There have been "spring stories" and there should also be "autumn stories". However, the latter topic is heavy
- Author's inscription
I've always felt that some things are weird.
For example, among many elderly, nearly illiterate villagers, the topic of disaster in their memories is almost surprisingly consistent. For example, "the great flood in 1957" (flooding), the 1958 Great Leap Forward, the Great Canteen; the famine in 60 years... As for the rest, you ask them to say the specific year, they can't say it at all.
I was not impressed by the flood in five or seven years, because I was not yet two years old.
What I want to say is that this year's flood disaster, "2021", this year number, will definitely be the same as "1957", leaving an unforgettable memory in the minds of the villagers.
1, the water potential is so large that it has not been seen for decades.
The big pond in the west of the village, the north pit behind the village (villagers used to call the pond a pit), has not been filled with water for decades, overflowing water. A few years ago, the village cadres renovated the pond, further excavated the bottom of the pit that had been silted up for many years, and the pond bank was also widened a lot, so that the shape of the pit and pond, which had always been irregular, was standardized. Fish farming, reed planting, lotus planting, tree planting... For breeding, wells were drilled on the shore and water was poured into the pond. Because every rainy season, only a small amount of precipitation enters, can not solve the depth required for breeding.
However, no one expected that after the autumn of this year, one heavy rain after another would follow. The rain fell calmly, it did not rain quickly, there were few thrilling lightning and thunder, and there was no fierce wind that overwhelmed the sea, or night or day, or night and day, or day and night, or day and night. Although there are sunny or cloudy weather in the middle, but it has never exceeded a week, it is cloudy and cloudy, and the real rain is continuous.
The pits and ponds in and around the village have seen a spectacle not seen in decades: the water surface is first flush with the pond bank, and then it spreads over the pond bank, over the protruding cement pavement, and into the crops. Two landscape bridges built on earthen embankments in the pit pond have disappeared, and nearby fitness equipment has been submerged in half.
As the saying goes, drought is a big piece, waterlogging is a line. Now it's reversed. From Henan to Hebei, from Shanxi to Shandong... So many places, a zeal country...
Soybeans, peanuts, these crops are short, showing a little hair tip on the surface of the water, almost to the top. Only corn, because it is a high-pole crop, can still see the upper half of the body, but the water in the field has not reached the waist of adults.
Wild wells, the water surface is less than half a meter from the edge of the well, if you are thirsty, hold the well rock, a little dip down, you can scoop the well water.
The rain is still falling, the land is already soaked, enough to drink, saturated! Whether it is downfiltration or evaporation, it is very little, only accumulated in the crop field. At high temperatures, the water turned black and smelly, and the corn began to die, showing a grayish-brown color.
The rain is still falling.
Crops that have matured or are close to maturity will be harvested when the rain stops and the water recedes and the ground does not sink, it will be far away.
Peanuts soaked in water for a long time will deteriorate, change taste, cook, fry, and cannot squeeze out oil. Some lodging corn, the ear of corn has sprouted and stinked, the unbent corn, the ear of corn has sagged, crumbling, once it falls into the water, it still germinates and stinks.
When the clouds clear, the hope is very slim, and it must be harvested in the water.
Just out of the village, I saw that the production road to the wild had become a river, connected with the water in the crop field, and the ocean was a sea.
2. The villagers who are struggling with the flood
Leather fork pants, also known as fishing pants, and high leather boots, suddenly became popular. These items have always been sold very rarely. Demand is now rising. The bosses saw the business opportunity and bought goods one after another. There are no leather pants and leather boots to protect the lower limbs, and it is very risky to soak in the sewage for a long time. One is skin diseases.
The sixty-nine-year-old cow Ankui in the village, barefoot wading through the water to break corn, less than a day, his legs were covered with red dots, giving birth to blisters, itching and unbearable; the second was an ant stinging.
The seventy-year-old second aunt behind the village was barefoot, an ant stung her thigh, she pulled and pulled and pulled, this guy, like a magnet, tightly adsorbed, and finally slapped the slap, plus the son slapped with the soles of his shoes, and then grilled with cigarette butts, the ant fell off. The third is a puncture wound under the foot. It is inevitable that there will be tiles of glass underwater. You can't see, you can't hide, you can't get around, if you accidentally step on it, you will cut through the hole and bleed. Besides, walking barefoot is not bold, cautious, afraid of prick, slower.
There are many reasons why villagers are rushing to buy leather pants or tall leather boots. The latter must be high at the base of the thigh, otherwise it is very easy to pour water into it.
The autumn tiger is still threatening, the leather pants are worn on the body, it is hotter, the sweat is raining down, the pants inside are wet, the socks are wet, and the strange sound of the bar chirping comes from the boots, which is caused by sweat, the taste is really indescribable. On October 3rd (2021), the temperature was as high as thirty-four degrees! The cornfield was sweltering and stuffy, there was no wind at all, people walked through the "jungle", the corn leaves were dry and astringent, scratching on the face and arms of the people, sweat soaked, fiery pain.
Knee-deep water is soaked soft mud, which is more accurate to call sludge. Working in such a cornfield is difficult to imagine. People, every step forward has to pay a great price. It takes a lot of effort to pull out a foot that is deep in the mud. When the left foot is pulled out, the right foot is trapped again, bending down and back, whimpering, waving his arms hard, shaking his body and struggling, while at the same time breaking the ears of corn with both hands.
It is said that in the countryside of Xinxian County, Shandong Province, an eighty-year-old woman raised three sons, but because she was busy, she could not come back to help. The old lady broke her stick in such muddy water. When she pulled out her left foot, her right foot lost its balance, and as a result, face down, she fell into the muddy water, choked alive, full of white hair, floating on the surface of the water, floating...
Normally, the ears of corn are broken off and put into woven bags, or the ears of corn are thrown into the body while moving the tricycle. Nowadays, large and small vehicles cannot enter the ground, and there is no place to put woven bags, so they can only be put in muddy water. The villagers had to use large iron basins, plastic pots, etc., to put the corn ears in and then drag them out.
The problem arises again: dragging to the ground, unloading, and dragging empty pots back into the cornfield. Repeatedly going back and forth in the muddy water, the steps are difficult, time-consuming and laborious.
Here's the way again:
Tie a long rope to each end of the basin. One leads to the ground, the other to the ground. After loading the ears of corn, the person on the ground dragged the rope and dragged it out; after unloading, the person in the field dragged the rope at the other end and dragged the empty basin into the ground, so that there was more effort saving, but there were fewer people, and there must be a person on the ground to drag out from the ground, two people, three people better, unloading, bagging, carrying to a higher place, faster. As for the inside of the field, the more people who break the corn ear, the better. But young people are not at home, where are there more people? Mostly husband and wife cooperation: the first person in the field breaks the stick, and the person on the ground drags out.
Inventions in Difficult Situations:
In the south of Mazhuang (belonging to Guocun Town), on the ground, there is an electric tricycle parked. The drive wheels are suspended. On the outside of the drive wheel, fix a small three-legged iron frame (the bracket of the round stool). After the local pot was filled with a corn ear, the person on the ground heard the other party's instructions from afar, and the man on the ground opened the electric door, turned the driving wheel, and wrapped a long rope around it, and the basin full of corn ears was quickly dragged from the ground to the ground.
You trek laboriously in muddy water. At the end of the day, the limbs were sore and the skeleton seemed to be scattered. The ears of corn should be peeled off and dragged out in iron pots. Re-loading the mesh bag back to a high place, the speed is slow, the efficiency is low, more than three times slower than the normal manual collection of sticks, four times. There was a stick on a half-acre plot of land, and my wife and I, plus the two sons who sometimes came back to help, took a day to collect.
Neighbor Niu Anzeng, 67 years old this year, right? Chubby, short mounded tall. The hair was already gray. People are very honest, silent all day long, and work hard and complain. A man came out and went in, not in a hurry. Sons can't come to work in Yinchuan, and after the daughters get married, sometimes they come to their mother's house, and they can only help for a while, so they hurry back to their homes. My wife and children have been sick for many years, and they can't do any physical work. More than a dozen acres of corn were all counted on him to harvest alone. I calculated that if you calculate according to the integer of ten acres of land, four thousand corns per acre (the normal number of dense plants), niu An zeng alone will break off forty thousand ears of corn, peel them, bag them, and then pick them home with flat shoulders.
Niu Anzeng's calculation method is different from mine: he said that one of the corn fields, from one end of the plot to the other, is more than two hundred meters, and if two rows of corn ears are broken every day, it takes half a month; if one row is broken every day, it takes a month.
I think, whether it's half a month or a month, trekking in such muddy water, thinking about it, is really terrible. From the village to the ground, more than two miles long production road, muddy, he trekked hard. Every morning after waking up early in the morning, he began to be busy, and he never saw him lose his temper or complain. He also knows that it is useless to be angry in a hurry, and he knows even more that every kind of farm work needs to worry about his own labor, it can be said that there is no one to rely on, only slowly, there is always a time to finish. I really admire my neighbor, the tenacity of an old fool. Doesn't he know he's tired? His wife once said to me: Since receiving the stick, the old man has not slept soundly all night, he said, his body hurts so much that he can't sleep, he keeps turning over, sitting up, lying down, humming unceasingly, and the bone joints of the ten fingers hurt so much that they shiver when they take chopsticks...
Human beings, the highest animals in nature, in order to make a living, after a long period of labor and exercise, finally liberated their forelimbs, became more and more dexterous, almost omnipotent, and therefore undertook more and more heavy physical labor. In this bitter struggle of "fishing and eating in the water", the role of the hand has been played to the extreme, no wonder the joints of Niu Anzeng's hands are particularly painful and unbearable, and he can't sleep at night, tossing and turning.
3. Late return
At dusk, thousands of mosquitoes rampage through the cornfield. Straight to the face of the person, kissing on the arm, the buzzing sounded. The continuous rain and sewage have created excellent conditions for mosquito breeding. Every dusk, mosquitoes begin to come out and wreak havoc, hitting mosquitoes and breaking sticks, but they can't be taken into account, and people have to finish work. In fact, from dawn to dusk, more than ten hours have passed, and people are sleepy, hungry, thirsty, and it is time to finish work. Even the mosquitoes could not look at it any longer, not so much as the moment when they flaunted their might, but rather that they used their bites to drive away the croppers who were struggling in the fields.
I was in the production team (now called the villagers' group). A production road from the village to the fields, just out of the village is a vast ocean. Only by referring to the cornfields on both sides did we know that it was a road, and now it was a river, and the surface of the water was integrated with the water in the crop fields. To go to your own cornfield, you have to wade through the watery and kneeless road, which is more than a mile! From time to time, traps lurk underwater—nests that are deeper than elsewhere. People carry sticks like blind men exploring the way, testing the situation underwater and striding cautiously. Just through this waterway, a round trip takes more than an hour. Despite being very careful, you will still step into traps under the surface of the water.
Men often just stumble a few times, and finally stand firm after shaking.
These old women, who were about sixty to seventy years old, could not help but suddenly lose their balance and fall into the muddy water. The seventy-year-old sister-in-law of Zhenyu in the front yard has to fall down this waterway three or four times a day, making her like a chicken in soup. Fortunately, his wife helped him take the spare clothes and went to the field, found a secluded place, and changed his wet clothes.
In order not to waste precious time on this waterway, many people get up early to eat, bring dry food to the ground, eat lunch in the field, and never go home. It was not until dusk, driven by mosquitoes, that they finished their work.
At dusk on this day, I, Grandma Hong, Grandma Hong, and Sister-in-law Zhenyu and a group of other people trekked out of the muddy cornfield to the production road that had become a river, and helped each other to go home. Although mosquitoes follow bites, most of them cannot bite in the shaky body of people. But from time to time, the attack succeeds, dinging on the face and ears, and from time to time you will hear a slap on the face or a crisp sound on the ear.
Hong Ye (full name Wu Hongbin) wears leather fork pants and leads the way in front of him.
Grandma Hong was carrying a bamboo pole that was as tall as a man, and she staggered behind Hong Ye, shaking and following closely.
The sound of the rushing water was loud.
Hong Ye said to his wife and everyone behind him: Don't get too close to me, in case I step into a trap in front of me and fall, you will stop and go around.
Hearing this, Grandma Hong and everyone really slowed down and pulled away from Grandpa Hong by a few feet.
On the road, of course, people can't help but complain, complaining about this year's floods.
Hong Ye did not complain, but was optimistic. He said: "Bitter or not bitter, think of the Red Army's Long March of twenty-five thousand; tired is not tired, bibi revolutionary predecessors." It's not a bitter thing. Look at the days spent by the volunteers in Chosin Lake in North Korea, and you will know where we are now! ”
This caused a burst of laughter in everyone.
When people talked about the old lady who fell into the muddy water and choked to death in Xinxian County, Henan, Hong Ye said: "The dry revolution is not always smooth. Dead people are not all on the battlefield. Farming also has risks, there are also deaths, to be correct, do not make a fuss. ”
Hong Ye said it very easily, and finally he actually sang loudly.
We walk on the main road,
Spirited and scrappy.
Chairman Mao leads the revolutionary contingent,
Cut through the thorns and run forward.
……
Hong Ye didn't finish singing, stopped, coughed twice, and said hoarsely in his voice: "The throat is dry, as if it is going to crack." ”
Grandma Hong said: "The cold boiling water brought to the ground after breakfast did not last until the morning, and it was drunk dry, can you not be thirsty?" ”
Grandma Hong said that Grandpa Hong was tired lightly and sang.
Hong Ye said in a dumb voice: "Go home, take a hot bath, fry two dishes, heat a pot of wine, drink, and then a bowl of egg noodles, sit on the sofa, brew a pot of tea, while tasting, while watching TV, sigh, this taste!" ”
Grandma Hong said, "It's easy to do. ”
There was a rushing sound of water under their feet, and people moved slowly. Hong Ye's words eliminated everyone's fatigue and stopped people's complaints.
Hong Ye continued: "Think about it, if you put it in the years when you eat dried sweet potatoes and nest heads, this season is the time to harvest sweet potatoes and cut sweet potato slices." In the face of such a flood as this year, it's all over! Confiscate the sweet potatoes, let the water blisters deteriorate, change the taste, cut out the dried sweet potatoes, and not dry thoroughly, all blackened, become bitter, can not eat also have to eat! This time, this winter and next spring will be sad! ”
Everyone thinks that Hong Ye said yes. Now harvest a season of wheat, the white noodles can not be eaten for three or four years, so it is difficult to collect the sticks, but most of the sticks are still good. Alas, if it were not for this flood, how could such a great injustice be made!
4, the story is not over
Struggling to get the stick back from the muddy water, it wasn't over.
Because there are not as many sunny days as rainy days.
Newly harvested ears of corn can not be threshed, even if threshing must be dried, otherwise they are piled together, fever and mildew, can not be eaten, and sold is not worthwhile.
Only build shelves and stack them. In case of sunny days, dry; in case of cloudy days, cover. Weather like this year's, which is sunny for only three days, takes time to dry the corn.
In order to reduce the amount of labor, most villagers put sticks and tassels into net bags. Put a shelf in the wild and put it on. It is easy to cover on cloudy days, and it is easy to open and dry on sunny days. Wait until the water on the road is gone, and then move back home. However, for the time being, it has added a lot of trouble -
The ears of corn are put into the wild, and in good weather, they must rush to the ground in the morning, remove the rain gear to dry, and at night they must return to the wild, and then cover the rain gear to prevent sudden rain at night. If not, in case it rains overnight, it will take more than an hour to go back and forth to that section of the waterway!
Usually people say that night and night to prevent thieves, now called night and night rain, so whether it is sunny or rainy the next day, at dusk, you must cover the corn stacks. Otherwise, once the night wind and rain hit, it can be imagined that at that time, people will be tormented by the pain of the body as if they are sleeping, as if waking up, and they have to beat their spirits, clench their teeth, get dressed and get out of bed, take the legs that are as heavy as lead, light the flashlight and rush into the wind and rain, and the footsteps are staggering into the wild.
In particular, to pass through that section of the knee-deep waterway, neither can you take a detour, nor can you be deterred, so you have to go backwards and backwards. During the day, it is still poured in muddy water from time to time, let alone three times in the middle of the night? The more panicked you are, the easier it is to fall, and you simply can't carry a stick like usual, poke and prod like a snail!
In this harvest of weal and woe with the villagers, I have thought more than once that in the face of nature, man is so great and powerful, and so small and fragile.
To say that man is great is that he is now in heaven and earth and is almost omnipotent. But when nature erupts, humans are so powerless, such as hurricanes, such as tornadoes, such as strong typhoons, torrential rains, heavy rainstorms, exceptionally heavy rainstorms, such as mudslides, such as flash floods, landslides, mountains shaking... More to go. It was this year's large-scale flood that easily regressed the rural areas that had realized agricultural mechanization to the most primitive farming society. Over the years, machine farming, machine sowing, machine harvesting, machine transportation, and even spraying to control insects, weeding and fertilizing have all had drones instead of manpower.
Agricultural mechanization has enabled the croppers who have worked at sunrise and rested at sunset for thousands of years to completely get rid of the stars and the moon, from getting up early and sleeping late, from sweating on sunny days, from mud on rainy days, from bending over tired bones and bones, from carrying shoulders on their backs, and so on, and planting and autumn harvests easily and comfortably. However, a flood has completely regressed to a state of slash-and-burn farming. Break the sticks and ears one by one, peel them, bag them, and then wade through the water, bend over backwards, panting, sweating profusely, carrying them out of the "jungle" and sending them to the ground, or turning over flat burdens that have not been used for many years, carrying two buckets full of corn ears and sending them home.
In this water rush, I have also heard and witnessed many uncomfortable stories. It can be said that a flood has exposed the ugly nature of some people.
After the division of land, people's attention to land has been greatly enhanced, and even reached the point of madness, and a small number of people have become dimwitted, only caring for themselves, harming others and benefiting themselves, not paying attention to public morality, making people indignant and helpless.
At the beginning of the land division, the production road is wide and high, two ditches (for water supply and drainage), tree planting along the road, and large and small vehicles going to and from the field are unimpeded, which is not only convenient for transportation, but also a landscape! Unfortunately, soon, the owners of the plots adjacent to the production road began to fill in the ditches, plant crops, and then encroach on the road. As a result, the production routes are getting narrower and lower-lying. When it rains lightly, the road surface is muddy, because there is no ditch to store water; when it rains heavily, it floods the road surface, and pedestrians have to wade back and forth. Large agricultural machinery, whether it is a combine harvester, a straw crusher, or a rotary cultivator, is difficult to enter the ground. Forced passage, crushing the crops on the side of the road, causing quarrels at best, demanding compensation at worst!
The river channel was dredged and widened, creating favorable conditions for flood prevention and drainage. However, some rivers are difficult to drain, and the crops are still flooded. The reason for this is that there is no drainage culvert under the embankment, and the other is that the ditches on both sides of the river have long been filled in for planting, and there is no ditch, and the water in the field cannot be discharged. It is easier said to re-dredge the original ditch, but it is even more difficult to dig a new ditch, and no one will let the owners of the ditch break the ground.
When asked about the dredging of the river, he replied: The river is invested and arranged by the government, and as for the excavation of the field ditch, the township and village levels are responsible. However, where does the money come from? Resistance, how to break through?
I think of such a real thing that makes people cry and laugh:
The first heavy rain after the autumn, the ground has accumulated water, but it is not so serious, and it will seep down in a few days. In order to prevent heavy rain and further water in the field, the village is ready to dig the original water canal on the ground (because it was flattened by the owner of the surname Zang and became its own farmland).
However, the owner of the surname Zang (pseudonym, Zang harmonic sound dirty), dead or alive will not let the excavation, the village cadres said a few big cars, this sixty-year-old surname Zang, just did not agree, and finally simply lay on the ground and rolled, saying that he wanted to dig, just kill me first! When people saw the situation, they had to retreat.
Sure enough, after several heavy rains fell from the sky afterwards, the water in the ground became serious, and people continued to do ideological work surnamed Zang, but it was still ineffective, and they could only watch the corn soak in the water.
The strength of the surname Zang easily plunged the entire village's more than 100 acres of corn into a vast ocean!
Whoops, morality has degenerated to such an extent that it is speechless and hateful!
It seems that only the higher-level government and the public security organs have gone deep into the front line to obstruct the execution of official duties and endanger public safety, because this contradiction among the people has been transformed!
It seems that it is imperative to concentrate the land once again, operate on a large scale, and unify the construction of drought prevention and drainage facilities!
5． Food prices are first seen
Someone once paid four hundred yuan to hire someone to help for a day, but no one responded.
One is because every family is rushing to harvest, and the other is because this kind of farm work is too laborious and too bitter, and now people are not short of money in their pockets, and no one will give up their lives to do this.
This afternoon (October 12, 2021), a man driving a farm tricycle to the countryside to harvest corn was only given a dime and a dime per kilogram of slightly drier corn kernels! If there is more moisture, the price is lower, as low as 7 cents and 81 catties. The corn kernels of the neighbor Liu Yongqiang's family are spread out on a thin layer of flat and smooth cement floor, and it cannot be said that the moisture content is very low. However, it still cannot be sold at a high price.
It seems that this year's corn purchase price will not be higher than in previous years.
Peasants do not hesitate to cultivate the land, because they must first make ends meet, they must seize a good harvest, and they are not willing to sweat. How much should the autumn harvest like this year be worth at the end of the day? It can be said to be very high, or it can be said that it is not worth anything! Fortunately, I have the strength and effort, and I don't need to spend money. If the labor cost is taken into account, each kilogram of corn sold to two pieces of five, or even three pieces is not high, you say yes?
Heavy topics are also: fertilizer prices have risen again, this is the dealer I personally asked today (2021/10/16): villagers commonly known as black fertilizer (diammonium phosphate), a bag per 100 catties, on the basis of the original, up sixty-five yuan! White fertilizer (urea), a bag per hundred catties, on the basis of the original, rose by sixty yuan!
On the one hand, the price of grain cannot be sold at a high price, on the other hand, the price of agricultural materials is rising, and related to this: the cultivation of machines, the price of pesticide seeds, etc., I am afraid it will not be indifferent, right?
The autumn harvest is not yet over, and the autumn planting cannot be carried out, because the depression is still waterlogged, the sandy field is still too soft, and seeing that the frost is coming, the peasants' minds have added another layer of heaviness.
End
Autumn stories, the topic is heavy.
Autumn, should be the sky high clouds, sunny, refreshing and soft season, however, this year's autumn, rarely have such a scenery, even if there is, it is also a flash in the pan, even if it is short-lived, I do not appreciate its leisure and ease...