When my mother got married, the family couldn't even afford to eat rice, and only a bunch of sweet potatoes in the corner could support it to keep me from starvation. The farmers who have lived in the countryside for generations rely on sweet potatoes as their main food. There is no other reason for this, it is nothing more than that sweet potatoes are high-yielding, easy to grow, and delicious. At that time, the farmers worked hard for a year, and after autumn, there was a large stack of sweet potatoes in the corner of the wall, which was the greatest relief.

In those days, having enough to eat was a big problem. At that time, it was still the period when the production team ate big pot rice, and all the villagers who had the ability to work had to go to the field to work and earn centimeters. Because only in this way can we get a small ration to make ends meet.

The production team is the basic labor unit in the rural areas in the era of collectivism, and a village is divided into several production teams, each of which has its own cultivated land, farm tools, and livestock, and the team members work collectively, and the labor is recorded as "work points", and then the grain is distributed according to the "work points". Rice belongs to the state, and after the rice is harvested, the grain distributed to each household is limited, and some villagers do not have enough to eat, so they cannot talk about nutrition at all. The food in the team could not last for a few days, but there was nothing to eat at this time. After all, they are all young people, and some villagers secretly go to the ditch to catch fish, shrimp and field chickens to improve their food. Some villagers were so hungry that they went to steal sweet potatoes that were originally intended for pigs.

The era of eating big pot rice collectively could not be sustained, and finally it was disbanded and everyone ate their own.

In the 80s, the fields were divided into households and the production responsibility system was implemented, and the peasants began to live a happy life in a small-scale peasant economy.

There are three kinds of sweet potatoes in the countryside, of course, the best one is the red heart sweet potato, which is fragrant, sweet and glutinous, and can be eaten steamed or roasted or dried after steaming. The white sweet potato contains more water, the starch content is not enough, it is not as sweet as the red heart, and the taste is not as good as the red heart. The red heart is especially sweet and delicious! Of course, the white-hearted ones can also be used in this way, but they are not as sweet as the red hearts. The white heart is used to extract starch, and then processed into potato flour for preservation, which can be eaten as potato noodles.

There are many ways to eat sweet potatoes: cut sweet potatoes into small pieces and boil them directly with water to make sweet potato rice, and rice to cook into sweet potato rice porridge, roasted sweet potatoes, fried sweet potatoes and so on. When I was a child, my mother cooked sweet potato rice the most, and I was afraid to eat sweet potato rice often. So we would always make a noise for my mother to cook sweet potato rice porridge. Of course, sometimes I see adults peeling and eating sweet potatoes raw, and I have learned to eat them that way. Raw sweet potatoes taste crispy, have a crisp and sweet taste, and have more juice. But I still think that cooked sweet potatoes taste better than raw sweet potatoes. Ripe sweet potatoes not only taste sweeter, but also smell sweet. This is also the main reason why children do not eat sweet potatoes raw, but like roasted sweet potatoes the most.

Before the 90s, there were basically no electrical appliances, and in the countryside, every family had a big stove. Rural people basically put a big pot on the stove and use firewood to cook rice and stir-fry vegetables. In addition to the fragrant flavor of the rice cooked over a wood fire, there is also the fragrant and crispy layer of pot rice left in the pot. In those poor days, the children in the village had no snacks to eat, and the pot was one of the children's favorite snacks. Like my family, there are many babies, so my mother will make more for us, and the hot pot tastes crispy and delicious. The little hand always holds a full hand of pots, and then delivers them to the mouth one by one. As long as the teeth are chewed, they will be broken in an instant, fragrant, and squeaky and can't stop, and I feel very happy.

There is also a lot of sugarcane planted in the village, because we have the custom of placing sugarcane at home during the Spring Festival. Putting a few sugarcane sticks at home during the Chinese New Year means that life is rising and the members of the family are rising step by step. At that time, they basically grew their own sugarcane, unlike now, many families bought sugarcane with a head and tail in the market and put it at home. Another reason is that because babies like to eat, each family has at least three or four babies, so a row of sugarcane will be planted in the field, or several trees will be planted in the open space directly in front of the house. Sugarcane is a very easy plant to grow, and the head or tail left over from eating sugarcane can be buried in the soil to take root and sprout, or you can cut it at will. A section of sugar cane is placed horizontally in the soil, then covered with a thin layer of soil, watered, and germinated in a few days.

When I was a child, I basically planted dark purple sugar cane, with only a few cyan. Dark purple cane is juicy and sweet, with a good taste. Sugarcane is rich in sugar and water, and is also the main raw material for sugar production, and some villagers will also grow sugarcane directly in the field to sell. Because sugarcane is very easy to take care of, it does not need to pull weeds, water, fertilize and apply pesticides as often as growing vegetables. Sugarcane only needs to be watered every 2~3 days and applied thin fertilizer once a week.

When the rice is ripe, the children in the village have to help their families after school and holidays. We are no exception, my parents will call us babies to go to the field to help with the harvest. In the past, there was no mechanization, and rice harvesting was all done by manpower, from rice cutting, threshing, transporting, drying, and harvesting. At all times, every process must be in close contact with the rice, the floating dust on the rice and the old hair of the rice leaves invade the skin on the surface, making people have a feeling of itching, as if there are insects crawling and biting, which is also the most afraid of children encountering. However, in order to harvest a crop, no matter how tired and hard it is, you have to endure it.

At that time, parents often chose Saturdays and Sundays because students had a holiday on weekends. At six o'clock in the morning, we had breakfast and were about to go down to the field to harvest rice. When harvesting rice, you need to bend over and lie on your back, hold a sickle in one hand, and stop the rice in the other, and the closer you are to the ground, the more effortless it will be. There are dewdrops in the morning, and after cutting the rice, there is no hurry to thresh, but will first spread it on the ground to dry. When it is almost noon, when the temperature is high, it is easy to sweat. And the more noon it gets, the more stuffy it feels, and there is no cool breeze around. At this time, we had to roll up our sleeves and work, and our arms and rice began to have our first intimate contact. By the time I finished work at noon, my face, neck, and arms were covered with sweat and rice rust, and the more I sweated, the more uncomfortable I became.

When I got home and finished eating, I took a wet towel and went to the field to thresh the rice. At that time, the threshing rice had to be threshed with a rice threshing machine, and the adults stood behind the threshing machine, holding the rice handle and gently putting it on the threshing machine. Then press the rice handle with your hand and rotate it repeatedly to thresh the rice cleanly. During the threshing process, the rice leaves and rice hairs are simply floating dust. At this time, we will wrap our mouths with a wet towel, tie the neckline and cuffs tightly, and try to let as few rice hairs fly in. After threshing, the whole person has changed, his face is dirty and he can't see it, and his body is like being stained with a layer of dust.

At the end of the day, my back hurts, and it is difficult to straighten my back. His face was also tanned, and his hands were cut by the tips of the rice, which was itchy and painful. Entering the late stage of the harvest, it was almost dark. I can only race against the clock, continue to work hungry, and then go home after the harvest. After harvesting the paddy, pick it home first, and wait until the next day to pick it up and dry it in the drying field. The task of picking rice was handed over to my parents, because the basket of rice grains that had been packed up did not contain a lot of water before drying, and a load weighed at least dozens of catties. We children naturally can't pick it up, so we can only leave it to adults.

After eating and taking a shower, when I lay down on the bed, I felt that the skeleton of my whole body was about to be tired. After that, I gradually relaxed, and after a while, I fell asleep.