Ecological Farm Author: Farmer on the Fly

Chapter 46: Picking

After leaving the Xu family, Tian Chuan did not return to the capital immediately, but went back to his hometown. Driving into the village, you have to pass by chicken farms and greenhouses.

When he arrived at the chicken farm, workers were feeding vegetables to the chickens that were moving outside. I saw the workers spilling chopped cabbage on the feeding point in the activity area, and groups of half-sized chickens crowded to compete for food, and the scene was very lively. Tagawa didn't enter the chicken farm, but just looked outside the fence for a while, then got in the car and drove towards the greenhouse.

There is still some distance from the greenhouse, and in the distance, I saw a red-colored steel building standing on the side of the road not far from the greenhouse, which should be the dining shed he asked his father to prepare.

In front of the color steel house, Tian Chuan unexpectedly saw a red banner hanging on the wall, with four big characters written on it: "local flavor". The door was open, and there was a lot of people inside, and the shack had been built into a restaurant, and it was already open.

Tagawa stopped the car, lifted the curtain of the cotton door and walked into the shed, a hot air mixed with the smell of food came to his face. The hall has eight large round tables and three private rooms on the sides. It was close to lunchtime, there were guests in the single room, and there was also a table in the hall, and the waiter was the second sister-in-law of the village's mobile restaurant.

When the second sister-in-law saw that it was Tian Chuan, she hurriedly stepped forward to greet her: "When will Xiao Chuan come back? ”

Tian Chuan replied: "Okay, prepare a table for me, half of each of the eight bowls, a large pot of fish, and half of the stew." I'll go to the greenhouse first and come back to eat later. The second sister-in-law agreed, and Tian Chuan went out to the greenhouse.

When he left the restaurant, he took out his mobile phone and called his parents and sister's family, inviting them to come and try the food. It was only on the phone that the second sister-in-law's family, who opened a mobile restaurant, heard about the purpose of Tian's father to build a color steel house, and took the initiative to ask for a contract for the color steel house here and opened the first hotel in the village. Tian Chuan persuaded his father to simply transfer the house to his second sister-in-law's family, so as to save himself from worrying about the business and avoid future ruptures.

Tian's father said: "Now the monthly rent is 600 yuan, your second sister-in-law is not sure if it can be maintained for a long time, and she doesn't dare to invest too much at one time, so let's talk about the transfer later." Tian Chuan no longer insisted.

After making the call, Tian Chuan walked into the greenhouse, and many of the strawberries in the shed were ripe, and a few of them had reached ten maturity and were about to spoil and deteriorate. He plucked a ripe strawberry and asked the workers in the shed, "How many days can this fruit last?"

The worker replied, "Two or three days, if you don't pick it in two or three days, it will be broken." ”

Tian Chuan nodded and said, "This auspicious is good." ”

He tasted a few strawberries, which tasted sweet and sour, and nodded in satisfaction.

He walked around the green pepper shed and the lettuce shed separately, and was very satisfied with the overall situation.

At lunchtime, he discussed the price of the harvest with his parents. The ordinary strawberries in the Beijing market are 15 yuan a catty, green peppers are 5 yuan, lettuce is 2 yuan, they grow pollution-free products, plus the cost of picking services, Tian Chuan prices these three products are 40 yuan, 15 yuan and 5 yuan respectively.

My parents are worried that the price is too high, but Tian Chuan is very relieved: "These are high-end customers, there is no problem with their spending power, they are more concerned about whether the product is safe and healthy, whether the service is thoughtful and comfortable, and the attention to price is not too high." ”

He asked his father to prepare some local specialties for sale the day after tomorrow, and the preliminarily selected ones were the winter vegetables stored by each family, homemade bean paste, shredded tofu, dried vegetables, pot paste, brine tofu, self-fried peanuts, dried wild vegetables, cornmeal, corn ballast, salted eggs, etc.

In addition, he asked his father to find the lame king who raised sheep in the village, buy two goats to kill them on the same day, and not to skin them after killing, but to remove them as if they were killing pigs. Forty catties of lamb with bones and skin are stewed directly, and the rest of the mutton is ready to be sold to pickers. Dad was worried that he wouldn't be able to sell it, but Tian Chuan said that if he couldn't sell it, he would freeze it and keep it for himself, so Tian Dad didn't say anything. Two sheep are more than 1,000 yuan, which is nothing to his family.

Tian Chuan had already called Lao Tian in the Jixian Farmhouse and asked him to send some hares and pheasants, and then some hawthorns, frozen persimmons, persimmons and other specialties. My mother has prepared the apples and pears that my uncle planted and is ready to try them out.

The taste of lunch is quite good, and the local flavor is strong, and Tagawa thinks it is enough to attract pickers from the city. After the meal, Tagawa and his second sister-in-law discussed the lunch and price to be prepared for the picking customers the day after tomorrow, and finally agreed on the fixed dish as follows:

Traditional vegetarian eight bowls: tofu, pot rice, vermicelli, vegetarian stew;

Stew: fish stew in a large pot, stewed meat and stewed vegetables, stewed mutton, button meat, meatballs, pheasant stewed pine mushroom.

Special cold dishes: fried river prawns, shredded radish, mixed vegetable core, dipped in pickles, smoked hare.

After setting the dishes, Tian Chuan and his parents returned home, chatted about the preparations for the Spring Festival, discussed the Spring Festival rewards of the chicken farm, greenhouse and fishing tackle shop, and finally decided to give the mother of the fishing tackle shop a bonus of 3,000 yuan, and the greenhouse and chicken farm workers each had a festival fee of 500 yuan, plus ten catties of hairtail, a box of fruit and five catties of mutton as New Year's goods, the total price of these New Year's goods was about 200 yuan, which was quite good. Tian Chuan reminded his parents that the New Year's goods should be sent before the twentieth day of the lunar month, and one copy should be prepared for each of the two professors of the Agricultural University and their students. Other awards for professors and students were given by Tagawa. It was already the sixteenth day of the lunar month, and the time was already very tight.

After the matter was discussed, Tagawa asked his parents to order mutton and ask his uncle to order fruit. Ready to be distributed on the nineteenth. I didn't stay at home for long, so I drove directly to the seafood wholesale market in Jinshi, wholesaled 20 boxes of 10 catties of large hairtail, and bought a lot of seafood by the way, and shipped it back to my home.

When I got home in the evening, after dinner, Tagawa chatted with my parents for a while and went to bed early. He has been busy for many days, and he slept very soundly today.

The next day, he was woken up by Zhu Dacheng's phone call, and it was almost nine o'clock when he looked at his watch. Zhu Dacheng came to him to discuss dividends, this year's 598 profit of more than 800,000 yuan, according to Tian Chuan's intentions, there will be no dividends, but Zhu Dacheng said that there will be money to be made in the first year, and he wants to take a good omen and take 500,000 yuan to divide it between the two, and Tian Chuan agreed.

Zhu Dacheng discussed with him about the year-end bonus for employees, and Tian Chuan pushed 625, claiming that he did not participate in management and did not care about these things.

Tagawa stayed at home for one night, and the next day was Saturday, and he returned to the capital in the afternoon.

Zhou said that he was going to take the people who participated in the picking activity home. Most of the applicants are family-based, with a total of more than 80 people. Tagawa has hired two buses that can pull more than 100 people, which is enough.

There was no word all night, and in the blink of an eye it was the next morning. The people who participated in the picking activity gathered in front of the farmer's gate, and a total of nearly 90 people arrived. Tian Chuan's Yuanfeng and Zhang Guangtao from the same dormitory arrived, Liu Meiting also participated, and Li Tao also came with his wife and children. The pickers are mainly employees of Agricultural University, families of civil servants and white-collar workers of large companies, and the overall quality of everyone is relatively high, which reduces a lot of trouble for the organization of activities.

There are nearly 20 bear children in the team, mainly from primary school, probably because parents want to take their children to learn about the countryside. At this time, there were basically no private cars, and public transportation was not developed, so there were not many opportunities to go out of the city and play in the countryside like this, and children and parents were very excited.

Everyone got into the car, led the way by Tian Chuan in front, went to the east half of the fourth ring road, transferred to the Beijing-Tianjin-Tang Expressway, got off the highway in Yongyang, and soon arrived at Tian Chuan's greenhouse. As soon as you get on the highway, the inside of the carriage is lively, and the children are chattering and discussing the scenery outside the window. In fact, there is no new scenery in the countryside in winter, the bare fields are close to the ground with dark green wheat seedlings, sparse trees with sparse leaves, and occasionally I see some slightly dilapidated villages, cows, chickens, dogs and other animals, as well as children playing at the edge of the village, the overall feeling is a little bleak.

After nearly two hours of driving, at half past nine in the morning, we finally arrived at the greenhouse of Tagawa's house.

Tian Chuan has communicated with you in advance about today's itinerary, first taking you to visit the fruit and vegetable shed, introducing the green pollution-free breeding project, and then visiting the chicken farm under the forest. At noon, I had lunch at my sister-in-law's place, picked and bought local specialties in the afternoon, and left for Beijing at about 3:30. Tagawa charges only for the amount picked.

Children have never seen crops grow, and even many parents have never seen them, so they are full of novelty and ask a variety of questions:

"Don't strawberries grow on trees?"

"How do you tell the difference between lettuce and cabbage?"

"Are there a lot of leeks next to the greenhouse?" (actually wheat seedlings)

"Chickens eat these earthworms, it's so dirty. ”

"What is the straw curtain on the roof of the greenhouse for?"

……

The morning passed quickly, and everyone had a great time. At noon, when I was taken to the local flavor restaurant of the temporary house, the interest was not high, it looked too simple, the price was cheap, and it didn't look like it was delicious, but fortunately it looked clean.

Tagawa recommends everyone to try the special cauldron dish. He had already ordered a table of eight bowls and stews to entertain his classmates and friends.

Tagawa's advice to everyone is to combine them freely and make a whole table a la carte, so that you can try more dishes. But for various reasons, people don't share many tables, only some colleagues or friends who originally knew each other shared the table.

Tian Chuan pulled Li Tao's family, Liu Meiting, Qi Gang, Yuanfeng, and Zhang Guangtao to a table, Zhang Guangtao brought his little girlfriend from the outer courtyard, and everyone sat at a big table lively. Yuanfeng's grandfather, Academician Yuan Guoqiang, wanted to come, but he had no choice but to give up because he received a notice to attend an important meeting.

At the end of the lunch, everyone generally responded well to these local flavors, and by the way, they became interested in the local specialties sold on the spot, and asked for the price, ready to buy them when they returned.

At half past one in the afternoon, the picking activity began, and everyone poured into several greenhouses to start picking. Most of us grew up in the city, and we basically had no experience of this kind of harvest, and they were very excited, especially the children in the crowd, who let out bursts of screams and raised the fruits they picked to show off to their parents.

Because they can't pick it, there have been many accidents of pinching the fruit or tearing off the plant, and the planting workers in the greenhouse have been constantly reminding or guiding the situation, and the situation has improved.

After about an hour of hectic activity, the harvest finally came to an end, and everyone had a good harvest. Tian Chuan had already asked several people to help weigh and charge in advance, and after another half an hour of busyness, the scene finally quieted down, and most of the people turned to the local style restaurants to patronize the stalls selling local products and buy some special food.

After preliminary statistics, a total of 450 kilograms of strawberries, 380 kilograms of green peppers, nearly 1,000 kilograms of lettuce, oil and wheat vegetables were sold, and the total income was nearly 30,000 yuan.