"I've already cried. I guess I won't be able to eat so much good food when I get home?"
"A person wrote a petition in blood, begging Principal Daddy to improve the food standards! My family is a large-scale grain grower, can we accept grain donations?"
"Support Xiaoman selling salted eggs! Sell more! Use the money to buy some good food for the kids!"
With a reminder from her longtime fans, Jiang Xiaoman finally realized belatedly that she was going to sell salted eggs during her live stream.
It's all his uncle's fault, he beat him so badly he's become stupid!
"Sorry, sorry, I was busy sending out orders and forgot to show you our salted eggs. Here's one for you to peel and see."
As she spoke, Jiang Xiaoman peeled a hard-boiled salted egg.
The pure white egg white encloses a pool of orange-yellow yolk, which is slightly oily and looks exceptionally tempting.
Aside from being smaller than a duck egg, this salted egg actually looks pretty good?
"We use fresh eggs within their shelf life, and each one is washed and hand-cured. If you are worried about hygiene, you can check out our previous videos on curing eggs. I also have the product's hygiene certificate and testing certificate, which are posted on the product details page. You can take a look."
"As for the price, because our express delivery and logistics costs are relatively high, the average price is about the same as the price of salted duck eggs in supermarkets."
"There are two packaging options this time. One is a trial pack of 10 salted eggs, priced at 18 meters with free shipping to most parts of the country. The other is a family pack of 30 salted eggs, priced at 36 meters, also with free shipping."
Jiang Xiaoman finished speaking and smiled shyly, "Well, if any local netizens want to try it, they can come to our Langshan Town market the day after tomorrow. I'm going to set up a stall on the street to sell salted eggs and dried chicken the day after tomorrow morning."
What? They even have dried chicken? Why isn't it on the shelves?
Fans are getting anxious. Some people don't really like salted eggs, but dried chicken is a good option! It's so delicious when steamed!
"There are too many comments, please be patient, I will reply to them one by one."
Seeing many people asking in the comments why the dried chicken wasn't available, Jiang Xiaoman said helplessly—
"As you all saw in the last video, the live chickens we use to make air-dried chicken are all laying hens and broilers that have been culled from farms. Although they are all fresh, we only made a little over a hundred chickens because we considered that many people might not like to eat farmed chickens, and the quantity was not large."
"Put it on the shelves now? That's too late, because the quantity is too small. I haven't had it tested yet. Food that hasn't been tested can't be sold."
"If you guys really want to eat it, I'll make a bigger batch next time, a special treat for everyone haha, I promise! I'll make it right away!"
Jiang Xiaoman was quite surprised that so many people wanted air-dried chicken, especially after he explained that it was factory-farmed chicken.
However, this is a good sales channel. Jiang Xiaoman thought about it and decided to find time to go to the chicken farm to see if she could discuss a cooperation with the chicken farm.
To be fair, Jiang Xiaoman's salted eggs are not cheap; they are almost more expensive than some discounted salted duck eggs.
But who can blame him for having so many fans now? Add to that the many fans who have always cared about Langshan Primary School and Jiang Cancan's fans, and the combined traffic from all three sides is truly terrifying.
Nearly 20,000 salted eggs were sold out in one live stream! Those who were slow or hesitant missed out!
Seeing Jiang Xiaoman's bewildered expression, the fans couldn't help but burst into laughter.
"Hilarious! Xiaoman's expression seems to say, 'Did I just confirm that it's on sale?'"
"OK, I got it! Haha~"
"Stop right there! Did you steal my salted egg?"
"I'm not sure! I've been waiting in the live stream to grab something, and my supervisor just came to assign me some work. When I came back, there wasn't a single thing to show for it!"
"Our Xiaoman is really famous! That's great! Xiaoman, may you become even more famous! Make lots of money to buy meat for the kids!"
Jiang Youliang even brought four large baskets and two carrying poles from home, worried that the salted eggs might not sell out and he could carry them home today. But he ended up with nothing!
Jiang Xiaoman was quite excited to have sold so many salted eggs at once.
He had already purchased the foam boxes and cardboard boxes for the eggs. Although more than 20,000 eggs seemed like a lot, packing them was not difficult, so he didn't hire anyone to help. He and Jiang Youliang each took turns packing the eggs and folding the cardboard boxes for packaging.
Fortunately, in order to save on the cost of custom packaging, he made two different sizes of packaging. It took the father and son half a day to pack all the eggs that needed to be shipped out.
"Dad! If we sell these eggs and there are no complaints or compensation claims for breakage, we can make at least six thousand yuan!" Jiang Xiaoman said happily.
"No wonder your Uncle Shanrong's village is so rich. I think that if you want to get rich in the countryside, you really have to do business." Jiang Youliang couldn't help but sigh.
These eggs were bought, pickled, and sold in just over half a month, right? Yet they made several thousand yuan!
In the past, his family worked hard to grow potatoes, and if they could earn a net profit of 3,000 yuan in half a year, it would be considered a great harvest.
They have to carry it down the mountain to sell it to get the money.
"Dad, how many beehives have we made? We need to hurry up. Autumn is coming soon, and the wild bees in the mountains will swarm. We need to take advantage of the swarming to put the beehives down. If we're lucky, we can still harvest a batch of winter honey."
While packing, Jiang Xiaoman chatted with his father about beekeeping at home.
"Do you even need to tell me? While you were away these past few days, I had over forty beehives made and put down! I went to check yesterday, and bees have already settled in half of them," Jiang Youliang said proudly.
Almost every household in Langshan has beehives. Jiang Youliang started helping his family take care of the bees even before he was tall enough to reach the beehives.
He may not know how to sell honey online, but he's incredibly skilled at things like swarming and attracting bees—these are his livelihoods.
"Hehe~ My dad is the most reliable! Unlike Uncle Baichuan, Dad, you don't know, the higher-ups finally managed to distribute the food subsidies from the past few years, and he still wants to give them to the students... I'm telling you, even if the students take that money home, they probably won't use it for themselves. It's better to keep it in the school's account, at least that way they can at least eat something good every day."
Jiang Xiaoman sometimes really can't understand the older generation. The poorer they are, the more children they have! Even when they are so poor that they can't afford to eat, they still urge their children to keep having children.
Some girls here can't afford to go to school, so they get married and have children before they're even eighteen, which is below the legal marriage age, and they already have two or three kids.
It's fine if men go out to work hard and earn money, but the problem is that there are some lazy men here who don't go out to work. They just lie at home like old men, playing on their phones, preferring to play cards and sleep rather than help their wives take care of their children.
The women carried one on their backs and held two others by their hands, while also washing clothes, cooking, and working in the fields.
With parents like these, even if the kids bring home the school's supplementary nutrition allowance, their families will probably keep it for the family's living expenses, or their dads will simply steal it to top up their phone credit and play games...
But there was nothing he could do; he knew that Jiang Baichuan was doing the right thing.
After all, the nutrition meal subsidy is not applied for in the name of all teachers and students. It originally belongs to those poor students. If the school forcibly withholds it, and if any dissatisfied parent reports it to the education bureau, then there will be irrefutable evidence!
Even if Jiang Baichuan meant well, he would likely be accused of "embezzling nutrition subsidies for impoverished students"...
There's no other way; netizens are right. The only way to keep the school cafeteria running is to find ways to earn more money, supplemented by donations from the community.
"Sigh! Your Uncle Baichuan hasn't had it easy either. What's that old saying? 'Poor mountains and bad waters breed unruly people'! You don't know, these past few days everyone's been saying that your Uncle Baichuan received hundreds of thousands of yuan in compensation from the county. A lot of people want to ask him if the students' textbook fees can be reduced or waived next semester, since the school has so much money..."
Jiang Youliang got angry as he spoke, "These heartless people! Don't they even think about how much money Baichuan has donated to the school over the years! When the school was in trouble, why didn't they take money from their own families to help the school?"
"This...they really dare to think of such things!" Jiang Xiaoman was speechless.
The textbook fee isn't collected by the school; it's collected uniformly by the county according to a set standard. Besides, there aren't many primary schools, so it's only a little over a hundred yuan per semester. Jiang Baichuan has to hand over this money to the higher authorities before he can collect all the books and teaching aids the students need for the semester.
Reduce or waive book fees? How could they even think of that!
Isn't this blatantly telling Jiang Baichuan: Since you have so much money in your account, why don't you help us pay for our child's school fees too?
Have you no shame?!
"In the end, it was right of your Uncle Shirakawa to return those people's money. Now that the money has been returned, we can't let him pay for the students' fees and other expenses, can we?"
Jiang Youliang couldn't help but sneer, "It's fortunate that you invested all the money you earned into our beehives this time. You don't know, people have been asking us for money these past few days."
"What?" Jiang Xiaoman was truly stunned. After a long while, she was speechless. "Building this house has almost emptied our savings. Everyone in the village knows that, right? We're so poor, and people are still asking us for money?"
"Of course! They're actually relatives of ours. They said their wife's health was damaged after giving birth to their fourth child, and they don't have enough breast milk. They want to borrow two thousand yuan to buy some formula for the baby. Pah!"
"When I brought you home, things were so tough for our family. You couldn't even afford formula, you had to drink rice porridge with me. And now you want me to borrow money to buy formula for other people's kids? You're dreaming!"
"He only gives birth to a child but doesn't raise it. How can such a grown man have the nerve to ask others to borrow money to buy milk powder for his child!"
"He can't even come up with two thousand yuan at home, yet he dares to have four children?" Jiang Xiaoman was dumbfounded.
Chapter 88
When Jiang Xiaoman sold konjac online last time, she took the opportunity to investigate several express delivery outlets in the county and found out which one offered the cheapest shipping for bulk agricultural products.
After packaging the salted eggs, he called the owner of the courier service outlet and asked him to arrange a car to pick up the package and take it to the county town the next day.
Then he went straight to the chicken farm to find Shan Chunhua.
Shan Chunhua's chicken farm originally had nearly 50,000 laying hens, but due to the plummeting price of eggs and the high cost of feed, she has now sold off half of them at low prices.
The couple couldn't bear to sell the remaining half, so they fed it half feed and half coarse grains, losing money every day.
Shan Chunhua was stunned to hear that Jiang Xiaoman had sold all the eggs she had bought last time.
"Didn't they say city people don't like to eat farm eggs? How come they're selling so fast?"
"Fresh eggs don't taste very good, but salted eggs taste pretty good. Sister-in-law, I brought you some. You can cook them and try them."
Jiang Xiaoman brought over a plastic bag with more than a dozen salted eggs. He didn't sell all the salted eggs; he kept some for his own family to eat.
However, he didn't come today to deliver eggs; he had something to discuss with Shan Chunhua and her husband.
"What? You want to get us to do business together?" Shan Chunhua was surprised after hearing Jiang Xiaoman's plan.
Jiang Xiaoman was already very grateful that she could help them sell their unsold eggs, but now she actually wants to help them open an online store to make money?
"Here's the thing, we plan to develop our online store into a specialty store for Langshan local products. The product range will gradually increase, but it's just my dad and me in the family, so it's impossible for us to do everything ourselves."
"So I thought, Sister Chunhua, you and Brother Dezhi don't seem to have much to do besides raising chickens. You even have to worry about sales during the off-season. Since that's the case, why can't you be my supplier as well?"
"In this way, during peak season you can sell fresh chickens and eggs directly, and during off-season like this year, we can turn unsold eggs into salted eggs and slaughter chickens into dried chickens. These pickled foods have a longer shelf life."
"I'll sign a supply contract with you. You can give me the wholesale price for these salted eggs and dried chicken, and I'll sell them in my online store. That way, you can break even, and I can also make some extra money. What do you think, sister-in-law?"
"What if you can't sell them? Won't you lose money?" Shan Chunhua asked hesitantly.
"Don't worry, sister-in-law. I'll figure out a way to sell them. If they really can't be sold, I'll go to the market and set up a stall to sell them. There are quite a few people around here who like to eat salted eggs."
Jiang Xiaoman smiled, not blindly making any promises to Shan Chunhua, because even he himself wasn't sure if the online store's business would continue to be this good.
However, he also had his own backup plan. When he went to the county town to purchase ingredients for the banquet, he also went to the wholesale market to inquire and got the phone numbers of several wholesale stall owners.
If we can't sell them locally, we can just sell them to wholesale stalls. Even if we earn less or no money, we won't lose money.
Shan Chunhua was still a little hesitant. It wasn't that she was afraid Jiang Xiaoman would lie to her; she was mainly worried that the salted eggs and dried chicken they made themselves wouldn't taste good enough.
"Don't worry, I'll write down the recipes for pickling salted eggs and air-dried chicken for you. Then you can pickle them according to the recipes I give you."
"Aren't you afraid that your brother and I will keep your recipe, make it ourselves, and sell it online?" Shan Chunhua teased him.
“If you and my brother were really like that, I wouldn’t have made this special trip today,” Jiang Xiaoman said with a smile.
"Besides, there are so many people selling salted duck eggs and salted chicken eggs across the country. If I couldn't stand up to them all, how could I do business?"
"To put it bluntly, if you sisters really take my recipe and make it yourselves to sell, I can just find another chicken farm to buy eggs and hire someone to cook it myself. We can each sell our own. My recipe isn't some valuable secret recipe; it's just that I've made it a lot and I think this way of cooking tastes better."
"Don't worry! Your sister-in-law is loyal enough. You can keep your recipe with me. I won't let anyone else see it except your brother and me." Shan Chunhua thought for a moment and couldn't help but ask, "Can we start making the dried chicken now? To be honest, my chicken farm is losing money every day just to stay afloat."