The back of spring

(Photography/Liu Haiyong)

In the spring of my childhood, it was actually a few loud bullwhip sounds from the village.

"Pa pa" and "Yao Yao", the cattle began to walk in the street of the village with clumsy steps. With the sound of the bullwhip of the cattle driver and the endless shouting, spring really came only in my village on the north bank of Dawen River near Taifei Mountain.

After the Lunar New Year, although it is spring in solar terms, it is still very cold. The cold wind blew everywhere with thorns, and the land outside the village was still frozen hard. Anyone who has survived the cold winter knows that it will be some time before warm weather comes. At this time, what we can do is to clean the pigsty, pad it with fresh loess and store fertilizer for the new planting cycle.

After the second day of the second lunar month, the dragon looked up, the busy spring ploughing began, and the spring in the countryside officially kicked off.

When I was a child, my hometown still had the shadow of a farming society. Before planting crops, primary cultivated land, flat land and loose land were mainly completed by cattle. At that time, cattle were the main production tools, and they were registered. They could not be slaughtered casually without incurable diseases. Each production team has two drivers. Their main task in spring is to cultivate land. Each production team also has two storekeepers. They have a clear division of labor with the "drivers". The breeder is only responsible for feeding the animals, while the "driver" is only responsible for looking after the animals.

The cattle in the cowshed of the village production team are led by the breeder and tied to the wooden cattle bolt outside the cowshed. The breeder swept the cows over and over again with a broom to expose them to the sun. People gather in the feeding shed, stir-fry soybeans and black beans in a large iron pot and mix them into the feed. Because cows will start to work hard, improve their living conditions and make full preparations for the coming strong labor. There are dozens of production teams in the big village where I grew up, almost all of them, and the aroma of fried beans can be smelled outside the village.

At that time, the land outside my hometown was divided into mountains, slopes and depressions. Which land to plow first depends on which land to plant what crops. Although the growing season of crops comes first, adults are born as "agricultural experts", and it seems that they don't have to be taught to know what to plant on which land.

There are two bull whips hanging on the wall of everyone's house, one long and one short, one thick and one thin. When pulling dung, crops and grain with a cart, use a long whip to drive cattle, and use a short whip when plowing. Bullwhip is made of cowhide strips, which will harden after a long time and cannot be thrown. At this time, they will all soak in the water, and soon the bullwhip will become soft and hang their heads like noodles just out of the pot.

I have been to the fields many times with the production team where my family is located. A production team 100 people, dozens of families, basically belonging to their own families. Although my family and the "groom" of our production team are surnamed Liu, our ancestors also moved here from the lair of Hongdong, Shanxi, but their surnames are different. Somehow, although his son is only one year older than me, he calls me "uncle". I played with his son since I was a child. He often farmed with his father in order to pick up cow dung and sweet potatoes that were not cleaned after autumn, which made me envy.

Once, he asked me if I would like to play with him. I happened to be fine, so I went back and told my mother. My mother thought it was better than wandering around the street alone, so she specially found me a wicker basket and told me to pick up some sweet potatoes and cow dung. At that time, cow dung was not collected to fertilize the land, but taken home to cook. The wok with dried cow dung is full of baskets of flames, and there is no smoke at all. It hardly rains in spring, and cow dung is the best at this time.

Most of the cultivated land in the north of my hometown village is in the semi-mountainous area near the mountain roots and terraces on the hillside, with small plots and narrow roads. The old cow pulled a square trailer with a plow and a rake on it, and walked on the winding dirt road. The trailer rubs against the hard ground and rocks, making different sounds. On both sides of the road are rotten yellow grass, which is blown in one direction by the wind. The "carriage driver" stayed with the cow for a long time, as if he regarded the animal as his own child, and kept cursing. If the cow walks slowly and deviates, it will hold the whip on its shoulder, and it will be a whip ahead, cursing "Grandma, where are you going!" " "You just know how to eat and are lazy to work!"

On the edge of the land, the "horse-driver" gave Niu Yi a good farming tool, connected the plow with the cow, and then found a suitable place from the edge of the land to get off the plow and start plowing. The plow blade is bright, brighter than a mirror. The plow tip fell into the ground, and the soil rolled up along the plow like waves. I followed him step by step with the "coachman". If there are sweet potatoes, I'll run to the basket to pick them up. Sweet potato has been frozen and deteriorated in winter, but it has an evil sweetness. But there are not many sweet potatoes left in the field, so finding dried cow dung in other places has become the main thing.

Whenever this time, I especially like to stand on the high slope and look around. At this time, the scenery under my feet is unobstructed. On the plains in the distance, green wheat seedlings have turned green, and new buds have sprouted from the roots of withered hay. Poplar trees on the ridges have also begun to grow hairy poplar awns, and yellow leaf buds of Zizyphus jujuba trees on cliffs and ravines have also begun to grow outward. From a distance, there is a lot of cultivated land in the field, shouting animals, plowing or raking, and working in plots of different sizes. This is a unique map of spring ploughing in the north. The driver of the carriage was the first in the village to enter the field. They cultivated one by one, making the soil in the field look like flour in a flour jar. In a few days, cotton, beans and sweet potatoes will be planted on these cultivated mysterious soil, and the whole desolate field will become green.

When the sun went down, the "grooms" began to prepare to go home. At this time, the cows seemed to be refreshed, and their work was not so disobedient. The rest of the land was almost finished. When I was a child, when I went to mow the grass in the fields on weekends, I often saw the picture of the old cow coming home on the road in Shan Ye, followed by the "driver of the carriage". The sun is about to set on the top of the mountain in the far west, and the sun turns bright orange-red, shining on the undulating ridges, as if with a layer of Phnom Penh. In the distance, the cuckoo's cry in the sky and the owl's cry in an unknown tree are particularly crisp and clear in the deserted fields. The "driver of the carriage" and the cow turned into shadows and walked slowly towards the village where smoking began. ...

This kind of picture didn't end until Grain Rain season and wheat embroidery ear. This is the back of my childhood in spring. Now there is no such scene, and it has already become a yellow memory negative.

About the author: Liu Demin, male, was born in 1967, Dongping County Sub-branch of Agricultural Bank of Shandong Province. 20 1 1 He created and published a large-scale popular research monograph "Talking about Water Margin in Guanzhong Hometown" (China Culture Publishing House), and published 8 short stories, 20 poems, 20 essays, and 2 short dramas of Quyi and movies in various newspapers and periodicals, among which the short story "Refund of Money" won the third prize in financial and literary circles, and the short story "Ma Borrow" won Shandong.

Yidianhao Shandong creation center