Carrying a Jurassic on me
Chapter 738 - 372: The Five Little Tigers of the Guan Family_1

Chapter 738: Chapter 372: The Five Little Tigers of the Guan Family_1

Once farm work starts, there’s no time for rest.

The workers keep busy until the noonday sun is at its fiercest. Only then, when the folks back home have made the lunch, do they return to eat.

Meals are usually simple. Due to the heat, most households make noodle soup. The boiled noodles are strained, rinsed through cold well water, topped with some shredded cucumber, cooked cabbage or a sprinkling of sesame salt, and finished off a drizzle of garlic sauce. It’s a wonderfully satisfying meal.

Sesame salt is made by grinding toasted sesame seeds and salt together; some people dip their buns in it. The garlic sauce usually also contains star anise, lending it a deliciously rich flavor.

After lunch, under the harsh sun, people pick up their tools and get back to work.

This isn’t even the hottest it gets. It’s even hotter when the corn stalks have grown and it’s time to weed. You have to take advantage of sunny days to do this job. Anyone who proposes waiting for a cooler or cloudy day to weed would be laughed to death.

The weeds in the field are incredibly resilient. Portulaca oleracea, for example, can thrive just from contact with the soil. After weeding, it is left out in the sunny weather to die. If it’s cloudy, all the hard work would be for nothing. Some rain and contact with the soil, these weeds come back to life. On the bright side, Portulaca oleracea serves some purpose — it can be used to feed pigs and can also be cooked as a wild vegetable for people. Cleaned and mixed with flour, then steamed, it can be enjoyed with garlic sauce. The taste is slightly sour, but it is well-liked in the countryside.

Sowing should take place just before rain, harvesting during dry periods, and weeding during the hottest of weather - these are all understood by farm folks and have been passed down over generations. If you make a mockery of it, word gets around, making it hard to find a partner.

Farming in the countryside is no easy task. If a storm comes before crop maturity, the ripe wheat will lay down on the ground, making harvesting particularly difficult. After harvest, if there are continuous rainy days, the wheat stacks left in the field for a few days will mold and that’s a big problem.

These are exactly the reasons why people get more nervous during the busy farming season. They need to keep an eye on the weather and seize good weather to complete the work urgently. There’s no rationale behind working one day and resting the next. If you miss the opportunity, it’s a season of farming wasted.

Wan City only has two farming seasons a year, losing one season means preparing to have nothing to eat!

By the afternoon, Yan Fei was quite tired of standing around and watching. If they weren’t going to let him work, he might as well busy himself elsewhere.

He started hanging around wherever people were working, asking them a series of questions as if he was conducting a census, "What’s your name, Brother? How old are you? Did you finish middle school? Do you have a girlfriend? Are you married? Do you have children? How many members in your family? How many acres of land do you have? What’s your situation?"

Of course, he wasn’t asking these questions all at once. He would engage them in conversation and those questions would naturally come out.

Most of the young people in the countryside, while active in their own villages, become nervous when they encounter such a large landowner. They would typically respond tersely to his questions, while Yan Fei patiently carried on, moving from one worker to another, asking his questions.

Old Guan was too busy with his loudspeaker to pay Yan Fei any attention. He mistook Boss Yan’s boredom with idleness, and let him wander freely.

As the afternoon wore on and the sun finally began to set, Yan Fei headed home before the villagers — who would continue to work through the busy farming season until it was dark. He wouldn’t wait that long.

Once home, without doing anything else, he pulled out his pager. It buzzed once again with a message from the anonymous girl, talking about her recent daily life studying, followed by the inevitable "I miss you, take care of yourself."

In truth, Miss Xu Xiaoyan was busy studying for exams and would return in just a few days. But for young lovers, even a few days could feel quite lengthy, no? And wasn’t it the case that the more her return was imminent, the more one missed her?

As for the little girl he had saved in Gao City, she had paged him several times. Not only did she send him messages but she also sent him letters. He never bothered to read them and ignored them as if they didn’t exist.

Miss Guo, on the other hand, paged him twice. She said their business was doing great. She further mentioned that her family praised her for having a good business sense and admitted that they made a profitable deal. Her elder brother, the idler, regretted not joining the business and contemplated starting his steakhouse but dropped the idea after getting scolded by his family.

Lastly, she reminded him to continue supplying the beef, saying that if there was a shortage of funds, he should let her know. He needed to supply the meat on time. Business was so good that even a day’s delay meant losing money.

Miss Guo didn’t ask him to call back. After reading her message, Yan Fei simply set his pager aside.

The thriving business was good enough. How much money she was making had nothing do with him. As long as she made timely purchases of beef, it was fine.

After a quick round inspecting the greenhouses, watering where needed, and finding no other issues, he headed towards Jurassic Park.

He spent some time playing and feeding the tigers and black bears, played with the golden eagles and sables. Then, he took some time to enjoy his food solo. He was completely satisfied with his loneliness.

Remembering that the wood he had prepared yesterday might not be enough, he quietly brought in a few more logs.

Everywhere was full of forests, and there was plenty of wood. When he was free, he would chop some wood and toss it into an open space. When he needed it, he just moved it out directly without having to chop it again at the last minute.

Then, he took a purposeless patrol around the whole county, just to have a look. Now, it’s hard to find a target to catch a thief and make a merit.

Some things are just like that. When the public security was not good, there were all kinds of strange things happening everywhere, such as stealing chickens and dogs, and even outsiders would come. Now that the public security is improved, not only the locals who had bad intentions dare not act rashly anymore, but even the outsiders dare not come.

Perhaps this is what people often refer to as the atmosphere. When the atmosphere is bad, all kinds of monsters and ghosts come out. When the atmosphere is good, everyone cooperates to make life better and better. In this way, people’s malice has also diminished a lot, and even fights and quarrels in rural areas have become rare.

After flying around, he came back and went to sleep, as soon as it was dawn, he would arrange the work of the cattle farm and continue to go around watching others work on agriculture.

For two days in a row, it was just like a big boss, just watching others work without ever lifting a hand himself.

He was not in a hurry when the truck from Hong Kong came to pick up beef from the cattle farm. When the truck arrived, Old Gao would naturally host the slaughter. He had asked Heizi to invite two masters from the slaughterhouse to help out temporarily since he was not there, paid them as day laborers, as no one would refuse to make money.

On the evening of the third day, he began to name and call people. He called five young men to the field, and said, "I have built a few greenhouses to grow mushrooms and I am planning to hire a few people to work there. Which of you would like to go?"

The five young men, who were already blushing from the hard work and sun, blushed even more at that moment, nodding their heads excitedly and not knowing what to say.

Seeing them nodding, Yan Fei continued, "Then you go back and discuss it with your family tonight. If it’s okay, bring your bedding and go there tomorrow. Let others do this bit of work! From now on, all of you will live in the cattle farm. I will take care of everything, including food and accommodation. The salary should be about three or four hundred. This is just because you guys just got there and your wages are a bit less than those of the original workers, don’t feel upset. As long as you work hard, it will increase in the future."

The few of them were just excited, and one of them, who reacted faster, quickly responded, "My family will definitely agree, just say a word. No matter how much the salary is, we trust you. Let us work, we will do it well..."

Everything was fine, and the other four could only nod their heads in agreement: "Right, right, right..."

The ones he called were those who he had asked when he was patrolling. They have siblings or parents who are not too old and are not lack of labor in their homes, who could go out to work and make money.

Yan Fei didn’t go around aimlessly these few days. All these people were reliable and capable at first glance. After working continuously for several days, none of them complained about the hardship or relaxed themselves by doing nothing. Such people are really good to use.

Of course, most of the others were not lazy, but Yan Fei didn’t need too many people, so he could only pick a few who were particularly realistic in working and had loafed in junior high school for a couple of years.

Yan Fei was telling Pang Fa that he was planning to hire a few people to work when he moved to the cattle farm. At that time, he thought he should look for someone who was smart, learned fast. After following him to learn, they could go out and teach others in the future.

However, everyone thought that he didn’t need to consider these.

Just that bit of work for growing mushrooms, anyone could do it. Even the dullest person would not make any major mistakes as long as the steps were explained clearly and the person obeyed the instructions. It’s basically agricultural work, and most people have been working on the field since they were young, so learning to grow mushrooms is really not difficult.

Anyway, everyone suggested to hire someone who was reliable and willing to work hard.

The best thing was not to hire acquaintances, relatives, or friends, but strangers...

It’s not a guarantee that acquaintances would do good jobs just because they are easy to deal with, everyone understands this logic.

Besides, it’s better not to hire people like Old Ou and Heizi who have never done agricultural work before, as they are genuinely slower than others. After all, they were not used to working since they were young. It’s not that they were not dedicated, but they have never done it from a young age, and it takes time to change their habits.

It’s been so long that everyone can work without any problems, so it doesn’t matter when it comes up again.

Actually, strangers are better. Relying on Boss Yan’s reputation, the people from the village whom they found would only feel grateful and work hard. Even in the face of difficulties, they dare not have any bad intentions easily and do things that are detrimental to the cattle farm.

That’s why Yan Fei started observing them from the beginning, talked with the targets he was interested in in the afternoon, and then decided after observing them for another couple of days.

The five people were just enough. Let them learn well in the future and then lead others. This was an equivalent of picking the leaders by himself.

Over there, there was an old man holding a small loudspeaker, constantly urging everyone to work. When he saw a few people standing here, he didn’t see who they were due to his poor eyesight, but thought they were loafing, so he raised his loudspeaker and came over shouting, "Hey, you guys over there, don’t stand there pretending to be ill, Boss Yan has paid you, hurry up and finish the work so that the money can be divided..."