When I was a child, my parents contracted ten acres of land, six acres of melons and vegetables, and four acres of rice. Manpower can harvest one acre a day, and early the next morning after harvesting, the ears of grain must be picked to the drying field. Load by load was poured on the ground, and the rice was spread out with a rake. It is spread in a thin layer, which is easy to dry in the wind, and at the same time, it also increases the light-receiving area, allowing the millet to dry in the scorching sun. After that, a larger baby was left to dry the rice, and the rest of the people continued to go to the field to cut the rice.

It is not easy to dry the grain alone, so you have to use a fork to copy out the straw and throw it away, and then rake out the ears of grain that have not been taken off by the threshing machine with a wooden rake and pile them aside. After being exposed to the sun, the grain stalk was smashed with a flat pole, and the millet fell off the ear stalk dozens of times.

To dry the millet, if you want to turn it, you need to turn the millet into a circle with both feet, and you have to turn it once in a while. The second is to watch and prevent sparrows from stealing food. As soon as the sparrows flew down to eat the grain, they hurriedly drank it, clapped their hands to intimidate it, or smashed it with stones.

It was late in the evening, and the sun was almost setting. The grains are cut into piles with a rake, and then the scattered grains are swept to the pile with a wooden broom. Then use a dustpan to pack up the rice and pour it all into the basket. When my parents were almost home, they would pick up the paddy and take it home. Wait until the next day to continue to pick it out to dry, the main reason for this is because there is dew at night, and the grains will get wet if you don't take them back. To make matters worse, there is a lot of rain in the summer, and heavy rains often come unexpectedly. The sun-dried rice is drenched all at once, and it takes several days to dry it.

In summer, as long as it doesn't rain, about three days, the grain can be dried. At this time, it is necessary to separate the unfilled grains from the good grains that are full, and the way to separate them is to use the wind to lift the grains. Hold a dustpan of grains and slowly raise it in the wind. Since the grains are not full, they are blown farther away by the wind. The grain is so heavy that the wind can't blow it, so it all falls near the feet.

In fact, the method of raising grain cannot completely separate the full grains of rice, because this method is especially unsuitable when there is no wind. At this time, it is necessary to use a windmill that fans paddy, which is composed of bellows, rockers, buckets, grain hoppers, air outlets and other components, and is a kind of agricultural tool similar to a separator. The windmill could drop the plump and strong yellow grain into the basket below; On the other side, blow the shriveled and lightly fluttering grains or chaff and grass clippings out of the air outlet.

The good rice should be dried for another day, and it should be turned dozens of times a day with feet or a wooden rake.

The sun-dried rice should be bagged and stored in the warehouse, and one person will use a rake to plane it into a large pile and pile it into the shape of a hill. Then another person uses a dustpan to fill the grains, and one person breaks open the plastic bag. People who earn pockets are the most likely to let the rice hair get wet, and they are easy to itch when they scratch it. But when I saw the yellow rice packed into plastic bags, I was still happy in my heart. It shows that the rice harvest is not bad, and it can feed a large family.

The most feared thing is that when it is almost harvest time, the torrential rain will crush the fast-ripening rice stalks and bend over, and the ears of grain will hang down to the ground and be flooded by the rain. This situation is very deadly, and it will basically destroy half of the grain that farmers have worked so hard to grow. When it is time to harvest, the harvest of good grain is at most fifty percent. Worse still, when the harvest is gone, the farmers will be sad. Because the next year's grain is almost full, and this year's food is still eaten, and it is possible that you will not be able to eat enough. At this time, it can only be cooked into gruel and live a tight life.

We store the plump grains in the barns, and the shriveled grains or chaff are used as fodder for pigs, chickens and ducks.

The rice grains are returned to the warehouse, and we children have to go to the field early in the morning to clean up the straw. Tie three or four straw tips together and erect them into a herringbone shape. In this way, it takes up less space and is better ventilated, and the sun is also transparent. Sometimes, though, the straw pile is a bit damp and shady, and there are frogs or snakes hiding underneath. As soon as we pluck these straws, small animals suddenly come out of it, which can scare us into standing on end. Frogs are fine, but if it's a snake, it can really scare us kids out of their minds. It will even affect other people, who are busy asking where the snake has run, for fear of running into the straw pile that another person has cleaned up. If the snake slipped away, it was fine, and it remained in the ground, fearing that it would bite someone, so it had to be beaten to death with a stick.

After the straw is packed and dried in the afternoon, it is pulled to the slope and piled into a high stack of straw, and one person throws it on the stack below, and the other person puts it on the stack. When stacked high, they are often thrown on the head and body of another person, and the rice hairs of the rice will invade the clothes and make intimate contact with the body.

The straw was piled high like a hill. Straw stacks can be used to light fires for cooking or feeding cattle, in winter when there is no grass to feed cattle, and when it is cold, it can be used as a bedding. It can also be spread on the green vegetable seeds that have just been sown, on the one hand, to prevent the seeds from being exposed to the sun in summer and easily injuring the roots and seedlings; On the other hand, it is to prevent the seeds from being frostbitten if they are too cold in winter and are not easy to germinate.

There are a lot of straws on four acres of land, and it is impossible to pile them all into straw stacks, because the slope cannot be placed. Then, we children need to go to the field early in the morning to spread the straw layer by layer and expose it to the sun. At four or five o'clock in the afternoon, the straw was basically dried, and we lit a fire, and the fire spread with the spread of the straw. There are also some straw that has not been dried, so I will leave it to the side first. When it is dry in the evening, it will continue to be burned, and if it is not done, it will have to be left until the next day.

After the autumn harvest, smoke rises everywhere in the fields, fires spread like camps, and farmers are busy burning straw. Everyone took advantage of the fact that it was not raining and disposed of the straw in time.

The advantage of burning straw is that the straw contains a lot of organic matter, which can make the soil fertile, increase the organic fertilizer of the rice field, and improve the yield. However, straw burning is now not allowed in rural areas, because burning straw produces a large amount of carbon dioxide and causes environmental pollution.

When the rice is harvested, you have to pay some public grain, and you have to eat or sell the rest. Everything is at the disposal of the peasants themselves, whether they keep food or sell it. If you want to eat it, you must first grind the grain into rice, and then you have to pull the grain to the rice milling shop in the town. The milled rice is fresh and fragrant, and it can be taken home to be eaten, and the rice husks can be used to feed chickens and ducks.

Soon, rice seeds will be sown. Dad would sprinkle the freshly sprouted seeds in the paddy fields and cover them with plastic sheeting. When they grow into small seedlings, they should be sprinkled frequently. It takes about a week to grow to two fingers, and then the seedlings are planted.

The climate here allows rice to be grown two or three times a year, but most farmers plant it twice and use it to grow vegetables, and some farmers continue to grow rice if they don't plan to grow vegetables.

Early in the morning, we have to uproot the seedlings from the field and bundle them into small bundles, and then send the bundles to the paddy fields where the seedlings are planted.

Rice planting is also an individual work, and the upper body is almost bent into a parallel line. Take the seedlings in your left hand, divide the seedlings in your left hand with your right hand, about 3 or 4 seedlings, and be careful not to break the seedlings in the process. Pinch the roots of the seedlings with the thumb, index and middle fingers of the right hand and insert them into the soil along the roots of the seedlings.

The spacing between the seedlings is about 10 cm, and the seedlings are kept erect. The roots must be buried in the soil, otherwise the roots will be unstable and washed away by the water in the field. When planting seedlings, move backwards, and be careful not to step on the seedlings that have been planted next to you. At the end, there are a few bundles of seedlings left for later use.

After a busy day, my back hurts, and I feel uncomfortable when I straighten up.

After the seedlings are planted, we must always pay attention to ensure that there is no shortage of water in the field.

If, after some time, some of the seedlings rot and die, the spare seedlings should be filled in the empty space and continue to grow.