Text: Wu Jianchang
The warm southeast wind and the warm sunshine have ripened rapeseed and yellowed wheat wheat. The rapeseed has been harvested and is waiting to be beaten. In the afternoon, I went back to the countryside and saw that it was ripe in a hurry, and there were already several harvesters running back and forth in the wheat field. When I saw the scene of the harvester starting to cut the wheat, I remembered the incident of picking ears of wheat in the team when I was a child. Because at that time, when the summer harvest and summer planting season came, the primary and secondary schools below the commune would have a busy farm holiday, so that we, the rural children, could help the adults do some farm work, and picking up ears of wheat in the harvested wheat field was one of them. Children are not evaluated for basic work, and are given temporarily when the farm is busy.
At that time, the wheat was cut by hand, and after the wheat was cut, it was first placed on the wheat ridge and let the sun dry for a day or two, and then the wheat was bundled into bundles with straw and picked to the drying field. Generally, it is picked up during the day and threshed at night. The threshing wheat is rumbling on this side, and the walk-behind tractor has turned the fields of wheat that have been picked during the day into watery paddy fields. The next day, all the women pulled the seedlings in the morning, and the seedlings could be planted in the afternoon, and it was also a time to harvest and plant in the summer. If the time is missed, the planted early rice may not be harvested.
The adults cut the wheat and picked the wheat, and the children who were on vacation had to help. At that time, the adults joked with us that we were "weighing thirds" and working hard. Because the work of a child is three cents a day's work. This help is not to cut wheat, if it is to cut wheat, the McGoer has a sharp scythe, and it may only help the blind man to help more and more.
"Let's all go and pick up the ears of wheat," said Uncle Jinquan, the captain, pointing to the fields where there were already male laborers picking the sheaves of wheat. Picking ears of wheat, easy work, we are full of promises. So he happily walked to the wheat field, and Chunxiang and Yanhong were still holding bamboo baskets. Everyone lined up in a row, carefully looking for the fallen ears of wheat among the stubble. Wherever the adults picked, we followed up in time, and when the wheat in the whole field was finished, we also picked it up smoothly. If it is a wheat stalk, it will gather sand into a tower, accumulate a small amount, and also bundle it into a bundle and give it to the adults; If you pick up an ear of wheat, put it in a basket, and when you fill a basket, give it to Ah Xiang, and then Ah Xiang is responsible for pouring it into a basket at the edge of the field. The granules are returned to the warehouse and implemented in action.
Picking up ears of wheat seems easy, but it's not easy either. The head should not be afraid of the sun, the eyes should be accurate, the hands should not be afraid of itching, and the feet should not be pricked. When you are tired, you will sit on the ridge and rest the meeting, and when you sweat, you will wipe the sweat with your hands. Looking at the loot in our hands, everyone was chattering and blowing, and the sound sometimes attracted the eyes of the adults, thinking that we were arguing.
Of course, picking ears of wheat can also be a headache. First of all, if you don't wear gloves on your hands to pick up ears of wheat, your hands will stick to the thorns of wheat, and when the sweat on your face flows down, you accidentally wipe the sweat with your hands, and when you wipe it, your face will itch uncomfortably, and it is strange that this itch will be transmitted to your body like electricity. Fortunately, there is water in the dragon ditch by the wheat field, and that water is very clear, really clear. We would go down to the ditch to wash our hands and faces, remove the stains and itches, and when we were comfortable, we would return to the field to continue collecting ears of wheat. Wash it again if it's itchy, and continue to pick it up after washing. The second uncomfortable thing is the stubble in the wheat field. In some places, the wheat stubble is cut higher, the wheat stubble is very hard, although the feet are wearing old cloth shoes, protecting the feet, but the wheat stubble will be pierced to the ankles, fortunately, the children who grow up in the countryside are not so squeamish, although the ankles will be pierced with blood marks, but we don't care too much, and it will be natural after a few days.
In addition to helping the parents weigh a little bit of work, the other pleasures of picking ears of wheat are superfluous headaches. For example, you can catch pheasants, grasshoppers, butterflies, etc. When you pick up wheat in the field, you can also have the fun of chewing wheat grains--- that is, you can chew wheat grains to eat. The barley grains are hard to peel off and bitter and hard to chew, and the lips of the "needle-to-wheat" will be punctured. But wheat is different, the wheat ears are less spiky thorns, the ears are arranged in a quadrilateral shape, and the outer layer of the wheat is easy to peel off. We will take the ears of wheat in our hands, count the number of ears of wheat one by one, and sometimes compare the length of the ears of wheat and the number of grains of the ears of wheat that we have picked up, and then we will put the ears of wheat on the palms of our hands, and gently rub the palms of both hands back and forth, and the golden husks will be separated from the full grains. Then with the palm facing up, with the mouth blowing so lightly, the wheat husk flew away from the palm, and the remaining wheat grains lay quietly in the palm of the hand. At this time, we will put the wheat grains in our mouths and chew them slowly, and as our teeth and cheeks move up and down, the thick aroma of wheat will fill the whole mouth, and the aroma will make us linger for a long time.
After we have picked up the ears of wheat in the wheat field, a large group of ducks will come to the wheat field to peck at the wheat not far away. I remember that at that time, someone drove the ducks to the wheat field to graze the ducks, and they came from other places. Their intelligence is very accurate, and they will follow the progress of each team to herd the ducks, so that they do not have to feed the ducks during the day, because there are not only fallen wheat grains in the wheat field, but also small frogs, grasshoppers, earthworms, these are the ducks' favorites. Of course, the wheat fields that have not picked up the ears of wheat will not let them put them, why, do the grains have to be returned to the warehouse? Only when we have picked them up will they be allowed to drive the ducks into the field. From afar, a large flock of ducks (mostly hemp ducks) were waiting on the road, quacking and shouting, and the scene was still spectacular, and these ducks were waiting for the orders of the duck herders. "Commander Duck", on the other hand, depends on the actions of our children before he can give orders. When we had finished picking up a field, the duck herders would wave the long bamboo pole with a small piece of plastic paper in their hands, and the ducks would flap their wings and rattle towards the field like soldiers hearing the trumpet. As soon as they arrived at the wheat field, they lowered their heads and desperately searched for the wheat grains that fell in the middle of the wheat stubble or the little frogs hiding in the middle of the grass, pecking happily.
In addition to picking up ears of wheat for the production team, there are other farm work that can be helped, such as when adults use threshers to remove wheat grains, they can help move the threshed wheat straw grass to the edge of the threshing field and pile it up; You can also sit under the team's cowshed on rainy days to help pick old broad beans; At that time, the team had cows, so they could also cut the cow grass, and if they could get the consent of the adults, sometimes they could follow Ah Xiang, Xincheng and others to the Hongqi Bridge in a small boat to cut the cow grass, once there was such permission, it was possible to be excited for several days......
Later, the farm holiday was canceled in the rolling trend of the times, and only remained in people's memories. Of course, now in the countryside during the wheat harvest season, there will also be elderly aunts and aunts who go to pick up the ears of wheat and pick up the missing ears of wheat in the sickle of the harvester. The ears of wheat that were collected belonged to them, unless they were organized by the contractor of the farmland, but the organization was very rare.
At noon today, due to something, I drove to the third uncle's house in the countryside. In front of the third uncle's house, there is a large yellowed wheat field waiting for the harvester to harvest, and one or two harvesters are already busy in the wheat field in the distance. Looking at the wheat fields and the harvesters in the distance, I suddenly remembered the poem "You see the barley is ripe, and the grains are golden" that I picked up last night, and I couldn't help but think of the things that I picked up ears of wheat for the production team when I was a child.
When I got home, I sat at the table, drank green tea, turned on the computer, and typed down the words on the keyboard. In this way, I miss the childhood years that I can't go back----
When I was a child, I remember picking up ears of wheat the most.
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