873 Very Talented
“Sister! My relatives live in a village in the suburbs and they have a lot of land! You can plant them at my relatives’ place!” Zhao Fei said excitedly.
She could not make up her mind about this matter, so she decided to discuss it with Qiao Mei. What if Zhao Fei was here to sabotage her as she was from out of town?
“Let… let me think about it… I’ll go home and think about it…” Li Gui said hesitantly.
Good things were worth the wait. Anyway, it was winter now and the seeds could not be planted yet. Zhao Fei had no issue with waiting as long as Li Gui agreed to work with him next spring.
“Sure!” Zhao Fei took out a card from his pocket with a string of numbers written on it. He handed it to Li Gui and said, “Sister, call me if you’ve decided. This is my phone number.”
Li Gui nodded and carefully put the card into her pocket. Then, she dragged the basket home. Along the way, she kept looking back, worried that Zhao Fei would follow her.
It was fine if she was in danger, but if her address was made known to everyone and people came looking for trouble while she was working during the day, those few children would be in trouble.
After Li Gui reached home safely, she quickly went to look for Qiao Mei to discuss this matter. She told Qiao Mei exactly what Zhao Fei had said.
Actually, Qiao Mei already had an intention to work with the farmers in the suburbs. After all, if she leased a piece of land herself, the cost would be very high and it would not be worth the effort. Furthermore, she would need to bid against others and then the costs would be raised even higher.
Besides, this was only an activity for Li Gui to do now. It was not certain if she would be able to do this seeds business in the future. She could not let Li Gui run around outdoors selling seeds for the rest of her life.
When Li Gui became older, she would need to rely on her children to support her. However, she was the kind of person who would never let such a thing happen. Therefore, Qiao Mei still had to think about if there were any other jobs that were suitable for Li Gui. It might be a good idea to set up a shop for Li Gui.
“What do you think about what Zhao Fei said?” Qiao Mei asked.
Li Gui hesitated for a moment and said, “… I don’t have any views, but I think the price he quoted is really too low. 35 cents a pound is so little.”
If they did the planting in their own courtyard, then Zhao Fei’s price of 35 cents a pound was indeed very low. However, if Zhao Fei could help them solve the issue of the land, then it would be a different story.
“We can work with him and we can also pay those farmers to lease the land, but we won’t sell him the seeds to plant. We’ll hire people to plant them and then we’ll sell the harvested seeds to Zhao Fei for 35 cents,” Qiao Mei said with a smile.
This way, it was a much better situation than just selling the seeds to Zhao Fei and letting him find a place to plant them himself. They could earn a lot of money just by selling the harvested seeds.
However, the prerequisite for a collaboration was to see how many people Zhao Fei could find to work with them. If only one or two families wanted to work with them, it would not be worth the effort. The small amount of seeds planted would not even be enough to make enough money to cover their travel expenses!
“Alright, I’ll talk to him when I meet him again,” Li Gui said.
Li Gui took out 1,000 dollars from her pocket and handed it to Qiao Mei. “I didn’t help much with the issue of the children going to school, but I have enough money for their books and tuition fees. See if it’s enough. If it’s not enough, I’ll raise more.”
Xia Wen had not settled the matter with Zheng Peng yet, so no one knew how much money they would need. If Zheng Peng could not take up the job, they would still have to think of another way.
“The matter of money is not that urgent. There’s no hurry. We can talk about it in detail when the teacher is here. What are your plans for Zhang Qin and Zhang Miao?” Qiao Mei asked.
Recently, Li Gui had also noticed that these two children had different interests. Zhang Qin was more inclined towards acting. Previously, Xia He had also said that Zhang Qin was quite talented in this area. Moreover, Zhang Qin had great interest in it herself. If her family’s financial situation allowed for it, she could consider learning dance.
Zhang Miao liked musical instruments more and could barely walk past an instrument shop without going in. Moreover, when Qian’e came to visit these children, she also said that Zhang Miao’s hands were very slender and suitable for playing the piano. If they started to nurture her now, she could definitely become very outstanding in the future.
However, there were so many children in the family. Other than Zhang Chao, if the rest of the children wanted to pursue their specialties, it would cost a lot of money. Li Gui was the only one earning money and she did not have enough for the four children to pursue their interests at the same time.
If they were to take turns, Zhang Qin and Zhang Miao might very well miss out on their golden period of development.
