1983 Small Island, Starting From a Large Farmer

“Due to the influence of cold air from the north, the temperature in southern coastal cities is lower than normal. Please be prepared for cold weather.”

 Although the weather is very cold.

The farmers on Kedandan Island are very busy, and the pier is full of shouts for people to help pick up kelp seedlings.

“Lao Chun, are you free tomorrow? Come and help me plant kelp seedlings. I’ll give you three yuan a day.”

"It's no use even giving me five yuan. My hands are covered in frostbite. Now they're itching to death. I can't even pinch them even if I want to."

“Then is your scumbag free?”

 “The one from my house went to help Zhang Jinsha.”

  The last month of 1984.

This is the busiest month on Dandan Island. There are more than 20 farmers on the island, including Chenjia Village, raising a total of more than 800 acres of kelp.

At this time, someone found out what Li Duoyu said to his leaders in the newspaper last year. Everyone found that he didn’t seem to be bragging. He had really made kelp farming bigger and stronger.

 For a whole month, half of the villagers on Dandan Island have been collecting kelp seedlings, and the kelp farmers are all competing for people to collect kelp seedlings.

 But because the weather was so cold, many people's hands and feet were covered in frostbite within a week of being pinched, making them unable to do anything even if they wanted to.

This has also resulted in the labor cost of clipping kelp seedlings directly doubling. Originally, the maximum wage for clipping kelp seedlings was two yuan a day, but now the wage for clipping kelp seedlings is at least four yuan a day.

 If you are quick with your hands and feet, making five or six yuan a day is not a problem.

 Luckily, Li Duoyu had enough relatives, and in less than half a month, they took the lead in collecting all the more than 200 acres of kelp seedlings.

Li Duoyu has 100 acres here, the eldest uncle’s family has 100 acres, the third uncle has 50 acres, and the younger brother-in-law Chen Dongqing has 20 acres.

 During this period, Li Duoyu also took the time to attend Chen Wenchao's wedding.

 Marriage in this era is quite simple and does not pay so much attention to the sense of ceremony.

The two parties take a wedding photo.

 Then go to the town to register and you will be officially married.

As for the three or four big items, even in this era, they were standard equipment for wealthy people. When ordinary people got married, they would only buy a few enamel basins and a sewing machine at most.

 Refrigerators, color TVs, and washing machines are simply out of the question.

After all, for fishermen, instead of spending so much money on luxuries, it would be more practical to save more money and build a big boat.

On their wedding day, Chen Wenchao and Liu Xiaolan mostly listened to Xi Niang’s good words, and then worshiped heaven and earth, their ancestors, and their elders.

 Then, there was a banquet for relatives and friends, and various toasts. Since Liu Xiaolan had more brothers and her younger sister got married, they, who were brothers-in-law, did not get much benefit, and they still felt a little resentful.

On the wedding day, Chen Wenchao drank a lot of wine.

 And in this month.

 Li Duoyu’s eel pond has finally been dug.

 Seven large ponds.

Li Duoyu also upgraded the original simple moso bamboo factory building and built six shallow cement ponds specifically for raising eel seedlings.

Li Duoyu, who has been here before, knows very well that fish cannot be directly raised in newly dug ponds, and they must go through a series of treatments.

 First of all, add water to the new pond and soak it for ten days and a half. Observe whether there are any leaks in the pond. If there are leaks, plug them up.

 Next, observe whether there are any small fry appearing in the pond, and if so, clean them all.

He used to be curious about why fish fry appeared in newly dug ponds, but he later found out after hearing other people's stories.

 Some land with relatively low terrain and close to streams may still have fish eggs in the soil, even if it was not a pond before.

Thousand-year-old grass seeds, ten-thousand-year-old fish!

During the rainy season some time ago, Li Duoyu had already discovered that after soaking in the water in these newly dug ponds, some small miscellaneous fish fry appeared inexplicably. For eel ponds, these small miscellaneous fish are unnecessary, so the last step is to use quicklime to disinfect the pond and purify these small fry.

In addition to outdoor earth ponds, indoor cement ponds also need to be treated. Since cement ponds are relatively alkaline, they usually used oxalic acid or alum to purify them in previous lives.

 But in this era, both of these things are difficult to buy, so Li Duoyu directly used the stupidest method, boiling the cement pool at high temperature.

 There were several iron pots set up there, heating hot water constantly, and then pouring it into the cement pool.

 Chen Dongqing, who was "watching" and "learning" the whole time, would sigh from time to time. He was too lazy to ask Li Duoyu why he knew so much.

No matter how I ask, I can’t figure out the reason, but I feel a little stupid.

 After the preliminary work was prepared, Li Duoyu was officially ready to start catching eel seedlings. I heard from some women who were begging for Xiaohai that some eel seedlings had been caught recently at the beach.

Li Duoyu also looked at the calendar. It will be January in two days, and the eel fry are indeed coming.

But before catching the seedlings, there is one more priority thing, that is, Li Duoyu must first catch a small thing called a red worm.

Red worms are the larvae of chironomids and generally live in smelly ditches.

The method of catching them is also very simple, just get a piece of gauze, and then shovel it down where there are red worms.

Dig up the mud worms directly, then put them into gauze, shake them in clean water and wash them. After all the soil is cleaned, the red worms are what’s left.

After the eel breeding plant was built, in addition to Chen Wenchao, Li Duoyu had two more employees, namely his brother Li Yaoguo and his second sister-in-law Zhu Xiuhua.

 Their official first day of work was to go to the smelly ditch to catch red worms with Li Duoyu.

After learning about the work content, Li Yaoguo wanted to take sick leave on his first day at work, but was dragged off the bed by Zhu Xiuhua.

 Five people wearing rain boots kept searching for red worms in the smelly ditch full of foreign objects.

Li Yaoguo vomited while scouring. He had never done such dirty work since he was a child, especially in the smelly ditch, which often contained the excrement of children.

　　"This is so beautiful and tight. The tuba won't go to the latrine, so why did it end up in the ditch?"

Li Duoyu smiled.

“If they hadn’t stopped here, there might not have been so many red worms.”

And their strange behavior also attracted the attention of the villagers.

 If it had been anyone else, everyone would probably have said it was disgusting, but if it had been Li Duoyu, everyone suddenly felt that red worms might become very expensive.

Many villagers couldn't help but want to catch them too, but they had no idea what Li Duoyu used to catch red worms.

 In fact, even Chen Dongqing from the Fisheries Research Institute was confused, but he was still tricked by Li Duoyu into coming here to catch red worms.

 Chen Dongqing refused at first, but when the big boss Li Duoyu offered the price of two yuan per pound of red worms, he knelt down on the spot.

 Less than two days.

They dug through the entire village’s stinking ditches, but they only caught less than twenty kilograms of red worms. After all, the island had little fresh water resources and relatively few stinking ditches.

The number of these red worms is far from enough. Li Duoyu has seven large ponds, each of which can support at least 7,000 adult eels.

Li Duoyu needs to catch at least nearly 50,000 eel seedlings. Considering that his breeding equipment is not very good, if the mortality rate is taken into account, he will have to raise at least 100,000 eel seedlings in the early stage.

Since twenty kilograms of red worms can only be kept for two or three days at most, Li Duoyu had no choice but to broadcast a red worm acquisition broadcast through the village loudspeaker.

We will continue to collect red worms for a period of time at the price of two yuan per catty.

 After hearing this price, some villagers who originally wanted to catch red worms slapped their thighs in anger.

Many people ran to the town one after another and picked up this inconspicuous little red bug from the smelly ditches in other villages.

Li Duoyu has already prepared a special net gear for catching eel fry, and can start fishing tomorrow. (End of chapter)