There are few people in the hometown, and the per capita land is less than 5 points, but fortunately, there are many mountains in the hometown, and most of them are red land, as long as they are hard-working, the yield of planting sweet potatoes is also quite high. When I was a child, most people entered the stage of food shortage after the first month. Even for families with a little more labor, there is not much surplus grain in the third month of the lunar calendar. Therefore, there is a specific local name for "Three Wilds and May", which refers to the period from february of the lunar calendar to before the early rice harvest. In order to make the family full, the average person's morning is to use sweet potatoes and a little rice to cook a pot of thin porridge. During the day, there is manual labor, and at noon, sweet potato shreds will be added to make sweet potato shredded rice, often half of the rice and half of the sweet potato shreds, sometimes even 70% or 80% of the sweet potato shreds.
I remember that one night, I was at home with my mother and me, and there were two bowls of sweet potato rice left at noon, I took two bowls of sweet potato rice and weighed them for a long time, and my mother was puzzled, smiled and asked me: "What are you doing?" At the age of four or five, I replied in a confused way: "I am so hungry, I want to choose a bowl that is heavier and more." My mother blushed, turned her head, and after a while she turned back and pulled another bowl of sweet potato shredded rice into my bowl.
In February and March, the mother will take the sweet potato left over from the first year to make seeds, take it from the upstairs, and after its natural germination, cut the sweet potato into small pieces according to the germination situation, ensure that there is at least one small bud on each small piece, and then find a fertile piece of land to plant the sprouted sweet potato chips in preparation for large-scale planting of sweet potatoes in the summer. Sweet potatoes are grown in my hometown, often before and after the early rice harvest, and it is the hottest time when the weather is the hottest, and my mother has to participate in the labor of the production team during the day to earn work points, and can only get up early every day in the dark to plough the land for sweet potatoes. I don't know how many mornings and evenings my mother spent turning over the corners and corners of her own land, and even on the small hillside, and piling them up into a long strip of ridges. Then on each long ridge, dig a small pit with a hoe, and grab a handful of farm manure in each small pit. The farm manure, that is, the chicken manure and duck manure in the chicken and duck shed at home, plus some accumulated stove ash, are mixed together.
Sweet potato chips planted in the spring have long since grown into a lush sweet potato vine. The mother would pluck it and use a rusty pair of scissors to cut the sweet potato vine into a one-foot-long sweet potato stalk. After cutting, the family picked up a load of sweet potato seedlings and carried a few buckets of water to the field that had already been turned over. Children are responsible for distributing sweet potato seedlings, adults are responsible for planting, and planting a sweet potato seedling in each small pit. Then, the adults continue to carry a load of water into the ground, and the children are responsible for pouring two or three spoonfuls of water on the side of each sweet potato seedling planted until the soil is watered through. After the sweet potato seedlings are planted, they should be watered every two days until the sweet potato seedlings are alive, usually for about 15 days. Often a sweet potato field, you have to pick up hundreds of cartons of water, in order to completely plant a sweet potato stalk. As the saying goes, "A grain of grain, seven cartons of water", I look at a sweet potato, but I really need to pour seven tons of water. Planting process, if it rains, it is tantamount to God's help, you can pick up water a few times, but there are not many such opportunities.
After two weeks, the sweet potato stalks begin to grow into vines. At this time, the weeds grow very quickly and must be pulled once. About a month later, sweet potato vines were basically covered with the ground. The mother will turn the sweet potato vine upside down, otherwise small roots and whiskers will grow on each vine, and the small roots will be rooted in the soil, forming small sweet potatoes to cause nutrient dispersion, and the main vine cannot produce large sweet potatoes. In the middle, but also to prevent wild boars from stealing, generally in the sweet potato field around the fence, there are also a simple, just in the sweet potato field with straw to tie a straw man, the straw man on the arm of a sounding bamboo tube, the wind blows, it will make a "tuk, tuk, tuk" sound. The sweet potato stalks grow longer and more luxuriantly, and the sweet potato stalks at this time are the best and easiest pig feed to pick. Occasionally, I will pick some tender sweet potato stalks and go home to eat, but because there is not much oil, you can only put a little oil when frying sweet potato stalks, so the taste is not very good.
Finally, when it was time to dig sweet potatoes, my mother first cut all the sweet potato vines back and dried them for feeding to the pigs in winter. After harvesting the sweet potato vines, the whole family went out again, the adults were responsible for digging the sweet potatoes, and the children were responsible for putting the sweet potatoes back into the basket, while checking whether there were any missing sweet potatoes in the field. At this time, our brothers and sisters would compete to see who picked up the bigger sweet potatoes. Whoever picked up the biggest, like the victorious general, cheered. Occasionally, my mother would stop and smile as we brothers and sisters competed, then looked at a basket full of sweet potatoes, and lifted the hoe again to continue working. That year's sweet potato harvest determined whether the whole family could fill their stomachs in the coming year.
After the sweet potatoes were dug, I had to choose a sunny day for a while, and my mother picked the sweet potatoes into the small river in front of the house, and I was responsible for cleaning all the sweet potatoes. My mother used a planer to shave sweet potatoes into silk, and some of them were cut into slices to make sweet potato chips for New Year's hospitality. After shaving, the sweet potato shreds and sweet potato chips are placed on the bamboo "sunbathing pad" for two or three days, and if the weather is good, let the sweet potato shreds and sweet potato chips suck up the dew at night, and the taste is better after drying. After a few days of exposure, until each sweet potato shred or sweet potato chip can be gently broken, it can be retracted into the oil-paper bag to prevent moisture and mold.
Nowadays, with the development of the country's economy, as our brothers and sisters grow up, our brothers and sisters no longer have to worry about feeding their stomachs, and children no longer need to weigh which bowl of rice is heavier and more when eating. The mother is also 80 years old, even if the children discourage, the mother still insists on going back to her hometown every year to plant some sweet potatoes, and the brothers and sisters will still go to help when they have time, but now they can no longer eat the taste of the bowl of sweet potato rice.