Chapter 577: Chapter 12: Selling Crabs
Autumn arrived swiftly. After the first pot of chrysanthemums at the nursing home turned yellow at the tips, the Agricultural Specialty Store’s business, which had initially seen a cold reception, gradually found its own customer base and eventually achieved stable operations.
The store’s main product—signature sweet potatoes—saw a price adjustment after a bumper harvest, with varieties of both local and non-local sweet potatoes appearing on the market, causing a slight impact on sales.
Fortunately, Zhuo Feng and her husband swiftly adjusted their strategy and processed the unsold sweet potatoes into sweet potato flour, and also produced small canned goods pickled with sweet potato leaves.
The customer source of the Agricultural Specialty Store also shifted slightly. Even some nearby restaurants began to specifically use their sweet potato flour, saying it was particularly good for thickening sauces or making glutinous rice balls.
The only regrettable thing was that the product variety in the Agricultural Specialty Store was a bit too limited; customers kept coming back for the same few items, and would occasionally inquire when the store would introduce new and better specialty products.
On the weekend, Zhuo Feng thought that since Xiao Xian had been at the Huake Institute for almost two weeks, apart from a message relayed by Yu Gang that everything was going well, there had been no further news.
Just as Zhuo Feng was planning to personally visit the Huake Institute to check on Xiao Xian’s school studies and campus life, Xiao Xian called back, saying she would return home with Zhang Yiyi on the following Wednesday.
Early on Wednesday, Zhuo Feng specially drove to Jingxi Agricultural Market, not to buy sweet potatoes this time, but to head to the local food market, planning to buy some good dishes to take home.
The vegetable market at Jingxi Agricultural Market was just as lively as the rest of Jingxi Agricultural Market, bustling with vendors selling fish and chickens. Autumn was also the harvest season for a variety of crops, a series of red, yellow, and green that made Zhuo Feng’s eyes whirl.
"Selling Hairy Crabs here, premium Miyun Crabs, hefty weight, big sizes," there was a cry selling Hairy Crabs, the voice not loud, lacking confidence.
Had Zhuo Feng not walked close to that stall, she might not even have heard the vendor’s calls.
Indeed, the saying ’when chrysanthemums are yellow, crabs are fat’ referred to the crab-eating season.
Xiao Xian loved eating crabs, but the sea crabs from the north were all transported from Shandong, and the taste was not as fresh. As for river and lake crabs, in recent years, there were rumors of breeding outside the city, but the flavor was unknown.
Zhuo Feng arrived at the crab stall and before the crab sale started, she was amused by the vendor’s setup.
A cargo truck and a few foam boxes for crabs; the setup reminded her of her and Xiao Xian’s early days selling crabs, clearly amateurs at a glance.
"Uncle, is this your first time selling crabs? You can’t just yell like that, you have to call out loudly, announce your specialty. But I’m confused, when did Miyun in Beijing start raising Hairy Crabs?" Seeing that the crab vendor was a naive-looking middle-aged man under fifty, clearly a novice, and recalling her own similar embarrassing experiences from before, Zhuo Feng felt inclined to offer some pointers.
Looking at the Hairy Crabs in his foam boxes, Zhuo Feng was surprised. Her hometown Zhejiang was also a major seafood-producing province. Her hometown town wasn’t directly on the sea, but she had eaten all sorts of river and seafood since she was a child.
She had eaten plenty of Hairy Crabs and had developed some experience in discerning them after seeing so many.
The Hairy Crabs for sale were modestly placed in the foam boxes, covered with a layer of green netting, only two or three displayed on top of the boxes.
Each crab was three to four liang (units of weight), some with long bellied and some round bellied. Their eight legs were bound by a single piece of plastic rope, and their large pincers bore a ring of black bristles.
"Uncle, your Hairy Crabs are really good," Zhuo Feng praised loudly, picking up a few crabs. Indeed, unscrupulous crab sellers would usually resort to using thick ropes, unlike the thin threads this seller had used to bind the crabs.
Weighed on a scale, each crab was consistently three liang and five qian (another unit of weight), almost like identical twins.
"Hey, young lady, you really know your stuff. These are good crabs, each one handpicked," said Uncle Lu as Zhuo Feng had anticipated; he was previously in charge of managing the breeding farm and had never been a crab seller before.
Recently, with Huang’s Breeding Hairy Crabs hitting the market, Yezi and Uncle Lu had thought it over: instead of transporting the crabs to other regions, putting the Hairy Crabs through half-dead distress alongside humans, it would be better to sell the crabs locally in various markets.