The villagers kept looking at the tractor and even had Li Long drive it a little before they finally drifted away.
It was not just this first tractor that shocked them, but its price even more.
Four thousand five hundred yuan-almost half the wealth of a ten-thousand-yuan household!
Some asked sourly what he needed the tractor for. The team used a Dongfanghong 75 to plow its fields. This tractor certainly could not plow; it could not pull such a big plow.
Hauling things? Didn't the Li family already have a horse-drawn cart? The tractor was only a little faster.
That left it in a rather awkward position.
Of course, they only said this in private. After all, it was an iron ox, and no matter what, it was better than a horse-drawn cart or donkey cart.
Then the team members learned what the tractor could do.
The day after buying it, Li Long drove it out with several able-bodied men from the family to a stretch downstream along the Mohe Canal.
Thirty years later, the county built a new Mohe Canal, with concrete slabs lining its bottom and sides in an inverted trapezoid. The old Mohe Canal only served a purpose occasionally then. Things were different now: there was only this old canal, which locals preferred to call the river embankment.
Along most stretches of the old Mohe Canal, the banks on both sides were quite high. Near the County Town in particular, they rose almost vertically, three or four meters high.
But along one downstream stretch, the water was less than half a meter below ground level. Here, they could dig river sand and scoop out pebbles.
The snow here had already melted. Although the river water was cold, it could not dampen the workers' enthusiasm.
River sand was