Have you ever done farm work?

Farm work is not a person, and farm work refers to agricultural labor.

Probably many people have never done farm work. When I was a child, I lived in the suburbs of a small city in Northeast China. There are many children from nearby villages and towns in my primary school. The school is big, but desolate. There is nothing but a basketball stand on the gravel ground and two lonely football doorframes in the wilderness. In front of the teaching building, there is a place paved with gravel called playground. What's left is endless grassland. The school doesn't even have a wall. At the end of the eye is a row of tall poplars, and on the other side of the poplars is cultivated land.

In such a place, when spring comes, the snow melts, bears are playing, and a large number of weeds on the ground will take root and sprout. Weeds in the northeast are really wild. They often come back for a weekend and grow everywhere like wildfire. Green grass can be seen everywhere in the school. At that time, I didn't know how to praise the tenacity of vitality, or the green vitality, and neither did our headmaster.

So the headmaster called on the teachers and students of the whole school to weed one day in the season of weeds. Because the school doesn't have enough hoes and shovels, all students should bring their own. So every spring morning, a group of primary school students will go to school with shovels and hoes, and people like me whose parents don't do farm work can only borrow shovels or hoes from their classmates in advance.

Then classes will be suspended for half a day in the morning, and the teachers and students of the whole school will clean up.

I remember the general weeding process is like this. Each class is divided into three groups. A group of children who are responsible for weeding, usually mainly farmers' families. The other group is responsible for cleaning the only open-air toilet in the school. This group is usually a punishment for naughty students on weekdays. The last group, like me, is responsible for cleaning the playground, that is, pulling grass and other debris to the garbage dump for burning.

After all, it is in the countryside, and many children have helped their families with farm work since childhood. There was no large-scale mechanized planting in Northeast China at that time, so every year when spring sowing and autumn harvest were carried out, students often took time off to help at home. These students are very good at drawing hoes. They stood up straight and waved their hoes, and soon a neat flat appeared, while the dug weeds were neatly put aside. Wearing cotton gloves, I caught a lot of weeds and threw them into the bamboo basket on my back, and then flew to the garbage dump to pour the grass. Even so, I often can't keep up with my classmates who weed.

One morning passed, the playground was flat and clean, and then a spring passed. Summer came, weeds began to grow wildly again, and bears began to play again. Therefore, this kind of drama should be staged at least two or three times a year, and this kind of work will not stop until the weather gets cold or even the first snow falls in autumn.

With the first snow, another job came again, that is shoveling snow.

So the headmaster will call on all teachers and students to shovel snow one day in the snow season. Because there are not enough hoes and shovels in the school, students are still required to bring their own.

In addition to shoveling snow in the school's own playground, there is also a road to shovel at the school gate. Because the heavy snow in the northeast is coming soon, the cleaners have no time to take care of the remote places in the suburbs, so for the safety of students going to school and of course for the safety of drivers, they must clean up the snow on the road at the first time. But sadly, the road at the entrance of our school is the main road from the south of the city to the urban area, so the heavy snow in the middle of the night has turned into a thick layer of hard ice and snow mixture in the morning, firmly sticking to the road.

Of course, it is mainly students who can do farm work. Naughty classmates were left in school to clean the playground for safety reasons, and I once again became a porter's soy sauce role. So the students lined up in a row, waving shovels and marching steadily, leaving behind thick and hard snow. I picked up the snow with thick cotton gloves and threw it into a bamboo basket, then fell into a ditch by the roadside. Even so, I often can't keep up with the speed of my classmates shoveling snow.

Of course, sometimes I will volunteer, or for fun, I will shovel snow with a hoe and shovel, but every time I do this, the class teacher and my familiar classmates will always pat me on the shoulder in good faith and tell me that your waist will soon be ruined if you work like this. More often, he looked at me silently, shoveled a few times, then came silently, took my labor tools, and then smiled and said to me:

"I'll do it."

Because of this, I have never learned how to hoe and shovel snow. Since weeding and shoveling snow in primary school, I have only read sage books, and I have never done such manual work again, so I still don't know how to use shovels and hoes correctly until today.

Time flies, but now I have unexpectedly become a farmer, sitting on my farm in shorts and vests every day, full of peasant style.

But until today, I still don't know how to use shovels and hoes correctly.

So every time I am forced to do farm work, I always silently say "I need an excavator", "I need a conveyor belt", "I need a forklift" and "I need a Dongfeng heavy truck".

But of course, none of this will happen. I will not look for an excavator because I want to lay a gravel road in front of the door, nor will I set up a conveyor belt because I want to pick eggs with bamboo baskets every day. Occasionally, when the neighborhood comes to buy chickens, I will catch chickens all over the mountain with a big insect net instead of using an anesthetic sniper rifle. When I build a shed and pull cement to clean the floor, I also use a two-wheeled cart without heavy trucks.

My aunt who does farm work often laughs at me, reluctantly taking my shovel and hoe like my classmates when I was a child, while my mother from a peasant family keeps laughing at my work every time, although she can't work herself.

But now I am not the child who walks with grass and snow on his back. I am a man of five big and three thick. What can these farm jobs bring me?

So every time I rolled up my sleeves, rolled up my trouser legs, put on cotton gloves, grabbed my shovel and hoe, and watched the shovel fly in the air and jingle on the ground. Because I don't know the correct posture and power point, I always use brave clothes, which is also commonly known as brute force. Soon, my back ached and my legs cramped, and the sweat as big as beans penetrated my body in five minutes.

I didn't do farm work when I was a child, and I don't do it now, but now I can be proud, or it may be dull. I do farm work every day.

This is not a growth, because I didn't learn anything from it. If I did, I might just understand the word self-reliance. I envy those students who used to do farm work, because they really did a good job, but now I don't envy those students who can do farm work, because I understand that some things can still be done, whether they are willing or not, as long as they have time and perseverance. There is no need to be clever, just stick to it and just be yourself. That's all that matters.

So now every time I ride my bike on a country road and see someone doing farm work in the fields by the roadside, I always stop, light a cigarette, sit on the stones by the roadside and watch quietly, enjoying their free movements, their skillful skills, thinking about myself and smiling.