Chapter 543: The Increasingly Lively Farm

Chapter 543 -377: The Increasingly Lively Farm

It was the perfect time to start planning the hiring process. The market stall was just sitting empty, which was a waste of money. He considered using it as a temporary kitchen, a place for new hires to practice and get used to working together.

On one hand, it would let the employees hone their skills, and on the other hand, it could bring in a little extra money.

‘It doesn’t need to be much. At the very least, I should make back the stall’s rental fee, right?’

The hiring requirements weren’t high. He’d thought it over. Rather than spending a fortune to hire chefs with years of experience or poaching some master chef, it was completely unnecessary.

The more experienced a chef, the more pronounced their personal style. These people were already used to working in a certain environment, and changing their habits would be very difficult.

Unless they were at the level of an executive or sous chef who could command an entire kitchen, they wouldn’t be able to adapt perfectly to most environments.

It would be better to hire some novices. As long as they knew basic cooking, he could teach them the rest slowly. After all, he had plenty of time.

The only real requirement was knowing basic cooking. It might sound simple, but it effectively filtered out anyone without a talent for cooking.

Although food prices in North America seem relatively cheap, the main living costs were all eaten up by rent, transportation, and phone bills.

After deducting these expenses from a base salary of $2,500, there wasn’t much left over. So, if you wanted to save money, you had to learn to cook for yourself.

These were the people he was looking for.

They didn’t have much money and lived relatively frugally, which meant they were desperate for a high-paying job. This would greatly reduce employee turnover.

Knowing basic cooking meant less training time, so he wouldn’t have to patiently repeat himself over and over and over again.

Of course, he couldn’t just write everyone off. If there was a truly suitable candidate who couldn’t cook, he could let them give it a try. ‘What if they had hidden talent?’

Besides chefs for the restaurant, they also needed people for the food stall out front, which required a relatively low level of technical skill. The front of house also needed staff, as did farm management, tourist reception, and so on.

He was the only professional chef here, so it only made sense for him to be the one to draft the hiring requirements.

After writing up a rough draft, he gave it to Jin Meiyan to polish. That same day, it was posted on all the major job search websites.

At the same time, he also posted the hiring information on his personal social media accounts, and Erica and Jin Meiyan both shared it.

Between the three of them, they had nearly 400,000 followers. Just two minutes after the message went out, Lin Chen’s and Erica’s inboxes had already received over twenty résumés.

He really couldn’t stand this kind of text-based work, so he could only leave the initial screening to the two women. They would pick out all the suitable candidates, and then the three of them would conduct the second round of selection together.

The two women focused on different areas. One was in charge of hiring for farm management—including farming, animal husbandry, and forest maintenance—while the other was responsible for hiring staff to receive tourists and form a promotions department, which included video shooting and post-production editing.

As for the restaurant staff—whether for the front of house, the back of house, or the food stall—Lin Chen was in charge of them all himself.

In addition to the restaurant, he also needed to hire a few guides skilled in wilderness survival.

With such a huge territory, having only Andre in charge wasn’t enough. After all, this was how they got their start, so they absolutely couldn’t be short-staffed in this area.

Compared to hiring for the other positions, recruiting wilderness guides was much more difficult.

It took three whole days to screen over two hundred candidates for the second round of interviews, but only six of them were applying for the forest guide position.

The practical experience of these six was clearly insufficient. The one with the most experience had only spent two years in the forest. The most ridiculous one was just an enthusiast, a “pure theory” candidate—just like he used to be, someone who just liked watching shows on the topic.

He didn’t understand where the guy got the confidence to apply for this position. ‘Or was he just hoping to get free training?’

The second round of interviews was much stricter. Regardless of the position, all three of them had to discuss and screen the candidates together. A candidate needed approval from two of the three to advance to the third and final round.

The final round was very simple: a scheduled online video interview to get a feel for their conversational skills, personality, personal preferences, and other conventional things.

Lin Chen’s requirements for other aspects weren’t high. His only absolute rule was that the people he hired couldn’t have any racial biases. Also, they had to have a calm and steady personality, not the type to scream and have an emotional breakdown over small things.

This kind of temperament, the “beast of burden” personality, is very common in Asia. Most people are like that. But in North America, it was the complete opposite.

People here received a liberal education from a young age and have a very strong sense of self. It was easy for them to have an emotional breakdown and lose their composure over minor issues.

After a full seven days of screening, they ended up selecting only twelve candidates who were highly suitable in all respects.

This number was clearly below expectations, so they would have to conduct a second round of hiring, and maybe even a third and fourth. In any case, it was highly unlikely the process would stop anytime soon.

…

“Make way, make way!”

A large piece of construction equipment drove down the wide asphalt road through the forest. In its huge metal claw, it held a banana tree laden with fruit.

The trunk of the banana tree was wrapped in layer after layer, tightly secured for fear that its fragile structure would be damaged during transport, killing it.

When the banana tree was gently lowered into a pre-dug pit, the driver finally let out a long breath and glanced at the various trees and flowers piled on the grass nearby.

Having worked in this line of business for so many years, it was the first time he’d ever seen a project of this scale. The number of plant species alone was in the triple digits. Many of the fruit trees, in particular, had been shipped in from various farms or other countries at great expense.

Just as he jumped down from the machine, a flock of sheep ambled across the asphalt road, followed by a sheepdog.

This was already the third group of animals he had seen in the past two days. Yesterday, someone had even delivered a truckload of chickens.

As the flock of sheep moved away, the rich aroma of meat wafted through the air.

The man licked his dry lips and subconsciously started walking in the direction of the scent.

In a clearing a few dozen meters away, a long line had already formed, filled with workers in their forties and fifties just like him.

“Today’s lunch is braised pork belly with fried tofu puffs, garlic broccoli, and tomato egg drop soup! Everyone line up! If it’s not enough, come back for more. We’ve got plenty for everyone!”

Behind a large stove, a sweat-drenched Lin Chen shouted a few times through a megaphone. Under a dozen pairs of expectant eyes, he lifted the lid of the pot, revealing the braised pork belly bubbling away inside.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to change the menu; it was just that these old-timers really loved braised pork belly.

After a morning of hard labor, getting a box of rice drenched in the braised pork sauce, topped with a piece of melt-in-your-mouth pork belly with its perfect ratio of fat and lean meat—that was a satisfaction no other food could replace.

He had made spare ribs, stews, and stir-fried chicken before. He’d even made pork knuckle. But the feedback was unanimous: nothing beat the braised pork belly.

For workers doing manual labor like construction, this dish was the undisputed number one choice. It was satisfying, filling, and high in fat. After a couple of boxes of rice, they’d be bursting with energy for work.

The only thing he could change up was the side dishes.

A large ladle plunged into the pot and stirred vigorously. Square chunks of meat rose to the surface, each one stained an alluring soy-red by the sauce, trembling nonstop like Jell-O.

The fried tofu puffs floating on the surface had also soaked up the sauce, becoming plump and juicy, looking as if they would burst with broth at the slightest squeeze.

With a few more stirs, large, finger-thick sheets of tofu skin were turned over, all of them soaked in the same tempting, soy-brown color.

Just smelling this aroma made the few workers at the front of the line swallow hard.

Even though they ate this three or four times a week, the scent could still stir up their cravings every single time.

To cater to their tastes, Lin Chen would also switch up the flavor profile from time to time.

Sometimes it was the rich, dark, and savory style of the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai region. Sometimes it was the sweet Northern style. Other times it was the Taiwanese braised pork rice style with shiitake mushrooms. He even added chili and Sichuan peppercorns once, making a spicy and numbing Sichuan-style braised pork.

It was precisely because of his meticulous care that after just a few weeks of work, not only had the workers not lost any weight, but a few had even gotten noticeably rounder.

“WHIMPER~~”

He had just dished out a few servings when a faint whimper came from his feet, and he could feel something nudging his pant leg.

“Stop it!”

Lin Chen glanced down and chided it gently, then handed a freshly prepared plate of braised pork over rice to a worker.

At his feet, a goofy-looking little wolf pup sat bolt upright, its little head tilted back, staring intently at his hand… and what was in it.

In just over a week, it had grown from a palm-sized little thing into a slightly more wolf-like little thing.

Maybe because it was still too young, it didn’t look much like a purebred Coyote. Instead, it looked a bit like a gray-haired husky, or maybe a Czechoslovakian Wolfdog—adorably dumb, with a perpetually sleepy expression on its face.

“Can’t you give it a few pieces?”

Erica looked at the little creature by her feet, her face full of pity. She wanted to pet it, but she was worried about food safety, so in the end, she suppressed the urge and dutifully went back to helping serve soup to the workers.

“No,” Lin Chen said, shaking his head decisively. “Pork belly has too much fat. It’s not that animals can’t eat it, but it depends on their size.”

“Medium to large dogs are relatively fine, but small dogs can easily get diarrhea from it. Their butts will be covered in it, and what if they step in it…”

“Ew! Stop, stop, stop! Okay, maybe don’t give it any.”

‘It’s one thing to not get to taste such fragrant meat at all, but once it has a bite, it’ll never be able to stop. Better not to feed it, just to be safe.’

The little wolf pup whimpered a few more times and pawed at Lin Chen’s leg. Seeing no reaction, it turned its head to look at Erica, licking its pink nose. Its pitiful expression was enough to make even the burly workers’ hearts melt with sympathy.