Mother Ye looked at the baskets of frog fish piled up on the open space and felt a little conflicted. She had to hire more people.
"Dongzi, are you sure these dried fish can be sold? If you only have a few dozen kilograms, we can set up a stall, but this quantity is too much, right?"
"Are you sure you want to continue drying it? There are more than 1,000 kilograms. If 10 kilograms can produce 2 or 3 kilograms, that's 300 to 400 kilograms. Plus there are so many more to dry tomorrow, the number will be even greater. How are you going to sell these 700 to 800 kilograms? Isn't it too much?"
"What if I can't sell them? I'll just keep them in my hands and won't even have room to store them."
Uncle Lin was carrying a basket to the scale and was surprised to hear this. "You frogs are going to keep them for yourselves to dry? No wonder you just said to pile them in the open space at the door. I thought you were worried that the purchase point would not have enough space and would be too crowded."
Ye Yaodong shrugged, spread his hands, and said helplessly: "It's only three and a half cents a pound, Uncle Lin, how can you sell it? It hurts me to sell it, it's so cheap, these ten or so baskets can only be sold for forty or fifty, it's too worthless."
Ah Cai interrupted and added, "There are too many. We can't help it. Everyone is paying the same price."
"Yeah, that's why I thought of drying it and selling it myself."
Uncle Lin pondered over what he said, "Are you sure someone wants it? Is it easy to sell?"
"I'm not sure. I haven't sold it before. But if it's so cheap, I'd like to give it a try. What if it sells well? If it doesn't, it doesn't matter. I won't lose much. It's a favor for friends and relatives to give it as a gift."
Ye Yaodong was wealthy and felt that with his current situation, he could afford to lose one or two hundred yuan.
"So I plan to take two or three days' worth of goods and dry them first, then go out to sea tomorrow to work for another day, and rest for two days the day after tomorrow to dry the nets. If there are any dried goods, I am thinking of taking advantage of my free time to transport two or three hundred kilograms to the entrance of the wholesale market and set up a stall to see how it goes."
Ah Cai interrupted again, "I think it's feasible. It depends on your luck and whether you can meet a dealer. If you are unlucky, you can probably sell a little bit, and there are many people in the market."
"Well, let's talk about it later. Anyway, I'll leave these back to continue drying them today."
Uncle Lin couldn't help but said, "After you dry these, if they sell well, remember to notify me so that I can also benefit from it and make more money. It will be another way to make money."
"Okay, no problem. I usually rely on Uncle Lin to take care of me. If these toad fish can be dried and sold for money, I will definitely tell you the first time."
"Okay, okay, then I'll wait for you to help me get rich."
"You're welcome. I don't know what it will look like yet..."
Mother Ye listened to their conversations and felt that they seemed quite optimistic. She couldn't help but feel that the difference wouldn't be much.
If you need to hire someone tomorrow, just hire another one!
After hearing what his father had just said, Lin was reluctant to sell it. After hesitating for a long time, he finally crossed out the toadfish that had just been weighed.
Ah Cai's eyes widened. "I've already weighed it, and you're crossing it out?"
"Haha, don't you think it's too cheap? Let's dry some of today's goods and try them ourselves. We haven't dried any fish this year, so let's dry some ourselves first."
Acai rolled his eyes. How could he not know what this old man was planning
Oh, what a big loss!
If I had known earlier, I wouldn’t have told Ye Yaodong that the dried fish was easy to sell and how much it could be sold for.
Seeing that the quantity he receives is getting smaller, and he has to keep all of them for drying, won't he earn much less
Although it is cheap and the profit is less, but the profit is small and the volume is large, so you can still make money if the quantity is large.
Damn, it’s harming oneself to benefit others.
Alas, he is such an honest man, and treats people too sincerely. If he were a little more cruel, he would not say so. He has lost a lot in one go, and if he continues like this, he may lose even more.
If Ye Yaodong really sold the fish at a high price, this guy would have to ask all his relatives to dry the fish together, or he would have collected the fish and sold it himself.
Damn it! What a loss!
Ye Yaodong also understood Uncle Lin's idea. He should be thinking of drying some of them in advance and keeping them there as a reserve. In case he can sell them for money, they can follow suit immediately.
Father Ye smiled and helped, "It's cheap. The weather has been nice recently, so it's good to get some more sun. If you want to eat it, you can have it anytime. Who knows if there will be good weather next? If there's no good weather, there won't be any food to go with the meal."
"That's what I mean."
Ah Cai said unhappily, "Okay, just row it, and then take your toadfish away."
"Hurry up and drag the stuff over from Adong's side to be weighed. We've been waiting here all night and haven't even eaten yet. Hurry up and finish your work and go back to eat. It will be hard to get a car if we wait this late."
"Okay, right away."
Ye Yaosheng patted him on the shoulder and said, "I'll push that cart of frogfish home for you first, and then I'll come out and push it again."
"Okay, go ahead. Catch two for yourself and cook them. Let my mother go back with you. Just ask her to push them out later. You should also go back early to eat."
"No, no, you asked me to do a job, so I must finish the work for you before I can leave."
"Well."
Ye Yaodong felt that his cousin was really good. Good bamboo shoots come from bad bamboo. His second uncle would not do anything without profit. He was a very shrewd person. The brother Asheng he raised turned out to be a good bamboo shoot, but his luck was a little bad.
Today, these goods were sold for 162.3 yuan. He borrowed Acai's scale and weighed the frog fish again. It was indeed a little more than yesterday. Excluding the bamboo baskets, there were 1,420 kilograms.
Father Ye smiled until his old face wrinkled into a chrysanthemum. Hearing Uncle Lin's constant praise, he hurriedly explained.
"Didn't I tell you that some of the catch was from longline fishing? Dongzi put 1,000 hooks there, so we're here so late today. Otherwise, we could have come back earlier."
"Tomorrow there won't be that many. All the hooks have been collected. I guess I can only sell them for a few dozen or a hundred yuan tomorrow. I can't go the day after tomorrow. I have to collect the nets and clean them."
"Dongzi is becoming more and more capable and successful. He is bold and does more than others and earns more."
Father Ye quickly said modestly: "What do you mean by achievement? There are many people in the village who are more successful than him. Don't praise him. If you praise him, he will become proud. I will blame you if he doesn't work."
“Hahaha~”
The two groups loaded their respective goods onto their own carts, and it took them several trips back and forth to finish moving all the goods.
Ye Yaodong made two more trips than them. Not only did he catch more toadfish than them, he also had ten baskets of hooks.
He waited at the dock to watch the goods until the last shipment, and then he went home with them.
After returning, before stepping into the courtyard, he saw rows of bamboo flats standing against the wall in the open space in front of his eldest sister-in-law and second sister-in-law's houses. They were covered with large and small toad fish, and the entire entrance was covered with them.
"There are quite a lot. Are they all covered with sunlight?"
Mother Ye said, "Your yard is even more full. We have no choice but to pile the fish in front of your two sisters-in-law's houses because there are too many of them. Otherwise, I would be worried if they were piled outside. I was afraid that some wild cats would jump out and steal the fish."
"This is easy. Put up a few bamboo poles in the yard, pull a few lines, and hang them high. After killing the fish, put the lines through them and hang them up to dry in the sun. This will also save you from running out of bamboo poles, and you don't have to worry about the drying position being too low and being dragged away by wild cats."
"Well, we can do this tomorrow. Hang it up to dry. There's nowhere to dry it now."
They walked into the yard while talking.
Lin Xiuqing came over quickly and asked, "Why are there so many toadfish again at night?"
She was a little afraid of killing fish. Although she had to kill a lot of fish every time she came back in the past, she never killed as much as she did today.
After holding a kitchen knife for a whole day, she felt her hands were shaking a little, and this was even when she was breastfeeding, cooking, and taking a break from time to time.
She had just washed her hands, but she still felt a strong fishy smell on her body. She had to take a shower later.
She would have to continue killing so many tomorrow, and she heard that there were even more today. She couldn't help but feel a little nervous.
"1,400 kilograms is 100 to 200 kilograms more than yesterday. If you can't handle it, hire someone else tomorrow morning. Mom said we can just hire our neighbor next door."
When she heard that they were going to hire another person, she immediately breathed a sigh of relief. She had to carry Ye Xiaoxi on her back the whole day to work, otherwise she wouldn't be able to do any work.
As the months passed, the child became more and more active. She could crawl when she was just over seven months old. She couldn't stay in the room without someone watching her.
While Ye Yaodong was speaking, he also noticed the braces wrapped around her body, and he quickly strode forward to look behind her.
"Why did you carry it on your back? Why didn't you put it in her room at night?"
At that time, there were no special straps, but a large and long piece of wide blue coarse cloth.
Simply wrap the child up and put him/her on your back, keeping the child close to the adult's back. Then the adult takes a piece of coarse cloth and wraps it around the child's neck and waist, then ties a knot.
"I didn't put it down in a hurry after finishing the work. It's convenient to do things with it on my back."
"Put her down, she's already asleep."
Lin Xiuqing tilted her head to look behind her and realized that she had fallen asleep. She smiled and said, "It's easier to sleep with me on your back. I don't cry, make a fuss, or look for you."
"Well, let's pile these fish in the yard first and cover them with rags. We can kill them tomorrow. We just sprinkled some ice cubes inside."
"good."