When I was a teenager, my understanding of wheat was a sacred feeling. We can feel the toil of sowing in late autumn, the expectation of jointing wheat seedlings in spring, the joy of rolling wheat waves in summer, but we can't feel the fragrance on the table, which is the most difficult for us to understand. Every time I see my mother neutralizing a dazzling little white powder with purple sorghum powder in a porcelain basin, it hurts. When this mixed flour comes out of the pot, the shadow of white flour can no longer be seen, and it is replaced by the faded purple food eaten in the mouth. The taste of sorghum flour completely suppresses the wheat flavor of white flour.
When we come to this world, we must first ensure our own survival. In order to alleviate the embarrassment of low-quality life, poor ordinary people will think of many ways to hide their eyes and ears. For example, there is a kind of food that impressed me deeply, and the people gave it a very romantic name, called "gold covered with silver". It is to use a thin layer of fine white flour, wrap a thick layer of fine corn flour and a thick layer of fine sorghum flour, then roll it up, chop it into paper shapes and steam it out. The appearance looks like white paper, but in fact, a bite is still the quality of corn flour and sorghum flour. This "means" can deceive our vision, but it can never deceive our taste. We should regard it as a kind of black humor, just like taking a look at pork and taking a bite. Let the stomach scold our eyes, it has nothing to do with our teeth.
Once I went to the market thirteen miles away with my neighbor's uncle, and he carried half a sack of wheat for sorghum. Replacing a high-quality thing with a low-quality thing naturally requires a balance, that is, how much weight is used to make up for the difference in quality, which is also an effective way to extend life at that time. However, I don't agree. A catty of wheat can only be exchanged for a catty of sorghum, which is a mockery of the quality of wheat. But uncle said that more than two ounces of food is two ounces. If you change a catty, you will get two ounces. Ten ounces, three more people a day.
In childhood and adolescence, we seemed to be very irrational about "eating", so at that time I always hoped that I could get a little headache and brain fever, because only in this way could I have a close contact with the sacred white flour. Grandma will dig out half a ladle of white flour from the noodle jar, put some salt, mix it with water, drop a few drops of oil in the wok, and make two pieces of "salty food" for me. At that time, I thought it was an unparalleled food in the world. It is conceivable that oil and white flour, two high-quality things, can not be condensed and sublimated in baking, and can not but leave an indelible memory on our taste buds!
The quality of wheat is there, so no matter what form white flour appears, it is undoubtedly wonderful. For example, in the winter at that time, the dishes on the farmers' table, except Chinese cabbage, were half-jars of pickled radish in the yard. Poor days need adjustment, just as beggars need to whistle. Grandma will grab a handful of white flour, dilute it with clear water into white soup, add some salt, then fry some cut dried peppers in a wok, and then stir the white flour noodle soup with chopsticks. Soon, a bowl of hot and fragrant batter pepper like big sauce came out of the pot. This is the only dish with white flour as the main ingredient that I have ever eaten.
two
I don't know which generation divided grain into "coarse grains" and "flour rice". Among many crops, the only one that ordinary people can recognize as "flour and rice" is wheat. Maybe corn, sorghum, millet and other varieties are not so convinced. I said that a standard can make them speechless: whose mature process can span the four seasons? Except wheat! Maybe other varieties can withstand high temperature, but they can't stand the test of ice and snow. Only wheat can do this.
A high-quality thing must have its own personality. As the saying goes, spring ploughs and autumn harvests. In fact, whatever is sown in spring and harvested in autumn belongs to the category of "coarse grains". On the other hand, wheat is sown in late autumn and harvested in hot summer.
The Mid-Autumn Festival of rural people is often spent in the busy autumn harvest. After the Mid-Autumn Festival, the crops in the field were almost harvested. At this time, the earth is like a clean stage, and wheat will appear in a unique spirit. When it is sown again on the harvested land, a touch of new green will appear in a few days. However, the fragile wheat seedlings have just been unearthed, and they will face the baptism of severe frost.
The quality foundation of wheat was laid in the defrosting experiment. If Mai is a poet, he should be as romantic as Li Bai. With the roar of the north wind, the snow and ice covered the earth, but the wheat seedlings smiled and pulled up the white quilt and fell asleep, dreaming beautiful spring dreams.
Heavy snow is the quilt of wheat seedlings. The thicker the quilt, the more soundly the wheat seedlings sleep. I remember when it began to snow when I was a child, the production team leader would knock the rusty plowshare hanging on the willow tree with an iron rake tooth. Everyone followed the "Dangdang" bell, scooped up the snow on the road, and pulled it into the wheat field with a row of cars until pieces of snow piled up on the white Yuan Ye.
With the experience of frost and snow invasion, wheat seedlings are no longer afraid of any severe test. When the first spring breeze blows, it wakes up in the cold land, shakes off all vicissitudes and prepares to turn green.
Up to now, one of my legs is still suffering from arthritis, and I have always suspected that it has something to do with pouring wheat back into green water. That early spring night was surprisingly cold. My father and I wandered around the wheat fields with shovels. The trouser legs were covered with mud and water, and the feet were soaked in cold water. The watered wheat fields soon froze. I think the wheat seedling at this time is a happy expression, but I am shivering in the ice water!
three
Wheat is really good food. It's really not easy to eat wheat. The harvest of wheat is at the hottest time in summer.
The wheat harvest season is very different from the autumn harvest season. The autumn harvest will take more than a month, and the wheat harvest will only give you a week. If the wheat is ripe and cannot be harvested in time, a dry and hot wind will blow it to the ground.
This season, it still rains the most. If there is a heavy rain and a strong wind, the wheat field will be covered by vilen like a threshing floor, which will bring great difficulties to the harvest.
The biggest fear should be encountering hail. At this time, the sun is like an iron block that burns to the extreme, and its pale light scorches the earth. This extreme weather is the most likely to attract hail. In that case, ordinary people can only sit on the ground and cry.
When there is a production team, our team leader implements the contract system. But this contract is only for harvesting wheat. According to the number of harvested wheat, the work score is recorded, which effectively speeds up the wheat harvesting progress.
Mom is a strong person. In order to earn more work points, she always packs a large wheat field by herself. I think my mother at that time was like an old horse. She can only carry 100 Jin, but she has to carry 200 Jin. At that time, my father was in the brigade, and I was only a teenager. In the vast sea of wheat, my mother is like a lonely boat, swimming upstream in the golden waves. I can only follow from a distance, cut a handful of wheat, straighten up and look at the diabolical sun overhead, cut another handful of wheat, and watch my mother struggle in the distant wheat waves.
After the implementation of the responsibility system, our family contracted ten acres of land. Life is better, you can eat white flour steamed bread, but every time you see golden wheat fields, your legs are as heavy as sandbags. My mother, on the other hand, walked tirelessly all her life like a clock.
If the wheat is to be cut the next day, my father will polish handfuls of sickles on the first day, and my mother will find a clean wrapping paper and wrap it with a pile of steamed bread, green onions and a few pickled eggs that I hate to eat at ordinary times. At about four o'clock in the morning, my mother will wake up the whole family, bring food, drinks and sickles and drive to the wheat field three miles away.
There is a reason for getting up so early to cut wheat. Because there are stars and the moon in the sky at this time, not the enthusiastic sun. Cutting wheat in the moonlight is not to seek a meaningless romance, but to reduce the heat and bitterness except a little fatigue. However, after all, it is summer, and you can't avoid the blazing light of the sun. When the dawn is over, the early morning sunshine will still make our working bodies experience "heat wave transpiration".
The tiredness of cutting wheat lies in the step of bending forward. In addition, the right hand holding the sickle handle will ache and cramp during repeated pulling, while the left hand that prevents the wheat from getting into the arms is often spotted like a rash by the needle of the wheat awn.
People who have never experienced wheat cutting may not know that it is still a dirty job. In order to prevent the sun exposure and the acupuncture of wheat awn, we often put on pants and robes regardless of the heat and wrap ourselves up, but this can't stop the invasion of soil and dust in the wheat field. Although you can't see the pervasive dust, it still gets into your clothes like magic and mixes with sweat. When you get home and roll up your trouser legs or sleeves, you will find that your body is covered with black patterns like zebras.
From four o'clock to nine o'clock in the morning, five hours of high-intensity labor, each of us has to cut an acre of wheat. Seeing the cut wheat, our hearts are as empty as fields. I squatted on the ground, picked up a dry steamed bread, chewed a few mouthfuls, and then poured a few mouthfuls of cold water into the iron pot, smiling bitterly, thinking to myself, "Who knows that every Chinese meal is hard?" We have the deepest experience.
The reason why wheat is delicious is not only its own excellent genes and excellent quality after four seasons of cold and heat, but also the sweat of our hard work. Cutting the wheat is only the beginning of harvest, and there is still a long way to go to put the wheat into the grain depot. At this time, we will put the sickle in the waistband of our lower back, drag our tired bodies to tie up the cut wheat, load it into a cart like a wheat pile, and pull it into the yard to be beaten, dried, crushed and raised. In fact, it is such a harvest process, which is often not so smooth.
As far as I can remember, there was rain and trouble almost every year during the wheat harvest season. If it rains, as long as it stops, people will file out of their homes, run into the yard and put their hands into the wheat pile. If the wheat piles are hot, they must be dismantled quickly, otherwise the harvested wheat will sprout soon, and then a year's hard work will be wasted.
four
Perhaps away from the hard work of farming, the sanctity of wheat has gradually faded in our eyes. It seems that the boundary between the so-called "coarse grains" and "flour rice" has gradually blurred. Nowadays, our dining table has become another color, and foods such as corn, sorghum, soybeans, millet and even sweet potatoes have become new fashion favorites. Think about this dramatic change, and then recall the past days, can not help but move!
However, wheat is wheat, no matter how the world changes, no matter whether we pay attention to its existence as in the past, it is never far away from our daily life!