Pick up cow dung from childhood memories

There are too many precious memories of childhood.

My childhood and even my whole youth were spent in a very remote town in Qinghai. To be precise, this is a reform-through-labour farm. It is one of a batch of reform-through-labour farms established by the state in Xinjiang, Qinghai and Gansu in the late 1950s.

Looking back now, the conditions on the farm are really hard, especially the climatic conditions. I remember one year when the school held a sports meeting on Children's Day, even the snowflakes floated. 1 1 month,1February is windy all day, so wrap your head completely with a scarf on the way to school. Otherwise, you can't keep your eyes open. When walking against the wind, I feel that the road is much longer than usual. When I get to school or go home, I will take off my scarf, open my mouth and my mouth is full of sand. Later, I learned that it was called a sandstorm.

Although the conditions are difficult, looking back on my childhood, I always feel beautiful and precious. In these beautiful and precious memories, picking up cow dung can definitely be selected into the top three.

Let's start with picking up cow dung. For people living in the mainland, especially in cities, it may be incredible. But for people in northwest China, especially in pastoral areas, picking up cow dung and sweeping sheep dung is an important event in their daily life. Cow dung and sheep dung eggs, that's the top grade for making a fire to keep warm. When I was young, there was no electricity on the farm, let alone gas and gas. Every household should make its own fire when cooking every day. Light the fire with wheat straw first, and then add dried sheep dung eggs. Dried sheep dung eggs have no peculiar smell, are easy to burn and have strong firepower. At that time, cooking at home required two people to cooperate. One person is cooking, and the other person is responsible for moving a small bench to add fire. The so-called adding a fire is to observe the burning of sheep manure in the kitchen pit and then shovel it carefully. Often the mother is responsible for cooking, and the children at home are instructed to make a fire. I often get angry with my mother because this job is really boring for a child who can't sit still. Looking back now, how precious the time I spent in the kitchen with my mother is, and it is also a scene that I will never go back in my life. I still remember clearly that once my mother and father quarreled, she sat alone on the bench in front of the kitchen and cried. A flash of fire in the kitchen lit up the wrinkles and tears in my mother's eyes. At that moment, I felt sorry for my mother, suddenly became a little more sensible, and vowed to be a good boy who would not make her angry or worry. Now, I am a good wife and a good mother, long after my mother's age. I think I am still happy for my life, but my mother can't see all this.

Although sheep dung is good, it can't be picked up. Shepherds will carry tools with them, sweep the sheep wherever they go, and then dry them and sell them to those in need. So, it's called sweeping sheep dung. Cow dung, on the other hand, can't be treated on the spot because of the material (it seems a little heavy here, so please avoid it if you are a clean friend), so it stays where the cows pass and becomes a public resource that everyone can collect.

Every winter, the school will equip each class with a certain amount of coal as the fuel for the stoves in the classroom. The two stoves in front and back of each classroom will ensure our children to attend classes normally in the winter of MINUS 20 degrees. However, there is no way to directly ignite coal. It depends on a little wood and cow dung, and then coal is added after burning. So where does cow dung, which plays an important role in winter heating, come from? It depends on the whole school to pick it up.

Many years later, my son came back from his first autumn outing in kindergarten and asked me excitedly: Mom: Did you have an autumn outing when you were a child? I blurted out: yes, when we were young, we asked the whole school to pick up cow dung every autumn, which was much more fun than your autumn outing.

For us, picking up cow dung is absolutely the same as the annual sports meeting, which is a grand festival in the school. First of all, you don't need to go to school that day. Secondly, we can have fun in the fields that day. Last but not least, just like my son's autumn outing, we can bring a lot of delicious food and exchange delicious food with our classmates that day.

After the school informed us of the specific time of this grand festival, we began to get excited. First of all, ask parents to prepare delicious food, because we will stay in the wild all day, so we must have enough dry food. Mother's specialty is the cake of egg milk kang, and there will be many sesame seeds on the cake, which is fragrant and sweet and full of taste. Fiona Fang is famous for its miles. In addition, you will bring one or two boiled eggs and a little pickles. Parents with good conditions will bring cooked food such as braised beef. In short, for me as a child, the focus of picking up cow dung is eating, not cow dung (it feels strange).

This day has finally arrived. The school will take the class as the unit, the teacher will lead the team, the strong male students will pull the cart filled with empty sacks, and the rest of the students will carry schoolbags full of food and water, and the mighty army of picking up cow dung will go to Yuan Ye. Wherever they go, birds and animals will be scattered and vectors will disappear. ...

When I was a child, I was younger than my classmates in age and size. I am often the kind of ignorant and lovely, and I have become the object of concern in my class. As far as I can remember, the bag given to me was never full. As for me, I am often attracted by a bug on the road, a bird in the tree and an unknown plant in the wilderness, completely forgetting my sacred mission. We need to have a rest in the middle, so we can sit down together to drink water and eat, and call back my lost heart. Then I found that, wow, there are always some powerful people who can not only complete their own tasks, but also fill other people's sacks. Those brothers and sisters always take care of us. Now that I think about it, I am moved and respected by the simplest feelings between people and those who have been silently enduring.

The sacks were full, and we were exhausted in the afterglow of the sunset, but we set foot on our way home with a sense of accomplishment. When I get home, it's getting dark, and I'll see my parents anxiously looking forward to it at the door. Then, I stepped into the warm door and was forcibly dragged back to the yard. I was dusted off by a feather duster, and my hands were pressed into a basin of warm water to wash away the dirt.

Yes, it is. Picking up cow dung has nothing to do with filth. It is the best, purest and most precious memory of my childhood.