Traveling back to 1977

Chapter 256 Trial Implementation
What kind of receipt?
Upon hearing this, Zhang Wenliang stared at him wide-eyed. "A registered mail receipt? You didn't send it by regular mail, did you?"

Chen Fan stared blankly at him. "I just bought two 4-cent stamps, stuck them on, and then dropped the letter into the mailbox."

Zhang Wenliang was speechless. "Sending a regular letter might get it lost, but sending a registered letter means it's properly registered and generally won't get lost. For something this important, you definitely have to send it by registered letter. A regular letter costs 8 cents, while a registered letter only costs 20 cents. Are you really going to be stingy with 20 cents?"

(A registered letter from 73, with a two-cent stamp)
Chen Fan stared blankly. "I forgot."

He really forgot; who sends letters in later generations? Normally, people send things via courier, and if they occasionally deal with the post office, they send via EMS.

Registered mail? He knew what it was, but he had never even considered sending a registered letter.

The post office still offers this service. In addition to registered mail, it also continues to offer services such as regular mail, confidential mail (letters from classified units), and parcels. However, the volume of this business is truly worrying.

He went to the post office to mail a letter today, still caught up in the novelty of it, and completely forgot that important letters had to be sent by registered mail.

Seeing his expression, Zhang Wenliang felt helpless. "Luckily, you kept a copy. The one you sent was the one Xiao Jiang transcribed for you. If it had been lost, you could have made a new copy."

Chen Fan snapped out of his daze, his face falling. "Could it be that Captain Xiao told you that Xiao Jiang copied it for me?"

Zhang Wenliang immediately coughed twice, looked up at the sky, and said, "The weather is gloomy, it might rain later. Well, I need to go check the fields."

He started to walk out, but after taking a couple of steps, he turned back and said, “Let me tell you, you’d better have Xiao’e make another copy for you. That way, if it gets lost in the mail, you can just send it back right away, right?”

Seeing Chen Fan's dark face, he grinned and chuckled, "Nothing else. Little Jiang has to go to work too, right? Little E is following you as an apprentice. When the master is in trouble, the disciple should do his duty. That's all. Ah, I'm leaving now."

After saying that, he quickly slipped away.

Chen Fan pursed his lips, looked at his back, then at the brigade office, and muttered to himself, "Hmph, how old is he? He looks so serious, yet he's so gossipy."

Then he walked inside with his hands behind his back and his head shaking.

He had only taken two steps when a bicycle bell rang behind him. He turned around and saw Secretary Yang carrying the crossbar of his bicycle as he stepped over the threshold. Upon seeing Chen Fan, he immediately looked up and said loudly, "Perfect timing, I need to talk to you."

Chen Fan watched him park his bicycle in the corner and asked, "Did you go to a meeting at the commune?"

Secretary Yang locked his bicycle, strode over, nodded, and said, "Yes, I talked about a few things. Come on, let's go to the office, I'll talk to them together."

Chen Fan followed him into the brigade headquarters office, where only Zhang Changjiang was present.

Secretary Yang glanced at them and asked, "Where are Lao Ye and Lao Xiao?"

Zhang Changjiang raised his head and said, "Old Ye went to check on the construction progress of the breeding farm, and Old Xiao just had a friend come over and took him home."

Secretary Yang nodded, walked to his seat, and gestured to Chen Fan, "Ignore them, you sit down."

Seeing that they wanted to roll cigarettes again, Chen Fan took out cigarettes and gave one to each of them before sitting down on the bench next to him.

Secretary Yang held the cigarette upright and tapped it on the table a few times. He then took out a match, broke off the match head, stuck the remaining small stick into the cigarette butt, put it in his mouth, and lit it while biting the stick.

He exhaled a puff of smoke, looked at the two men, and said, "I went to the commune today for two things. One was to report on the spring plowing situation, which is pretty much the same anyway, so I won't go into details. The other was that I also privately reported to Secretary Qian about the livestock farm. The commune's attitude right now is that they offer moral support, but no material assistance."

Zhang Changjiang shook his head and chuckled, "I guessed it long ago."

Secretary Yang chuckled. “That’s normal. The commune’s resources are limited. It’s not good to favor one team over another. I don’t have any other requests right now. I just hope that the other teams won’t cause trouble for us. If they see that we’re raising livestock, they might blindly follow suit and set up their own farms.”

Zhang Changjiang flicked his cigarette ash, shook his head, and laughed, "Just following the trend and setting up rabbit farms? What are they going to do with that? Do they have veterinarians, or can they even buy rabbit seedlings?"

As he spoke, he pointed to Chen Fan sitting to the side, "Our rabbit seedlings were caught by Xiao Chen one by one. Although they are not as good as specially bred meat rabbit seedlings or Angora rabbit seedlings, the ones you can hold in your hand are the good ones."

Other teams want to follow suit, but where are they going to buy rabbit seedlings? Let alone rabbit seedlings, chickens, ducks, geese, horses, cattle, sheep, anything is in short supply everywhere. Otherwise, why would the commune's breeding farm have to buy piglets from each team? It's not that the higher-ups don't have enough piglets to distribute, so they can only use this clumsy method to ensure the supply of live pigs.

And veterinarians,..."

He took a drag of his cigarette, exhaled a puff of smoke, and said with a smile, "Being rich doesn't count if you're dealing with animals. Without a veterinarian, try running a livestock farm; they'll lose everything."

Secretary Yang listened with a smile, and nodded after he finished speaking. "That makes sense, but some people are just too stubborn. They only see the thief eating meat, but never the thief getting beaten. They've been blindly following the crowd more than once or twice. If some brigade really starts a breeding farm and then gets an epidemic, and comes to you for help, will you do anything about it?" Zhang Changjiang lowered his head and remained silent after hearing this.

Putting aside everything else, the Zhang family has several relatives in other production teams. It's perfectly normal for them to be related to each other in the surrounding villages. If something really happens, the terms can be negotiated, but they will definitely not stand idly by.

Chen Fan leaned back in his chair, glanced at the two men, his eyes darting around, and chuckled softly, "Just think of a way to prevent them from setting up their farms, wouldn't that be great?"

Ok?
Secretary Yang and Zhang Changjiang looked at him together, their eyes full of confusion.

Is this kid up to something?

Seeing their expressions, Chen Fan immediately said, "What I mean is, let's go to their teams to buy seedlings. We can buy any kind of chicken, duck, goose, pig, cattle, sheep, or horse. Anyway, once the farm is set up, we'll need to buy seedlings. The commune's breeding station definitely doesn't have enough seedlings. Without the commune's support, we don't have the money to go to the county's seedling farm for wholesale. So the best way is to go to a few nearby production teams to buy them. As long as we offer a higher price and include interest, we should be able to get them to issue IOUs, right?"

Upon hearing this, Secretary Yang and his companion slapped their thighs in unison.

Zhang Changjiang pointed at Chen Fan, then turned to Secretary Yang and smiled, "It really takes the brains of cultured people; they just work better than ours."

Secretary Yang nodded repeatedly, pondering as he said, "The breeding farm is about to be set up, and I'm also worried about the seedlings. Firstly, I don't have enough capital, and secondly, I don't know where to buy the seedlings. Xiao Chen's method can solve both of these problems. It can also prevent other production teams from setting up breeding farms and competing with us for business. It's a good idea."

After he finished speaking, he immediately took out his notebook and wrote it down.

We're all relatives in the surrounding villages. I'm buying seedlings from you, and you're offering high prices, with the production team as guarantor. Can you really stop me from giving you an IOU?
In this way, we have the seedlings, but we don't have to invest too much capital at the beginning. Once the farm starts making money, we can pay back the seedlings. It's a win-win situation!
What? What if I lose money?
So what if we lose money? We'll put it in the production team's account and pay it back a little each year. That's what we did during the famine more than ten years ago. Are you trying to drive anyone to their death?!

However, he had confidence in Chen Fan.

There was nothing else to it; the brilliant plan they devised was for Chen Fan to catch rabbits first, raise them for a period of time, and then sell them to the production team.

As long as Chen Fan raises them for a period of time, he will know whether this matter can be done. If they are raised well, then there will be no problem. The production team will take over all the rabbit seedlings, gradually expand the breeding scale, and make the side business bigger and stronger.

If you can't raise them properly.

Cough cough, the only one who suffers a loss is Chen Fan himself. At worst, they won't charge him work points for the feed he bought with his work points, or they'll charge him less.

Moreover, failure is still experience. If you learn from your mistakes, you might succeed someday.

This is what is meant by "learning from others' mistakes."

Of course, this can't be called cheating people. After all, the production team itself has invested a lot of manpower and resources in running the breeding farm, and has also reclaimed several barren slopes to grow forage grass. They have also made preparations to cover Chen Fan's losses. This can only be called "cooperation and win-win".

Closing the notebook, Secretary Yang took out his personal cigarettes for social occasions, pulled one out, and tossed it to Chen Fan, saying, "This is a reward for you."

Chen Fan looked at the cigarette, then at Secretary Yang, quite surprised. "Oh, so generous today?"

Secretary Yang glanced at him. "It's just a suggestion, worth only one cigarette. Do you want a whole pack?"

Chen Fan grinned and chuckled, "No, no, one is fine."

Secretary Yang took a puff of his cigarette and continued, "Besides the spring plowing and the livestock farm, I also received a notice at the commune meeting today."

He put a cigarette in his mouth, picked up his faux leather briefcase, opened it, pulled out two pieces of paper, but instead of handing them to Zhang Changjiang, he turned around and handed them to Chen Fan.

He also said, "After the commune applied to the county and received approval from the prefectural party committee leaders, it was decided to pilot the resumption of farmers' markets."

Chen Fan looked at the word "trial" on the document and said with a smile, "When the wind direction changes, we have to be careful. If there is another cold snap in spring, no one will dare to take responsibility. If it is a trial, it can be withdrawn as long as there are any changes, which will make it easier to deal with the inspection from above."

Secretary Yang nodded, pursing his lips. "That makes sense."

Then he raised his head and laughed, "Whether it's a trial or a formal implementation, we ordinary people don't care about these things. If there's a market, we'll go to the market; if there's no market, we'll stay home and farm. We live our own lives, and we can't interfere with other things."

After he finished speaking, he pointed to the document in Chen Fan's hand and said, "Just draft a notice based on what's in the document, and broadcast it over the loudspeaker later."

(End of this chapter)