Traveling Through Farmhouses: Taking the Baby on a Famine Escape

This location is indeed excellent. As soon as the firecrackers went off, many people stopped in their tracks and looked at this newly opened shop.

Zhang Dacheng quickly introduced the shop and its promotions in his loud voice.

"Dear fellow villagers, my shop is having a grand opening today! The first ten customers who buy pastries today will get one free, first come, first served!"

"Boss, is this for real?!"

"of course it's true."

Several passersby heard this and went into the shop. Zhou immediately went over to introduce the products and even let them try some.

Zhang Xixi immediately got the others to work, with Xiao Chenshi assisting Chenshi.

Zhang Dacheng and Zhang Wenhong then led several children, each carrying a plate of pastries, to the intersections on either side of the road, inviting people to try them.

The waiter that Ma Youqing brought was also serving guests; after all, he was a professional and more eloquent than Zhou.

Those who came in exclaimed in amazement upon seeing the cake, "This pastry is absolutely gorgeous!"

"They are beautiful, but one or two taels of silver each is too expensive!"

After the taste test, a woman dressed in fine cotton cloth still paid for a cake. After paying, Zhang Xixi immediately asked the waiter to pack another cake for her.

"Walk slowly!"

Seeing this, the other people in the shop knew that the buy-one-get-one-free offer was real, and they quickly grabbed a portion of the pastries they wanted.

Zhang Xixi also made a note that by the eleventh item, the discount would be 40%, not buy one get one free.

After people outside tried the food, many came to their shop, all with their children.

In no time, only a few pieces of walnut candy remained in the shop.

People kept asking if there were any cakes left, so Zhang Xixi had to launch a pre-order service, allowing people who needed cakes to place an order, leave half of the deposit, and pick it up the next day. Of course, there was only one style available, and they were all cream-filled.

Zhang Xixi gave the remaining walnut candy to Xiao Er so he could take it home and eat it.

Their own family doesn't need to taste it, because they've already eaten enough at home.

They sold out in less than an hour, and Zhang Xixi and the others asked the waiter to keep an eye on things outside.

They went to the backyard and counted. They had made a total of twenty cakes today, all on a buy-one-get-one-free basis, and received five taels of silver. With the other pastries, they made a profit of twenty taels even with a 40% discount. After deducting the cost, they still made a profit of five taels of silver today.

The Chen family was overjoyed when they heard about the profits; they were about to make a fortune!

"Mother, don't be too happy yet. Today is just a big market day with lots of people, but it won't be like this in the next few days. At most, you can only earn three taels a day."

Hearing what Zhang Xixi said, the Chen family was still very happy, as three taels of silver was quite good.

Mrs. Chen said happily, "Let's go, let's eat out at a restaurant for lunch today."

"There's something delicious to eat!"

The children cheered happily.

Once outside, Chen called over Jingui, the waiter introduced by Ma Youqing. They agreed that he would be paid 500 cash a month and would live and eat in the backyard.

The Chen family will also be having lunch at the shop from now on, so they plan to bring some rice and vegetables over tomorrow morning.

After everyone finished lunch and tidied up, they went back. Madam Chen instructed Jin Gui to keep an eye on the shop.

Business is so good, I need to go back and prepare the materials!

After returning home, Zhang Xixi helped the children peel walnuts until after dinner before going home herself.

After a few days, the business of Chen's shop stabilized, and they became more proficient in all aspects of the shop's operations.

Zhang Xixi didn't go over to help; she had to go back to planting potatoes.

This time, instead of buying seeds from the store, I took the potatoes I harvested last time out of the cellar, cut them into chunks, and used them as seeds.

Together with Sun Xiuxiu, she planted half of the vegetable garden outside with sweet potatoes. Of course, after planting, they used soil conditioner and plant growth solution.

Recently, the vermicelli factory has been producing more and more, with a daily output of over 1,000 jin (500 kg), while Qian Zhanggui's demand, which is once every five days, has increased to 6,000 jin (3,000 kg).

Zhang Xixi's sweet potatoes have already been mostly sold out.

News of the border war nearing its end reached the town. It was said that the battle was extremely difficult, resulting in heavy losses for both sides, with neither side gaining any advantage.

The main reason is the impact of natural disasters, which have led to food shortages on both sides.

As a result, the two places decided to go through the difficulties together through marriage, but these things had nothing to do with Zhang Xixi and the others.

More than ten days later, at the end of the month, the vermicelli factory in the deserted village had been operating for two months. Zhou Dashan and the others decided to tell everyone about the recent situation and also to distribute dividends to everyone.

The time was set for the afternoon of the last day of the month.

On the first day, they had someone notify the villagers who had bought the shares to gather at the threshing ground in the afternoon.

After lunch, Zhang Xixi and Chen Shi went to the threshing ground.

Zhou Dashan first said a few polite words, and then Zhou Yuping introduced the situation and announced the accounts.

"Our village's vermicelli-making factory initially raised 90 taels of silver to build the factory and buy materials and equipment... Now, two months later, we have bought 300,000 catties of sweet potatoes, spent 600 taels of silver, and produced 50,000 catties of vermicelli. We sold it at 25 wen per catty, and made a total of 1,250 taels. We paid 57.5 taels of silver to the workers, and have a balance of 592.5 taels."

The people below were overjoyed to hear that there was so much silver.

Zhou Dashan stood up again and said, "We discussed it and decided to distribute five hundred taels of silver among everyone. Everyone can come to me to collect their silver by presenting their agreement."

Those who could do arithmetic did the math in their heads and realized that each share would yield five taels of silver, which was not a losing proposition.

This investment is fantastic!

Zhang Xixi also felt that if things continued to develop at this pace, the vermicelli factory could at least improve the villagers' living standards by several levels.

However, the prerequisite is that the villagers are willing to spend money!

After the villagers lined up to receive their silver, they all came over to thank Chen and Zhang Xixi.

They were praising them.

It really proves the old saying: whoever feeds you is your mother!

The day after the dividends were distributed, Manager Qian came again!

This trip is to help them increase their fan production, because the Northwest needs a large number of fans to trade for horses and sheep with the Northern Desert.

Although a factory has been built in Fuzhou, the shortage of raw materials has prevented the production of many vermicelli, so we still rely on this place.

Of course, this time he also came on behalf of the Duanmu family, because the disasters in various parts of the Tianqi Dynasty have emptied the national treasury, and they can no longer even pay military salaries.

The Duanmu family maintains its own army, and now they want to improve its strength. Aren't they afraid of arousing the old emperor's suspicion?

Although Zhang Xixi thought this way, she kept her expression hidden and pretended not to know.

This was just an ordinary transaction.

This time, Manager Qian also brought them bad news.