Sangou's father pinched a piece of rice, put it in his mouth and bit it, basically knew how ripe the rice was, and set a time to clean up the water in the field in advance; On the first night, taking advantage of the moonlight, plus the grandfather, father and mother brought the three dogs who had returned home to cut the rice first, and the younger brothers and sisters let the grandmother take them to sleep.

Why do you want to cut the rice the night before, because you should do a little more before the poisonous sun during the day, at this time, the moon and stars are sparse and the breeze is blowing, and it is not very tiring to do things.

The knife used by the father of the three dogs to cut the rice is a special sickle, the grabber held with one hand, the short figure 7 type, the hand all wraps the back of the knife, the tail of the knife is the tail of the figure 7, there is a belt through the wrist and tied to the wrist, the knife edge is the head of the 7, grasp the knife edge with one hand and move downwards at the root of the rice rod, the knife edge will cut off all the rice stalks, and cut off a few handfuls of rice stalks with a few brushes, and hand them to the left hand to hold if they can't finish the rice stalks with one hand, enough to put a large handful on the ground, so that the rice is cut very quickly and not very tired.

Sangou and his mother used a normal firewood knife, which was a figure 7 long, but it was much larger, with a wooden handle, and they had to cut the rice with both hands, holding the middle of the rice stalk with their left hand, and holding the wooden handle of the firewood knife with their right hand, cutting it at the root of the rice stalk, cutting five or six handfuls in a row, and when the left hand could not grasp the rice, they put it on the ground.

Each bundle of cut rice should be staggered and stacked on top of each other, piled up to half a person's height, and then placed in a second pile, forming a line and row, so that the threshing machine can beat all the way through the next day.

At that time, the old-fashioned threshing machine in the countryside was used, which was actually a manual threshing machine, made of wooden planks to make a large rectangular wooden bucket, and the front was equipped with gears made of wire nails, and the gears of the threshing machine were turned up with their feet, and they grabbed a handful of rice stalks with both hands, and put the rice on the flying gears, and the rice was brushed down.

Even if it is such a threshing machine, it is also a high-tech product in those years, not every family has it, it needs to be borrowed or rented, it is really unaffordable or not, so it has to take the most primitive threshing method, that is, the whole rice is put on the drying field to dry, and a big bamboo pole or wooden block is used to hit the rice ears to make them fall off.

There are not a few threshing machines in Sangou Village, and they are all owned by the owner, so they have to be used at a good time. Sangou also went to grab the rice to hit the rice while stepping on the foot, and began to feel very fun and majestic, the rice was pulled by the flying gear, the rice splashed, the gear was slowed down by the rice He, and the feet had to be stepped on hard, and the three dogs were exhausted for a long time, and the adults thought he was slow to delay the time to drive him away, and many families were waiting in line to use the threshing machine.

In order to prevent the rice from splashing outside and wasting food, a bamboo cover was added to the threshing machine, so that the splashed rice was blocked and no longer flew out.

But there are still occasional grains splashed out, I heard that one year when Yinfeng's father in the village was threshing, a grain of rice splashed into his eyes, and he couldn't get the rice out of his eyes when he stopped, and it became more and more uncomfortable.

Looking for someone to break his eyelids and want to pull out the rice, I didn't expect the strength of people's eyelids to be so great, a few men can't do it, it's useless to wash with water, flush the eyes, etc., Laifu his father is a local man in the township, and there is no way to clip it out with a small bamboo clip, and he also makes Yinfeng's father as exhausted as a water dog.

There is really no way, Yinfeng and her father are stiff, Lao Tzu is incurable, the outside of that eye is swollen like a big pink peach, and from time to time there is water in his eyes, this "wild bull" is also a man, he should eat, sleep, work, and live.

Unexpectedly, after a while, a rice bud grew out of that eye, and pulled it out along the bud, and actually pulled out the rice, and the rice sprouted in the eye, which was really a miracle, and within two days, Yinfeng's father's big peach eyes disappeared, and it was as good as ever.

……

The three dogs were quite fast when they first started cutting, each time they counted six handfuls of rice, cut them from the right to the left and put them on the other side, and the second time they were also six on top of the previous six, just a big bunch, and the brush was cut all the way to the half-ridge past, and it was not good for a long time, and I was so tired that I was panting.

There were small serrations on the side of the rice leaves, and they kept hitting Sangou's left arm, and the left arm began to be hot and swollen, so he had to put down his sleeve to block it. Bending over and stuffing his head and hands kept exerting force, the air in the straw was not smooth, the breath was stuffy and the chest was tight, and many insects in the straw were driven up, flying head to face, tired and tired to cut for a while and rest for a while.

The father is slow and reasonable, not fast or slow, nor resting, has been a speed, soon pulled the three dogs behind him, did not urge the three dogs, has been busy until the second watch, the village dogs are not much barking, before the end of work, a few people to the stream, stripped naked and took a good bath, after returning home and drinking water, the three dogs fell asleep as soon as they dipped their pillows.

The next day was just dawning, the summer dawn was early, the three dogs did not sleep comfortably, they were woken up by their father, the mother had already made breakfast, it was dry rice with vegetables, not the usual porridge, because after the meal, you have to catch the fresh air in the morning to cut more rice, so you have to eat some dry rice that can carry the stomach.

After dinner, Sangou and his father went to the field to continue to cut rice, until the sun slowly rose, and then went home to avoid the most poisonous sun at noon.

At the same time, they also invited someone to carry the borrowed threshing machine, and the two of them stepped on the rice while threshing, and the wooden bucket was almost full of fresh rice, which had to be put out, packed in baskets, and carried back to the threshing floor one by one.

Mother has laid the "mat" (bamboo mat) on the barn field, the rice is poured on the big bamboo mat, the mother uses a bamboo rake to rake open, the rice is raked out, after a period of time to rake the rice over, fully dried, when the sun goes down, go to sweep up, put it in a basket and pick it home.

In the middle of every morning and afternoon, grandma took her younger brother and four dogs and sister Chunhua to pick up some food, which was considered to be a tip, generally a sauerkraut and spicy dish under the handmade wide noodles, everyone stopped to wash their hands, sat down and ate two bowls of sparsely, and had the strength to work. My younger brothers and sisters don't eat at home, but they want to eat with everyone in the field, and they eat very fragrant and feel very fresh.

The people who invite are also the labor force of the village, and they invite each other to invite each other, and sometimes the wages are eliminated, but the people who are invited to work are to pack a day's meal, and the workers who say that they come to the house in the morning are generally to eat dry rice, and they do farm work porridge without a stomach.

Lunch and dinner are extremely rich, the meal is full, the dishes are meat and vegetarian, at least there must be a large piece of pork, otherwise people will be stingy gossip, some people have to kill chickens and slaughter geese, lunch wine can not drink too much, and work in the afternoon.

After the handiwork in the evening, they went home to take a bath, changed into clean clothes to have dinner, dinner is to drink more, the owner should keep persuading the wine, there are drunk, it's okay, sleep and the next day will be fine.

Double robbery is to grab the harvest and grab the seeds, so it will open up a small field in advance to plant seedlings, early rice harvest, immediately have to plough the field to plant late rice seedlings, because not every family has cattle, so there are cattle on the family to take over the work of plowing the field, rice harvest on the field, you have to arrange to plough the field.

The Sangou family invited Ermao's father to plough the fields, and their family specially raised a big buffalo to plough the fields; Early the next morning, Ermao's father drove the cow to Sangou's house to eat, and he also had to prepare food for the cow, in addition to the grass, he also had to prepare bran and rice, so that the cow could be full and energetic to work.

First of all, the plough field, the ox pulls the triangular tip of the iron plough in front, the person in the back holds the wooden plough handle in one hand, the other hand holds the bamboo whip, the mouth shouts the special number of the command ox, the ox goes forward and shouts "hi", stops and shouts "whoa", all of which are one sound, and when it is time to plow, the horn of the ox is called one after another.

Whichever cow is selected to be a ploughing cow must be trained at the time of calf, and if it is disobedient, it will be beaten until it is completely under the command of the owner. In the countryside, most of the cattle have to be trained as ploughing cattle, buffaloes are basically, buffaloes have a docile personality, cattle run in the mountains all day long, the personality will be irritable, often see two cattle fighting on the top of the banging bull, so there are not many ploughing cattle, will be sold as beef cattle, and there are many sturdy female cattle are trained to plough cattle.

Cattle in the countryside like to raise cows, do not need to spend money to be castrated, docile and good training into ploughing cattle, more importantly, will give birth to cows, cows can be sold for money, Ermao their family raised a female buffalo, gave birth to several calves and sold, the whole family served it well, and ploughed the field and gave birth to cubs, top several laborers.

In the summer, the three dogs often let Ermao pull the big buffalo into the big pond, everyone swarmed to climb on the back of the buffalo, the buffalo is really strong in the water, the hunched child can still swim to the other side, I heard that the water ghost who catches people in the water is infinitely powerful and can't pull the feet of the big buffalo.

Speaking of Ermao, there is also an interesting thing, once again Ermao took the firewood knife to lead the cattle rope to the side of the mountain to graze the cattle, the firewood knife is generally used to cut some long grass, put the cattle on their backs and go home, and they can throw the cattle in the cattle pen at night to add food.

Ermao was walking while herding cattle that time, and suddenly there was a point on both sides of the grass, and a little beast that didn't know what flew in, and hit him directly, so scared that Ermao jumped, but he didn't expect it to be a fat stupid rabbit, directly hit the back of the knife in Ermao's hand, and died all of a sudden, and picked up a fat rabbit in vain and went home.

Speaking of cattle, cattle are the main farming tools of farmers, and many families rely on a cow to survive, so they rarely kill cattle and eat beef, unless they are sick and incurable, fall and be seriously injured, or they will be killed for sacrifice.

The old people in the village said that the cow knew its own date of death, and would shed tears before being killed, and the big tears dripped down, and the people who saw that they could not be killed, so they would use a cloth to cover the cow's eyes or cow's head, and some people said that the cow who killed the cow was afraid that the cow would come to him for revenge in the next life, so that the cow would be blindfolded, so that it did not know who killed it.

After breakfast, Ermao's father carried the iron plough on his back, led the buffalo to the edge of the field of Sangou's house, and first put a cow's mouth seal on the cow's mouth, which was a bamboo-woven cow halter, covering the cow's mouth, not allowing it to eat the vegetables or grass on the edge of the field, and concentrating on the same plowing of the field.

Drive the oxen down to the field, tie the iron plow, plough the field around the paddy field from the outside, and then gradually plough the circle small, when plowing the field, the three dogs take the younger brother and the four dogs and the younger sister Chunhua take a jar and follow the plow, there will be loaches and yellow eels to turn out, quickly pick it up with your hands, and it is time to pick up enough for a few meals.

Pick up the loach eel and take it home and put it on a plate of clean water for a day or two, mainly to let the loach eel spit out the mud and sand in the mouth, and then let go of the water and scald to death, scoop it up and peel the stomach to remove the internal organs, the frying is very fragrant, generally fried and used to cook tofu or powder skin is more, the meat is smooth and tender, fragrant and delicious; There are also smoked and dried and then fried or fried with chili peppers to serve with wine, and it is also very good with rice.

After the first plough the field, the next step is to harrow the field, the rake is made of wood into a rectangular slab, the front and back rows of knives are installed on the ground, the front row and the back row of knives are staggered, the front ox pulls, the person stands on the rake, the knife below will cut the soil into pieces and wisps, and then carry out a few horizontal diagonal to cut the soil into pieces.

Although the harrow is not as laborious as when ploughing, and the ox can be a little easier, but the skill is still very strong, people need to stand on the harrow, have to control the balance, stand on it will be very calm, give orders to the ox, go when it is time to go, turn when it is time to turn, just like driving an ox cart in a paddy field to take a boat.

Sangou begged Ermao his father to let him try it, and when he stood up, he was shocked and scared, for fear of falling down and being cut by the knife under the rake, but he felt that it was very comfortable to be pulled by the ox on it, and generally adults would not allow children to do this, unless they had to learn this technique and let him do it.

After playing for a while, Ermao's father let Sangou come down and said, Sangou, don't learn these tiring jobs, you are so good at reading, and you will come back with a top score in the exam, and you won't have to do anything when the time comes......

The last one is the 耖 (chào) field, the rake is about one meter high, about one meter five wide, the top is the horizontal handle held by the hand, and the bottom is a neat row of large iron nails, the ox pulls in front, and the person holds the horizontal handle on the rake with both hands in the back, and combs the mud several times in the water with long iron nails, so that the soil becomes more sparse, and also pushes the bottom of the whole field to be as flat as the water surface, and you can wait for sowing.

But if you don't rake flat, or don't crush the clods, it will affect the planting and growth of rice, so the rake is also a test of strength and technology, just start the first time, you have to press the nails a little deeper, so that some of the soil clods that are not completely loose under are turned over.

You have to control the angle of the field, too straight will have no effect, too oblique, the cow will be very difficult to pull up, after the whole has been turned over, you can rake a little shallower, and then some relatively large pieces of grass roots and other garbage that is not easy to break are raked out, the whole paddy field is loose and flat.

When plowing the field, the three dogs were arranged to pull out the seedlings, with both hands, the right hand to grab the root of the seedlings to pull, the left hand continued, not to catch too much at a time, otherwise it would be pulled off, pull a large handful of silk torn from palm leaves to tie up, throw it on the shore and drain it and pick it up to the paddy field to plant seedlings.

The seedlings must be in the paddy field, some people will take a long-legged stool to sit and pull out, so it is much easier, the three dogs feel that this is not very tired, what they hate is the locusts, there are many grasshoppers in the seedling field, this kind of thing is soft one by one, it is bitten and sucks the legs, sucks blood, and it can't be pulled off at once, and it is very annoying to tear down one after another to bite you.

Ordinary people will take some lime and put it in the box, grab one and throw it into the lime box, the locust is very afraid of lime, and if it falls into the lime, it will vomit blood and vomit water and die, otherwise even if it is torn off a few pieces, it will live into a few pieces of water, and the vitality is very strong. Some of the nasty ones even take advantage of your inattention, and crawl all the way to your thighs and panties to suck blood, so terrifying.

After pulling out the seedlings, they put them in a dustpan and pick them up to the paddy field, and the first seedlings are beaten, that is, they throw a handful of tied seedlings into the field according to the estimated distance, so that the person who planted the seedlings will just continue the next handful after planting a handful.

The three dogs will also go to the rice planting, the rice planting is upside down, there will be a rice transplanting master in the middle of the field to plant a ridge of standard demonstration seedlings, and then everyone to the ridge of standard to plant.

Seedlings are generally two or three as a cluster, thumb, index finger, middle finger three fingers hold the roots, insert into the soil, let go of the wrist with a finger, drive a little soil to protect the roots of the seedlings just planted.

The distance between each cluster of seedlings is fixed, and it is evenly spread in a square square, because the width of the rake to be weeded in advance is too narrow, and the rake cannot enter or will dig the rice to death when the rake weeds, and the distance is too wide to waste the field and there will be less harvest.

After the last row of seedlings is planted, Sangou can finally take a breath and rest for a few days.