Our Youth Years - When We Were Seventeen (I)

The vegetable garden of The Five Branches of Victory Farm in Jimbotun is very famous in the local area, where not only a variety of vegetables are grown, but also a large sand fruit field, but also a wheat field next to the vegetable garden. Zhao Jing, Zhang Cuimin, and Ma Lihua, who were the same school as Tianjin Railway No. 1 Middle School, came to the farm and were assigned here, when we were all seventeen years old, looking at a few old photos that had been preserved for more than forty years, I was very excited and remembered a lot of past events.

Immersed in the memories of Zhiqing's life, the story of the vegetable garden made me extremely excited, because just yesterday by chance, I finally found my good friends Ma Lihua and Zhang Cuimin, and we met in the WeChat video on the same day. Zhang Cuimin is now the attending physician of Shijiazhuang Central Hospital, Ma Lihua is a senior accountant in Beijing, and Zhao Jing and I are in Tianjin. For more than forty years of flicking, we are very excited to see each other today, and we don't know where to start, last year Zhang Cuimin accidentally saw a photo of the four of us in the vegetable garden on the Zhejiang network, but unfortunately we did not see it in the vast sea of people. Today we are finally reunited, the seventeen-year-old girl has become a silver-haired old woman, but still recognize each other at a glance, many topics that used to be very heavy to say are so kind today, because the years have tempered us, let us laugh at life. We talked about the Campbellon Farm from the teachers and classmates of Tieyi Middle School's alma mater, from the farm to the five stations, and the most talked about was the vegetable garden, because that was the first stop we left the school.

That year we came to the farm just in the summer, all kinds of vegetables tend to mature, is the golden season of the vegetable garden, the person in charge of the vegetable garden is the old Wu tou, I heard that the old Wu tou management of the vegetable garden in the technical set, often have the surrounding rural villagers to ask him to grow vegetables experience, the villagers also to the five stations to buy vegetables. The person who has the most contact with us is Lao Wangtou, who is not tall, has a few shallow hemp seeds on his face, speaks faster, is always clean, and he lives in the vegetable garden and guards the vegetable garden every day. Both of these people were employed people who stayed on the farm, and at that time the leaders of the five stations insisted on supporting them without being influenced by the "ultra-left" ideology, and their technology was their favorite. What was particularly impressive was that when the cadres of the five stations, Jili Buhe, talked to us, let us humbly learn techniques from them, exercise ourselves well, and continue to make progress.

On the first day of coming to the vegetable garden, Lao Wangtou took us around the whole vegetable garden, and I saw that in the middle of the vegetable garden was a large street, and there were demarcation signs on the horizontal and vertical plots on both sides, which were well organized. Rows of cucumber racks are hung with spiked cucumbers, pink tomatoes are particularly attractive in the sun, purple eggplants, large zucchini, a large potato field, and a bunch of leeks. I love to eat leek stuffed dumplings, but this is the first time I know that leeks are rooted and will continue to grow after cutting. Once the old king's head asked us to cut leeks, and I went up to pluck them, but I didn't expect to be startled by the shouts of the old king's head: 'Don't pull, it's a waste!' ''Why?'' The old king dug out the roots of the leeks with a sickle and told us that a handful of leeks whose roots are full of whiskers will continue to grow new roots. Although the leaves of the leek are slender and long and look very weak, its roots are not afraid of the cold, and every spring it will break through the soil to top the young buds with strong vitality, so we cut the leek to keep its roots in order to grow more vigorously in the coming year. The leek is really a treasure, cut stubble after stubble. I don't know why the big canteen to Zhiqing to improve their life dumplings always love to use celery, may be afraid that we eat bad stomach.

Almost all of the dishes we eat in the city are here, and we are very happy to see them. The poor middle peasants in the vegetable garden saw that Zhiqing had come and asked this and that kindly, and also brought out fresh tomatoes for us to taste. There was a poor and lower-middle peasant woman we called her Sister Li, and for some reason her neck was crooked, so I was very impressed with her. She was amiable and often took us to work, always gave us lighter work, the most impressive thing was her with a Northeastern accent, the sentence we liked to hear the most, 'Rest', Zhang Cuimin and I met forty years later when we met the meeting vegetable garden life almost in unison said 'rest', and then laughed happily.

Every morning we come to the vegetable garden in the sunlight, beat the tomatoes, weed, loosen the soil, plan potatoes and so on. It was not easy for us girls from the city to look like a simple job, the hoe and shovel were heavy, and they couldn't hold it in their hands, and every shovel and hoe almost used up all their strength. At the end of the day, I was so tired that my back hurt, and everyone had blisters and on their hands. Interestingly, no matter how tired we were, as long as we heard the crisp bell in the distance, we jumped up and ran like a small road, because it was a cute little donkey cart coming, and the little donkey cart carrying vegetables came and we could pick it. At the beginning of the memory, it seems that the person who drove the car seemed to be Tianjin Zhiqing Mu Huaimin, who was dragging the rope tied to the donkey cart with one hand and the whip in the other hand. At that time, we were embarrassed to talk, but just nodded our heads to say hello, and every time a few of us went back to the donkey cart to rest for a while, talking to the little donkey, the little donkey's long ears stretched back and forth as if they could understand our words, and then we loaded the car until we watched the donkey cart go far.