(My back hurt terribly today. I couldn't sit or stand for long, and even had to turn sideways to get out of bed. I could barely manage one chapter.)
Last year's order had been for eight thousand big brooms. This year it was thirty thousand, nearly four times as many. The pressure was enormous.
The Prefectural Supply and Marketing Cooperative's purchase price was still five yuan. Li Long reckoned it would only rise a little in another two years, when prices began soaring. After all, he vaguely remembered big brooms selling for only ten to fifteen yuan apiece even ten years later. There was no room for another increase now.
He vaguely remembered the Prefectural Supply and Marketing Cooperative quoting eight yuan per big broom-the price for shipping them to Inland China.
After all, bamboo brooms shipped in from Inland China already sold for five yuan at the market-hadn't their cost been three yuan?
Whatever the case, the Fourth Team didn't have enough Achnatherum splendens or handles now. There was Achnatherum splendens over by the Qingshui River, but rather than go there to cut it, the Fourth Team would be better off heading north. Beyond Big Haizi to the north, they wouldn't even need to enter Sand Hollow. There were scattered clumps and even large stands of Achnatherum splendens on the saline-alkali land.
As long as they found the right places, they could cut some.
Liang Wenyu's village was Four Not-Reliant, with neither Achnatherum splendens nor handles. The older generation all knew how to bind brooms, but without materials, there was little they could do.
Each village needed a different approach. By the time Li Long left the Supply and Marketing Cooperative, he had worked it out.
He had already accepted the job, so he was definitely going to do