What to do? The bloggers aren't human; they want to unfollow them again...
Chapter 145
It took Shan Yan and his team four and a half days to cut down all the capped honeycomb from this vast expanse of wild honeycomb.
The remaining uncapped honeycombs, as well as some empty ones that hadn't yet been used to store honey, were left behind.
To prevent the wild bees from losing their homes and wandering around building nests, so they won't be able to come here to harvest honey next year.
The harvested winter honey was pre-ordered by several wealthy old customers of Shanyan before they even came down the mountain.
They specifically requested that the honey not be shaken out, but bottled together with the honeycomb, and then packaged in gift boxes. They wanted to give away this rare, authentic, pure wild winter honey as a gift.
Jiang Xiaoman, standing nearby, encouraged Shan Yan, suggesting they take the opportunity to register their own brand. Once their wild honeybees were ready for harvesting, they could leverage the brand's popularity.
Shanyan had actually been planning this for a while, but in the past they only dealt in the highest-end wild rock honey in this industry, and their customers came through referrals from acquaintances. To put it bluntly, they relied on word of mouth, and it didn't matter whether they had a brand or not.
But things will be different in the future.
He and his apprentices have placed dozens of beehives in the mountains since last winter. They've been making new beehives whenever they have free time. After all, since they got Jiang Xiaoman's supply of secondhand timber, the production cost of beehives has been greatly reduced. Not to mention his apprentices, even Shan Yan couldn't resist making quite a few new beehives.
Despite their poverty, the mountain people still have integrity. Once the beehives are finished, they write their names and numbers on the outside with ink and place them in the mountains, where they are rarely stolen. Moreover, since they frequently travel through the mountains, they deliberately choose relatively hidden places to place the beehives, making them less likely to be discovered.
Based on the honey production in Langshan, a single beehive can normally produce 80 to 100 catties of local honey in a good year; in a bad year, it's impossible to calculate. Sometimes, there are consecutive months of rainy days, and the flowers in the mountains can't bloom, so there's no honey, and you have to spend money to buy white sugar to feed the bees, so it's impossible to calculate.
On average, a hive of bees can generate an income of about 800 to 1200 yuan per year. If you make more than a hundred hives and put them in the mountains, even after deducting losses, you can still make a profit of 80,000 to 90,000 yuan a year, which is already very good in rural areas.
If you calculate it that way, their annual production of wild honey isn't small, and they really do need to register a brand or something. His little fish has also been grumbling lately, saying that when fans ask him to buy fishing gear, they always ask what brand it is, whether it's imported, and so on.
This demonstrates the importance of branding.
However, he didn't know much about these things, so he could only leave the matter to Jiang Xiaoman.
Just then, Jiang Xiaoman also needed to work on the chrysanthemum planting project. After parting ways with Shan Yan and the others, he immediately went home, printed out the materials he had previously compiled, and put them together with the information he had just gathered about several households in the old mountain valley in a file folder. He went to town early the next morning.
I first went to a rice noodle shop and ate a bowl of beef rice noodles to bolster my courage before entering the town government gate with the materials.
Hearing that he was there to see the town's poverty alleviation officials and needed to submit some project application materials, the security guard at the gate laughed: "Oh dear! Then go to room 203 and find that Officer Sun. He's so bored he's practically growing mushrooms."
Jiang Xiaoman was speechless for a moment.
But thinking about it, it's normal. The poorer the place, the less capital ordinary people have to start a business.
The government did provide some support in previous years, but many projects take several years to see returns.
Just like when the town previously encouraged everyone to grow potatoes, we need to first expand the planting area, then introduce processing enterprises, and finally achieve economies of scale so that we can continuously generate income for the people...
Ordinary people can't wait that long.
Just like Qingshan said, many families in the mountains are like his family, waiting for rice to be cooked as soon as they open their eyes every day. If they are not allowed to grow potatoes, and they cannot see any money in growing other things, are they expected to sew their mouths shut and not eat or drink for three years while waiting for the project to make money?
It's unrealistic to expect ordinary people to start businesses on an empty stomach.
No wonder the poverty alleviation cadres in the town are so bored they're practically growing mushrooms.
The appearance of Jiang Xiaoman made Sun Zheyuan, a poverty alleviation cadre who had been in a state of self-isolation for a long time, feel as if he were having some kind of hallucination.
Is he dreaming?
How come people would actually come to Langshan, a place like this, wanting to apply for projects?
Looking at the project approval form, which was still completely blank since the beginning of the year, Sun Zheyuan suddenly sprang to his feet and tightly grasped Jiang Xiaoman's hands!
"Don't worry, comrade! As long as the villagers are willing to start businesses and undertake projects, the town will definitely give them its full support!"
"Come on! Sit down and have a cup of tea, let's chat slowly."
As he spoke, he ran over and closed the office door.
It was as if they were afraid Jiang Xiaoman would run away.
...
Jiang Xiaoman was stunned. She felt that the poverty alleviation cadre in front of her seemed a bit unsteady. Could he be reliable?
He had some doubts, but it seemed that there was only one poverty alleviation cadre sent by the town. Apart from the young man in front of him who looked about the same age as him, he couldn't find anyone else.
Left with no other choice, Jiang Xiaoman took out the bag containing the documents from her bag and verbally explained that her village and more than a dozen households in Laoshan'aozi had joined forces to develop the chrysanthemum planting industry.
"Come on! Have some tea! Have something to eat. Let me take a look at your materials first." Sun Zheyuan pulled out a cardboard box from under the cabinet and took out some New Year's goods that the town had given him to eat.
Are they treating him like a guest? Jiang Xiaoman grabbed a handful of peanuts from the box with a dark expression, eating them while waiting for Sun Zheyuan to finish looking at the materials he had prepared.
The materials Jiang Xiaoman prepared were actually a ready-made template that he bought from Baidu Wenku, and he filled them out based on that template. They were mainly divided into three parts.
The first part is that he synthesized data from several sources, compared the per-acre yield difference between planting chrysanthemums and traditional crops, and demonstrated the importance of planting chrysanthemums for increasing the annual income of local families.
The second part started to ramble on. Since he had no experts to guide him, he could only focus on the fact that "Langshan has been rich in resources and diverse flora and fauna since ancient times." He emphasized that both wild and cultivated chrysanthemums grow very well in Langshan. By the same token, the imperial chrysanthemum, which is also in the Asteraceae family, should also be able to be cultivated on a large scale in Langshan.
The third part gets back to the practical stuff. He used his own and Jiang Yu's account followers and sales performance as examples to illustrate that if they established a chrysanthemum planting cooperative and cultivated chrysanthemums on a large scale, their future sales could be entirely online.
After all, chrysanthemum tea has a long shelf life once it's made into dried tea, so there's no need to worry about losing money if it can't be sold quickly.
Moreover, he had another idea: aren't many towns and villages promoting their local specialties or agricultural products these days?
Jiang Xiaoman hoped that the town could help them out. If the chrysanthemums they grew were to become unsaleable, could they promote them by highlighting their local specialties and agricultural products?
According to his understanding from the platform, major e-commerce platforms now have special channels for agricultural products from impoverished mountainous areas to encourage rural entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation. With the help of the platform's promotional channels, they can sell a batch of these products, which will greatly reduce the pressure of inventory.
"Not bad, Xiaoman! You're really quick-witted!" Hearing him even bring up agricultural product support, Sun Zheyuan nodded in satisfaction, put the documents on the table, and turned to Jiang Xiaoman to say—
"I just took a quick look at your materials, and to be honest, they completely fail to meet our application standards!"
What?!
Jiang Xiaoman was so startled that she almost dropped the peanuts in her hand.
"Don't be nervous. What I mean is that if you submit it according to this format, it definitely won't work. But I think your project still has great potential."
"Most importantly, your plan has opened up a new path to entrepreneurship and wealth for the people of Langshan. It is to develop chrysanthemum cultivation by utilizing idle mountain land and wasteland with low grain yields. This way, it will not delay the people's grain production and can ensure that the people can make a living. Secondly, if this industry can be promoted, it may be able to make use of all the abandoned and idle mountain land in our town!"
"Xiaoman! Your plan still doesn't have a broad enough scope!"
Jiang Xiaoman smiled awkwardly, thinking to herself, "I even used my relatives and friends to get this project approved. He can still say a few words in Langshan Village, but if I extend the plan to the whole town, he must be crazy. Who would listen to him?"
Fortunately, Sun Zheyuan only sighed a couple of times and immediately decided to go with him to Langshan Village for an on-site investigation.
He decided to personally revise and improve Jiang Xiaoman's project application form according to the required format.
It's not easy! The first quarter is almost over, and their town's entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation projects are still nonexistent. If they don't seize this opportunity, their annual performance evaluation will be terrible!
Jiang Xiaoman went to the town and came back with the town's poverty alleviation cadres, causing a sensation throughout Langshan Village.
Sun Zheyuan first took Jiang Xiaoman to the village committee. For this matter to be implemented, the village's support was essential. Worried that some village officials might be jealous and sabotage him, Sun Zheyuan also brought up his uncle-in-law—
"Speaking of which, Xiaoman is actually my junior from school. My uncle used to be the dean of studies at the county's No. 1 High School. I never expected that Xiaoman would also graduate from the county's No. 1 High School. If my uncle knew that his student is so successful now, he would be overjoyed."
Sun Zheyuan said that on purpose.
Sure enough, upon hearing that the town officials had actually taken the initiative to forcibly claim kinship with Jiang Xiaoman and even created a senior-junior relationship, the village officials became even more enthusiastic towards Jiang Xiaoman.
It's clear that Sun Zheyuan really values this project. He even declined the village chief's invitation to have lunch at his home, saying he wanted to go to Jiang Xiaoman's house immediately to check on the progress of the "Phase I Demonstration Site".
Jiang Xiaoman was speechless. What kind of progress was this? They had just plowed the land and applied the base fertilizer, but the chrysanthemum seedlings hadn't even arrived yet.
However, since the poverty alleviation cadres were so enthusiastic about their entrepreneurial project, he, as the person involved, certainly couldn't let them down, so he could only go to Sun Zheyuan's house with the village cadres.
His father is still working at Uncle Baichuan's old house, and there's no one at home. Fortunately, he ate a big bowl of beef noodles this morning. If all else fails, he'll just cook some noodles for the leaders at noon.
To Jiang Xiaoman's surprise, compared to these native mountain people, Sun Zheyuan, a city dweller, was actually quite fast at climbing mountains!
"Haha~ This is all from practice! When I was first transferred here last year, I waited for a whole month and no one came to our department to apply for projects. So I looked through the work summaries of the previous poverty alleviation cadres, found the villages that had participated in poverty alleviation projects before, and went to each one of them."
"As soon as they heard that we were going to develop specialty crops, they all shook their heads like rattles and absolutely refused to agree! Before I could even say anything, they told me that they didn't want seedlings or fertilizer, they just wanted to grow some grain on their own land," Sun Zheyuan said with a wry smile.
Having suffered losses several times, the villagers in the mountains are now truly terrified of these "poverty alleviation projects."
Jiang Xiaoman was speechless.
He had heard his father mention this before. That's why his father had absolutely refused to let him plant honeysuckle on their land.
In the end, he compromised and said that instead of planting in the field, he would plant a circle around the edge of the field to provide honey for his own bees. When his father heard that it could produce honey, he reluctantly nodded in agreement.
He is Jiang Youliang's son.
If it were anyone else trying to persuade his father to change the farmland into flower fields, wouldn't they be chased out with a big broom?
No wonder Sun Zheyuan acted as if he had found a lifeline as soon as he saw him, and even offered to help him write the application materials.
It seems being a poverty alleviation cadre is really not an easy job!
Chapter 146
On the way up the mountain, Jiang Xiaoman specifically pointed to the slope overgrown with weeds on the roadside embankment and explained to Sun Zheyuan and the others—
"The available idle land I mentioned in the plan also includes this kind of wasteland on both sides of the mountain road."
“My dad told me that this used to be a place where villagers planted tea trees. Later, tea became worthless, so no one came here anymore. It would be a waste to leave it barren. My family raises two pigs, right? My dad plants some pumpkins and things here every year.”
"You don't need to clear large areas of land to grow pumpkins. Just dig a small area about the size of a bathtub, fill it with base fertilizer, plant the pumpkin vines, and leave them alone. In the fall, you can find a hundred or eighty large pumpkins by searching along the way."
“I was thinking, in Langshan, not to mention the villages, who living in the mountains doesn’t have a mountain road to get to the village? For those who live far away, it takes more than an hour to walk to the village.”
"If we really organize everyone to plant chrysanthemums, we don't actually need to use our own farmland. We can just plant them on both sides of the road, and each family can contribute a few acres of land."
"Oh my! Xiaoman is so quick-witted! No wonder she's a college graduate! Isn't that right? And these flowers are planted by the roadside, so you can just take a bag and pick them as you walk down the mountain, which is so convenient." The village chief immediately gained confidence when he heard that this project could be done without taking up farmland.
After all, his old house is a forty-minute walk from the village.