Old Things in the Country-Wheat Vacation and Autumn Vacation

When I was a child, in the 1970s and 1980s, rural students didn't have summer vacation when they went to school, and they had wheat vacation and autumn vacation.

As the name implies, wheat leaves are leaves for cutting wheat, and autumn leaves are leaves for autumn harvest.

Why do you say that?

I guess one reason is that most of the teachers in rural schools at that time were private teachers, and teaching was only part of their work. In addition, they have to farm at home, so it is difficult to support their families with the meager salary of private teachers.

Another reason is that at that time, there were many children, and the oldest one in the family took the second child. Parents are busy making a living every day, and it is a problem to support their families. Therefore, this is basically a mode in which older children look after their children. When farming is busy, you need children to help you. If the busy farming is delayed, the dropout rate may be high.

What can children do after the wheat harvest?

The simplest thing is to go to the field to pick wheat ears; Help gather the wheat together and let the adults bundle the wheat together; In the earliest days, wheat was usually cut first, and then corn was planted. Children can put seeds in the pit and push the soil with their feet. Another important role is to help look after the children at home, or boil water to deliver meals or something. ...

In this way, rural children can help adults do a lot of work from the age of six or seven.

As far as I can remember, there are no children who don't work.

Only girls who are about to get married when they grow up, in a year or two before marriage, in order not to be dark, a slightly more particular family will let their daughters do some housework at home and do some work in the field that does not need to stay in the sun during the busy farming season.

As for some families with more people and less labor, there may be no such concern. There are other families whose daughters are getting married and still work in the sun every day.

02

For me, when I first started my vacation, I also wanted to help my mother take care of the children, cook and work in the fields.

I remember that the first time I hired jiaozi was during my eight-year-old wheat vacation.

At that time, I was alone at home, and when I saw leeks and potatoes at home, I decided to pack jiaozi.

I don't know how an eight-year-old girl made such a big decision at that time. It may be that the ignorant are fearless and the project is big.

Needless to say, in the end, I really wrapped a jiaozi for a summer mat. The shape must be grotesque, and the fillings vary in size. The leek was badly cut and finally chopped with potatoes, only mixed with oil and salt.

Our neighbor's sister can also help with laundry and cooking at home early. I don't think it's anything special. People around me are like this.

At that time, children went to school late, and basically they went to the first grade of primary school at the age of seven or eight. In the third and fourth grades, I was almost eleven or twelve years old.

By the time I was in the third grade, my sister could already take care of my brother. I want to make some money when I have time.

Because my family is poor, I pay my tuition by selling eggs every time I start school. A tuition fee of one or two yuan can block many children's way to school.

Later, I decided to sell sorbet. Said it was sorbet. In fact, it is a hard ice block frozen from well water with saccharin.

When it was sold in the first year, it was 20 cents each. Of course, there were also 30 cents each, that is, the kind with a little more essence.

The first step is to buy a paper box from the canteen and tie it with a piece of cloth, so that you can carry the box on your shoulder.

The second step is to find a big white paper, which is the kind of big white paper that is nailed up for notebook to save money. Compare boxes, cut, paste and paste cartons. The whole box immediately looked like makeup, and the overall feeling was higher.

The third step is to grab some clean and soft straws from the wheat field and lay them on the bottom.

Step 4: Wash a new piece of white cloth and make a new quilt with cotton to wrap the sorbet to keep warm and prevent it from melting.

Step four, find a new plastic cloth, rinse it and spread it on the straw.

Then, carry the box to the sorbet factory to wholesale sorbet! Only twenty or thirty dollars can be approved at a time. First, carry too much. Secondly, there is the problem of funds. Third, there is too much wholesale. If it is not melted in time, the loss will be great. The wholesale price of sorbet is half cheaper, but with melting, it is actually not as much as the budget.

The sorbet stopped as soon as it came back from wholesale, and running all the way went straight to the wheat field. If you are lucky, you can catch up with the scorching sun, and a threshing floor can sell out a box in one breath. A box of sorbet can earn two or three cents at most.

I remember the clearest day. I sold five cases and made a dollar and thirty cents. In those days, a strong worker was only one dollar and twenty-five cents a day.

My mother was shocked when I finished calculating the account that night. Then there was a wheat holiday that year, and my family didn't assign me any work, so I concentrated on selling sorbet.

It is worth mentioning that as a result of my efforts to earn money that day, the next morning, I felt dizzy, nauseous and suffered from heatstroke.

However, the rural child Pi Shi gave me a bottle of snow water stored for three or nine days in winter, and I continued to sell sorbet.

I earned five or six yuan during the whole wheat holiday, which was a huge sum at that time, more than my mother's money. My mother gave me a hand-over sentence, but later I didn't want it because I couldn't bear to pay for it.

After paying a tuition fee of one or two yuan after the start of school, the rest took almost a year.

Now that I think about it, I know how enlightened my parents were at that time!

03

We have ended our wheat vacation. It's time to talk about autumn vacation.

During the autumn vacation, we mainly collect peanuts, sweet potatoes and broken sticks.

What can children do?

Grasp the peanut tree in your hand and drop the soil; Pick peanuts one by one; Dry and fresh sweet potatoes cut by adults are put into the ground to dry; Come back in a few days to pick up dried sweet potatoes; Go to the field to help break the stick; After that, you can go to other people's fields to collect sweet potatoes and peanuts. ...

At this time, if someone doesn't work hard, more sweet potatoes and peanuts will fall into the ground and be snatched away by others, often leaving a label that will not live behind.

It's cold in autumn, and sometimes you have to wear cotton-padded clothes from early morning to late at night. I can't sell sorbet. So, is there any way to make money?

There are also some. It is to sell corncob, put yellow corncob in woven bag and sell it in the field.

However, after selling it once or twice, I found that the business was really bad in autumn, so I changed it to winter vacation (annual leave) and then sold it.

Now that I think about it, I feel endless aftertaste. At that time, I was extremely poor, but all the children were so content. I happily faced all the poor days and helped adults do a lot of work.

Perhaps a free life, without spiritual demands, is a kind of spiritual prosperity!