As children growing up in rural areas, it must be essential to help their families with agricultural work。
There were two big things that had to be done in our community. One is double-breeding, the other is garlic。
At that time, we were growing rice for two seasons a year, divided into early and late rice. Double-breeding is the taking and taking of seeds. In july of each year, early rice matures and needs to be harvested, dried and stored quickly. The paddy fields are then cut out for tilling, sorting, and late rice is to be plugged. The whole double-barrel is about a week or two. Since harvests and seeds are concentrated in one period of time, they are the busiest season of the year。
As a child, there were few agricultural machines, and the ploughing was mainly based on buffalo. The buffaloes in the village were busier than humans during the double-barrel period, often a few axes and overworked. Because of the fact that several families share a buffalo, the zhang family spends its share of the family's household in order to catch a farm, people can be rotated and cows can work overtime. The buffalo is often seen to be slobbering。
The children also have to come down and help with work that they can do, such as collecting rice together, helping with seedlings, feeding (the time of farming, eating is done on the ground, the child is responsible for feeding the adults) and helping with the bigger ones. The worst thing to do is to hold up the rice and suddenly find a snake lying under it; the locusts sucking blood...
The second thing is to make garlic. Garlic is a cash crop imported from the outside, at a time that i can't remember, around 1990, starting to grow extensively in our neighbourhood. As the growing of garlic is more profitable than the growing of food, many people leave their fields for food, enough for food, and the rest for dry land。
Starting in august of each year, we have to prepare for garlic. First of all, the family buys two weed bags of garlic back, the kind of garlic we use in our kitchen now. And then it's the work children have to do to help, to split the garlic into a petal, to fit it in a clean snake-skin bag and to plant it behind。
At the same time, dad was responsible for the conversion of the drylands into a rectangular block about two metres wide and 20 or 30 metres wide, a small piece of our dialect called a box. There is a small ditch between the compartments that is wide enough to allow water to be poured and drained after rain. The second is to facilitate access to people during weeding and to serve as a road for field management。
When the garlic is planted, the whole family moves. Mom, little sister and i, the three of us, each with a small bench, lined up and sitting on the floor. Dad's in charge of the earth. The three of us are in charge. First we open a gutter with a hoe, then we'll stick it in, one by one, and we'll put garlic in the soil, and then dad will scratch it off. Put a line. Little stool back. Start at one end of each compartment and fall back. When you start planting, if you look back, and there are dozens of metres of yellow soil behind you, and you feel like you can't look at your head, you will only wonder: when will this plant be finished
Fortunately, the whole family worked in parallel, working at hand, talking while working. When you make garlic, your mother sings for us, or tells us some strange stories about her youth。
Mother was born before liberation, was very bitter as a child, lost her mother at around two years of age, was bitten by a dog from the landowner's house, and left behind teeth marks on her calves, which are still visible decades later. Mom was the youngest in the family with two brothers and a sister. She said she was going to help her grandfather raise two big fat pigs every year as a child, that her daily job was to cut herbs and feed her pigs, that a pig paid her uncle for her tuition, and that a pig was sent to his aunt's house. Both uncles graduated from junior high school and went out as soldiers; mom went to third and fourth grade, she knew the basic words and would settle the score. He dropped out of school to help his grandfather. He later produced a regiment of troops in xinjiang, where he was able to re-establish himself. When mom was young, she followed red guards to xinjiang for a while, so she told us a lot about xinjiang。
I remember this song: the ishawar river, the whips, the border guards on the banks of the river, and the people who traveled... People's lives, axel
This old song was taught by mom in xinjiang. Mom sang it herself and taught me to sing with my sister。
Garlic work is more difficult than planting, usually lasting about two weeks. Unlike planting, the main force of garlic is the child, who works faster than adults. One or two acres of ground, with a single garlic seed and a full code into the ground, is a great project. The children must be at home during the summer break before school starts. Almost every household in the village has a large family area and other children are required to help. Kids are also happy to come to the neighbor's house to help because they can make a meal or two powdered meat。
In august, the hottest of the year, the sun on the top of its head, like a pot of fire roasting on the ground, and the yellow earth under its feet rebuffing with heat waves and coming up. Garlic was planted halfway to work, facing the yellow earth. When i say "hot" to my sister, my mother tells us to go to school and grow up, to work in factories, to feed on drought and floods, and to stay out of the wind。
When you're done with garlic, you're free for a while. By the time the winter months of each year, when the garlic grow to a foot long and its fingers thick, it's the garlic season. When kids don't go to school, they go to the ground to help with the garlic。
Garlic is the hottest of the year and the coldest of the year。
When the garlic is dug, the earth is pineed with a shovel, which does not hurt the root, and then the hand is held against the ground and grabs the garlic pole, pulls it up and wipes the dirt off. Then the code is neat and bound. It is usual to leave early in the morning, blindfolded, on the dew, then dig until 1 or 2 p. M., put the well-earned garlic on board and drag it to the market for sale. Every winter, henan's merchants come to us for garlic. A carload of garlic usually costs 5,600 pounds, $3,400 when it's good, and $2,300 when it's bad。
It is true that the poem of the white house, which sells the cocoons, says, “the heart is worried about the cold”, is the same as ever. The price of garlic in the snow is better, so sometimes it is picked to dig when it snows. The leaves of garlic are frosted in the morning and there is a small amount of snow on the ground. When you dig garlic, you grab the garlic pole, you hold the snow and the ice in your hand, and you freeze your hands and your hands are numb... The back vests are slightly sweaty, and your hands are cold and your fingers are not straight。
Garlic mining is a difficult job in the countryside. The whole garlic work is intermittent and lasts for more than a month before spring. In years when the price is not good, they don't dig until they're sold. Garlic was the main cash crop in our neighbourhood and the main source of income for our family。
In the middle of the rural season, dad pulls his family's bike and goes to town to work. The filial dialect is called “bunt beating”, which is actually the use of a wooden truck to help people pull things, pick up moving houses, deliver goods, etc. In the 1990s, with the deepening of reforms and opening up of the urban economy, the opportunities for casual labour increased, making it easier to earn money than in the 1980s, and the economic situation of the family began to improve. Sometimes dad moves people, makes $50 a day, and every time he gives his mom the full $230 he's got, he can see his dad's smile like a child。
In addition to supporting household spending in the coming year, the two income items of garlic, combined with part-time work by the father, will be the task of household savings. In rural areas, it is the greatest wish of parents to build a three-storey building together for life。
There's also a wish for her children to grow up and to be able to cheer for her foreign sister from sichuan. My grades in elementary school were good. Mom said that when i was a kid, my fortune teller said i'd go to college. Prior to 1996, university students had been assigned jobs and had gone to university, which meant jumping out of the countryside, moving into urban areas to eat food for commodities, making it possible to cross classes and lead a life that rural people envy。
It's a wish of mom and a eternal regret of her heart。
(to be continued)
