1
Among the crops at the mouth of the Yellow River, wheat is certainly the most delicious, and sorghum is probably the most beautiful. Sorghum was born with a model figure, tall, slender waist, and pink face, like a charming star, swaying on the earth, her charming shadow dancing, overwhelming the crowd.
The crops on the west end of Tanmaqiao Village, on the east side of Caoqiao Ditch, and all the slopes belong to our village. For so many years, my infatuated gaze always likes to pass through the mottled sorghum leaves and look at the eternal red sorghum.
2
Since ancient times, sorghum has been an important raw material for brewing wine, making vinegar, and processing sorghum syrup. Whether it is Dukang, Moutai, Wuliangye, Lanling, Xifeng, or Xinghuacun, the preferred raw material for all famous wines is sorghum. But in the era of food shortage, sorghum was first and foremost people's ration. When the lean years come, the pitiful yields of other crops are simply not enough to satisfy the hunger, so the high-yielding sorghum comes in handy. Before graduating from high school, sorghum was the grain I ate the most. At that time, sorghum was a life-saving product for people in the north.
Perhaps, the sorghum in the botany textbook is more informative - sorghum is also known as sorghum, sorghum, foxtail millet, wild rice, wood millet, sorghum, etc. It has the reputation of "the essence of five grains and the best of all grains". It is sweet in taste and warm in nature. It is an annual herbaceous plant of the family Gramineae. It is 3-5 meters high, 2-5 cm in transverse diameter, and has some white powder on the leaf sheaths. Adults say that this kind of white powder can stop bleeding. When I was a child, I ate sweet sticks secretly and cut my hand on mat strips. I would often roll some off and put it on my hands. It really worked. Sorghum has been cultivated in China for at least five thousand years. "Compendium of Materia Medica" records: "Sorghum is grown in northern Sichuan to prepare for food shortages. It has been cultivated for 4,900 years, along with cattle and horses." Sorghum appeared very early in the "Book of Songs": "Yellow birds, yellow birds, No one gathers mulberry trees, no one pecks my sorghum.” Look, it was very troublesome for birds to peck sorghum at that time.
There is an earlier record about sorghum in Zhang Hua's "Natural History" of the Jin Dynasty: "In the third year of the ground, sorghum was planted, and in the next seven years there were many snakes." Does sorghum have this mysterious connection with snakes? , I don’t know, but that year the Yellow River flooded, I did see so many snakes in the sorghum fields. Sorghum is resistant to drought and waterlogging, grows vigorously, and has high yields. Even if it is flooded, there will still be a big harvest. In 1975, the Yellow River levee was opened. Fortunately, there was a second dam that blocked the water in the northeast direction. All men, women and children in the village went to the dam to prevent floods. Women and children stood on the dam, looking at the water and the sky outside the dam. The short beans were submerged under the water and had stopped giving birth. Men waded through waist-deep water to harvest sorghum. The river water has reached the neck of the sorghum, and only the upper half of the ears are exposed. The commune members pushed dustpans to grind sorghum. Many sorghum ears were coiled with long worms (snakes) hiding in water, which scared the women and made them scream. Fortunately, the vegetable snakes at the mouth of the Yellow River were not poisonous.
After some time, the water receded, and at the northernmost end of the Northeast Depression, a few sorghum plants on the high hills stood there forlornly. After experiencing a disaster, they are still in shock. Where the sorghums bent over to drink water, a school of fish swam in the wild water. My sister asked worriedly, what will happen to these fish when the water runs out?
3
In my hometown, there are many ways to eat sorghum. The easiest way to eat it is to simmer the sorghum rice into dry rice, which is mellow and refreshing, and maintains the unique fragrance of sorghum. The usual way to eat it is to steam the sorghum noodles into steamed buns or pancakes, which are strong and chewy and especially filling. When someone in the village builds a house, the villagers will help out for free, and the owner will just take care of the meals. Breakfast is steamed buns and shrimp paste. At noon and evening, we fried radish strips or stewed cabbage. Each person had a bowl and two skewers of steamed buns, and it was a very lively meal. I have done all the work of tamping, laying bricks, kneading mud, and making bricks. On the brand-new house platform, adobe bricks were rattled and songs were played. It was as lively as a big drama in the village. There is another way to eat sorghum, which is to make steamed buns. My mother often used the pitiful amount of white flour to roll the sorghum into pancakes, then put them in a pot and fry them over a low fire. The white flour on both sides of the pancake would slowly bulge up, forming a "baopizi pancake" with two lids. It’s out of the pot. Cut a pancake into four corners, smear it with homemade pasta sauce, roll it with scallions, and take a big bite, which is refreshing and chewy. Of course, what I drank the most since I was a child was the sorghum sticky porridge made by my mother. My mother said that ever since I could hold a bowl, I liked to hold it in the corner of the room, with my straw belly bulging out, and shout to the people coming and going: "Drink the sticky beans, drink the sticky beans, drink the sticky beans..." < /p>
Four
Grandpa Eighth said that there are many varieties of sorghum, and they are divided into big sorghum, lion head, black shell, high tip, etc. according to their shape. Hybrid sorghum was widely promoted in 1973. It has short stalks, is lodging-resistant, can be planted closely, and has high yield. The commune members held paper hats like those worn by the big bully Hu Hansan when he paraded around the streets in the movie, and used small sticks to beat the sorghum ears to perform cross-pollination. "You can't eat enough sorghum beans." This definitely refers to tall sorghum. Short-pointed hybrid sorghum is enough to eat, because this kind of hybrid red sorghum is difficult to digest. As the little lazy man said, it is hard to chew. My mouth feels dull, my stomach becomes bloated after eating, and I suffer from having to poop. For those who live a better life, they can mix in some bean noodles and stick noodles to make it a little more gentle and easier to digest. But our family was poor and had no choice but to steam the steamed buns with pure red sorghum. At such a young age, I couldn't free my hands. I leaned on the ground with both hands, and my vagina was raised high. I couldn't pull it out with all my strength, and I cried from the pain. My mother used a hard straw stick to dig out bit by bit while comforting me gently.
Alas, I will never forget the pain of constipation.
There is also a kind of sticky sorghum in sorghum, which is usually used for steaming rice cakes. It has the same stickiness as millet and can wrap the dates well. Folks have a saying to describe greedy and petty people: "If you can't bite a date, you will get annoyed and throw the cake to the ground." Even in the era when sorghum was grown in large quantities, sticky sorghum was only a supporting role. It's even rarer now. When I returned to my hometown after autumn last year, beside the rugged path, the silhouettes of several sticky sorghum plants occupied the October sky, looking lonely and beautiful into the depths of autumn.
At the mouth of the Yellow River, no crop is as valuable as sorghum. Sorghum, the real hardcore crop for the common people! The sorghum ears after sorghum threshing are called 秫秫穰 in my hometown, and the husk of sorghum is called "husuozi" by the people in Qianqiao. After scraping off the shell cords on the bamboo shoots with a sickle, they are called broom seedlings. Broom seedlings can be spun into long-handled brooms for sweeping the floor, or short-handled cooking brooms for washing pots and dishes. They are light, durable, economical and environmentally friendly. Now my third aunt sometimes brings me cooking brooms or roof covers. "Gaitian" is made of tappets, which are pot lids. Probably because it covers food, and food is the most important thing for the people, it is called "covering the sky". Xiao Gaitian is usually used to place dumplings and hand-rolled noodles. I know how to make a living by spinning brooms and nailing nails to cover the sky. These densely packed stitches are connected with an endless string of nostalgia.
The shell rope can hold a pillow, making it soft and comfortable to sleep on. When you turn over in your dream, you can hear the rustling of sorghum in your hometown.
The uses of straw on the farm are a bit dazzling. It can be made into a book and covered on the roof to keep it warm in winter and cool in summer; Grandpa Eight can also make it into grain stacks, grates, and baskets like a magic trick, wear it into a bowl bed to place bowls and chopsticks, break it into pieces and weave it into a mat; They are tied into thin sticks (fences), but what I like most is the grasshopper cage that Grandpa Eight made for me. It is beautiful and strong and will last a whole summer.
After the first snow, the land was vast. Sparrows jumped around the piles of straw, searching for grass seeds and sorghum grains. The sorghum piles in winter are a paradise for children. Here we practice handstands, hide-and-seek, and drill in and out of the sorghum piles, leaving the joy of childhood deep in those big piles. At night, when Xing Xing is not sleeping, he can still see young people quietly coming outside the village, getting into the piles of straw, looking for the smell of sunshine.
Ah, hometown ***, the mysterious straw stack!
Five
"The poplar leaves are clapping, and the ground is full of sorghum." Grandpa Eighth said that the solar term of sorghum is around the Qingming Festival. The farmer's proverb says: "The Qingming sorghum grain rains and the flowers bloom. Xiaoman Mianhuan won't go home. "When the moisture is good, sorghum will sprout in four or five days. When the weather is good, sorghum grows very fast. "The wheat has turned its head, and the sorghum overwhelms the cattle." During the wheat harvest season, the sorghum is already waist-deep.
When I was six or seven years old, my eighth grandfather who watched Po often took my sister and me to play in the sorghum fields in the west of Hezi. We still like hybrid sorghum because its seeds are sweet. I miss these "sweet sticks" and always like to break a few of them when adults are not paying attention. If Grandpa Eight was caught, he would inevitably have to be punished. Looking at the sorghum ears thrown aside, he kept tutting: "Oh, what a waste of food!" But Grandpa Eight was always considerate of the greedy and naughty children. In order to prevent us from "breaking innocent things" again, we started to teach us how to choose sweet sticks: "Choose thinner ones. The color of the straw should be darker and greener. When folding, press hard from the root joint to make a crisp sound." "Yes, keep it sweet." He also personally folded a few sorghum trees that didn't have any ears to satisfy our craving.
In fact, in the sorghum field, it is not only the sweet sticks that attract our attention, but also the black rice (called Gumi by the folks). The black rice is a spore-like substance produced by the mutation of the sorghum variety. It has a plump and attractive appearance, white skin and black flesh, slightly sweet dough, and a special freshness. My sister and I often eat it and our mouths are gray and black, as if we have a black beard. Umi is also a medicinal material that can regulate menstruation and stop bleeding. The production team generally does not allow children to beat black rice, because the temptation of black rice is hidden in the ears of freshly packed ears, and children are not sure about it, often ruining the crops.
Grandpa Eight is a bit chatty, and sometimes I can’t figure out whether he is talking to us or to himself. He said that those who eat red sorghum have a hard life, and the common people eat red sorghum. He also said that the sorghum field is a good place to fight Japanese invaders, and then he sang "Jiu 18 Ditty": "The leaves of sorghum are green and green, and the leaves of sorghum are green. Eighth, the Japanese soldiers are here."
There are always endless wild things to eat with Grandpa Eight: roasted grasshoppers, roasted sweet potatoes, burnt green beans, yellow and fragrant small wild melons hidden in the grass, and sorghum. There was a bunch of glutinous rice hidden in the bag, which made my belly feel round. My sister sang in the sorghum field: "Sorghum leaves, clatter, it's you or him", or she sang: "Sorghum leaves, blow haha ??(suona), my mother won't tell me about her husband's family".
This sorghum field is so big that we can’t walk out for half a day. In the early morning, the sun rises from the sorghum fields in the east; in the evening, the sun sets from the sorghum fields in the west. The sorghum in the glow is red all over the earth and toward the sky. The dewdrops slid down quietly on the sorghum leaves, and then dripped onto the sorghum leaves below. They gathered their strength and slid down again. They wanted to throw themselves into the embrace of the earth. The gourds are blooming, the grasshoppers are singing, and the spiders are busy in the sorghum field. Before the sorghum begins to show off its ears, a large group of sparrows fly here and there noisily. They are looking forward to the sorghum's rapid maturity more than anyone else.
Six
As the main food crop in the north, rough sorghum once warmed my growling stomach. When I was in middle school, land was assigned to each household, and my sister and I were old enough to pick up a hoe. Delicious wheat and profitable cotton have occupied the living space of sorghum, and sorghum has gradually shrunk from people's eyes. But our family still planted five acres of sorghum in four fields. In about twenty days, it will be time to hoe all over the sorghum. My sister was worried that she didn’t know how to dig out sorghum seedlings, so I said, don’t worry, I’ll ask a few classmates to help me on Sunday and we’ll finish the work in one day. When I returned from home for the first week, I strapped four picks to the back of my bicycle. The next weekend, I got up early and called Li Min, Xiu Shun, Zeng Hua, and Qi Wen. We set off from Lijin No. 2 Middle School and headed north to Luo Town and then east. We rode 50 to 60 miles to Sichang and Sichuan. When my sister and I met, the sun had just risen a pole high.
Among the hoeing activities, the most technical one is "gouging out sorghum seedlings". There are three processes. First, hoe the grass on the back of the ridge. Second, we need to set the piers for sorghum. To set a pier for a sorghum plant, you must dig out a nest with three hoes, and let the sorghum seedlings squat in the middle of the nest, so that the sorghum can survive even if there is only a little rain in the dry spring. Sorghum is drought-resistant and has deep roots. Even if you accidentally cut off a few roots when digging out the seedlings, as long as one root is connected to the soil, it will not die. The third step is to thin out the seedlings. Sorghum cannot be planted closely, otherwise it will easily lodging. As the saying goes: "The grain should be thin, the wheat should be thick, and cows live in the sorghum field." The key to thinning out seedlings is to "leave three sorghum seedlings in one step." That is, only three sorghum seedlings should be left in one step. Others need to be hoed. These three processes make the treatment of sorghum unique among crops.
During lunch, my sister brought roasted sugar and pickles from home. This was the best meal we could get at home at that time. A plastic water bottle was passed around, and everyone filled their stomachs with cold boiled water and sat down by the sorghum field to rest. Xiu Shun took out his harmonica and sang "Morning on Campus", which spread over the sorghum seedlings, making the young sorghum leaves tremble with emotion...
My sister hoeed the sorghum for the second time. of. Sorghum is poetic, but hoeing sorghum is not very poetic. It is tiring, sultry, and the sorghum flour sticks to the body after sweating, making it unbearably itchy. My sister has endured this kind of hard work much more than I have.
Among the crops sown together with sorghum in spring, there is no higher crop than sorghum. The time has come for the sorghum to grow. Xiu Sui was the birth of a new life, but she was born with her head upward. The first thing to receive the sunshine was her rosy top. The heading process of sorghum is very slow. If you want to watch the heading of a sorghum plant on a bright day, you will definitely be disappointed. It's best to be like me, when the sorghum is being packed, I can build a shack next to her to watch the slope, and gaze at the beauty of her earing up close.
In fact, it is a happy thing to camp next to the one you love, not to mention that there are weaver girls everywhere singing for me day and night.
There are weaver girls in and outside the sorghum fields. They were still singing enthusiastically until I saw a blush flying onto the sorghum's face.
If you want to show dancing to the mouth of the Yellow River, corn is not good. You have to look at sorghum. Sorghum is a born dancer. Comparing the two, sorghum is soft and corn is tall and straight; sorghum leaves are narrow and long, while corn leaves are wide and short. Sorghum likes the wind to caress its bright leaves. If the wind blows, the corn will only shake its leaves, while the sorghum will rise and fall with excitement and make rustling whispers.
The sorghum that has just finished its harvest shows its charm and love. A bunch of tassels is like a poem picked up in the air by sorghum stalks.
My sister came to hoe sorghum for the third time. Her heart also rises and falls with the sorghum. The sorghum flowers have fallen behind my sister one after another, and the sister who is hoeing sorghum has also grown taller. The sorghum is red, and my sister’s face in the sorghum field is also red. As soon as my sister got into the sorghum field, I couldn't tell which one was sorghum and which one was my sister.
Seven
After hoeing three times, it’s time to hang up the hoe.
The sorghum has thick roots and big ears, and it has grown into a tree, and it doesn’t even have bow legs.
During this period of time, sorghum does not like anyone to disturb it except the birds that cannot be driven away. She is going to dry rice.
The sorghum is coloring day by day under the sun. It deliberately absorbs the sun's energy, and this energy will eventually be absorbed into a poor boy in Tanmaqiao Village.
After the beginning of autumn, the vines under the feet of the sorghum will crawl all over the ground. My sister and I cut off pieces of vines, dried them to 60 to 70%, loaded them into a cart, and took them home for silage. Up, it will be a favorite of winter livestock. When I stepped on the car and climbed onto the roof, I saw red dragonflies flying above the ears of sorghum in the sunset. As far as the horizon could see, everything was deeply immersed in the boundless red color of sorghum. I thought about how relaxing it would be to find a huge blanket and place it on top of the sorghum, letting the sorghum support me and my young ideals, and rolling around on it for a few times.
My sister said that when the sorghum is ripe, you have to do it by yourself. I signed up for a class and am going to learn tailoring. I knew that I had no choice but to go by myself, because my mother had really found an in-law for my sister. My sister said, Brother, I don’t want to. Before I could say anything, a gust of wind came and the sorghum leaves rustled.
Of all crops, sorghum is closest to the sun. I like the feeling of hiding in the fields.
It's completely different from the feeling of hiding in a crowd. There are too many dangerous joys hidden in the sorghum field, just like Mo Yan's piece of red sorghum. The dense and deep sorghum field, with its slanting shadows and subtle fragrance, is the most suitable for interpreting simple love. However, Lao Mouzi’s movie "Red Sorghum" was a bit too exaggerated. It was just about having an affair and having a heart-warming heartbeat. It's such a big piece of sorghum. For a beautiful story to happen, you only need a piece of sorghum field, and there is no need to waste so much sorghum.
The harvest season is here, and the sun’s longing awns pass through the clouds, tightly holding each sorghum ear, and the beauty of the sorghum standing is about to end.
It's late autumn, and I'm going to see what the sorghums that listened to Xiu Shun's harmonica solo have grown into. In the morning, I drove the donkey cart to Sichang Depression early. In the wilderness, there was only a donkey cart moving forward. Rabbits in autumn are fat and happy in the harvested bean fields. The cry of a skylark flew across the sky from time to time. In the distance, people looking at the slope built a pergola on some willow trees. Next to the pergola, there were two old storks nesting. On a bright moonlit night, it would be so pleasant to lie in the arbor on this tree, keep company with the old bird, smell the scent of ripe crops all over the field, and have a good sleep!
Four games are coming. Sorghum stands proudly on the field. Its aristocracy comes from its confidence in its height - as a crop, it takes a year and a half to grow, so how can it not be able to withstand people? The sorghum in the depression was seeds transported from Qianqiao Village, which is forty or fifty miles away. Perhaps, I am the flying bird, and this place where I stand is the inn left by my relatives for me to stay. Seeing me coming, the sorghum was twisting and turning in the late autumn wind, and the curvature of its body was mesmerizing. I know that it has been waiting for me for a long time in the depression of the old course of the Yellow River.
I tied the donkey to the frame pole of the ground row and let it chew grass by itself. The donkey ate the vine grass without raising its head. I started to use my right hand to quickly cut off the sorghum with a knife called a sorghum. The sorghum ears were turned upside down, one ear biting each ear. I arranged them in a layer from my left hand to my elbow, and placed them on a shaved stalk. , after placing it five or six layers in this way, tie a bundle with straw around the waist, and a sorghum head will be bundled. By the time I finished cutting the sorghum ears in the field, it was getting late. I carried the sorghum head to the ground cart and rewarded the donkey with a few sorghum ears. Then I hitched up the cart and loaded it until the mountains were covered with willows. I cut a few handfuls of beans and threw them on the roof of the cart. Then I drove the donkey cart to the In the village under the setting sun, the tip of the whip swings in the air. The night was getting darker, so I was wearing a little bit of clothing, so I simply lay down on the sorghum pile, the hot sorghum ears warming my body. I rarely yell at the donkey. The old donkey knows the way. It has traveled this road countless times. The stars in the sky illuminated a cart of sorghum as it approached my yard...
The sorghum stalks kept standing, and my legs became numb standing in the field. Because the most important sorghum particles have been stocked. When all the crops were harvested and only a few flat-bellied cotton peaches hung on the stalks, people remembered that it was time to clear the sorghum straw. There are two ways to grow sorghum in the Qing Dynasty. One is to cut the sorghum stalks with a sickle and leave the stubble heads in the ground for the winter; the other is to uproot the sorghum stalks with a pickaxe. The sorghum stalks in the four fields of my house were standing until late autumn, and I spent a Sunday in Laos to finish them. I picked up a piece of sorghum stalks, swung the pickaxe into the sky, and "bang bang bang". Within a day, the sorghum straw was laid flat on the ground to bask in the sun. Since then, we can no longer find acres of sorghum in our village.
The fiery red sorghum field is gone, and the rustling of sorghum leaves can no longer be heard. Even if there were, a few trees would be planted on the edge of the field, and they would not be able to create a climate at all. Today's children, few have seen the appearance of sorghum, and the swaying style on the earth has disappeared.
Who can tell me where my sorghum went?
Eight
I miss my sorghum and I want to go home. I went home with the name of Sorghum in mind. But there are no acres of sorghum to be found on the earth. My old house has collapsed, my parents have returned to the land, and my sister has gotten married. The only ones holding on were the two scrawny jujube trees in the yard.
I miss the sorghum fields of my hometown. In the sorghum fields, there is a gentle breeze and sunshine. I miss the tall beauty on the earth - quiet and warm, simple and wild, closest to the sky and as far away as the earth.
Sorghum is the red dress of my hometown. When the autumn wind comes, it becomes gorgeous and the skirts fly.
Sorghum is a poet in Tianchou, always igniting the eternal nostalgia in the autumn wind.