Chapter 539. Regrets (2/2)
She still had a petty person’s way of looking at things. Before she had appeared again, Xiaocao had pretty much forgotten to think about her. That being said, Madam Zhang was an old woman in her sixties doing hard labor every day in order to keep herself and her youngest son’s family afloat. In Xiaocao’s eyes, having to work so hard in life at such an advanced age was already the best punishment and torture for her.
Xiaocao stayed in the prefectural city for two days and, during that time, she gave the recipes for Jiangsu style crystal pork trotters, pork trotter sausages, and sweet and spicy Hezhou black duck as well as numbing and spicy Hezhou black duck to her eldest paternal aunt and her older cousin, Xiaoyan. There were about twenty or so days until the New Years, so it’d be good to have new products on the market to increase the sales even further.
After leaving the prefectural city, she spent two days at Tanggu Town. Tanggu’s greenhouse grown vegetables and fruits had been entirely dominated by the Yu Family. In the past two years, the Yu Family had expanded their farmstead to over three thousand mu and they were now the largest privately owned farmstead in the Tanggu area. Two thousand mu were currently planted with high-yielding winter wheat and the remaining a thousand mu had greenhouse pavilions on them since the start of autumn. All of the nearby vegetable merchants in the vicinity as well as the restaurants all got their supplies of vegetables and fruits from the Yu Family.
The prices of these greenhouse grown vegetables and fruits were all at least ten times as much as they were during the regular growing season. Thus, it was obvious that they were making quite a big profit from all of this. Naturally, there were other people who wanted to reproduce their success and use greenhouses too. However, only the imperial court’s Ministry of Works had the technology to manufacture the plastic film used in these greenhouses and they didn’t produce very much. Not just anyone could get their hands on it!
The influential officials in the capital naturally envied the imperial family’s dominance over the greenhouse growing market. However, only those who were stupid would try to compete with the imperial family. There were those who were more shrewd and flexible and tried to reproduce their success in the more faraway Zhou Prefecture. However, without Xiaocao’s mystic-stone water on hand as well as a lack of experience in farming, their vegetables and fruits had poor outputs and didn’t look very good. They weren’t even going to necessarily make up for the amount of money they poured in. When these people failed, the other wealthy and noble families, who had started to get ideas, also decided to let this go. Thus, the greenhouse growing market was still dominated by only one family.
Right now, they were right in the middle of a very popular time for the vegetables and fruits. Other than Yu Xiaolian, who was back at Dongshan Village managing the pharmaceutical workshop, the rest of the family were all busy working on the farmstead. Even Old Yu, who seemed to be more youthful now, was also in the fields picking and weighing vegetables like a busy bee. Even though the family had hired enough workers to keep up with everything, Old Yu couldn’t stay idle and had a lot of energy in his body. When the family saw him happily working every day, they allowed him to continue to keep up his spirits.
“Father, Mother! Your Cao’er is back ah!!” Yu Xiaocao hollered loudly from the distance when she saw her parents going over the account books in front of the granary.
Yu Hai and his wife thought that they were imagining things when they first heard their younger daughter’s voice. Zhuang Xiaomo keenly spotted in the distance that there was a small figure riding on a red horse. He revealed a smile and hurriedly spoke to Yu Hai and Madam Liu, “Uncle Yu, Auntie, Xiaocao is back! You two should quickly go greet her. I’m not in a hurry right now!”
Ever since the Wokou pirate disaster, Zhuang Xiaomo had moved to Dongshan Village. As the years went by, he slowly grew up and became more certain that he wanted to marry the hardworking Xiaolian. However, as he saw the Yu Family’s fortunes go up and up, he started to feel a bit of pressure.
Uncle Yu and Auntie Yu treated him like their own son and often sent him food. In fact, most of his clothes and shoes were personally made by Auntie Yu. However, he had just reached the age of seventeen and knew in his heart that using his sincere character alone was not enough to marry Yu Xiaolian. He also needed to make sure that his situation was better to ensure that her living situation would be smooth and steady in the future.
Consequently, when Xiaoaco came back last year to establish the greenhouse grown vegetables business and mentioned the booming vegetable and fruit stalls in the capital, Zhuang Xiaomo had an idea. He decided to also start a stall that only sold the expensive greenhouse grown vegetables and fruits in Tanggu.
He didn’t have a lot of money on hand and had originally planned on renting a stall in the regular food market for this. As he started on his plans, Uncle Yu found out and enthusiastically supported his idea. However, Uncle Yu advised him against renting a stall at the regular market. After listening to Uncle Yu’s reasoning, Zhuang Xiaomo was enlightened. The vast majority of people who went to shop at the regular marketplace were the commoners, but whom among them could afford the expensive out-of-season fruits and vegetables?
In the end, Uncle Yu gave him some ‘business capital’ and he rented two stores in the western rich area of Tanggu Town to open Tanggu’s first specialty vegetable and fruit stores. Naturally, this money was a loan and he gradually paid it back through the money he had earned.
Last autumn, Zhuang Xiaomo’s vegetable and fruit stores made a bunch of money. The Yu Family’s greenhouse business only gave him wholesale pricing on their goods and introduced him to a few old customers. Tanggu never lacked for the rich and wealthy. Thus, Zhuang Xiaomo’s vegetable and fruit stores exploded in popularity.
In order to make it easier on himself to stock the stores, he bought a donkey cart. Every day, before the sun rose, he would drive the cart to bring the goods over. He spent the morning busily selling his stock. Sometimes, when business was especially good, he would have to go get another set of goods to replenish for the afternoon. He was quite busy every day.