Rich seasonal prose essays

After the beginning of autumn, there will be a rich scene that has been brewing for a long time in the wilderness. In the village, the originally peaceful days with smoke curling up and disappearing were completely disrupted. Those women who loved standing in the street chattering around also turned around and began to call their men who were playing cards in the den to go home and tidy up the yard. The cow, sheep and pig manure in the pen should be dumped outside. See if there is a suitable place at the foot of the wall behind the house outside the courtyard? As long as it doesn't get in the way during the autumn harvest.

In fact, there is no need for women to talk too much. Men who live with their families all know that the autumn harvest is tiring physical work. It is not as short as the wheat harvest season. It takes a few days to harvest. Field, put the wheat into the hoard, wait for a drenching rain to pass, then scatter the seeds and that's it. Autumn harvest is not that simple. The work is scattered, such as harvesting corn, cutting beans, picking cotton, chopping sorghum, picking ears of grain, pulling peanuts, and digging sweet potatoes. It's too busy to use, and the extremely tired man just wants to have a good sleep, but he still has to be ordered to do this and that by the strong-minded old woman.

In the eyes of men, women love to nag and have no other abilities except cooking and feeding their children. Women are really unconvinced after hearing this, and they will raise their voices and tell the men one by one: in addition to cooking, washing, mending, washing, and educating children at home, the men have to work in the fields to cut a ridge of wheat and chop a row. After wiping the corn on the field and taking a break to smoke a cigarette, the woman also caught up; the man pulled the cart to transport manure to the field, but without the woman pushing hard one after another from behind, the cart would have been stuck in the field. Let's go; the man is hunched over to pick up the cotton, his hands are clumsy and he can't pick it up quickly. The woman leans forward a little and touches the water, and a lot of cotton pours into the bag inside. For a while, the bag is filled with cotton like a pregnant woman in her arms. To surpass a man several times. Men have no choice but to accept the job of picking cotton. Two men can't keep up with the diligence of a woman picking cotton. Therefore, everyone is responsible for the autumn harvest work, and we cannot rely solely on loyalty. Since it is not one person’s work, the whole family needs to divide the work, and even children will be involved. Whenever this season happens, the men, women, and children in the village will be excited. The whole village is like a drunken sorghum field. The heavy purple-red tassels are swaying in the autumn wind. They almost touch the ground, but suddenly they straighten up again and look all over the field. The land where ripe crops are fragrant makes the drunkenness even stronger.

Like all families in the village, our family’s work is also divided. I cook and look after my three-year-old brother, while my parents go to the fields to chop and break corn. After loading the truck with corn, he took some edamame, peanuts, and peeled some sweet potatoes to take home. The corn cobs had to be transported many, many times, and the empty yards were piled up into mountains of corn. At night, as soon as the moon rises like a big silver plate, the whole family goes to shuck corn together. The corn husks need to be peeled off hard with your fingers, which will make your fingertips painful and numb. My parents peeled it off so fast that there were bloody cuts on their fingers. They wrapped it with tape and peeled it off again. And it's not a good job for children. The origin is the character of the mind. Even though Qiu Liang is very cold, he does not cry out. In addition to the sounds of crackling, thorns, rustling, and corn peeling, there are also crickets and small insects hiding in the firewood and at the foot of the wall singing little tunes one after another. Let's listen. However, after the fog started, the fog became moist and wet. It wetted the corn piles, as well as my clothes, pants, shoes and hair. My hair stuck to my face, and the dirt and dust from the corns covered my whole body, making my body itchy. I was tired of peeling corn. At this time, the growing sleepiness began to make me feel attached to it. The action of peeling naturally slowed down. The fat worms in the corn crawled into my pants to keep warm without feeling it. The crickets in my ears also stopped. Singing, I was so sleepy that I almost fell into the corn pile. I trembled and suddenly woke up. Seeing my parents peeling it vigorously, I started peeling it again, but not long after peeling it, I fell into a dream again. The taste of sleep is so good, gentle and sweet. No matter how delicious the mooncakes are (the Mid-Autumn Festival has just passed), the sweet and crisp apples and pears can no longer tempt me.

Probably my parents couldn't hear the sound of me shelling corn. First, my father laughed at my sleepy look, and then my mother said: Go to sleep! I was sleepwalking and longed to hear this lovely cry. I squinted my eyes and stood up unsteadily. I didn't have time to shake off the corn beards, dirt and reptiles all over my body. I went back to the house and fell into a deep sleep on the bed. When were my parents? Those who went back to the house to rest didn’t know anything about it!

My task during the day is to cook. There is no need to work in the fields when cooking, just put on a gray cloth apron and look like a cook. After my parents had breakfast and went to work in the fields, I would first clean up the dishes and chopsticks placed on the stove, brush the bottom of the pot with a layer of porridge on it, and then pour the swill from the pot into the cow trough, and then wash it again. Add some fodder for the cows to eat and drink when the cows come back in the afternoon. I also need to wash my hands and make a bowl of noodles, steam a pot of steamed buns and serve them to the table before my parents come back.

In fact, cooking is really beneficial. You can take the opportunity to burn beans in the stove fire and eat a few pieces of sweet potatoes in the ashes of the stove. Even though sweet potatoes, peanuts, and edamame are steamed in the pot, the flavor is so fragrant and extraordinary. This will make my little brother obey my instructions obediently. Besides, he is really a good boy. If I want him to catch the chickens, he will catch the chickens. If I ask him to bring me firewood for the pot, he will take the firewood for the pot. He can’t take much at a time, but he is very diligent. He also helps me blow the bellows, which saves money. It gave me a lot of strength. When he grew up and I asked him about his childhood, he just smiled like he didn't remember anything.

Sometimes, my father returns from the fields with bunches of green grasshoppers. The grasshoppers had everything to eat and drink in the fields, and each of them had plump green wings. I would burn them in the hot ashes at the bottom of the pot and share them with my younger brothers. They were so fragrant, I couldn’t say enough. There were also times when I forgot to cook the rice because I was too greedy. When eating rice with uncooked rice, my mother would inevitably nag or scold me. My father, who was very tired, would flick a few chestnuts on my head with his hands. My scalp would immediately feel numb, but not too painful. I knew it was my father who liked me. Show mercy.

Sometimes, my father would catch a few grasshoppers for us to play with. Grasshoppers are similar in size to grasshoppers, but they are more beautiful than grasshoppers. Put the grasshopper in a cage made of sorghum stalks and hang it on a dwarf jujube branch in the yard. There were small holes in the cage, so my brother and I fed it with vegetable leaves. In the morning and evening, the grasshopper's cry is clear and loud. We like to listen to it very much, and we even made up a song to sing: Little Grasshopper/Crying/Squeaking and drinking dew. Unfortunately, it could not survive the winter and died soon after.

At this time, a depressed scene began to appear in the fields, and the harvested fields were like patches nailed to the earth. Late autumn crops that had not had time to be harvested stood alone, some lying sideways and vertically, and showing signs of being blown by the wind, trampled by people, and gnawed by livestock. And the village began to become crowded. Look, corn, peanuts, cotton, soybeans, millet, and sorghum are spread out and piled up in every yard, inside and outside the house, and on the roof of the bungalow. Even the corners of the walls and outside the gate are piled with firewood, straw, etc. Cover up the peanut seedlings and corn stalks. Once winter comes, these are the best feed for cattle, sheep and pigs and must not be destroyed.

After all, cotton takes a long time to harvest, so most people harvest corn, soybeans, and peanuts here, and have to pick up the white cotton all over the ground over there. Soybeans cannot be harvested until they are fully ripe. When the bean leaves turn yellow, you must cut them quickly to prevent the beans from exploding and causing unnecessary losses. Cotton has to be picked up as soon as it is opened. In case of bad weather or cotton that has been exposed to rain will lose its yellow color and will not be sold at a good price. Our family, like most other families, piled together the cotton we picked up every day. It looked like it weighed three to four hundred kilograms. My parents took some free time and spread it out on the field at the entrance of the village to expose it in the sun while they went to work in the fields. Live, let me see the cotton. While looking at the cotton, like other children, they learned to pick up the grass and pile the cotton like adults. The cotton is so warm and soft after being exposed to the sun. As long as I lie down on it, I will soon feel sleepy. I lay on the pile of cotton and fell asleep soon after. I had that sweet dream. I don’t know how long it had passed, but I seemed to hear a wheezing sound in the hazy place. The sound was very much like the ambiguous meowing of the neighbor’s cat. Unconsciously, my heart was pounding wildly, as if I had peeked into someone's privacy, my face was red and my ears were hot.

Is this the sound of the men and women hiding next to the cotton pile, or is it the unique aura of the season of abundance? While I was sleeping, I kept thinking and thinking, but I couldn't figure it out.

The exposed cotton must be packed in the afternoon. Tomorrow morning, my father will go to the cotton purchasing station to sell it with other villagers. When he came back, he would use the money from selling cotton to buy us a lot of delicious and fun things, which made us as happy as a holiday. But this warm, sweet, and happy moment can only be experienced a few times, and it will lose its luster along with the scene after the autumn harvest. The earth is lonely, and we have to look for another kind of happiness.

Therefore, at this time, I like to go to the harvest fields with my friends to look for sweet potatoes and peanuts, which are all dropped by others during the harvest. Every time I use a small grappling hook to find a piece of sweet potato and a few peanuts, my heart feels like honey, as if I have picked up delicacies from someone else's table and are now taking them as my own, getting a big deal.

While we were rummaging and picking up, our little minds were not allowed to be idle, and we loved to have wild imaginations. For example, it is very interesting to recall the scene of picking wheat in the fields during the wheat harvest. Children's songs about picking up wheat are sung together casually under the blue sky: Cicadas are calling, wheat comes on the field/Adults are busy spreading wheat to dry/Children are busy picking up wheat in the field/Busy in picking up wheat, their hearts are happy/In exchange for sweet and fragrant peaches and apricots. The more I sing, the happier I feel and the more I talk. At that time, I wanted to collect the wheat and return it to myself, so that it could be turned into big white steamed buns, sesame cakes and fried pancakes rolled with chopped green onion for the whole family to eat. It could also be exchanged for lots of sweet peaches and apricots to eat, so it would be more exciting to pick up the wheat and carry it on my head. Even though I was exposed to the scorching sun, I didn’t feel too hot. I was so tired that my back and legs ached and I didn’t want to rest for a while, for fear that my friends would surpass me. Adults are often happy to see us hardworking and don't care much about us. Besides, the wheat I picked up was kept alone at home. It was so much that I wanted to get more. Finally, I weighed it out to see how much I could pick up. There is an accurate number, and the friends love to show off who has picked up the most, and the atmosphere is very lively.

Suddenly, I remembered the scene of getting into the green gauze-like cornfield to cut grass together. There is a melon garden next to the corn field. When we are thirsty, we bend down and sneak into the melon field to pick melons to eat. By the time the old man watching the melons finds out, we have already disappeared. I also picked other people's edamame, broke other people's corn, and peeled other people's peanuts and sweet potatoes, hid them at the bottom of the straw basket, and carried them home to burn and cook them. Green corn leaves are chopped and fed to cattle and sheep. If they are no longer edible, they are dried and used as firewood. After the newly harvested corn is dried, I always ask my mother to twist some with her hands to try it out. Beat it into porridge and cook it with grits. The porridge is sticky and delicious, with a sweet taste. In our family, my mother only used cornmeal to steam hollow steamed buns, which I didn’t like to eat. My grandma, who had been dead for many years, would use cornmeal to make more delicacies. She used new corn flour, sweet potato flour, and white flour and folded them together with the old flour cakes to roll them out. The noodles she rolled out were big and round like a flower map. Sitting in the yard, I drank a big bowl of it while snoring. I mixed a little corn flour with it. The vegetable dumplings made of white bread are fried in a flat-bottomed oil pan. The front side is fried until brown and crispy. There is stuffing inside, and it is delicious when you bite it. My mother also made it a few times, but it was not as delicious as my grandma’s. Grandma regards cooking as an artist sculpting his work, and the precision is under the knife. Mother does not have such intentions and thoughts. It is the accumulation of experience through time and trial, and ordinary people cannot learn it. This reminded me of the old jujube forest at the entrance of the village. There was a grave covered with morning glories in summer. That was the place where my grandma rested.

However, the wheat harvest season is short. Once the joyful atmosphere passes, the long autumn will soon come. When autumn comes, especially after frost, the originally colorful and fruitful season will turn into a bleak one. The land is empty, the distance into the distance cannot be seen, and it is misty. The trees that were originally covered in red and green had lost their beauty. On the bare black and green branches, there were a few dry leaves that had not been blown away by the west wind. The lonely, dead thatch was uprooted by the wind and rolled away. After the autumn harvest, wheat is planted in the cornfield, and green seedlings grow. Watching the season move towards winter day by day.

Let’s talk about the peeled corn. After being spread out in the yard to dry, the corn will glow red, yellow or purple in color and pile up in a big pile, shining brightly in the sun.

The rich fruits obtained through hard work on our own land are the fruits of sweat and sweat, so I feel very kind and fond of them. When I walk in the yard and pass the big corn pile, I want to hum a little tune. Something like that. However, what is hateful is that there are swarms of rats that do not show their heads during the day. At night, they come together to destroy the corn, eating and stealing it, all night long. My mother felt distressed seeing the good food being wasted, so my father decided to borrow a corn earing machine to thresh the corn.

So the whole family joined the battle, and the neighbors also wanted to fight, so they came to help in advance. My parents first surrounded the yard with sorghum, fearing that the corn would fly everywhere and make it difficult to clean up. The diesel engine makes a loud noise when started. My parents, the brother next door, we picked up the ears of corn and put them into the machine together. We heard the crackling and roaring noise inside the machine. It's also strange. At the other end of the machine, the removed corn kernels and the beaten corn cobs were flowing loudly. Even though the corn pile looked like a hill, it couldn't withstand the devouring of this little machine. After a while, The effort is over. The next work is not easy. We have to pick out all the corn cobs and only the corn kernels are left. At this time, I would hold my pocket while my parents used a dustpan to pick up the corn kernels and put them into the pockets respectively. Seeing that the corn kernels filling the pockets were lined up, more and more, maybe thirty bags. The person who harvested the corn was Ah Si from the same village. His father called him to come and weigh the corn before loading it into a truck and transporting it away. So much corn was exchanged for a wad of money in the hands of his father. He handed the money to his mother for storage. At this time, he listened to his mother nagging: How much is the net profit from this season's corn, except for pesticides and fertilizers? The father on the side glanced at the mother with sly eyes. Needless to say, my trouble has come. The meaning is very clear. I will have to settle the account next. How many kilograms of corn was harvested this year? Our family has more than ten acres of land. How many kilograms does one acre of land weigh? Excluding the chemical fertilizers and pesticides per acre, how much is the net profit per acre? This continuous flow of numbers made me dizzy, but I suppressed the panic in my heart and held my chin in one hand, pretending to think. Just like a great mathematician, he has to go through such hard thinking before becoming a mathematician. But after all, I am not a mathematician. My mother saw through my thoughts and said: I am not born to go to school, and there is no point in forcing me! Looking at his father's face, he looked a little disappointed. He didn't nag like his mother, but sighed. Don't look at this sigh, it makes me uneasy enough, it's better to hit me to feel better. Beating me could relieve my father's anger, but he was so sad, mixed with the sadness of hating iron for not being able to become steel.

I just wish that moments like this would pass quickly so that I could go back to running around among my friends and playing hide-and-seek among stacks of firewood. Then sit down and talk about the old locust tree in Grandma Lao Hei’s house that is covered with cicadas and stars, and think about how many stories she has told under the old locust tree. But I did not have such good luck. My mother punished me by carrying a firewood basket on my back and picking up a basket of firewood when I got home, otherwise I would not come back. I felt so lonely at this time, as lonely as the land after harvest without the company of crops. I watched the ants climb up the tree and then fall down again, making the dry leaves rustle. Or I hope that the next heavy snow will bury me so that my family can come find me. I even hope that I will grow up soon. When I grow up, I may be able to settle accounts and no longer be entangled and stumped by those numbers. And these are just my fantasies. The reality is that when I came home carrying a basket of firewood, my parents asked me to put down the basket of firewood, wash hands and have dinner. They seemed to have forgotten what they asked me to settle accounts in the afternoon. How could they be so forgetful?

However, after I grew up, I missed my childhood scenes very much. I often have the same dream: there are always endless amounts of wheat, firewood, and cotton to pick up; there are endless amounts of dense grass to cut, and I can grab a handful of them; I dream of a bean field full of edamame, and a large amount of edamame. Cornfields with ears of corn, peanut fields as far as the eye can see... I like to be greedy in my dreams, and they will never grow up. What makes me even more incredible is how my childhood memories can last so long. I just want to find someone to ask, is this the same for you? I really miss that fruitful season.