The days of farming

Farming before and after my hometown is not for the enjoyment of life, but for the crazy weeding.

As early as more than twenty years ago, our family left the village, and the house in our hometown was occupied by a cousin alone. Last spring, an unexpected mountain fire took my cousin's life. My hometown is deep in the mountains, and the natural conditions for survival are relatively bad. The implementation of the relocation and poverty alleviation policy has turned this backward mountain village into a veritable hollow village. There are only four villagers left, including my cousin who has already left. My cousin is gone forever, leaving my family unattended. Only' Iron General' guards the door tightly. My wife and I made an appointment to go back when we come in autumn.

It was a sunny day, and my wife and I drove straight to our hometown. Less than three kilometers from the village, the driveway began to narrow. The road is not only less than two meters wide, but also half of it is covered by thorns on the roadside. If you force the front shovel, you will be scratched all over. More importantly, my driving skills can't reassure my wife at all. Abandoning the car and walking is an inevitable choice.

After walking for more than half an hour, I turned 18 ravines and returned to the village that I had left for a long time. Seeing the shadow of my hometown covered by Toona sinensis and smelling the pear fragrance floating from the phoenix, I was excited. My nephew stayed in the village and was eager to do something when he saw us coming back. My wife and I politely declined my cousin's invitation and walked eagerly to our home. What we didn't expect was that the house was surrounded by thick weeds, especially Artemisia annua (grass name), which was comparable to me, which made my wife and I flinch. I grew up in the countryside, knowing the dangers in the grass, not only all kinds of poisonous scorpions, but also all kinds of wild bees. What's more, the pale local strongmen may be lurking in the grass to enjoy the cool, and they can't clean up the passage for a while if they want to enter the house. My wife and I felt very depressed and helpless when we came back from far away. I had to climb the nearest neighbor's house and visit the yard. Those arrogant weeds are no different from those outside the yard. What makes me feel gratified is that the old pear tree that watched me grow up is still radiant, and the golden fruits are covered with branches. Under the caress of Feng Qiu, he nodded to me frequently, as if telling me his thoughts of parting. The changeable sky and dark clouds obscured the bright sunshine. My wife and I don't want to stay any longer But left the village with a heavy heart and reluctantly left. Although weeds grow on the land of my hometown, they feel equally uncomfortable growing on me.

The next spring, the cuckoo's song called back my wife and me. We smashed the rusty iron general on the door, burned the dead weeds everywhere, cleaned up the garbage accumulated in the house, lit the mud stove fire, picked up the clear spring water in the mountains, and started a new life of "fighting the sky and fighting the land".

The "slap"-shaped corner in front of the house is not more than 10 square meter, but it is not as small as one square meter, and there is no seven points in total, but it has become a battlefield for my wife and me to compete for land. We use burnt grass ash as fertilizer, use picked stones to block geography, use newly bought steel shovels to dig deep into the soil, and enjoy spiritual happiness with the sweat of labor.

In this land less than seven minutes, in the gap outside the courtyard, my wife and I planted corn, beans, loofah, pumpkin, cucumber, gourd, tomato, sunflower, sesame and other crops, which can be described as everything. After spending so much effort and planting so many varieties, can you get anything? My wife and I have never thought about it, just for the sake of weeds not being arrogant, just for our own happiness.

The weather in my hometown has been dry for ten years and nine years. The land here depends on the sky for food. The expected spring rain has never come, and the seeds in the field are quietly sleeping and waiting. My wife and I can't wait in the village all the time There are mountains of things in the city. We left the village after entrusting the left-behind nephew to take care of us.

It rained, although it was not very heavy, but it was enough for the seeds to sprout, take root and break through the ground. My wife and I stood in the city's silk rain and sincerely blessed the seeds buried in the soil of our hometown.

My cousin told me on the phone that the unearthed seedlings were all ideal after several intermittent and timely rains, but they were accidentally missed and he replanted them. He reassured me in town, and I thanked him. After properly handling things in the city, my wife and I drove back to the village. In the last few kilometers, the simple road was widened, and my car was unimpeded and stopped directly at the threshing floor in the village.

Green seedlings are growing healthily, ranging in height from one inch to one foot. It is intolerable that all kinds of audacious weeds want to run amok among seedlings. My wife and I have no time to rest, so we are committed to a new chapter in the battle-weeding. We didn't use herbicides, not only to make crops green, but also to be afraid of affecting my cousin's bee production. "When weeding at noon, sweat dripped down the soil." When my wife and I finished weeding the weeds in the field, when my wife and I removed the extra seedlings, when my wife and I set up the shelves of beans, cucumbers, loofahs and gourds, my wife and I rested under the pear trees in the yard to enjoy the cool, cooked with water in the iron pot on the stove, and the smoke curled up on the roof and rose into the beautiful sky. At this moment, my wife and I have been greatly comforted by our homesickness.

Traveling back and forth between the city and my hometown, I have gained the fruits of self-reliance. Beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, gourds and pumpkins surrounded my wife and me, waiting a few meters away from the stove, waiting for the water in the pan to boil, and picking up the vegetables from the ground when the oil in the frying pan was about to smoke. In addition to oil and salt, there is no need to add seasoning, and the food is fragrant. This kind of feeling is not enjoyed by city people! The mature life cycle of vegetables is limited, so my wife and I can't enjoy it alone, and more often we give it away. Give it to the surrounding folks, to friends and relatives in the city, and to tourists far away.

This year, the good weather has fulfilled my wife's wish, defeated the arrogant weeds and got unexpected returns. Beans climbed up the pear tree little by little, tomatoes grew taller than one person, loofah became a disaster, pumpkins ran all over the slope, corn was strong and straight, and sunflowers bent over with laughter. '

With the change of solar terms, my wife and I kept reclaiming land and planting radishes and cabbages in order to enjoy the fruits of our labor in winter.

Autumn has come, and the visible crops are ripe, attracting the intrusion of sparrows and the patronage of wild boars. They are all protected animals of the country, so we can't take extreme measures. We can only scare them with scarecrows and fake barbed wire. Even with such efforts, the losses of the villagers cannot be completely avoided. Villagers surnamed Ma in the same village worked hard to plant a piece of corn, which was taken away by wild pigs on a windy night in Gao Yueming. My wife and I moved the cooked pumpkin into the yard, dried the surplus loofah into silk, made thick-skinned gourd into gourd ladle, boiled bright red tomatoes into sauce, and put the peeled corn on the windowsill to dry naturally. Radish and cabbage are growing well, and frost days are fighting for time. Today is the bleak autumn wind again. Without the disappointment of last year, with the joy of today's harvest, it is really a "different world."

When my wife and I lived in the city, the winter snow came early and attacked the crops still growing in the field. Thanks to my cousin in the village, my radish and cabbage were unearthed in time, otherwise it would be nothing. The hometown after the snow is beautiful, and the tired land is extraordinarily quiet. Before the Spring Festival came, my wife and I went back to our hometown and put the carrots we couldn't take away in the earthen pot, which added warmth to the cabbages piled in the yard. The corn dried on the windowsill is only empty corncob, and the full corn kernels are stored in the grain depot of voles. The two intact ears of corn left by luck followed my wife and I back to our home in the city and hung ostentatiously on the living room wall.

Yu Fengyuan on the afternoon of July 20 16 13.