Chapter Fourteen: The Oil Mill

“Peanuts! Fresh peanuts with soil still on them, just dug up!”
“Fresh peanuts straight from the greenhouse…”

Chen Ling found a spacious spot in the grain section, parked his donkey cart, and began shouting at the top of his lungs.

At this time, more people were just starting to gather in the grain area.

Chen Ling’s call quickly attracted quite a crowd.

Seeing that the peanuts were truly fresh and still covered with soil, people found it quite a novelty.

Upon inquiry, Chen Ling told them these peanuts were grown in a greenhouse.

The crowd immediately became livelier, bombarding Chen Ling with questions.

Some asked which village he was from, others inquired about how difficult it was to manage a greenhouse, and how much it cost to build one…

Questions came from all directions, and during this, they all tasted Chen Ling’s peanuts.

Everyone agreed they tasted better than ordinary peanuts.

But sales didn’t pick up as quickly as Chen Ling had imagined.

It wasn’t that no one was buying, but the quantities were small.

People bought in five or ten-pound increments.

The largest purchase was fifty pounds from the owner of a grain and oil shop at the farmers' market.

He told Chen Ling the peanuts were delicious but wasn’t sure how much oil they’d yield, so he bought fifty pounds to try.

If the oil output was low, he’d just eat them as fresh peanuts.

Chen Ling was rather speechless.

He wondered if he had overestimated the purchasing power of this era.

Throughout the morning, Chen Ling kept shouting now and then, and buyers kept coming.

Once they saw the fresh peanuts and heard they were greenhouse-grown, they were willing to buy.

But still, the issue remained: the amounts were small.

By around eleven o’clock, there were about seventy pounds of peanuts left on the donkey cart.

“Tsk, I used to think five hundred pounds wasn’t much, but after a whole morning of shouting, this much is still left.”

Chen Ling shook his head, feeling quite helpless.

He understood that such matters could not be rushed.

Whether in this era or the future, quickly opening up the market and attracting a large customer base was never easy.

His expectations had simply been raised by the presence of the Sun and Moon Cave.

“And this is all based on market prices, without much of a markup.”

Currently, shelled peanuts were selling for 0.8 yuan per pound. Using the appeal of fresh and greenhouse-grown peanuts, Chen Ling raised the price by 0.1 yuan to 0.9 yuan per pound.

People could still accept this.

But if he raised it another 0.1 yuan to 1 yuan per pound, it would be harder to sell.

Money was still quite valuable in this era.

Moreover, the price difference for grains was small; even if Chen Ling priced two-tenths of a yuan above market price, they simply wouldn’t sell.

Unless Chen Ling took out the peanuts grown directly inside the cave.

But there was no way he was willing to sell those now.

He couldn’t bear to part with them!

As noon approached, the grain section gradually emptied.

Chen Ling sold another twenty pounds of peanuts, leaving just over fifty pounds on the cart, which stubbornly wouldn’t sell.

So he decided to have a meal first to fill his stomach.

Then he would figure out how to quickly deal with the remaining three thousand pounds of peanuts inside the cave.

For lunch, Chen Ling ate a bowl of he luo noodles at the farmers' market.

A big steaming bowl with spicy red oil broth and minced pork topping, served generously.

He ate with great satisfaction, paid, then drove the donkey cart out of the market to find a place to water the donkey.

After a morning without food or water, the donkey was restless.

To reward the stubborn beast, Chen Ling fed it some peanut vines and leaves left over for the chickens inside the cave.

This really whetted the donkey’s appetite.

It stopped by the roadside and refused to move, barking and nudging Chen Ling with its mouth, asking for more food.

“You stubborn thing, with an attitude like that, you still want to eat…”

Chen Ling frowned and cracked his whip, urging the donkey to keep moving toward the county town.

He planned to visit the major oil mills and grain and oil shops in the county to see if he could sell more peanuts.

That trip truly surprised Chen Ling.

He had loaded the donkey cart fully before heading out.

At the first oil mill he visited, he unloaded three hundred pounds.

And this oil mill wasn’t even large.

The owner tasted the fresh peanuts, noting the soil outside was fresh but the kernels were dry enough to press oil directly.

Hearing they were greenhouse-grown, he happily weighed them, paid on the spot, and took the goods.

He told Chen Ling to leave three hundred pounds for a trial oil pressing, and if it worked well, he’d have Chen Ling deliver more next time.

Chen Ling was quite confused. Why did the farmers' market owner only keep fifty pounds for trial pressing, but this small oil mill took three hundred pounds right away?

Later, after some inquiries, he learned that although the oil mill seemed smaller than a grain and oil shop, its customer base was different.

The oil mill supplied to restaurants, hotels, supply and marketing cooperatives, department stores, grain and oil shops, and so on. Even a small oil mill had a much broader sales network than ordinary people imagined.

Moreover, the leftover meal and cake from oil pressing were also in great demand.

They were sold to feed factories and sometimes brought in profits comparable to oil pressing itself.

Grain and oil shops mostly dealt with individual consumers, with smaller volumes sold.

Chen Ling realized he had made the wrong choice from the start.

Based on what he learned, it didn’t take long for him to grasp the underlying dynamics.

In his previous life, he rarely had to deal with these matters, so he hadn’t bothered to understand the differences between oil mills and grain and oil shops.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have made such a basic mistake.

Seizing the opportunity while inquiring about oil mills, Chen Ling asked a few more probing questions.

Then he learned:

At this season, peanuts were still in high demand, and oil mills were running low on their pre-New Year supplies.

New peanuts hadn’t been planted yet.

So any oil mill would keep some peanuts if the quality was good, usually starting at a minimum of two hundred pounds.

Lingyun County wasn’t big, but there were still several oil mills.

So Chen Ling spent most of the afternoon offloading about fifteen hundred pounds of peanuts.

Adding the morning sales at the farmers' market, he had sold around two thousand pounds.

Judging by the 1,800 yuan in cash he held, the day had been quite fruitful.

“Hmm…”

“Once these oil mills try pressing the oil, the peanut market will be secure for the time being.”

Chen Ling had confidence in the peanuts watered by the cave’s stream.

Of course, even if the entire Lingyun County became saturated, he could still visit oil mills in the surrounding townships.

If that didn’t work, he could try neighboring counties.

None of that was a problem.

After counting his money again, Chen Ling bought good plows, harrows, and cultivators.

He also bought several bags of various rapeseed and other miscellaneous seeds before driving the donkey cart home.

But before leaving the county, he ran into Liang Hongyu and Qin Rongxian, a couple he had seen at the farmers' market.

They were dressed the same as before, sitting on two small stools, fishing by the river.

It was just past the tenth day of the lunar second month; the weather hadn’t begun to warm yet. Chen Ling wondered where they found such leisure.

“Little brother, have you sold all your peanuts?”

Liang Hongyu greeted first, and Qin Rongxian, who was fiddling with bait, looked up and recognized Chen Ling.

“Yes.”

Chen Ling got off the donkey cart, shook his head with a smile. “I’ve been at it since morning, and after all that effort, I finally sold them all…”

“Little brother, I’ve been meaning to ask, why did you choose to grow peanuts in a greenhouse? With a greenhouse, shouldn’t you be growing vegetables or melons instead?”

Qin Rongxian asked.

“I’ve seen greenhouses used for mushrooms, watermelons, and vegetables, but never for peanuts.”

Chen Ling laughed and replied, “I just built the greenhouse. I planted a bit of everything—vegetables, fruits—to see what sells best.”

“After planting, there was a patch of empty ground left, so I casually sowed two rows of peanuts.”

That was just an excuse.

In truth, a few days ago he didn’t have suitable seeds on hand. At home, he had preserved dried fruits like red dates, walnuts, melon seeds, and peanuts.

Peanuts were the easiest to deal with. The others, if planted on wasteland and watered with cave stream water, would just grow into trees, which would attract unwanted attention.

Peanuts were low-maintenance and less troublesome, so they were perfectly suitable.