.
Especially for people like Jiejie who don't need a stepping stone, academic qualifications are really not a necessity, and ability is the first priority.
What, this master's degree, that doctorate, is just a halo, whether it is or not is really useless to Jiejie.