The Fortunate Lady and Her Mountain Man

Chapter 56: Chapter 56: Hiring Helpers

Although things went more smoothly than expected, it was also more exhausting than she’d imagined. Ji Huan slept until noon the next day. She didn’t know about the others, but every inch of her body was sore.

When she arrived at the Hu family’s, she saw the others weren’t in much better shape.

But purchasing the vegetables was an urgent matter, and they couldn’t afford any delays.

Hu Liang gritted his teeth. "Let’s just push through for a few more days. Once we’ve finished buying all the vegetables, we’ll have plenty of time to rest."

His voice was a little hoarse from all the shouting he’d done yesterday.

"What? We have to go to another village today, bro?" Hu Dacheng cried out, turning to Ji Huan for help. "Wan, my legs hurt so much I can’t walk..."

Hu Liang retorted irritably, "You’re so soft. You work in the fields all the time, don’t you? How can you not handle this?"

"How is that the same? On our own land, it doesn’t matter if we work fast or slow. But buying vegetables means running all over the place, and there are so many of them. Then we have to sort them all out when we get back..."

Hu Liang was about to lecture him further, but Ji Huan stopped him.

"Dacheng has a point. Running from village to village like this isn’t just inefficient, it’s exhausting. Look, Aunt Xie is used to hard labor, but even she had trouble with yesterday’s sudden intensity. So what do you expect from Dacheng?"

Hu Liang knew everyone was exhausted. But he was desperate to make this venture a success. It was a way to pull his family out of their difficult situation and, more importantly, to propose to the Cao family sooner. So it was only natural that he felt a sense of urgency.

The opportunity was right in front of him. He wasn’t afraid of a little hardship or exhaustion, but if the others couldn’t keep up, he wouldn’t be able to do it by himself.

"We don’t have much time. Wasting a day means we’ll buy far fewer vegetables... Maybe we could rest for half the day, and then this afternoon we could..." For a moment, Hu Liang was at a loss.

"I have an idea," Ji Huan proposed. "Instead of going from village to village to buy small amounts, why don’t we buy in bulk from the town?"

"You mean... the vegetable vendors in town."

"Exactly," Ji Huan said with a nod. "They haul their vegetables from the villages to the town for one reason: to sell them. So what does it matter who they sell to? Liangzi, if it were you, would you rather sell your produce bit by bit, a pound or two at a time, or sell an entire cartload at once?"

"I’d sell the whole cartload, of course!" Hu Liang said without a moment’s hesitation.

"Plus, the wholesale price is cheaper than the retail price... But we won’t ask for that discount. Instead, we’ll make a condition: they have to deliver it to our door."

"Really? We could save a lot of money..." Hu Liang’s heart ached a little to hear her give up the wholesale price so easily.

"Liangzi," Ji Huan said, amused. "Those vendors have already gone through the trouble of hauling their produce from the villages to the town. If there’s nothing in it for them, they’re not going to deliver it all the way to our house. If we try to save that little bit of money, we’ll have to haul everything back ourselves, cart by cart. Do you think it’s worth it if one of us gets sick from exhaustion? Business is important, but you have to put people first. A person’s health is their greatest asset."

Hu Liang suddenly realized he had been too hasty and shortsighted.

He grew a little dejected. "I didn’t think things through. Wan, we’ll do as you say."

"Don’t sell yourself short," Ji Huan said, not wanting to discourage his enthusiasm. "I’m just good at coming up with the overall strategy. When it comes to drive and taking action, I can’t compare to you. Plus, you’re very meticulous. You think of details others would miss. In that respect alone, you’re much better than I am."

Her praise made Hu Liang blush, and his brief moment of negativity vanished. "I’m not that amazing..."

Seeing a way out of his suffering, Hu Dacheng immediately started buttering him up. "You are that amazing, bro! In my heart, you’re the greatest!"

The courtyard filled with laughter.

They all agreed to take the morning off to rest.

After lunch, Hu Liang took Dacheng into town. Ji Huan and Widow Xie didn’t go with them.

Widow Xie was still a little worried.

Their trip to buy vegetables in Willow Tree Village yesterday had gone so smoothly mainly thanks to Ji Huan. Now that Hu Liang was going to town on his own, she was afraid he would bungle things.

Ji Huan told her not to worry and to have more confidence in her son.

Although Hu Liang had been a bit impatient lately, there were good reasons for it. He was level-headed by nature and a quick learner. Yesterday’s experience had already broken the ice. Going to town was just a matter of applying the same method in a different place; nothing would go wrong.

And the reason she and Widow Xie hadn’t gone with them was because they had other tasks to attend to.

This was Ji Huan’s thinking: if buying in bulk proved feasible, there would be no need to waste manpower on purchasing vegetables. She and Widow Xie could then be freed up to start the preparation work simultaneously.

The vegetables they’d bought yesterday were piled up in the front yard. While the Hu family’s courtyard wasn’t small, it probably couldn’t hold much more if they kept on like this.

Therefore, the best solution was to purchase and process simultaneously. This would be the most effective way to prevent the raw ingredients from spoiling or piling up.

Widow Xie did as Ji Huan suggested, grabbing a large wooden basin to start washing vegetables.

"Aunt Xie, do you really think the two of us can handle all this?" Ji Huan asked, gesturing from the mountain of vegetables to the two of them.

"Of course we can! Why not? You don’t know me well enough yet—I can do the work of three people, no problem! If you’re tired, you go rest. I can handle it myself!"

Widow Xie was indeed a fast worker, so it was no problem for her to do the work of three. The problem was, even if she could do the work of thirty, it still wouldn’t be enough.

Going it alone was fine for a small-time operation, but they had taken a large order from the army. Their current manpower was clearly insufficient. They definitely needed to find outside help. "Many hands make light work," after all.

"Aunt Xie, do you know any other aunties or women who you’re on good terms with? We could ask them to come help. We won’t make them work for free; we’ll pay them wages."

At first, Widow Xie was reluctant. ’Why waste money hiring others for work I can do myself?’

But after Ji Huan explained why it was necessary to hire help, quoting the old adage "many hands make light work," Widow Xie began to worry about falling behind schedule. What if the client came to pick up the order and there was nothing ready? That would be a disaster.

"Well, there are some people... Are you sure we should hire them? It’s not just that I’m worried about the money. I’m mainly afraid that with more people around... word will get out."

"Once Liangzi and the others get back from town, do you think we’ll be able to keep this a secret anyway? As long as we don’t say anything ourselves, we can just let people guess."

Ji Huan believed that while the purchasing and the final, most critical stages of preparation had to be handled by them, the intermediate menial tasks—sorting, picking, washing, and chopping the vegetables—could all be outsourced.

’You can’t earn all the money in the world. Anyone who doesn’t know how to delegate authority and distribute work, who tries to do everything themselves... well, it’s hard to say if they’ll succeed, but they’ll certainly work themselves to death.’

"But we have to be careful about who we hire. They must be diligent and clean. Most importantly, they need to be good people with tight lips."

"Leave it to me. Don’t you worry."

Widow Hu wouldn’t even bother with the malicious, lazy gossips in the village, let alone ask them for help. The people she found were from families she interacted with frequently and knew inside and out.

She found nine people in total. Ji Huan only recognized one of them: Sister-in-law Fu, who had helped them sew quilts before.

Though Ji Huan didn’t know the others, she could tell from their words and actions that they were honest, capable women, so she kept them all on.

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