In recent days, the news that the grouted wheat is sold as green storage feed has occupied many news headlines. As the saying goes, the people take food as the sky, especially wheat is the main food of the people in the north. I grew up in the countryside and often remember the harvesting of wheat more than a decade ago.
Every year during the wheat harvest, parents are always the busiest. At this time, the temperature rises, the air is dry, a gust of hot wind blows through the wheat field, the cuckoo chirps are heard from time to time in the distance, and the uncles and aunts who work outside have returned to the village on leave.
The wheat ripened quickly, and the day before yesterday I went to see the wheat field, which was still half green and half yellow, and it became golden in three or two days. If the wheat in the surrounding neighbors has been harvested and you are left alone, the combine harvester will not want to go. At this time, once my father heard the news of the combine harvester operation nearby, whether it was exact or not, he had to run to the field to take a look. When I was a child, I often heard the old people say that harvesting wheat in summer is "grabbing wheat from the mouth of the dragon", and you can't wait or drag. If you catch up with heavy rainy days, it is possible that overnight, the wheat will all fall to the ground, the machinery cannot be used, and all can be cut by people, and many mature and dried ears of wheat fall off and fall into the soil, resulting in a reduction in production. Some people, due to lack of labor, even if they have pulled the wheat trees into the yard and finished the game, but only because the wheat grains have not been piled up and covered with rain cloths, in the blink of an eye, they have been washed from the yard to the nearby river by the pouring rain, and the losses have been heavy. I've seen all these things with my own eyes. So whenever the wheat is harvested, we will go all over the place. Grandma cooked, boiled water, my sister and I ran errands back and forth, watched the scene, did logistics, father, mother, sister-in-law are the main force. When there were no combine harvesters, every day when it was not lit, they would pick up a sickle, carry a plastic drum and boil water, get on their bicycles and set off.
Father said that before the sun came out, there was dew in the ground, and the ears of wheat were not easy to break, and no food was wasted. Moreover, it is cool and the road is out. Although he did not say a sentence, as a peasant child, I also understood: Where is this wheat? This is the ration of our whole family, my sister and I's tuition, my grandmother's medicine are all in it! The ripe wheat of his house is still standing in the ground, and no one can sleep! Sleep is not steady. Society is progressing, and science and technology are developing. Most of today's children have not experienced the farm life of harvesting wheat in autumn and autumn, and it is difficult to understand the true meaning of "every grain is hard", and our explanation can only be listened to as a story. Once, when I showed the eleven-year-old Dabao a photo of the villagers harvesting wheat and drying wheat, he felt very fresh and curious, and asked me: "Dad, it is much more convenient to harvest with a machine now." But what did you do when you were a kid twenty years ago? "In my memory, harvesting wheat at that time was very cumbersome: before harvesting wheat, it was necessary to clean the yard outside the village about five days in advance, first pull out wild grasses and wild vegetables, throw the stones and bricks that were picked out aside, and then put on livestock to flatten the land; then splash water, and use the pot to flatten and compact the scene, which is called "light field". After the wheat is ripe, the wheat is put down by hand or a small harvester, and then tied with a "grass waist rope" and pulled to the yard. After that, wooden or iron forks are used to spread out the piles of wheat trees to dry, called "stalls".
At noon, when the sun is shining, it is a good time for the tractor to pull the roller to "play the field". Hire a good machine (there are people in the village who specialize in making money for others), negotiate a good price, and the family sits around a tree on the edge of the yard, drinks water or smokes a cigarette to take a little rest, accumulates strength, and turns the wheat at the bottom of the wheat field, so that they can be evenly forced, so that the wheat grains can be better stripped from the ears of wheat. In this gap, my father would always ask me to go to the village commissary to buy some old popsicles or a few ice cubes, and buy a box of cigarettes for the master who drove the tractor. I bought sorbets or popsicles, and if there happened to be neighbors in the nearby wheat field, I would send them a few to cool down. The simplicity between the villagers is still unforgettable to me. If it rains, the neighbors who have already finished harvesting the wheat will take the initiative to run out of the house to help, sincerely, without the slightest courtesy. After the game, the follow-up also has to go through several links of "picking the field", "stacking field" and "raising the field" before the new wheat can enter the warehouse.
Every now and then, my parents were tired and dark and thin, and their legs hurt and their waists ached. One year, because my father did not hire a combine harvester in time, he was in a hurry to catch fire, and his ears could not hear any sound at once, until the wheat was taken back home, and the symptoms improved and slowly recovered. In the years when my mother was working outside, I was my father's right and left arm, learning from my father's appearance to turn over the field, pile up the yard, help him watch the scene at night, and carry the bag with him when he entered the warehouse...
When it was another year of wheat harvest, my mother got on the bus and went home to collect wheat with my father. On the way back from dropping off my children to school, passing a wheat field that had just been harvested, I couldn't help but stop the car. Looking at the tall stubble, it is as if you have returned to your childhood, and the scene of cutting wheat and picking ears of wheat as a child is vivid and unforgettable.
About author:Wang Dongliang, post-80s, member of the Provincial Prose Literature Association and member of the Binzhou Writers Association. Worked for Shandong Dongwang Sugar Industry Co., Ltd. Occasional articles are published. In 2020 and 2022, he won the Binzhou Daily Newspaper Great Plains (Biennial) Literary Creation Award.
One point no. Sugar industry breeze