Carrying a Jurassic on me
Chapter 1081 - 561: Secretary Jiao Comes to Work_2

Chapter 1081: Chapter 561: Secretary Jiao Comes to Work_2

Until someone who couldn’t hold their tongue mentioned the apple trees that were currently being grown.

By this year, the apple trees had reached the time when they should have been bearing fruit officially. By now, even the slowest person had realized that the situation with these trees wasn’t as initially expected.

In Sancha River village, it wasn’t that there were no fruit trees at all. Some people nearby had peach trees—in fact, peaches from Tanghe County had a bit of fame, but they were difficult to transport, didn’t store well, and fell in price as soon as the season hit.

Besides peaches, there were also persimmons, pears, apricots, and plums, all planted in large areas. Many were aged fruit trees that could bend branches with their fruit as they ripened each year.

As for jujube trees, they were even more common. Yan Fei, who ran the blacksmith shop, had one in his courtyard.

But whether it was the trees that each household grew for themselves or the fruit orchards, they were all small-scale and too scattered to form a large economic benefit.

Rural people lacked economic awareness. Take jujube trees for example. You could easily find dozens in a village, but no one sold them commercially. They just kept some at home and gave some away to relatives and friends; that was enough.

These fruit trees were common in Sancha River village, and because of their ubiquity, nobody realized they could be economically beneficial.

Apple trees were exceptionally rare; they were virtually unseen. And the few that existed bore fruit that was incredibly small and didn’t taste great.

The newly planted apple trees, however, were what everyone was pinning their hopes on to make money. But, ironically, these so-called special varieties of apple trees grew worse than the neglected ones in the village.

In fact, in retrospect, one could ponder why out of all the fruit trees grown for generations on this land—peaches, plums, apricots, pears, jujubes, loquat fruit, hawthorn, pomegranates, oranges, figs, and even a small number of chestnuts and walnuts—why were there no apple trees?

This was a question destined to be unanswered—this land was simply unsuitable for apple trees.

Before the county organized the large-scale planting of apple trees, they had invited people from the Agricultural University and the Agricultural Institute in the city to inspect the area, test the soil, and survey the environmental conditions. Everything necessary was done, but the apple trees that were planted barely bore fruit and grew strangely slowly—last year, a few trees had apples, but they were small and sour, not even palatable for those who had grown them.

So, mentioning the apple tree planting had become a sore spot for the whole county.

Now that someone brought it up, there was naturally dissatisfaction.

Just as one person, who was right in the middle of working, complained a couple of sentences, another beside him, remembering that Boss Yan was watching from above, quickly reminded him to grumble less.

Thanks to the reminder, everyone saw Boss Yan, and those ’odd words’ immediately ceased.

Secretary Jiao’s heart must have been troubled. Governing an area and facing such a problem was an intolerable mistake for him.

Yet, it was an unforeseen issue. Nowadays, everyone spoke of science; the land here had been rigorously studied and verified scientifically, and growing apple trees should have posed no problems.

Watching Secretary Jiao wield the spade with increasing strength, Yan Fei and Secretary Xiao Zhao didn’t know what to say and simply walked to the side.

After a while, Secretary Jiao came over. Seeing both their faces looking troubled, he laughed and said, "Alright, this mistake is mine. Now that the mistake is made, we can only hope not to make such errors in the future. Don’t think too much about it, we still have to look forward. Not to mention anything else, once this place is built, having the villagers raise cattle is a good way forward, isn’t it?"

Seeing his forced smile, Yan Fei deliberately shared some good news, "That’s true, I reckon before our facilities here are finished, the clients in Hong Kong will need to expand business. By then, I’ll be slaughtering even more cattle each month. As long as we maintain this momentum, by this time next year before I leave for college, doubling the current scale of cattle farming won’t be an issue."

Secretary Jiao truly looked relieved hearing this, "That’s great, let’s work together. Without going too far, at least you can lead these villagers to better days. Look at their spirit while they work. If they can’t live a good life, it means we, the leaders, aren’t doing enough!"

Their spirits were indeed strong. With only a few slacking off already and the temptation of a beef feast—perhaps some were thinking that even if they worked slowly and missed the beef, there was still beef bone soup every day, which was also good. But such thoughts were rare. People have a competitive nature; seeing others work hard and get meat while they would have none, who could stand it?

Secretary Xiao Zhao, seeing that Secretary Jiao’s mood was not so heavy, joked alongside, "What I admire most is Boss Yan’s confidence in going to university. Whenever he talks about it, it seems as easy to me as herding cattle..."

Secretary Jiao suddenly laughed, "I had forgotten that Xiao Fei is still a high school student! By the way, Xiao Fei, with all your busyness, do you still have time for your studies?"

Yan Fei confidently replied, "Don’t worry! For me, getting into college is truly easier than herding cattle. I’m not bragging, but don’t believe me? Just pick out our high school textbooks, flip to any page, read a sentence, and I can tell you which page it is."

Both men were stunned, asking almost in unison, "Really?"