People eat grains and grains to live, since ancient times, people's favorite is wheat. It can make a variety of pasta dishes and is the most popular and number one food in the world.
In the 1950s and 1960s, whether the old peasants worked alone, or in mutual aid groups and low-level cooperatives, most of the wheat planted was sown with such agricultural tools. The basket has two handrails, a dustpan in the middle, a box in front of the dustpan, wheat seeds in it, and a small hole in the bottom of the box. In the middle of the box, there is a wire on the top and bottom, and a suitable dry hook is tied to it. The man took the handrail and swung it from side to side, and the dry hook swung with it, and the wheat seeds flowed continuously down the small hole into the shallow ditch through which the shovel was shoveled. Two other strong boys, with a slanted back dung bucket, containing farm manure, walked forward with the shrug, constantly sprinkling dung into the dustpan, the first person finished, the second relay.
After the year 80, the land was contracted to the household, there was no livestock, and the land was planed with a large hammer, bean stubble, peanut stubble, and directly used a small donkey. The third elder supported me, and the father of the child and I used two ropes, tied to the little donkey calf, and pulled through the ditch in front. Wear it back and forth, sprinkle with wheat seeds, sprinkle with compound fertilizer. One acre of land takes two or three days to plant, and five or six acres of wheat to be planted in fifteen or six days.
There is water and fertilizer in the field, and the wheat takes root quickly and grows malt. Malt is a round needle, unearthed yellow, meets air, dew, sunlight, and slowly turns yellow-green and dark green. On the tip of the morning malt, there are round beads of water, like small crystalline eyes. Slowly grow wheat leaves from the round malt, growing longer and longer. The wheat seedlings grow to four or five inches tall and begin to tiller, and a wheat seedling divides into eight to ten branches, that is, wheat mounds.
Among all kinds of crops, wheat grows the longest in the field, from the autumn equinox sowing to the harvest of mango seeds, after seventeen solar terms, more than two hundred and twenty days, about seven and a half months, and it is almost the same as giving birth to a baby.
When working alone and producing teams, in the spring lunar calendar from March to April, the old farmers began to get busy. Weaving the tomaid from the skin of the amaranth, weaving more, the tomass was on the tripod, becoming a tomas stack. Prepare to stack wheat and shield ears from the wind and rain. Before harvesting the wheat, preparing the yard, the farmers circulated a saying: "An acre of land needs a field, and a hundred years old wants a woman." "That is to say, the crops of an acre of land also need to be dried, and there is a mother at the age of one hundred, and she will always be a child." After cutting the wheat, pour it out of the ground, level the ground, and roll it flat with a pin to set a firm. Then splash with water, moisturize overnight, and the next morning, sprinkle wheat bran or grass ash to prevent sticking. I began to pull the barn with a rope, and I don't know how many turns it took to roll the field well.
The field is dried and the wheat is cut. At that time, wheat was cut by hand with a sickle, cut wheat for a day, and transported home by trolley. At night, the night shift is done, all the wheat cut during the day is finished, the wheat ears are placed in the field, and the wheat roots are carried to the outside of the field. Spread out the ears of wheat and dry them, and then cut them on the slope, and five or six acres of wheat can be cut in six or seven days.
Use a threshing machine to take off the wheat grains. Several households help each other, and the more households there are, the more wheat there is, the longer it takes. The threshing machine asks for money by the hour, so whoever takes the turn wants to dry quickly and spend less time and less money. From the morning, after playing one household after another, the machine did not stop, and even there was no time to eat lunch. The body let the dust explode like a little ghost, and the person was exhausted. They also had to go to their own fields to dry the wheat, stack the wheat, and seize the time to replant the next crop. Farm work after farm work, endless.
One year in the north of the village, the wheat grains had just come off, and the weather was bad, the rain was continuous, and the ground was wet. The wheat grains had to be bagged and transported home, and hung on the kang, on the ground, in the door, and on the floor of all the rooms. Thousands of pounds of wheat, no sunlight, no drying, the color became black, fortunately did not deteriorate.
Earlier, there was no Mashan (bean cake), no summer hefei, no drought and no water, relying on the sky to eat. One acre of land can only produce about 300 catties of wheat, and the yield is very low. Only during the New Year's Festival are people willing to eat white-noodle steamed buns or dumplings. The elderly, children and the pillars of the family, people come and go, men marry women, borrow customers to set up a game, eat several times. Housewives generally do not have this good treatment, rough tea and light rice, fill their stomachs, and they are satisfied.
I remember once, the neighbor's three aunts gave me a white loaf of bread and said that they would give it to the children to eat, and the old man himself was reluctant to eat it. The child ate this bun and solved the problem of food and clothing for a meal. I am very grateful to her, people often say: "Poor help, better than a help." "This is charcoal in the snow, and now more than fifty years have passed, and I have never forgotten the good of the old man."
One year before the wheat harvest, I borrowed sixty or seventy pounds of wheat from Bi Honglan's family, and for the first time I made a pot of steamed buns, and the children treated him. The steamed bun is fluffy, sweet and fragrant, no need to cook, not to mention big fish and meat, but also confused nose. The second brother was more gluttonous, everyone else had left the dinner table, and he was still eating, as if his stomach had no bottom. After harvesting the wheat and drying it, I returned it to the people.
The second eldest was in junior high school in Sunjiatun, I gave him a cold noodle cake, he couldn't finish eating at noon, and went home to let the third old eat. The third elder said to me, "Mother, you give my second brother a cake, and the stew is bigger." The implication is that he also gave him one, and he himself knew that he could not achieve it, and he could only eat as much as the second brother left.
There is a Spring Festival, Chinese New Year's Eve night wrapped in vegetarian stuffed dumplings, the old rural customs say: "Eat vegetarian dumplings in the New Year, the whole family is vegetarian for a year." This means that a year of peace is not a calamity. I can't just eat vegetarian, so I wrapped a cover of pork dumplings in the second year of junior high. Put it on the West Kang, the morning of the third day of the first year, the day is not light, I boiled the water, ready to make dumplings. When I went to the house, there was a cover of cushion dumplings, and there were only a dozen left, most of which were gone. When such a thing happened to me, I didn't tell my family, but only boiled the leftover dumplings for the immortals to eat and let them go back to their hometown. Then I looked around and finally found out that it was the rats who stole the dumplings. They were buried in three piles in the kang cave, with dumplings on the inside and soil on the outside. I don't know how many rats, busy all night, stole the dumplings, ready to enjoy. As a result, we didn't eat it for a year and a half, and it was all wasted. At that time, if I could catch them, I would have separated them on four legs. Fortunately, for three hundred and sixty days a year, nothing went wrong.
There is one little thing that I will never forget. Once, I carried fifty or sixty catties of wheat and went to the town of Yao Gezhuang to make noodles. It seems to be an afternoon, the wheat is not polished, the sky outside is very cloudy, everywhere is pitch black, constantly flashing thunder and lightning, the sky is raining, big and urgent, the water is not flowing, almost to the knees. After the rain, I carried the noodles home, the child's father was not there, and no one picked me up. After returning home, I listened to my mother-in-law say that the eldest son, three or four years old, he looked at the sky was very dark, lightning, thunder, and heavy rain, frightened, crying and shouting, how did my mother come home? I listened to the excitement and warmth in my heart, the child understands the heartache mother at such a young age, from the heart. Without feelings, without love, no adults or children will not use crying to express feelings. Mother and child are connected to the heart, no one can change, love is priceless.
Author-related article:
Related Articles by authors:
Waking up is a dream (Chongqing Rule of Law Daily)
Unforgettable Sweet Potato Love ("My Red Sorghum")
Hatching Chicks (Bin Yue Yun)
Little Tofu ("Gaomi Writers Association")
Peanuts (Bin Yue Yun, Gao Mi Writers Association)
Kerosene Lamp (High Secret Literature)
(Some of the above articles are published in Qilu Evening News, QingfengYuan, Good Neighborliness and other newspapers and periodicals)
Author's manuscript
The author wrapped dumplings
The author himself
Author and family