Busy with farm work with age memory

The factory date of my walking tractor is1May, 986, which is more than three months older than me according to the solar calendar. I was eleven or twelve years old when it came to my house.

At the age of eleven or twelve, he was already a small expert at work, and he has been working for six or seven years. Yes, when he was two or three years old, he could take off his pants and pee by himself, so he would follow adults to the fields. At the age of five or six, he will enter the activity of household contract responsibility system.

When the cuckoo crows, it's time to harvest the wheat. Before harvesting wheat, interplant peanuts or corn in the field.

When interplanting, a person hangs a cloth bag around his neck and hangs it on his chest, with peanuts or corn seeds in his pocket. After the start, grab some seeds in your right hand, stand between two rows of wheat, dig a hole with a hoe, throw three or two seeds in, and then bury the hole. Think of Zhao Benshan's words "Dig a hole, bury some soil, and count, two, three, four, five ...".

The row spacing depends on whether to plant corn or peanuts. The distance between pits, my father made a demonstration, leaving three words "that's it", and the rest is my own experience.

The time of interplanting is very particular. When harvesting wheat, it is best that the seeds have just germinated.

After interplanting, it's time to cut the wheat, cut it by hand with a sickle, and the whole family will go into battle together. When I get up in the morning, I wear a straw hat on my head, a towel around my neck, and aluminum pot with a long mouth to boil water, which is full of cold boiled water.

Don't wear big underpants to cool down, let alone sandals. You'd better wear long sleeves for your coat, so that you won't be scratched by those wheat awns, stubbles and leaves. There is a small mouth or a red mark, and the pain is secondary, itchy and itchy.

When cutting wheat, lean forward, bend your left leg forward, push your right leg backward, turn your left hand upside down, hold a straw in the middle or near the middle, hold the tail of the sickle handle with your right hand, and put the sickle head close to the lower part of the straw, ten to fifteen centimeters from the ground. At the same time, raise your left hand and pull your right hand obliquely upward and backward, and you will hear a crunchy sound, and a pile of wheat will be cut.

The first bundle of wheat should be cut as much as possible, roughly divided into two bundles, with the sickle under your arm, and a bundle of wheat ears in your right hand and your left hand, twisted into a ball. Pull apart a bunch of straws on either side, press the twisted ears into the separated straws, and finally screw the two sides of the separated straws together to prevent the squeezed ears. So the rope for binding is ready and laid on the ground for later use.

Then repeat the action of cutting wheat, bow the front legs, push the rear legs, grasp with the left hand, and pull hard with the right hand, and the wheat is one after another.

Put the cut wheat end to end on the tied wheat rope. According to the eye observation, it is almost enough. Lift both ends of the wheat rope and tighten it in the opposite direction. You can press with your legs. Twist the extra rope head twice, press the twisted rope head into the wheat rope, and cut off a bundle of wheat.

For beginners, it is energetic and fast at first. The most tiring thing is to cut a pile of wheat in the middle, which is near noon. I stand up and take a look from time to time. Alas, it's still that long. However, when you can see the fields and there are still three or two bundles left, you will be excited again when you are tired.

It is impossible to go home early at noon. It's almost time for dinner. Mom goes home to cook, and the children have to stay and continue to work with dad. Children will inevitably say that they are tired. Dad asked them where they were tired, so we talked about waist fatigue. Dad will definitely say that people don't grow their waists until they are 70 years old, so where did you kids get your waists?

Thirst and peeing are the only two opportunities to breathe. Aluminum pot has a long mouth. When drinking water, lift the aluminum pot, tilt your neck, open your mouth wide, and face the spout, and the water will flow. Drink as much as possible at a time. Hot weather is not conducive to urine production, especially if you drink less water. The steps of urinating should be as cumbersome as possible, and pants can be untied and tied as slowly as possible.

At that time, the belt buckle was not as advanced as it is now, and there was a small iron bar in the middle. When you untie, you should tuck in your abdomen, take the lead and lift your face, set the small pole to a wide place, press it, and then take out the belt. Sometimes improper operation will tie it tighter and tighter, resulting in urine trousers.

We made an appointment, waiting for mom to cook dinner and dad to take us home. This appointment will only be late, not early. After dinner, take a lunch break, and then go to the fields.

Cut off a whole piece and pull it to your own threshing floor with a tractor. Walking tractors are not easy to drive when dragged. Its steering is not the steering wheel, and its principle is closer to the tank. There is a clutch tube shifting on the shelf, and there are two handles under each handle. Pull the left one, stop the left front wheel, turn left, pull the right one, stop the right front wheel, turn right. When using the rear trailer, it is usually not necessary to hold the two steering gears, but the front frame can be retreated left and right by hand, and the steering rod is only used when steering the cart frame is laborious.

Loading wheat is a technical job with good layout. A car can hold a lot, but it is strong and stable. The layout is not good, and it is tilted when it is installed.

When I can't drive a tractor, my father should be busy, spread it on it first, and come down to drive when I need to walk. I am too young to move my fork. The most I can do is to help carry the wheat bundles around me to the car and let my mother pick them up.

When my father asked me to drive the tractor, my seven-or eight-year-old child just reached out his arm to reach the steering rods on both sides. He asked me if I dared. I said I'd try, and if he didn't get off, he bowed his head and directed me.

Pull the clutch, press the clutch into the fixed groove, push the lever, put it in first gear, step on the accelerator and slowly release the clutch. Ok, take your time. The distance is similar. Release the accelerator, pull the clutch, downshift and then release the clutch. It's done.

When I jumped out of the car, my heart was pounding and my face was full of pride. Dad said, that's it. Just walk in a straight line

The threshing floor is muddy, so it should be straightened before the wheat harvest. First, clean up the sundries with a broom. If it is really potholed, sprinkle some soil, then throw a few straws thinly, sprinkle water, and use a tractor with small supporting wheels to pull stones back and forth to crush them.

When the wheat sheaves are pulled back, you can throw them in one place at will without deliberately piling them up. When all the wheat in the field comes back, it's time to make an appointment to thresh.

The thresher is like a pulverizer, driven by a motor. Because of its compact mechanical structure, it looks huge. The front is a traditional belt, the back is a straw without wheat grains at the tail, and there is a mouth like a dustpan in the middle, where wheat grains are produced.

There were few wheat threshers at that time. There are two small villages and only two production teams in the north of our bridge. We need to make an appointment in advance. When the wheat is finished, relatives, friends and neighbors will come, with towels on their heads and sickles in their hands. The host family will cook some beer, drinks and, of course, boiled rice.

Wheat threshing is usually at night, and there are several incandescent lamps 100 watt standing on the threshing field, which shine brightly. The threshing machine is facing the wheat bag, and people should do a good job of division of labor. Most people cut wheat bales on them. Two people stand on both sides of the machine head, fork the chopped straw onto the conveyor belt of the thresher, and then two people stand at the feed inlet to control the feed rate and speed to prevent the machine from being crushed. There are two or three people standing behind the machine. Two of them are responsible for relaying the wheat straw out, and one is responsible for removing the wheat chaff screened from below. There are four or five people in the middle. Remove the wheat and pile it up.

Once you start the machine, you can't stop it. We children are cutting wheat bales in the back. At first, we cut them open and threw them directly on the conveyor belt of the nose. The front is empty and the speed is up, so we concentrate on cutting them and throwing them on the ground in front of the nose.

There is a lot of noise and dust. Except for the occasional talk about fast and slow, no one spoke, and everyone stuck to their posts and kept busy. After that, everyone seems to have gone down to the coal mine, especially those who pick straw and bran at the back, and it is two or three layers dark.

When the host brings water, everyone washes it casually, sits down and chats. Men drink beer, light cigarettes, and women drink water or drinks. At that time, every family had a lot of land, and they attached great importance to agriculture. Whoever has a high output will be envied. One year, my family hit more than 8 thousand kilograms of wheat and a lot of wheat. Everyone said, Oh, so much.

At night, the metropolis is very busy. Now people come to help, and later people will line up. We have to help others, sometimes several times in the evening. Parents love us dearly and let us go home to sleep. They will come back to help.

When the wheat is ready, lift the sundries with a shovel and spread them on the threshing floor to dry. Every day, you should look at the weather forecast. If it rains at night, put the scattered wheat in cages and piles at night, and don't gather in a big pile, otherwise it will be hot for a long time.

In the evening, I will go to the vendor and spread the mat on the threshing floor, or I will take a spring single bed and sleep on the threshing floor for one or two people. One is to prevent people from stealing, and the other is to prevent bad weather. Many times, I was called up in the middle of the night to go to the threshing floor to cage wheat

When the wheat is dry, carefully lift the sundries and bag them and take them home. This is only the main part. At that time, the income was low, but the money was on it, and eating was the main income. Children go to school, and there is an emergency at home, all by selling vegetables. Therefore, what they get back with energy consumption will not be wasted.

First, chaff will be thrown over and over again. The wheat collected here is still good and should be remitted to the grain depot at home. The other is a straw with empty ears of wheat. This part needs a little effort and effort.

Spread the wheat straw on the threshing floor, roll it back and forth with a tractor, turn it over with a fork while rolling, roll a batch, and pile it up to the edge of the threshing floor very carefully. It's all land, and there is a pile of wheat on the edge of the field.

This can also produce dozens of kilograms of wheat, mainly used for watermelon, because it is repeatedly crushed, and its appearance is not good.

The pile of wheat piled very delicately will be bought by vendors who specialize in collecting wheat stalks and sent mainly to paper mills. If you can't sell it for a while, or keep it as livestock feed, spread thick mud on it, just like the brain, which can protect you from the wind and rain.

When the wheat is harvested, keep a part for yourself and give it to the national grain depot according to the amount planted. This is a lively time to pay public grain. Some people use carts to push, some people use ox carts, donkeys and mules to pull, and some people drive tractors.

The grain collector will randomly puncture several bags with a seal, take them out, look at the appearance first, see if they are clean or not, then chew them in his mouth, measure the dryness, and decide the grade according to the above points. I wonder what effect the grades will have.

Those who pay the public grain and keep it for themselves, if they have good appearance and high yield, will choose some seeds for the coming year and then hoard the grain.

There are three ways to store grain, corresponding to three places.

At that time, it was a tile-roofed house with stone walls and wooden beams, with an attic on each side to store groceries and store food. Grain is stored in the attic. Now put one or two layers of plastic paper on the bottom to prevent moisture, and then use a woven reed mat with a width of 40-50 cm to form a circle, pour the wheat in and enclose it on the top, thus forming a grain depot. Finally, sprinkle some powder called grain insect net on it, and then cover it with some cardboard, sacks and the like, even if it is stored.

You can also use vats, which are more than one meter deep and 80-90 cm in diameter. After washing, pour the wheat directly into it, sprinkle with grain worms, put it on a sack, cover it with a round cover made of sorghum, and live together.

The old method is a square grain depot made of wood, which is coated with tung oil to prevent water and moisture, and then covered with a movable cover. A wooden grain depot can hold several thousand kilograms of grain.

Straw will not be burned at first, because most cattle are raised and fed with straw, and then fermented in the cowshed to form a good organic fertilizer, which can be scattered back to the ground in winter, which can not only increase soil fertility, but also prevent soil hardening.

Wheat stubble should be leveled with a hoe. When the wheat stubble is planed, the corn and peanuts have already grown. When the corn seedlings grow to half a foot high, they should be fertilized, interplanted, replanted and weeded.

Fertilize corn fields, either before watering, after raining, and sometimes when it rains. You can't spill it into the air at this time. If the chemical fertilizer falls into the corn top core, it will burn the young leaves, so you can only fertilize them one by one, you can raise them, but you can't raise them greatly.

Intercropping is to remove a few long and thick seedlings, separate the long and dense ones, select the seedlings with good growth and supplement the sparse seedlings. These two tasks must be completed in rainy days.

At that time, pesticides were not used to weed, but only to prevent insects. Weeding is also carried out in stages, and the methods are different.

Use a hoe when the seedlings are short, and only pull them by hand when the seedlings are deep. The peanut field is fine, the seedlings are deep, people can't cover it, and they don't scrape it. Corn is not good. When the seedlings are deep, I can only get in and squat and pull them out. This is very uncomfortable. It hurts to think about it now.

Dad is a perfectionist, and he will never allow his land to be deserted. In that age of eating by the ground, he panicked and was going to be laughed at.

No pesticides were used, and a lot of farmyard manure was applied. There was a lot of rain in those years. How could grass not grow? It is impossible to grow less and grow slowly. So, once the grass is pulled out, it will take a month, and then another batch will come up. Especially after beginning of autumn, the grass will immediately become thick and take root. As the saying goes, after beginning of autumn, nothing grows, which means that once beginning of autumn passes, the newly grown grass will bear seeds. At this time, we should get rid of the grass in the field as soon as possible, otherwise it will become grass panic and grow more in the coming year.

After beginning of autumn, the cornfields were deep and dense, hot and wet, stuffy and prickly. At this time, every Sunday, even after school every day, I will follow the adults to pull weeds in the fields. Oh, my God, once I get in, I don't know where the venue is. It's no use standing and watching, you can only arch forward wholeheartedly. The pulled grass hangs on the corn leaves, and the grass roots do not touch the soil. Even if you don't die right away, you will work slowly. If I go back in time, this is the first job I don't want to do!

Autumn harvest is much more complicated than summer busy, mainly two crops, corn and peanuts, slightly ahead. When people are still raising cattle, mung beans and soybeans will be interplanted in corn fields, which is rare.

Collecting peanuts depends on the rain, or queuing to water the ground, or the sand is soft, otherwise it is not easy to pull out. If you don't have these, you can only use plow arch, which is more labor-intensive and requires multi-person combination. If the arch is not good, it will be wasted.

Peanut dad looks like playing mahjong, spreading a row on the ground, pulling the front and pulling the back. He couldn't pull on the ground, so he pulled the whole tree home and pulled it with a lamp after dinner.

Pulling peanuts is nothing. Pulling peanuts is the most exhausting. Few baskets have been kept for a long time. In the past, a few acres of land and dozens of acres of land were pulled out one by one.

When the work in the field is finished, the children will dig line by line in the planted field with baskets and hoes to bring back what they left behind.

As for corn, you need to cut off the pole with a sickle first, then break off the ears of corn one by one and pull them to the threshing floor by car to dry.

Cutting corn is similar to cutting wheat, but you don't have to bow your head so much. The corn stalk is not cut, but really cut. The left hand holds the backhand and the right hand holds the sickle, waving obliquely upwards. Cutting corn is harder than cutting wheat. The sickle for cutting wheat is slender and slender, and the sickle for cutting corn is underpants. The sickle head is short, the blade surface is wide, the back is thick and the handle is firm. The sickle is fast, but the sickle is hard.

The ears of corn are almost dry, and the seeds of corn are hard and shaped, which can be threshed by machine.

The corn thresher is not electric. At first, it was a big iron knot, which looked like an old cow without horns. It was driven by a diesel engine through a V-belt.

When the corn was threshing, a group of people came. Most of them carry baskets in front of the corn ears. Two men stood at the feed inlet and poured the handed basket containing ears of corn into the feed inlet. Just throw the empty basket back, then pick it up and put the ear of corn in it. Two men stood behind, taking the seedless corncob away and putting the unwashed corncob back into the feed inlet. Corn kernels came out in the middle and three or four people moved back and forth.

This is also done in one go. It will look black, but it is not as black as when threshing wheat. The removed corncob will be taken home and piled up near the stove as fuel for boiling water and cooking. Some are bought and broken to make the bottom material of mushroom culture.

When drying peanuts and corn, vigil is the most interesting, because it is cool in autumn, the tide will ebb at night and you can't sleep outside. Either build a shack with corn stalks or dig a hole in the straw pile. Putting a mattress and covering it with a quilt can be comparable to camping. At that time, the air quality was good and there was no pollution. On autumn nights, you can clearly see the stars, and occasionally meteors pass by.

When the corn and peanuts are put away, it's time to plow and plant wheat.

At first, cattle were used to cultivate land. A cow is not enough. Two or three families need to be combined. Today, your family plowed the land and used your Daniel. Then my children will be responsible for releasing the rest of your cattle. The next day, you use mine at home, and you put the rest of my cattle at home.

Cattle are too late, and hoes are used to turn the ground, and small plots and vegetable fields are turned with hoes.

Later, with tractors, plowing was much faster, but people were still very tired.

Rake the ground before plowing. Walking tractors with iron harrows run back and forth in the fields, not blindly, but regularly. At first, we didn't put stones, raked lightly, and didn't lift them that low. First, we rake out the straw weeds in the field, and then we hold forks. Rake for a while, rake for a while. We will take a fork to carry those sundries to the ridge.

After raking several times, put stones on it, or two children stand on both sides, raise and lower, and start to rake deeply. This will rake up the corn stubble by the roots and clear the ground.

Raking the ground before plowing is called harrowing, and fertilizer should be sprinkled when harrowing.

When the land is harrowed, hang up the plow and start plowing. There are exquisite tillage methods, such as double tillage and stirring tillage. One is a plow with a ditch in the middle and two sides, and the other is a plow that turns from outside to inside. The middle ditch is called Niangou, and the quality of Niangou is directly related to the maintenance of land fertility. Re-cultivation or ploughing is determined according to the way of the previous year. Last year's ploughing and this year's ploughing can basically keep the whole land level.

My father knows this, and so does my brother, but I don't understand it because I'm not interested at all.

In front of plowing, we followed with pots and fertilizer, ditched and scattered fertilizer into the furrow. After harrowing, spray large granular fertilizer before plowing, and spray fine fertilizer such as flour and snow when plowing.

When the plow is finished, hang up the rake. This time it was called heartbreaking. It rakes up the clods on the plowed land, and when it is leveled, it will not run away.

The rake reads the bar above, four tones.

After the plough was finished, we began to plow the fields. Many people worked together and several families connected each other.

Two bamboo poles of the same length are wrapped with a slender hemp rope. When making a border, one person takes a bamboo pole, one person is on the ground, and the other person is on the ground. The rope is twisted upside down and plunged into the soil. The rope is tightened on the ground, and people press the rope with their feet and step on it all the way, thus forming a straight footprint line on the ground. Then pull it out, with the cordless end facing the hole just inserted, put down the bamboo pole, draw the width of the bamboo pole, tie one end of the rope, and then step on a footprint line. In this way, a piece of land is divided into boundaries with the same width as possible, and the camera can grasp the remaining width, wide or narrow.

When dividing the plot, each person takes a rake and tells a group. They will stand opposite each other along the footprint line, raking the soil in the field to the footprint line, forming a long small ridge, and the two ridges are separated by a boundary.

The rake here reads pa, two sounds.

The beds are all made, so it's time to sow.

The night before sowing, wheat seeds should be mixed with pesticides evenly, usually in the attic. Two adults piled up the wheat seeds, poured the liquid medicine into a plastic bucket, and added water. Then, like live mud, one person poured the liquid medicine on the wheat seed pile, and the other person kept stirring with a shovel. After mixing evenly, they gathered into a pile and covered it with plastic bags. This is mainly to prevent insects. In the past, the land was rich in organic matter and aphids.

Sowing is the kind of seeder made of wood that has been handed down for hundreds of years. The dialect is called "basket". There is a bucket above and three legs below. The legs are hollow, and under the legs are pointed feet made of iron, which are used to row the ground. The place where the hollow leg connects with the bucket above is called the door. There is a bolt on the door. It's a cork. Moving up and down can adjust the size of the doorway and decide how much to plant, thus affecting the planting density.

When sowing, three or four people pull the rope in front, and an experienced person pulls it behind, grasping both speed and density. When walking forward, the person holding it should keep shaking from side to side, and the strength and frequency of shaking are also related to the planting density.

After sowing, it is the later management.

In the past, it often snowed in winter, which covered the wheat seedlings, protected them from freezing and insects, and also inhibited the growth momentum of the wheat seedlings, maintaining fertility for the growth after the next spring.

In winter, the shepherd can drive the sheep near the wheat field and eat the wheat seedlings at will. This is called lying on the ground, eating wheat seedlings, reducing growth, saving fertility, and leaving feces in the ground to increase fertility. Sheep also have green feed to eat, and one thing can be used for many purposes.

However, the most tiring thing in winter is watering the land. At that time, the reservoir will release water regularly, which is called flood. Water irrigation is charged by time. How much is an hour? Strangely, it always seems to wait until midnight.

Enough packing at night, put on a military coat and rubber boots, one with a shovel, the other with a hoe, and then a flashlight. When watering the land, a person blocks the water in the field, changes the sprinkler, and walks back and forth alone to see if it flows to his head.

In addition to floods, the water in the river behind the village is used to irrigate the land, which is called Xiaoshui. Xiaoshui is free, but one team and another villagers' group take turns to line up.

To catch up with the small water, gather the water first, that is, gather the water in the river in the big pool in the village, and leave some time to water the land when the accumulation is almost the same. Strangely, it's always at night.

Because this river comes out of the river through a canal, it has to pass through many small plots, some of which belong to our village and some of which belong to other villages. People often steal water at night. Another, the canal is aging and often breaks. You should have a tour before watering the land. When watering the land, a person should also look back and forth. Once the water suddenly becomes smaller, we must find out the change as soon as possible.

My usual role is to guard the canal and run back and forth with a shovel. At that time, there were few people, few factories, poor roads and few cars, and the whole environment was still very open. The places where the canal flows are all in the wild, and it is still terrible to walk alone. At that time, I was only eleven or twelve years old, and I didn't feel anything special. Now let me go, I absolutely dare not.

There were many wild animals at that time. When guarding the canal, you often meet pheasants and rabbits, because there are many weeds on the roadside, but pheasants and rabbits are difficult to catch. There is an animal that will catch them back when it sees them, and that is hedgehog. When you meet a hedgehog on the road, you just need to touch it with your foot and it will shrink into a ball. Then, pull out a bundle of grass, twist it into a rope, hold it and take it away.

There will be that kind of bug when wheat heads, which is as big as a small grain of rice and is very harmful. Pesticides will be applied at this time. Carry water, bring a sprayer and take medicine. The old sprayer is very laborious, and people are reluctant to change it after a long time. Usually not. Sprayers are usually kept in the toilet.

This is the cycle of two years and three crops.

Later, wheat was not cut by hand. With the combine harvester, wheat planting does not need manpower, and people do not need to pull that kind of wood seeder to do it. Instead, sowing and threshing are integrated. Interplanting corn and peanuts, from one person using a cloth bag and hoe to a simple seeder pulled and pushed by one person, to a seeder that can be handled by one person later, and now directly sowing wheat by machine after harvesting. Peanuts don't have to be dragged one by one, but they are directly separated from peanut seedlings by machines like wheat.

No one mows the grass manually, no matter how short and deep the seedlings are, no one pulls weeds in the fields, and no one even does weeding. Instead, it is pesticide, a medicine, a medicine, a medicine, a medicine, a medicine.

The same change is that there is no need to pay public grain, and there is little hoarding of grain at home, and no one relies on selling grain to save the emergency.

There is less and less land, fewer and fewer people stay on the land to work, and those who stay are getting older and older. I can't see how many families help each other anymore. There are only two cows left in the village. There is no need to pull carts, transport goods or plow fields. The whole set of guys can't find the younger generation, and no one has a cart anymore. In menopause, probably no one understands "virtue, morality, morality, morality and morality". When driving cattle, it means, forward, right and so on.

In autumn, I can't see the sky so high and blue, and I can't see so many bright stars. I can't seem to remember what fashion across the sky looks like.

The water in the river is not enough for the villagers to drink. The faucet at home is no longer like water at any time. Water can only be poured by big water, often late and absent.

The threshing floor that used to hide and seek was overgrown with weeds, and the once overgrown ridge was bare and desolate. There will be no pheasant rabbits that suddenly fly, and hedgehogs will only be caught in dreams.

No one is happy just because he has harvested a lot of food. We no longer need to work in the fields like that, and then everyone runs more and more.

If you miss it, you can only miss it. What you can go back to is your hometown, and what you can't go back to is your former hometown!