Sweet potato bud and sweet potato vine-my motherland 32

Grandma picked sweet potato buds at the bedside of the nursery of the production team.

Seedbeds stand in a long row on the sunny wall. Opposite the wall is the cowshed. There are always some scalpers chewing some chopped corn stalks in the straw cutter, and the corners of their mouths are grinding up and down. Their bodies are standing, their eyes don't look at food, they open aimlessly and glow innocently. When the bull's head turns around and pushes the two corners outward, there is always a tendency to pierce something. When children pass by, they should tread lightly and avoid.

The house further inside is our nursery. A dozen children stayed together and the team sent people to watch. I don't remember what I learned or played at that time. I only remember that occasionally people from the brigade came in with baskets and barrels and sent some leftover steamed bread and cold dishes from the collective canteen, all of which were left after the working group entered the village. This kind of rice and vegetables can only be shared a little, which is more delicious than the cakes and pickles at home, and tastes delicious when chewed, with a faint aftertaste in the dim mud room. At that time, the temporary teachers also had a lot of other work to do, so the children had the opportunity to wander around, and nothing changed in the cowshed, the stone wall and the alley. From time to time, I go to my grandmother next to the nursery to see how she and a group of older people in the team raise sweet potato buds.

Seedlings "beds" spread along the wall for tens of meters. Said to be a "bed" is actually an "invention of the earth" by adults. According to parents, sweet potato sprouts need a certain temperature. People are used to taking out their half-baked kang and putting the picked "sweet potato Niang" (sweet potato for bud grafting cultivation) on the kang to germinate. In this way, people sleep, be careful for many days, and the buds can come out and grow well. With the "nursery bed", seedling raising is much more professional, and old people with their own seedling raising experience come in handy here. The bottom of the "nursery bed" was covered with a fire bed, and fine sand was planted on the fire bed. A thick and fat "sweet potato mother" was selected and half buried in the sand. Grandma's family is busy adding firewood to the fire resistance, sprinkling water on the seedbed and checking the germination of sweet potatoes. There is no time to take care of me.

I'm just looking around by myself. Life is fresh and magical. I saw that the skin of sweet potato was not smooth, and there were lumps and bumps in many places. Purple granulation pierced the melon skin from all directions, and I was as dumbfounded as seeing the novelty of this world. Sweet potato buds grow fast, and in a few days, they will stick out their stems, and purple leaves will stick out on the stems; Then the stem is elongated, the leaves become bigger and greener, holding up a heart shape and shaking upward. I am in the steaming heat, in the shadow of autumn, ignorant to meet those who are pregnant with growth.

When the thin stems of sweet potato buds thicken and the leaves spread out four or five pieces, grandma and they gently break these stems and leaves from the roots, pick them one by one, integrate a large handful of oil green in their hands, and then put them in baskets carefully and orderly until they are full.

These sweet potato buds are put in the basket. Their bodies have not faded to pink, and they are full of water. Each one is four or five inches long, with small leaves, and is in the confusion of being separated from her mother. Grandma sprayed water into these baskets from time to time, protecting the melon buds like a baby. I look between the seedbed and the sweet potato bud. The "sweet potato mother" with faded sweet potato buds lost its original roundness, her skin shrank, her body was partly convex and partly concave, and she piled up in the corner, waiting for the production team to distribute it to all families. Everyone knew that their food was tasteless and chewy, but they were unwilling to give up the time to cook, eat and fill their stomachs.

At this time, it is the middle of April in the lunar calendar, the ground temperature is rising, the mountains on the slope have been deeply ploughed, the soil is soft, and high ridges have been piled up in the sand where sweet potatoes are to be planted. Sweet potato buds are transported to the mountains by wheelbarrow, so people hold the seedlings in one hand and cut them in the other. It is human's clenched meat fist that inserts sweet potato seedlings into deep soil. In the eyes of young children, the process of plowing, harrowing, pruning and planting cattle and people is just an excitement, a ceremony and a way of life, which will definitely happen in a certain season, without perceiving the significance and hardship.

I really realized the hardship of this kind of work in the days after the land contract. In the mountainous area with fine sand, I watched my father bend down, holding a green bud in his left hand and one in his right hand, surrounded by the fist shape he held in vain. Then repeatedly put the fist back into the soil, poke out the shallow nest, insert the melon seedlings, straighten the thin stems, and then cultivate the soil to protect the roots, leaving a shallow pit for watering. Every melon seedling is treated like this. On the top and bottom of Nanling, Shagou and Nangou shared by our family and on the semi-sandy land near the reservoir, our parents planted every sweet potato bud repeatedly.

Sweet potato buds are tender and need to be watered immediately when planted in the ground. The land on the edge of the reservoir can be watered by the water in the reservoir, and the father carries it one by one. Far from the reservoir, you need to find a small ditch in the ravine to carry water. The land in the south is at the top of the slope, and the ditch that can carry water is at the bottom of the slope. On the way up the mountain, two buckets carried by my father on a pole are always filled with water when passing through the bottom of the slope, and then the chains at both ends are wound around the pole several times, and the hooks hook the buckets and go up the mountain askew, leaving deep marks on the shoulders. Even so, the bottom of the bucket collided with the steep slope, splashing, leaving a wet watermark all the way. When my sister and I were older, we carried a bucket of Mizukamiyama. When the bucket slides down on the pole, the person in front needs to bow his head, and the person behind needs to hold his head high and hold his chest high, and he needs to tie the bucket with his hands to prevent it from slipping down. It is very difficult to carry water every time, and it takes dozens of minutes to walk back and forth. Water is precious, so you don't want to spill a drop when you scoop it on the sweet potato bud.

The wind is warm and sunny. Sweet potato buds are stained with soil nutrients and just start to be stiff and upward. As soon as the leaves grow, the stems and vines can only fall to the ground and spread wildly against the ground, and the leaves cover the whole ridge. These fields don't need special care, just use hoes to weed when the sweet potato vines are not covered with the ground, and pull weeds by hand when there is no gap in the ground. Then leave it alone, although let it grow patiently under the natural wind and rain, but people just need to put their mind and strength on the growth of other crops.

Sweet potatoes are planted in the mountains by peanuts, which are planted in a boundary. Compared with sweet potato, peanut has small leaves and dense plants, and yellow flowers can be seen between leaves when it is in full bloom. However, there are many similarities between the two crops: the same spring sowing, the same fruit hidden underground, the same lush leaves and vines, and I don't know how the fruit grows. A summer is so long. As soon as the autumn wind blows, impatient people occasionally pull up a pile of sweet potatoes or peanuts. When they see that the white grains are flat and the sweet potatoes are small, they quietly bury them and accept their hearts and wait in a hurry.

Crops were put into storage one after another, and peanuts were dug out, leaving only the sweet potato fields in Shan Ye with some greenery. Autumn has been spreading for a long time, but the wind is getting stronger every day, blowing the leaves of sweet potatoes back and forth, until some leaves turn yellow, people are not in a hurry to harvest. Always wait until the first frost, the weeds are covered with frost, and a large area falls, and the sweet potato vines also shrink, and the leaves begin to wither, so people go up the mountain to collect sweet potatoes.

Father always asks me to lift the sweet potato vine first. Pull leaves along the vine. Those long vines are connected from one tree to another, and this one is wrapped around that one. There is no disconnection in the middle, and a ridge of sweet potato vines is connected into a whole. The more the stem is lifted, the heavier the vine is. Children are very light, and sometimes they roll with those vines from one side of the ridge to the other and lie on their backs like sweet potato vines. Ridge by ridge, the whole piece of sweet potato vine is tilted to one side, much like half a hair on the top of the head, and the sweet potato is half naked to the sky. Most of the leaves on the vine are upside down, so that the back and front of the leaves intersect, and green and light green are intertwined between the stems, overlapping some artificial pictures. The next thing to do is to find the connection point between vines and sweet potatoes, tear it apart and completely cut off the life connection between vines and sweet potatoes.

Sweet potato vines have been dragged to the ground, and only the original soil is seen in the whole sweet potato field, which is explained by the unevenness between ridges. Barefoot, my father stepped on the ridge of the field, and the shovel head with three claws waved and accurately planed to the gap between melons, and the sweet potato showed its head. At this time, the teeth of the shovel head were crossed by his father, and as a rake, a pile of sweet potatoes ranging from 35 to 10 pieces were dug up and evenly spread on the brand-new soil. Sweet potatoes were dug out one by one and laid flat on the ground, like flocks of white geese floating on the brown river. They seem to be scattered, but they are linked and interdependent. It seems that sweet potato buds and sweet potato vines have been competing to grow for half a year, and they have quit one after another, just waiting for the moment when sweet potatoes break ground.

Planing sweet potato is a technical activity, which is a re-planing based on fully understanding the soft and hard land, the growth state of sweet potato and the possible size of sweet potato formed in repeated labor of fixed mode year after year. Every time my father bows his head, the sweet potato is basically intact, and the thin melon skin grinds off some scratches at most, and the internal juice oxidizes without flowing out. However, if we shake our heads when dad is resting, what we often see is that the melon body is scratched by sharp claws, or it is simply a few pieces. My father would stop it loudly, stop the rest, come over and pick up the hoe again. ...

We will pick the sweet potatoes, put them in baskets one by one and turn them into baskets tied to wheelbarrows. When the basket is full, put it in a sack, which is tied to the top of the basket, and then put the full bamboo basket on the car beam. This car weighs several hundred Jin. Father pushes and we pull. From the top of the slope to the bottom of the slope, and then from the bottom of the slope to the top of the slope, I walked carefully through the narrow road next to the reservoir ... When I pushed to the top of the slope to rest, my father sat on the sandy hard ground and picked a few red mangosteen flowers that were still very strong and put them in my mouth to smell or chew, with a smile on his face. ...

When some sweet potatoes were shipped back, grandma and mom had put leather gloves on their right hands, only protecting their middle fingers and palms. Put the iron rubber in the bamboo basket, hold it down with your left hand, and pick up the sweet potato in your right hand and wipe it down. After wiping, the sweet potatoes became thin slices and piled in baskets. We children will spread the sweet potato pieces in the ground, slowly put them where grandma and mom are sitting from a distance, and surround them. The child felt that he had done a great thing and laughed all over the mountain.

The mountain is full of sweet potato chips rubbed by various families, and there is no soil color. Waiting for the late autumn wind to blow, the sun shines, ten sunny days have passed, and day by day, I ran to the ground and tossed. After that, the sweet potato slices lost moisture, the surface was covered with white powder, and the body shrank and turned upside down. This became dried sweet potatoes, which were taken away by car. The mountain has no burden, and stretches its limbs into the sky, leaving only a corner for the sweet potato vines that are still piling up.

People are not in a hurry to take back the sweet potato vines, as if all the harvest in a year has been collected, and this extra "tail" can stay between heaven and earth until the end of time. It was not until first frost and Lan Xue drifted by that people remembered that there were still some forgetfulness in the mountains, and then they packed up the stems and leaves that turned yellow, brown and completely faded all winter to make pig feed. In the meantime, an old man picked a few leaves and rolled them into thin white paper, frowning.

After tasting the crispness and hardness of raw sweet potato, the sweetness of boiled sweet potato was found in the smoke of every household at night. In a large iron pot, sweet potatoes are laid flat in the water at the bottom of the pot, with a bowl of pickles or cabbage radish in the middle. After lifting the pot, stick a circle of tortillas on the edge of the pot and burn it. The food in winter is like this, and the typical rural life scenes belonging to that era are repeated in every household.

In this way, some sweet potatoes became the rations of the whole family and raised the floating fertilizer of the villagers. Part of it is pushed into the vermicelli, giving the food a soft embellishment. Some of them were stored and put into the cellar dug tens of meters deep between the high slopes behind the village. The wine cellar is open every day, and the sweet potatoes are put in and then covered. Children often go to see them and are interested in how sweet potatoes get into the cellar and how to store them. Until spring, the cellar will be opened and ventilated for a few days. Then someone will put down the basket at the pit. The handle of the basket is tied with a thick rope and a lighted candle is placed inside. Slowly put it down and pull it up again. When the candle is lit, the basket will be placed at the bottom of the pit. People began to pull up sweet potatoes in baskets. Because there are always rumors that the dead are suffocated in the sweet potato cellar every year, children will worry about the people in the cellar and cran their necks to see them, but they will never see him come up. It's always like this after a long time, and everyone at the bottom of the cellar is pulled up. Seeing him jumping out of the basket panting, the children were relieved and scattered.

The sweet potatoes from the cellar were screened and began to prepare for the sweet potato buds in the New Year.