pjbooks Chapter 90 Buying Timber from the Forest Farm
Chapter 90 Buying Timber from the Forest Farm
Chapter 90 Buying Timber from the Forest Farm
Shan Yaowen's plan was simple: first, take over all the ranches he considered good, and then gradually expand outwards.
You can't get fat in one bite; this was his only plan to expand the ranch in the first half of the year.
As for the future, there is an opportunity for the dissolution of the Xinma Ranch, and there will be plenty of pastures available for expansion if desired.
After speaking with the Party Secretary, Shan Yaowen went back to write his application.
What troubled him most was that he couldn't write the characters.
"Oh, is Awen going to school?" Shi Fang teased her brother-in-law as she was putting the child to sleep in the room. He was scratching his head with paper and pen in his hands.
Shan Yaowen sighed, "You only realize how little you know when you need to use it!"
"Oh, you can even spout idioms now? Are you still my son?" Mother Shan brought over a pile of leather and cloth and placed it on the kang (heated brick bed), looking at Shan Yaowen in surprise. "Didn't you hate studying when you were little?"
"That's because I was immature. Mom, you didn't know to send me to school back then."
Upon hearing this, the mother took out a pair of scissors in an annoyed tone: "You're blaming me now? Who was it that didn't want to go to school when they were little? Even after the whip broke, they still refused to go, saying it was a waste of money."
She vividly remembered how mischievous Shan Yaowen was when they were little; he absolutely refused to go to school.
In the end, there was really no other way, so they just let him attend primary school.
Since he doesn't want to go to school anyway, paying tuition is a waste of money.
Seeing his mother angry, Shan Yaowen smiled and admitted that he had indeed been too immature as a child.
"Hey, where's Anian?" Shan Yaowen looked around but didn't see his wife. He was thinking of asking her to help him write.
Lin Nian had good grades when she was young and even finished junior high school.
Writing an application is not a simple matter.
"You're here, what's up?" Lin Nian walked in while wiping her hands and clothes.
"Come on, help me write the application."
"You're usually quite eloquent, so why aren't you talking now?"
"How can speaking and writing be the same?" Shan Yaowen shoved paper and pen into her hands. "Remember to write Chinese characters."
"How do I write it?"
"I'll talk, you write."
Although he couldn't write, Shan Yaowen could still speak. With Lin Nian's great help, he finally signed his name in the applicant section.
"Mom, you didn't know to give me a simpler name back then. The character 'Yao' is so hard to write." Shan Yaowen said, holding the application form.
He was satisfied with everything else except his own name, which was different from the one on the application. It was crooked and looked obviously written by someone else.
"If you're not satisfied, go change it yourself! See if your dad breaks your legs."
Shan Yaowen: ————
After writing the application, Shan Yaowen delivered it to the Party Secretary's home, and the Party Secretary would then handle the rest of the process.
He just needs to wait for further instructions.
After the Lunar New Year, the blizzard began to subside. The most difficult period was the month or so from New Year's Day to the Lunar New Year. After that, things returned to normal.
Although the snowfall will not stop until early April, the snowfall will gradually decrease from the period after the Lunar New Year. At the same time, the sheep are most likely to die during the period from the snow melting in spring.
We can't relax at all until the weather warms up.
"You three really pulled through." Shan Yaowen looked at the three fawns, who were now completely healed, in the woodshed.
He had thought that one or two of the three fawns would die this winter, or even that none of them would survive, but to his surprise, none of them died, and none of them showed any signs of being listless; they were all lively and energetic.
However, getting through this period is not the end of the story. Like sheep, we have to get through the spring.
Shan Yaowen initially planned to start his own sika deer breeding business.
Unfortunately, apart from these three fawns, he didn't encounter any other fawns. He even asked his brother-in-law and Shi Zhang's family to keep an eye out for them.
As a result, they didn't see a single deer, let alone a fawn, all winter long.
After checking on the three fawns, Shan Yaowen brushed the silly bird's fur, played with the dog for a while, and then went out.
Springtime will be much busier than winter, so the ranch fences need to be set up, especially the spring ranch area, which will be the first to be fenced off as we move to a new ranch.
First, they enclosed the pastures and campsites, and then gradually expanded to the entire boundary of the ranch.
Although there is still snow and it is not possible to work, the materials need to be prepared first. Also, we need to find someone to demarcate and mark the area where we border other herders.
As soon as Shan Yaowen arrived at the forest farm, he saw his father-in-law waving at him.
"Awen, over here."
"Dad, Uncle Xu—"
After greeting the person in charge of the forest farm, Shan Yaowen looked at the pile of wood next to him.
If this were modern times, Shan Yaowen would definitely choose cement pillars or steel pipes, but under the current conditions, he can only use wood and thorns, along with barbed wire.
Since his father-in-law happened to work at the forest farm, Shan Yaowen asked him to help select some timber.
To be honest, having connections makes things much easier. Shan Yaowen doesn't need to worry about anything; his father-in-law has already taken care of a lot of things for him. All he has to do is make the final decision.
"The main wood here is Mongolian oak, which is the most common type of wood we have here. There are also some willow, birch, and elm, but we don't have much of these types of wood here."
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Uncle Xu was also one of the workers at the forest farm. He was Lin Anbang's colleague and had the best relationship with him. He was in charge of timber sales and was also the director.
"Let's go with Mongolian oak. It's plentiful and durable." Shan Yaowen nodded. For him, Mongolian oak was enough for now, and there was no need to buy those rarer types of wood.
Mongolian oak is a cold-resistant and rot-resistant native tree species. It is widely distributed in their forest and grassland areas as well as in Northeast China. Local people mainly use this wood to make fences and agricultural tools.
As for willow, birch, elm and other types of wood, they are already more expensive and there is less local supply, so he would not consider them.
Upon hearing this, Director Xu, who was in charge, pointed to the Mongolian oak tree on the ground and said, "You're lucky to have this at the right time. If it were a couple of years ago, it wouldn't have been allowed to be freely traded."
"I know that. The logging and sale of timber are all handled by the forestry department, and the prices are set by the state. But the policy has changed, so I came to take a look." Shan Yaowen smiled and took out a pack of cigarettes to hand over: "Thank you for your help, Uncle Xu."
"How about the price?"
In the past, it was indeed not allowed to trade timber privately. If people needed to make furniture or repair houses, they had to apply for permission from the collective, and the village would approve the application before they could cut timber on public forest land.
If the usage is small, everyone tacitly allows themselves to cut some trees, but now Shan Yaowen uses a large amount, so private logging is definitely not an option, and they can only buy them.
Director Xu calmly put the cigarettes into his pocket and continued, "In the past, the quantity was small, and they were 50 cents a cigarette. But now that the policy has changed, they are sold by the cubic meter, 50 yuan per cubic meter."
How much do you want?
Shan Yaowen took out a notebook and handed it to Director Xu, "My ranch's current plan is to fence off the spring pasture, with stakes 1.2 meters high and spaced 2.5 meters apart."
"Based on that calculation, there would be about three to four hundred wooden stakes needed for a one-kilometer radius."
"Three or four hundred stakes?" Director Xu glanced at the data in his notebook and immediately started calculating. "Based on the largest number of four hundred stakes, a standard Mongolian oak can yield three to four stakes, which means we need one hundred stakes."
"A standard Mongolian oak tree weighs about 40 jin (20 catties), and one cubic meter of dried Mongolian oak would yield about 900 trees, which means approximately 5..."
A standard Mongolian oak.
While Director Xu was calculating, Shan Yaowen was also silently calculating. Despite being illiterate, he was quite good at this kind of calculation, having done a lot of such things while working on a ranch in his previous life.
Director Xu's calculations are about right. There are bound to be some discrepancies in these estimates. If there are too many, we can keep them for later use; if there are too few, we can just bring them in again.
"Then let's calculate based on 5 cubic meters of wood, which is 250 yuan."
Shan Yaowen clicked his tongue in amazement. There was so much wood alone, not even counting the barbed wire. Although barbed wire wasn't the main component, for such a large ranch, besides the spring ranch, there were several other seasonal ranches, so it would definitely cost at least two hundred.
So, the material cost alone will be around 450 yuan. The labor cost is not too bad; we can invite relatives, friends, and neighbors to help out, and they will provide meals.
However, the necessary investments still need to be made. If you want to make money from breeding, costs are inevitable.
"By the way, you're using these for aquaculture; the government will provide subsidies then," Director Xu added, giving Shan Yaowen an extra reminder.
"A subsidy? How much?"
"How could we possibly give you money directly? We usually give you supplies or discounts."
Shan Yaowen smiled and said, "That's not bad either."
"Well, when you come to the forest farm to haul timber, get a certificate from the village. I'll explain the situation, and then you can apply for subsidies."
"Thank you, Uncle Xu. Come over for a drink sometime."
After deciding on the timber, Shan Yaowen started driving a horse-drawn cart to haul it away. If he had asked the forestry station to do it, there would have been a transportation fee. But since there was nothing else to do in the dead of winter, Shan Yaowen decided to do it himself.