Her Cultivation Diary - Chapter 476

Chapter 476: 476. Add a cover to the back hill_1 Chapter 476: 476. Add a cover to the back hill_1 The summer this year was especially hot; on the very first day of Minor Heat, temperatures had already soared to 39 degrees Celsius.

Vegetable vendor Old Zhao drove over to Song Tan’s house and guzzled down two bowls of silver fungus soup in the yard before he vehemently wiped off his sweat:
“This heat is way too intense!”

Wu Lei, who was frantically moving watermelons from the back hill to the truck, cast him a resentful glance–
His daily source of laborious pain was this very person, Old Zhao, with his thick eyebrows and big eyes!

Damn it! If he wasn’t picking vegetables in the garden early in the morning, then he was out in the scorching sun picking watermelons in the afternoon…
Now that he had been working at Song Tan’s place for half a month, his entire body had turned a dark tan, and when he looked in the mirror, he could only flaunt his white teeth (cavities hidden inside, out of sight)…
And because he was getting darker and darker, Lili… Lili had recently refused to even accept video calls!

Wu Lei was extremely upset in his heart.

But he gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, with a tragic determination in his heart to struggle for love–
Lili, you just wait for me! Once I fight for our future down payment, we will never be apart again!

Zhang Yanping looked at his figure and sighed with a sense of superiority and melancholy:
“Good thing I’m a bit smarter… You say he works hard here, but with that effort, he could easily find a similar job somewhere else and earn at least two or three times the salary he gets here every month, right?”

“Work it out for a full two years, let’s not talk about saving up for a down payment, but it wouldn’t be a problem to save a couple of hundred thousand for his family… Why does he–”
“Who knows?”

Song Tan also glanced at the increasingly robust figure of Wu Lei:
“He probably just loves his home too much.”

Zhang Yanping: …I’m afraid you mean he’s just foolish.

Just then, they heard Old Zhao sighing again, “With the weather so hot this year, your watermelons are sure to sell for a long time! Why didn’t you plant more at the beginning?”

Wasn’t that plenty already?

Song Tan was speechless–if she hadn’t run out of money after renting the hill, she could have divided this block of watermelon land into over a dozen portions, planting a little of everything she wanted to eat.

Now that Old Zhao had become an important partner, his treatment had been upgraded, and she poured him a cup of old tea leaf water; the fragrant tea was right in front of him, yet he was still frustrated:
“I wouldn’t say this if it were ordinary watermelons, but your family’s melons are so delicious–sigh! You don’t know, we don’t sell to other places, but now, every afternoon, people drive all the way here just to buy.”

“They’re willing to pay over a hundred bucks for a single melon, asking for at least 100 per order… They’re coming here to buy in bulk for others!”

But there was no helping it, he was playing the long game here, and the daily supply of watermelons wasn’t that large; giving away a hundred would leave his regular customers unattended, so he could only give up.

Song Tan didn’t care about whether they were resellers or wholesalers or middlemen…

After all, she only had so many watermelons, and even if wholesalers came knocking, she couldn’t provide much at once.

And because the quantity was limited, for the time being, she hadn’t worried about finding wholesalers.

Once this year was over and the reputation grew, she wouldn’t have to lift a finger next year; customers would come to her.

Old Zhao, having manned a market stand for many years, had learned a fair bit about business, and now he prattled on:
“I’m telling you, Peach Forest isn’t really suitable for growing watermelons. No matter how much space you have, it still blocks sunlight–watermelons aren’t meant for intercropping!”

“Next year, why not just plant soybeans and find a separate hilltop for the watermelons–you rented another hilltop, didn’t you?”

With more land available, it was definitely possible to plan it out like this.

Song Tan replied, “Don’t worry.”

She turned her head and received a call from the logistics company–her fruit boxes had arrived.

Old Zhao got excited:
“How many in the first batch again?”

“1000. They’re at the suburban logistics center, I’ll go pull them back tomorrow.”

Old Zhao waved his hand: “Pull what? Isn’t the logistics center just out of the city in that area? There’s someone on duty 24 hours there. I’ll just bring them along when I pull the vegetables tomorrow.”

“The driver is my own nephew, it’s fine to get him to do some work–and if you like, throw in a watermelon for him!”

“Sure thing!”

Moving and lifting, Song Tan was quite generous: “Make it two!”

Old Zhao immediately smiled with eyes narrowed: “Good! Rest assured! I’ll get it done for you!”

Then he looked at her expectantly: “Now that you’ve got these boxes, when are you selling the peaches on the mountain?”

Song Tan thought for a moment: “Tomorrow, I guess. As soon as the packaging boxes arrive, we’ll arrange picking and simultaneously sell them in the live broadcast–do you want some? To make it convenient, this batch is sold by the box.”

“How’s it sold? What’s the price?”

Old Zhao instantly perked up.

Song Tan: “…I haven’t decided on the price yet. Try them tonight first.”

Initially, they planned to price it at 40 yuan per jin, and everyone thought it was a bit expensive, given that the big peaches from the mountain weighed half a jin each. But then they casually picked a few to try at home…

Well then!

Zhang Yanping and Xin Jun disagreed.

Now, trying to get a taste of the ripest peaches, they would settle on a final price.

“You really are…” Not in a hurry at all!

They would start picking tomorrow, start live selling tomorrow, and yet the price hadn’t been decided tonight… Old Zhao was speechless.

Now that he had sat in the air-conditioned room for a while and had drunk two bowls of chilled silver ear soup, the heat in his body subsided, and seeing that the sun had set, he slapped his thigh resolutely: “I’ll go up the mountain to have a look.”

Song Tan thought for a moment, and then followed with a basket in hand: “Alright, we’ll pick some to try first; I’ll bring a few back for you later.”

That really touched Old Zhao–
“You really are generous now!”

The way he said it… they still had 6000 fruit boxes to follow, didn’t they? Having someone bring them on the route saved her the trouble of running to the city area again and again!

But there was no need to say all that in too much detail.

When they climbed up the hill at the back, Old Zhao opened his mouth in awe at the sight of the high nets over the orchard: “This is like building a house; you’re taking security a little too seriously, aren’t you?”

Song Tan also heaved a sigh: “You think I want to? It’s all because the birds keep stealing the fruit before it’s even ripe, and I can’t chase them away…”

After all, with 20 acres of land, if you chase them off one side, they go to the other. Even if Da Wang ran his legs off around the mountain, he couldn’t guard everything, so he decided to set up a layer of netting, like a 360-degree openwork lid, to keep a close guard.

They tried to make the mesh as fine as possible to prevent all sizes of birds from getting through.

Old Zhao looked around for a while, then glanced at the crowd of especially bold birds perched on the outer net, unable to help feeling perplexed: “Don’t they have those really fine silk nets now? They seem lighter than this, and your rope seems a bit heavy… Why not use that?”

Song Tan sighed:
“The Forestry Bureau people said that many of those nets are sticky and can easily snag the birds’ claws, making them unable to fly. If a Guoyi or Guoer kind gets stuck, I might even get in trouble.”

“So, just to be safe, I’d rather use this thicker rope, as if adding a cover to the hill at the back.”