In the harsh winter of childhood, besides looking forward to the arrival of the New Year, I also hope that the farm work at home can be done as soon as possible, so that I can have a good time as I like. For example, store sweaters simmered on the kang during the New Year to keep warm, accumulate livestock manure for a winter, and send them to private plots as soon as possible. The soil and fertilizer of pigsty and sheepfold were also cleaned up early and turned into powder, which was quickly sent to the private plot. Even the grass eaten by livestock should be cut at one time.
Sweeping "sweaters", a regional labor, is widely known among the poor in Xihaigu. I wonder if anyone else is engaged in this work. The "sweater" mentioned here is the dead branches and weeds on the barren hills and ditches, and it is the fuel for cooking and simmering kang for heating.
As long as I can remember, in the cold winter, the mountain village began to sweep sweaters. Whether it is windy or snowy, the work seems to never stop. The poor live a hard life, and coal is a rare commodity that can't be reached. All the wheat stalks are given to the animals, and the cooking and simmering kang are supported by sweaters. Without sweaters, we can't cook and our family will starve. Without a sweater, the kang can't be simmered, and the whole family will be frozen. "Hunger is unbearable, night crime is uncomfortable" is what I heard most from the big population in the cold winter.
The annual winter vacation coincides with the cold winter, and it is also the coldest day of the year. At that time, I didn't have time to write a lot of winter vacation homework assigned by my teacher. It has become the main job of mountain village teenagers to pack their schoolbags, carry backpacks, carry "sweater" rakes, enter ravines, climb ridges, find "sweaters" and sweep sweaters, and it is also an unshirkable responsibility and obligation. I often climb mountains for a sweater. There is a hole in the cotton-padded jacket and a hole in the cotton trousers. A cold winter has come, and a lot of sweaters have been piled up in the place where firewood is piled at home, just to protect the home from burglars during the Chinese New Year.
In my impression, the winter when I was a child was really cold, much colder than now, and I wore much less than now. Poor families are content to have a cotton-padded jacket and trousers to keep out the cold, whether new or old. The little boy's face, feet and hands were swollen with cold all winter because of lack of cotton cap, shoes and warm gloves. This kind of harm to the body is more unforgettable than hunger.
In the cold winter, collecting dung seems to be something suitable for all ages, a shovel and a backpack. As long as the livestock go to the river outside the village to drink water, and the livestock carry manure to the mountains to send manure, there will always be times to defecate and urinate. At this time, there will always be teenagers with thin clothes and runny noses on the road to pick up feces, or' old people in the village who bend over to pick up feces'. The old man's collection of excrement is not the result of anyone's compulsion, but more to let people know that he is a useful person, not an idle person who eats. And we teenagers pick up feces because of our family.
Sending dung in the countryside is a hard job, especially in villages in deep valleys. The collected cow manure, donkey manure, horse manure, and soil manure from pigsty and sheepfold are all excellent organic fertilizers. No one wants to waste it in the fence, repair it early in the morning, and take advantage of the slack season to send it to the ground and pile it up. In order to maintain the quality of fertilizer, a layer of soil must be covered. Feces are scattered like graves. The dirt and excrement of donkeys and horses, human excrement and urine in toilets outside hospitals are collected by family members in cold winter, picked up by family members with shoulder poles, backpacks and dung baskets during slack seasons, and carried to the ground by livestock.
The village is located at the foot of Nanshan, which faces north in the south, and most of the farmland is in the steep slope of the hillside in the south. Under the condition that production quotas is not fixed, one third of the work points of the production team members are earned by picking dung in the fields and carrying dung in the cold winter months. The production team carries manure, carries it on a pole and carries it on its back, relying on the advantages of more people and more livestock. This is a long road and a steep mountain. Talking and laughing, you chase after me, and you don't feel how far the road is or how steep the slope is. I didn't feel tired or frozen after going back and forth several times in the morning.
When the family production quotas is implemented, the differences between families will be highlighted, and the advantages of allocating more housework to livestock and good families will be extremely obvious. The work of delivering dung will be finished in a few days.
For families without labor and livestock, transporting feces is a heavy farm work. Pick a burden and carry a backpack. Without good posture and indestructible ferocity, all kinds of farmyard manure piled at home can't reach the ground. Facing the cold wind and the snowflakes flying all over the sky, I stood stiffly cold, and I sent them to the fields again and again. The mountain was steep and the road was long. Come back for more than two hours, twice a morning. When you are hungry and tired, your body will warm up. Some people from the cold winter to spring ploughing and sowing, when large and small dung piles are piled up in the ground, the work of delivering dung is over. Even some families are still working on New Year's Eve.
The dung in the livestock pen was mostly collected after the Spring Festival and before the spring sowing. At that time, there was no fixed production quotas. This farm work also depends on a large number of people, cleaning the shed and plastic surgery outside, and it will be completed in a few days. After the family production quotas was settled, the situation of each family was different. Some of this work is carried out during the slack season, but more often it is carried out in the cold winter, while others are postponed to the spring ploughing and sowing in the following year. At this time, the people who sent the manure were all neglected by the busy farming, or something at home delayed the people who sent the manure.
As for the work of storing forage for livestock in the twelfth lunar month, it is a delicate work, which requires experts to deliver grass, so that the harvested grass is uniform and easy for livestock to digest after eating. More importantly, the grass delivery person decides the speed of grass delivery according to the frequency of mowers. A pair of hands and knees control a handful of firewood to move under the hay cutter, while the mower moves according to the mower. According to mowers, people can be adults or young people with a little strength, but they must keep pace with the grass delivery people so as not to cut their fingers and other accidents. In fact, these things are inevitable in rural areas. As long as livestock eat grass, they have to mow it. The key is that mowers must pay close attention and try to avoid injury accidents. As a teenager, I seldom participated in this work, and adults also know that mowing grass is really a dangerous job. No one ever expected me to do it, only my older second brother did it.
Homesickness is long, and boxing is wandering. Childhood farming has long been a memory, and childhood winter has long been a warm winter. We can only look for it in the days when we are short of clothes and clothes, and in the days when we are hungry and cold. While lamenting the ever-changing new era, we are also lamenting the great difference between the present weather and the previous weather. We also bid farewell to an old era and ushered in a new era.
That boy is no longer young; However, the past events experienced in that severe winter more than 30 years ago, with the passage of time, are as mellow as the old wine fermented in the heart.