Early rice grows until July, which is the harvest season, which is the dog days. At this time, students have a summer vacation. The whole village entered a tense "double grab" state. The so-called "double grab" is to grab the harvest and grab the seeds, or grab the early and insert the late. Grab the harvest, that is, cut early rice to grab seeds, that is, insert late rice seedlings.
At that time, "double robbing" was a tough battle in the countryside. Before the prelude of this tough battle begins, it is a step-by-step preparation: the rice fields are dry, so that when cutting grain, the fields are dry and cannot be sloppy; Fishing for fish, killing pigs and sharing meat, every household is "a rare sacrifice" for "double robbing". The grain drying flat should be cleaned, and the harvested farm tools and tools for drying grain should be cleaned one by one. Then the production team leader divides the whole team's labor force into several groups according to the young and old, and implements the team leader responsibility system. Children who go to school should also take part in collective labor during the summer vacation and join the "double robbing" with their parents.
At dawn, the production captain blew a long whistle and woke up the sleeping people. He shouted at the top of his lungs, "Let's get to work", which resounded through every family in the village. So, adults and children, rubbing their eyes, carrying laundry baskets and sickles, went to the fields. Women don't need to go out to work in the morning, just prepare breakfast at home.
Put the laundry list on the ridge, the adults will go to the field to cut food, and the older children will also go to the field. Young people will wait in the ridge of the field first, and stubborn people may flee to the field to find the nest and fly a group of birds.
When mowing the grass, people put the cut rice and straw away regularly, and the children are responsible for stacking the cut rice and straw into symmetrical piles. The reaper bends down, wields a knife in his right hand, holds the grain in his left hand, and the sickle clangs and moves quickly. After a few seconds, he freed the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, quickly picked up the broken leaves at the root of the rice grain, tied the knot, put them away and started the next round of cutting.
When the rice and grain in a hilly land are cut to one third, the team leader will divide the work in detail: two young people thresh, two children pass the rice and grain, the other children build a pile, and an old man is responsible for unloading the grain in the thresher into the laundry basket. At this time, two mature men carried the rice thresher and put it in the middle of the piled rice. They stepped on the pedal and stepped on the lever of the gear of the rice thresher. The gear flew and the machine roared. With the rhythm, two people on the rice thresher stepped on it, put it up, turned it up and threw it out. When the children threw it, a grain of rice had been handed to them. This cycle goes back and forth. When everyone's basket was full of rice, the captain gave an order: "Call it a day!" " So the child followed the adults carrying the burden and jumped on the field path. It is already eight or nine o'clock in the morning.
Go home for a quick breakfast and start work in the morning. In addition to harvesting in the morning, there is also drying food. It is usually elderly women who bask in the grain. Others are carrying a laundry list and working in the fields with sickles. The sun is burning, ears of rice and grains are ringing, sweat is flowing quietly, machines are rumbling, insects are buzzing and birds are chirping. In such a tense and sultry atmosphere, laughter came from time to time, which was the rude words and jokes of adults. With the phrase "there are ears next door", the laughter has subsided, and some people try not to laugh with their mouths closed. The adults chatted and found that there were children around them.
"It's a gang fight!"
The women in charge of drying grain came to the rice field with sweet dregs and buckets. In the bucket, one end is spring water and the other end is chopsticks. The mower immediately went to the ridge, grabbed the bowl and chopsticks, scooped up the sweet dregs, filled it with spring water, squatted by the ridge, took a few gulps, burped, and felt relieved and comfortable. Some took advantage of the time to go ashore and quickly lit a cigarette and smoked greedily. In such dog days, it is not only refreshing, but also fragrant to "burn your back" and "strike a case" in the middle of "double robbery" Those who send the "case group" are voluntary and do not need to be arranged. Your house will deliver it today, and mine will deliver it tomorrow. In the process of eating and sending, housewives are competing with each other, men are tasting in their hearts, and even proud of their wives.
Take a rest, continue to go to the fields and continue to work. When all the rice fields on a hill are harvested, the mowers put down their sickles and began to tie straw, tying the faded straw into pieces and spreading it in the rice fields to dry. The next day, the child's task is to carry these straws to the hillside with bamboo poles and continue to dry. After drying completely, the children will pick the dry straw into their pigsty. When the "double robbing" is over, the old straw on the pigsty will be uncovered and put down, and the new straw will be laid on it.
We call the straw "tube" locally, and the penny for picking the straw is called "tube test". When picking up straw, it is very interesting. One end of the bamboo pole has a fixed peg, and the other end is perforated with a pointed end. Stick the straw into the bamboo pole one by one, squeeze it, tie it again, and then squeeze the gap from the middle. The bamboo poles are lined up, and the straw is swaying with the pace, which is very rhythmic. Picking straws in the "double grab" is a relatively easy job. Maybe when we were picking up straw, we took the opportunity to hide and seek in the rice fields and catch loach in the fields.
Working in the countryside, there is no specific concept of time. For example, when you cut grain during "double robbing", you usually collect one load in the morning, two loads in the morning and afternoon, and then call it a day and go home for dinner.
After harvesting early rice in hilly land, immediately irrigate the field to soften the silt. Older people began to plow and "wash" the land. The so-called "washing the ground" means turning the ground and loosening the soil. Rake the field after "washing the field", comb the turned paddy field flat with a rake, fill the field with water to make the soil soft, and after raising the field with water for a day or two, start planting late rice. "Double robbing" is carried out in this tense and orderly state: while harvesting and drying grain, plowing and raking the ground. When the harvest draws to a close, "seed grabbing" begins.
In the "competition for seeds", all ages went out together. Grandfathers plow and rake, grandmothers reap grain in the sun, mothers pull out seedlings in the rice fields, children pick and send them back and forth in the fields, and young and middle-aged people transplant rice seedlings in the rice fields. In order to catch up with the season and seize the time, it is common to pull out seedlings at night. At that time, children didn't know the hardships of adults and always thought that "working at night" was a beautiful thing. Because the seedlings came back in the middle of the night, they had a group dinner "night gang". The so-called "night gang" means eating a bowl of noodles or a bowl of rice tofu. Many children covet that bowl of noodles or that bowl of rice tofu, and they will also take part in the "night shift" to pull seedlings.
As the saying goes: "Grab the early and insert it late, and the sweat will fall into eight petals." The time of "double robbing" is about 20 days. In my hometown, the per capita land is divided into two, and people lose a few pounds every year after "double robbing". So far, there is no fat man in my hometown, and the degree of hard work can be imagined. In the "double snatch" season, God may not necessarily abide by heaven, but he turns his face when he says he turns his face. It was sunny at noon, but it rained cats and dogs in the afternoon. People who were taking a nap on bamboo chairs immediately ran to Sunguping, combed the rice with a rake and covered it with plastic paper. As soon as it was covered, the sun showed a ferocious smiling face, so it spread the rice all over the floor, smoothed it and dried it again. In the evening, when the windmill was being used to screen rice, the dark clouds rolled up and the wind blew hard. "harvest! Harvest the grain! " Men, women and children, from fields and vegetable fields, came running quickly to grab the sun-dried rice and put them in the warehouse. If it is too late to grab the harvest, quickly spread plastic paper, hemp fiber and hat, and press the four sides of plastic paper with hoes, rakes and stones. When the dark clouds clear and the heavy rain stops, remove the lid and let the rice blow to avoid damaging the grain. It can be said that the "double robbing" at that time was a battle: fighting against the sky, fighting against the ground and fighting against ourselves.
In my hometown, rice has always been planted as a single cash crop. Paddy field is a "gold mine" in people's minds, and all economic sources depend on rice. Therefore, during the "double robbing" period, time is money, and the body in my hometown will be deeper.
After dividing fields into households, people's enthusiasm for farming is higher. It is normal to "work at sunrise, rest at sunset, and have no time all day", and it is more necessary to pull out seedlings late at night and transplant seedlings in the morning; There are also water protection, insect prevention, weeding and so on. That time is a hard memory that many rural children in the south can't erase.
Nowadays, with the development of economy, the process of mechanization and the increase of cash crops, people no longer rely solely on rice for a living. Young people have never experienced hunger, and the emotional temperature of the land has naturally weakened a lot. Although they live in the countryside, they are always ready to go to the city to express their betrayal of traditional agriculture and farming by fleeing. Most of them stay in the countryside because they are old and sick. Therefore, most farmland no longer grows double-season rice, only one-season rice or tobacco leaves. "Double robbing" only exists in the hearts of old farmers who still regard "land" as gold and are devout to the land.
When farmers are not busy with farm work and are not nervous about their livelihood, but slowly live an idyllic life, this in itself is the progress of the social development era, and this is also the life that our predecessors have been striving for. It is an experience to think of "double robbing" today, whether it is bitter or poor. Nowadays, "double robbing" has gradually become a thing of the past, but craftsmen's meticulous spirit of food, awe and gratitude for land and food are still worth remembering and admiring today.