Chapter 6 of Remote Mountain Village: Experiencing Busy Farming

The south main canal of Huiting Reservoir was opened, and the clear and sweet canal water bypassed the back of Houwan House. Huiting Reservoir is the domestic water source for Chengshan Brigade to farm. It entered Chengshan Brigade from Wangjialing No.1 Team, passed through Wan Hu No.4 Team, passed through No.2 Team, bypassed Yangjiachong No.3 Team, and then extended to Tang Yan Brigade to reach Tianmen.

The floodgate opened and spring ploughing began.

Jingshan county Revolutionary Committee is promoting double-cropping rice and planting early rice and late rice in the county. Early rice is a kind of inferior rice with early maturity and low yield, which is not a good variety. Because the growth period is short, we are eager to plant late rice in the open field, so when the early rice is ripe, we will cut the sickle and harvest it. Hu Zhongxiu's eldest daughter, Shui Qing, has poor eyesight. She told Shan Qing. After Shan Qing came to the team, people in the bay also looked at Shui Qing skillfully. Hu Zhongnan, Hu Zhongxiu and Hu Zhongmei are three brothers of the same clan. Shuiqing is the oldest girl, the same age as educated youth, and has a sisterly relationship with Shanqing. Many stories about the bay come from her.

Liu Jixiang likes to tease girls in the bay. The swear words he imitated are hard to distinguish between true and false. Liu Jixiang is about one meter tall, and his height is an eye-opener for people in the Bay Area. My aunts hope that if they have a marriageable daughter, they will take her as their husband. In Wan Hu, it is very common to recruit a son-in-law, and the eldest daughter seldom marries outside.

At the beginning, no one in the educated youth could plow, and Liu Jixiang took the lead in trying the whip. He took Hu's bull and carried an iron plow to the bowl. The old captain gave him a paddy field of 4 acres and 2 cents for him to cultivate. Liu Jixiang put the rope on his forehead and whipped the cow. The cow flashed forward. We all stood on the ridge, sweating for Liu Jixiang. No one would have thought that Liu Jixiang was so cruel to cattle. Poor middle peasants have been treating cows like life for decades, and they have never cultivated 3 mu of paddy fields every day. They don't believe that an educated youth from the city can plow 4 acres of land a day? We all have our own jobs, and we can't bear to do them. We just "watched the play on the high platform" around the stadium and made a scene. Wei Yukun and Liu Jianshe sang "Hey, Horse, Walk Slowly, Feed Slowly ..." The cruel Liu Jixiang kept hitting the bull, plowing like a mechanization, and trotting all the way. Hu's mother-in-law rushed to the farm, and she cursed, saying it would kill the cattle.

Hu is the door-to-door son-in-law His daughters Luo Xin and Luo Xiao study in Huiting Middle School and Chengshan Primary School. Luo Xiao is a student that I have taught. Hu's wife, Hu, is a big woman. Among the women in the production team, she is the benchmark and scored the highest. Hu is a cultural person. He studied for several years. He has no place in this family. Is it because of his family? Liu Jixiang was frightened when he saw the bull soaring into the sky. He took the cow back to Hu's house and came to Sha Niu, who had made a fortune, and still trotted all the way. The old captain was furious and angered Liu Jixiang: "Pick cow dung tomorrow, nonsense!" The old captain doesn't lose his temper easily He was really angry. He felt sorry for the ox in the production team, not to mention the strongest bull in the production team.

Liu Jixiang finished two days' work in only one day. Why not praise it but criticize it? Liu Jianshe can't understand. "kouta has many loopholes. How to transplant rice? Can cultivated land go to farming? " Wei Yukun is learning what the old captain said.

The old captain was angry. What he values is intensive cultivation. People miss a moment and miss a year. But in any case, Liu Jixiang cultivates 4 mu of land a day, and is famous as Chengshan Brigade.

The old captain told me to plow: if you are not afraid of slowness, you are afraid of standing. After a period of time, the educated youth learned to plow, and the transfer of cattle can also be banned. What I do most is "get out". Rolling is used in two situations, one is to break the clods after the first ploughing, and the other is to tie up the clods after the second ploughing, which makes the paddy field muddy and convenient for transplanting. Rolling in the paddy field, people standing on the edge of rolling, is not careless at all, if Liu Jixiang ate the leopard bravery, he would never dare to run with the cattle when rolling. If a person falls off the roller, it will hurt people.

Frog king, we need to transplant rice seedlings. Children in the bay are running on the ridge, and many children are shouting as they run. In the evening, it is a good time to herd cattle. The first thing children do after school is to find their own cows. Frogs croak, croak, frogs in the field are partying. The black frog eggs on the edge of the ridge are glittering and translucent. Children in the bay don't catch frogs, and adults don't eat frogs. Our educated youth coke is broken. Isn't a frog a frog? That's low-fat meat. "Where to improve life? Eat frogs. " Liu Jianshe said with his eyes open.

After dinner, Liu Jixiang, Liu Jianshe and Wei Yukun twisted the nylon net, and I took a flashlight to catch frogs in the field. In the night sky, we can't hear anything except frogs. We followed the frogs, and under the irradiation of the flashlight beam, the frogs held their heads high and threw themselves on the ground. In a short time, the nylon net is full. Liu Jianshe quietly took out the bucket and filled it with half a bucket. In rice fields, the fun of catching frogs is unforgettable. On the way back, we sang "The Condor" happily. Where did Caixia fly? Obviously the stars are all over the sky. We walked on the ridge with one foot high and one foot low.

Shan Qing and Liu Chungui have already prepared kitchen knives and bowls to welcome us home in triumph. Under the kerosene lamp, we killed frogs cruelly. We cut off our heads, skin and gut. Many female frogs still have seeds in their bellies, and some male frogs can't settle down on their backs. Male frogs are small and have little meat. The frog jumped into the bucket, and the frog in the net killed two bowls.

On the dining table, a frog's thigh with a fork is held in a sand bowl. Shan Qing made the spoils into delicious food, which was really delicious. We sat around the table and laughed that there was no way out, and good food was easy to get.

At dawn, people in the Bay went out to work early and passed by the educated youth's house. They saw the remains of frogs near the small pond in front of the house. They said, "The educated youth in the city are really delicious." Frogs can catch pests, and educated youth eat frogs. What's going on here? Looking at their strange eyes, listening to criticism and discussion, I guess: they must have never eaten, perhaps because of protecting frogs. Educated youth are famous for eating frogs. They kill frogs for a living.

Jingshan promotes double-cropping rice and plants it reasonably and closely. The seedlings of early rice are very unique, and the locals call them fans. Rice seeds were soaked in hot spring water in Tang Yan and germinated in greenhouse. There is a big iron pot in the greenhouse, with firewood burning outside and steaming in the pot. After the seedlings emerge, you can sow and raise seedlings. Paddy fields are flat, some are hydroponic, and some are dry land. Dry-raised seedlings are selected on grain fields and covered with nylon film. When transplanting rice seedlings, the seedlings are rooted with soil, and the seedlings are 50 to 60 mm long.

We were divided into various fighting groups by poor peasants and middle peasants. Liu Jianshe and I were incorporated into the combat team in Huang Ma. Huang Ma likes smoking. Her eldest son is building a railway in Danjiangkou, her second son Hu is in junior high school, and her youngest son is nursing. The first time we tried transplanting rice seedlings was when we were studying in Wuhan No.45 Middle School. At that time, the school propaganda team took us to Wuchang Jinshui Commune for a week to help the commune transplant rice seedlings and volunteer labor. Transplanting for the first time. My hands are heavy. I put all the seedlings in the mud. When my hands are light, Miao Miao can't stand. I imitate Huang Ma's drying method, and the faster I dry it, the faster I get. After the practice of transplanting rice seedlings, I realized that practice makes perfect. We didn't call it a day until it was dark. People in the Bay said: When we are fighting for each other, we pull out seedlings at 4 am and go home at 9 pm. Cutting grain in the dark is horizontal. "That's to scare us!" I said to my classmates.

Liu Chungui is the oldest girl in the class. Her younger brother Liu Changchun is also my classmate. She joined the army on the eve of graduation, but she and Song Jianhua were not in the same army. Although Liu Chungui is the eldest sister of the educated youth, she is very delicate when she speaks, and she is as afraid of leeches as a mouse sees a cat. In the rice field, leeches crawled on Shanqing's legs, and Shanqing called someone to help her catch leeches. Liu Chungui saw the leech sting on his leg, screamed and jumped desperately, and blood flowed from his leg to the ground. It is said that when leeches suck blood, they secrete a liquid that dilates blood vessels and inject it into the human body, so that the blood does not coagulate and the wound is not inflamed. I noticed that the wound on my leg would scab the next day. I've never seen anyone get bitten by leeches and cause inflammation. People in the Bay taught Liu Chungui how to take the leeches off his legs: a few slaps on the leeches on his legs made the leeches fall off. I found that leeches were so afraid of chemical fertilizers that they put them in ammonium bicarbonate or urea and soon died of dehydration.

It rained for several days and the temperature plummeted. I planted rice seedlings in the rain, wearing a hat and nylon cloth, and it was freezing. I put a thick cotton-padded jacket of student style on my body, and put on autumn trousers and cotton trousers. Standing in the water, rolling up your trouser legs, but never rolling up your sleeves, is extremely inconvenient for transplanting rice. Gulf people like to transplant rice seedlings in the rain, saying that seedlings survive well and don't need pumping. Where can I pump water? It is very convenient to introduce canal water into rice fields. It should be said that the rain is nothing, the season waits for no one, and it is necessary to transplant rice seedlings under the knife.

I couldn't keep my job, so I picked up scissors and cut my forearm sleeves. It can be said that the only short-sleeved cotton-padded coat in the world comes from my hand.

"Winter is coming again. What should I take to keep out the cold?" Self-reliance and hard work! I laughed at my impudence.

Sleeveless cotton-padded clothes are worn on me, which often leads to laughter in rice fields. I don't know what they laugh at me for being stupid or laughing at me.

Damn god played a trick on me. The next day, after a storm, the temperature rose sharply, and the warm wind in early summer blew all over Wan Hu.

Sleeve-broken cotton-padded jacket completed the mission of accompanying me. After the early rice was inserted into the middle rice, the farming was busy from spring ploughing to autumn harvest.

I got to know the highest Motianling in the team, where terraces extend from the top of the mountain to Houwan. I met Dong in a rice field one step away from Team Two. I met Cao. On the other side of the river, there is water on one side and mountains on the other, and Wenfeng Brigade of Fancheng Commune is on the north and east.

When the river surged, people in the bay could not cross the river to manage Caojiachong paddy field.

What is a kiln and what is a temple doll? Hundreds of acres of cultivated land are separated by nature.

I'm very interested in miaowa. The raised foundation was transformed into a threshing floor, followed by a cemetery, the legendary burial place of temple monks after their death. There are no living remains around, but the big stumps on both sides of the foundation are surprisingly thick, with a cross-sectional area of one square meter, which can remind people of the past. Whoever cuts it down is a sin, which is unforgivable. If Cooper stays, it will bring many touching stories to future generations.

Busy farming, busy transplanting, busy harvesting. Early rice is inserted into middle rice, cotton is planted after wheat harvest, and late rice is inserted after early rice harvest. It is said that the busiest time is to grab early rice and late rice, and the time is concentrated in 20 days. That's real kung fu.

The summer harvest is sickle-shaped, the golden ears of wheat fluctuate with the wind, the waves of wheat roll and the peaches on the ground are ripe. Peaches are everywhere in the field, but no one picks them themselves. The owner of the peach tree picks them and sends them. In the wheat field, we tasted different kinds of peaches, the red belt was sour, the green belt was sweet, the red peach juice was like blood, and the green peach juice was like milk. It was delicious. Help yourself, have plenty of food and clothing, and we'll choose after eating. Shan Qing shouted while picking, only picking a big one. We educated youths walk around several trees, pick, pick, wash with water and eat in the sewer. The people in the bay are very generous. They just laughed and didn't look reproachful. We are all embarrassed to choose again.

At night, I lay in bed with my clothes on. We have our own single bed, desk and cupboard. Lying in bed, I soon fell asleep.

Wei Yukun woke me up with a travel bag: "Let's pick peaches!"

I woke up from my dream and said to Wei Yukun, "Didn't I eat during the day? Why do you have to pick peaches at night? "

"Let's go!" Wei Yukun insisted on going, perhaps because he likes sweet peaches. He took me out of the door without saying anything.

At night, a crescent moon is high in the air, shining with stars. Wei Yukun keeps going forward, and the target is getting closer and closer. This is a vegetable field with peach trees lined up. I climbed the tree and groped for it. In the moonlight, the outline of the peach is far from the peach leaves. When you meet a big one, pick it up and fill it up like sweeping monk.

Wei Yukun and I swept away, and several other students in the group were waiting to taste the harvest. They have prepared clean water, sprinkled salt and prepared to wash peaches.

Peaches are soaked in salt water, the fluff fades, and the red ones look redder. Shan Qing said: "After washing like this, it doesn't hurt to eat a stomach." She said very seriously.

"This is the technology brought from Wuhan and taught by her mother." Wei Yukun added with Shan Qing's words.

Liu Jixiang pointed to Wei Yukun: "You talk too much about torpedoes!"

Wei Yukun's nickname is "Torpedo", from primary school to middle school and then to the countryside.

Liu Jianshe is pragmatic. He only cares about eating and smiling. The topic digress, return to peaches: "Can't you pick them during the day?"? It is stealing at night! " Liu Jianshe wiped her mouth after eating and said.

"Don't listen to hemp seed!" Liu Jixiang seems a little brave, but he eats very carefully.

Liu Jianshe plays a lot of jokes, which always attracts everyone's attacks. Laughter came from the educated youth's home, and Wang Xi came. His scientific name is Zhou Houfu. Seeing the peaches on the table, I grabbed them and ate them. Wang Xi said, "Please help yourself to the peaches on the tree." A selfless expression. He knows that we didn't pick his peach tree, and his peach tree is in his backyard.

"Ok, we'll pick your house tomorrow." Liu Jixiang said, "Go back and tell your father that we will leave at dawn!"

Wang Xi hesitated. He is worried that we will really go. Wang Xi and I were born in the same year. He likes to associate with educated youth.

In the middle of the night, the wind blew hard and the rain poured down. When I woke up in the morning, it was especially bright, and the sound of running water sounded like a piece of water. The wall of Wang Qianjia's north courtyard collapsed and the adobe fell on the way out of the village. The vegetable fields and bamboo forests in the yard face north.

Wei Yukun and I wandered on the threshing floor. Seeing the door of big warehouse of Nantou production team open, we went straight in. Tianshun's mother is sorting out the things piled up by the wall alone. She is the manager of the production team. Tianshun's mother can smoke, so Wei Yukun took out the Xinhua cigarette in her pocket and handed it to her, and took out a match to help her light the cigarette in her mouth. The two vats against the wall were filled with sesame oil, and the fragrance came to my face. Wei Yukun had a brainwave and gently said to me, "Go!" When we went outside, he said, "Take the basin!" " "I see. Wei Yukun will take sesame oil from the warehouse with me.

We hurried back to the educated youth's house and walked out with a washbasin. Shan Qing looked at us curiously. The moment Shunma walked out of the warehouse that day, Wei Yukun and I uncovered the lid of the oil drum in time, picked up the washbasin and squeezed oil from the oil drum. It's so delicious that my mouth is watering. Wei Yukun and I walked towards the educated youth's home with a washbasin full of sesame oil. The spilled oil droplets were scattered behind us, and we didn't know it at all. The old captain witnessed our whereabouts in the distance, but he turned a blind eye. He doesn't care about our bad behavior, he gives in to our bad behavior. The old captain once said to the team members, "It is not easy for educated youth from rural areas to go to Wan Hu. The poor peasants and middle peasants in the team should treat them as their own children. "

Back to the educated youth house, we used sesame oil to bibimbap, which was delicious.

The grain quota provided by the state to educated youth is only enough for the first half of the year, with 45 kilograms of rice and half a catty of oil per month. Rice quotas can buy flour or noodles. Shan Qing's hand is very skillful, frying fried dough sticks and twists with alum used to purify water at home. Liu Jixiang and Shan Qing are kneading dough to make a fire. Educated youth who has never worked is busy cooking at home. The educated youth who had worked sneaked back in the heavy rain. No one knows what the basic procedures of fried dough sticks and fried dough sticks are. The remaining four people watch Liu Jixiang and Shanqing fried dough sticks and fried dough sticks while playing the "three levels".

"Put it away, put it away!" Liu Jixiang took out fried dough sticks and twisted dough sticks. If it's not the difference in appearance, it's hard to say which is the fried dough sticks and which is the twist, and the taste is the same!

Shan Qing smiled sweetly. After all, her work has been recognized by her classmates, and the twisted dough sticks just served on the table have been swept away by everyone.

The rain outside the house is still dripping, and the dirt on the road in front of the door can be seen through the door left unlocked. We sat around and talked about everything, leaving it stormy outside.