Visual Prose on Farm Tools

Most farm tools are a combination of iron and wood. The eyes of farm tools grow on wood.

Head is the big brother of farm tools, which can be used for digging, planing, harrowing and leveling. Especially in mountainous areas, people stay at home for almost four seasons, so it is essential to buy one or two. The blacksmith in Mazui Town Street is the funniest. His family has been blacksmiths for three generations. As long as it's from Goujian blacksmith's shop, the quality is definitely steel. Even if the head is sharpened, bald and blunt, it will continue to be used once in the blacksmith's shop. Even if the head is only polished to the end, I have never heard of anyone whose head blade is broken. The word-of-mouth of ordinary people is the golden signboard.

Several heads of my family were beaten by Gou blacksmith. Whether it is seven kilograms or three or four kilograms, it is a good thing that has been tested for a long time. Farm work in the mountains costs money for furniture, not to mention there are many stones hidden in the ground. The root of rhubarb, whose root is as thick as the root, will be twisted into a twist after three or five days. Only the head made by the blacksmith is hard and elastic, and even the stubborn roots will be cut off. Even those hidden stones and iron stones collided with dazzling sparks, and only a few white marks were printed on the head blade. Digging deep-rooted rhubarb, as long as you have great strength and good skills, you can dig up a seven-legged rhubarb with five or six strokes. Of course, a good horse needs a good saddle and a good head.

The best pestle is wood, and mountain tincture is second to none. Poplar is made of solid wood and porcelain, which combines rigidity with softness. Hard is soft, and soft is hard. It is the best partner for the head. Although the whole body of Zanthoxylum bungeanum is scarred, its toughness is very good, and it is especially important that it can recover after bending. My handlebars are all made of wicker, which my father found in the forest while herding cattle. No matter how good the stick is, it must pass the test of smoky fire. Only in this way, the moisture and femininity on the wood will disappear, become tall and straight, hard and radiant, and become the best combination of the head. Those hilts soaked by the blood and sweat of my father and my two generations, like glazed ones, are bright and clean, with clear wood grain, and every scar is just an eye. Those eyes witnessed the hardships of my father's life and my timidity and maturity. My father supported a family of nine with one head until he was old and exhausted; I took three years to train myself from an ignorant and cynical youth to a qualified farmer.

The hoe is the backbone of agricultural tools. The grass in the crop field always grows faster than the crops. If there is no hoe, the harvest of crops is just soap bubbles. Whether it's a small hoe used by my mother to grow vegetables or a fan hoe used by my father and me, hoes are light and handy purple willows. Purple willow is a beautiful wood. Although it is difficult to become a pillar, it is a very popular agricultural tool. Purple willow's skin is dark red and covered with white spots, especially in bleak winter. Make the hoe handle smoky and remove the skin, and it will be fine naturally, otherwise it will be deformed and twisted. The handle of the purple willow hoe is smooth and delicate. In addition to the scar similar to human half-squint eyes, it also has veins similar to human blood vessels. After decades of sweat immersion, those veins have become clearer. I always suspected that my father's sweat was transmitted to crops through the handle of a hoe. Otherwise, my family's medicinal herbs and potatoes are getting more and more prosperous year by year, while my father is getting thinner year by year.

Sickle is essential for farmers. Who can leave the sickle, harvesting crops, mowing grass or cutting bamboo in the Woods? Cut wheat with an iron blade mounted on a wooden sickle. Blade is Shaanxi's "Harvest Brand", with good molten steel, sharp and wear-resistant; The wooden sickle doesn't require much wood, but the place where you shake hands must have an inclined arc, so that the strength of your hand can be better transmitted to the blade. My family's wooden sickles for cutting wheat have suitable handles and are very powerful to use. More coincidentally, every sickle has eyes made of wood grain, some of which are Gherardini, and some are serious and solemn. Every summer harvest season, holding those sickle handles seems to be an encouragement, and I dare not slack off. Longkou grabs grain, and the particles return to the warehouse. The handle of the iron sickle must be made of wood and porcelain, because it must bear the forces of nature. For example, cutting peas, wormwood and bamboo is hard work, and those light and fast wood will delay work. Several iron sickles in my family are all pearl handles-a kind of beautiful porcelain wood, named after pearls with white flowers. The handle of the pearl pole is heavy in the hand, giving people a strong feeling. The wood grain on the pearl pole spreads in one direction, like ripples aroused by water, but there is a smiling eye on each cross section, which makes people smile after work.

It's time to say axe, which is the joint effort of the mountain people! A heavy axe needs a solid handle, and mountain tincture or chicken bone wood is the most ideal. Those slightly raised bumps will have a slight itchy feeling and are very comfortable. My axe is about 60 years old. Older than me anyway. After 60 or 70 years of friction and sweat infiltration, roses are mixed with light yellow and a striking cyan. It is also a bright spot in cross section, a lovely work of art with a bright and shiny axe. This axe is not only a tool to cut down the firewood necessary for life, but also a magic weapon for my father to graze in the mountains for decades to protect himself. Many encounters with leopards are scared away by the strong light of axes.

With the implementation of migration, hometown is just an empty name; As my father gets older, no one touches those farm tools anymore. Coupled with our betrayal of our hometown, those farm tools that accompanied us day and night, those farm tools with eyes, were covered with dust in the decaying barn of our hometown, losing the luster and glory of the past and becoming intuitive history.

Last night, many eyes suddenly fell asleep-eyes on farm tools. They looked at me expectantly, as if to say: You haven't come to see us for a long time!