Chapter 11 "Buying Produce"

Going back to her truck, Ruan Wen made her way to the suburbs. She found some farms and fruit orchards that have good reviews on the internet and ordered most of their products before she drove there with the help of her phone's maps.

There were a total of two farms and three fruit orchard she was aiming to visit before the day ends. And another farm and two fruit orchards that were located farther away for the next day, she didn't want to waste her precious holiday!

Her schedule is very full!

At first the farm managers that she talked to thought she was scamming them since it was a large order. And the fact that the Ruan Wen sounded like a little girl on the phone wanting to order every variety of their produce out of no where! But were quickly convinced when she offered to pay the downpayment and managing to tranfer the money giving her credibility. Unfortunately all they can offer her were their extra harvest and the rejected produce.

Explaining that the rejected produce are perfectly good, just not entered the standard marketable appearance. And that most of the farms' produce were already contracted by local grocery stores, large supermarkets, and various restaurants.

They advised her to get a reservation next time before planting season for her convenience.

Ruan Wen told them that she understad and will take their advice to mind the next time she wanted to mass purchace produce. And told them that she would still take what they could give her if possible, happily ordering the farm's extra produce she wanted to purchase.

And because of her large order, saving their farm with the time handling their extra and rejected produce that most of will likely just end up in dumped in landfills breaking their hearts, they gave her a huge discount saving her some money!

Arriving at the first farm on her list, it was vegetable farm mostly producing root crops like carrots and potatoes varieties. Crops that are both seasonal and ones that grows all year around.

Ruan Wen was shocked upon how many varieties one crop has! The carrots alone in that farm has ten kinds! Apparently where over fourty types of carrots that people grow and cultivate!

Potatoes have even more varieties! I thought there only classed between sweet potatoes and the normal potatoes like those you use for fries and such! Turns out I very wrong, and apparantley, those baby potatoes are another kind of variety on their own, in fact, not an underdeveloped big potato!

She did not know the differece between any of it but she genuinely learned a lot.

She was bombarded with this knowledge when one of the farmers on the first farm talked passionately about potatoes and berated Ruan Wen when she made the mistake of saying that all the potatoes they were loading in on her truck were the same!

It felt like my ears will fall off and have nightmares about potatoes at one point! Even so, with that kind of passion and dedication for his work, it was incredible and that mister farmer guy deserved a lot of respect.

Finally finishing loading her box truck, it was barely able to fit all her purchases! Ruan Wen bought some of all the varieties they have for the season and all seeds and seedlings that they can sell.

Even though she did not stay too long there, it was a very nice experience!

After leaving the farm, Ruan Wen drove to a distance and looked for a secluded area to transfer her purchases inside her space. With the cargo unloaded, she went straight to her next destination wasting no time.

The same goes with the next two farms. Both of which were another vegetable farm, of course with different varieties of produce than that of the first farm she went. And as always she also bought all the seeds and seedlings they can sell her.

Ruan Wen enjoyed talking to the people at the farm, they shared their experiences growing their crops and gave her useful advice in planting!

With the fruit orchards fortunately, Ruan Wen didn't have much problem purchasing their produce since all of them offer special pick-your-own fruit services for tourists and have gift shops that sells many fruit products from jams and preserves to dried fruits.

Ruan Wen head to the fruit orchards, one was with apricots and the other with cherries that are on season along with other fruit trees the have available, both of which she called ahead to order baskets of their fruit to be readied for pickup.

Ruan Wen did not want to waste her time going around the entire plantation picking her own fruits. If it was a normal situation, Ruan Wen would have loved to take her time choosing her produce and enjoying the experience but she was in a tight schedule and it was already late in the afternoon!

Almost everything went smoothly, the only trouble she ran into was when she asked to buy an actual tree from the orchard. She wanted to buy some seedlings and small imature trees from them to add in her space and she had to make a lot of convincing in order for them to agree.

When asked what she will a young girl be doing with such a large purchase, Ruan Wen just vaguely said that she was a middle man and didn't know what the customer want to do with it. Which she thought was pretty clever of her to think of this kind of reason. Anyway, its not like these farmers will check her background and investigate her, right?!