My village can't be like this

Chapter 17 Autumn Harvest (Revised)

The land in Changqing Village is distributed according to the head, and Zhang An's family has one mu per person.

This is because there were few people in the village at that time, and if it was placed in a village with many other people, it would be about half an mu for one person.

The rice in the paddy field has not yet been harvested, but the corn is ripe. This has a lot to do with the sunshine this year.

Zhang An’s family has a total of five acres of mountain land, but in fact, they can grow less than four acres. The rest are small pieces on the rocks. The land is not fertile, and the crops are not very productive. tired.

But Zhang An's parents didn't want to leave it there, so they were all planted.

Zhang An went to school last year, and there were no horses at home, so Zhang Jianguo and his wife broke them down one by one and picked them up from the mountains.

But this year is different, not only Zhang An has joined, but the family also has horses, and the capacity is immediately full.

Don't underestimate the capacity of a horse in the mountainous area. If it is carried home by hand, one person can carry up to eighty or ninety catties at a time, and it will take a lot of time on the road and have to rest frequently.

But the horses are different. Although the mountain roads on the mountain cannot go to the carriage, they can be carried back by horses.

A horse can carry five bags at a time, at least two to three hundred catties.

As for the horse of Zhang An's family, not to mention, it can be loaded casually, and five hundred catties will not be a problem.

Breaking corn has never been a big problem, it's just that the transportation is too time-consuming.

After Zhang An got up, Wang Fang got up early to cook the noodles and fried a duck egg by herself.

I packed dozens of bags and put them in baskets, and started to work after breakfast.

There are usually two corn cobs on a corn stalk, and it is easy to break off.

Zhang Jianguo and Zhang An broke off the corn in the corn bushes, and Wang Fang followed behind to chop off the broken corn stalks.

If it is a village in other places, the corn stalks on the mountain will be collected and fed to livestock and composted.

But Changqing Village does not need it. Compared with other places, there are so many paddy fields, so there will be a lot of straw.

Compared with corngrass, livestock prefer straw, and the effect of straw retting is much better.

In this way, the corn that originally took Zhang Jianguo and his wife seven or eight days was packed at home in three days.

Since no one has started to break the corn these days, only Zhang An's family has already carried it home.

Therefore, Zhang An's family took over the sun-drying field, and by the time other people started harvesting, Zhang An's family had already sun-dried.

The corn needs to be peeled first when it is carried back. Rural people can’t stay idle. They come back from the mountains during the day and peel the corn at home at night.

The scorching sun in early autumn is so hot, otherwise why would it be called the autumn tiger.

On the wide dam, it was exposed to the sun for two days, and all the corn was directly dried and dehydrated.

Taking advantage of no one using the grain drying field, the family of three beat the corn directly on the grain drying field.

Because there is no threshing machine, the only way to use manual threshing is flail.

Two wooden sticks, one long and one short, are connected with a rope. When you need to use it, hold the long end with your hand and let the short part exert force by waving.

Corn is a good thing. In the era when rice was not enough, corn became the staple food.

Where rice is plentiful, corn can not only feed livestock, but can also be sold for money.

The threshed corn cobs can also be used for fire. Everyone in the countryside has corn cobs in their homes. These things can make a fire much faster than dry wood.

When the corn matter is settled, the rice in the field has matured and it is time to harvest and go home.

Unlike corn, corn can be harvested slowly in the field, not in a hurry, and they are quite durable.

But rice is different. If it’s time to harvest, if you don’t harvest it, it will soon fall to the ground by itself.

And if the weather is bad and there is heavy rain in the sky, then there may be no harvest.

When Zhang An's family harvested rice, the whole family of his second and third uncles came to help.

As the hostess, Wang Fang must cook at home, and then help out in the fields after cooking. There are many meals for seven or eight people.

Early in the morning, the second uncle and his father set off with buckets on their shoulders, and the rest of them took sickles, water to drink, and pockets of millet followed closely behind.

The bucket is a large square wooden basin made of wooden boards, which is specially used for threshing rice, and basically every household has it.

After cutting the rice connecting rods in the field, they picked them up and beat them against the inner wall of the bucket. In this way, the millet was smashed down.

There are many people working fast, and Zhang An's paddy fields of about three acres are all next to each other, so they have to change places without finishing the field.

By noon, one-third of the collection had already been collected, and the sun was too hot, so it was time to eat.

Seven or eight people came down, and the yield of the three-acre field was harvested.

The next step is to dry the millet and help the second uncle and third uncle's family harvest.

After all, everyone has come to help, so you have to return it, so that no one will help you next time.

When helping the two families, Zhang An's family also dispatched the whole family. This time, because it was already National Day, the two sons of the second uncle's family came back to help, so there were more people.

In two days, everyone's family has finished harvesting, only the corn in the field, and that one can be slowly broken back at home, anyway, it is not in a hurry.

Now Zhang An was assigned a new task. The family's horse was borrowed from his uncle's house, and his parents also went out to help the villagers.

Zhang An himself was left to dry the millet.

Drying millet is not as easy as drying corn, because the swarms of sparrows in the sky are the most annoying.

Every time you don't pay attention, they all fly down to eat millet, which is very annoying.

Even if a dummy is put, they are not very afraid.

But Zhang An's family is okay, with the existence of the three tigers, Zhang An can be lazy.

Every time the sparrows came down, the three tigers would rush to chase them away. After a long time and many times, they seemed to think that Zhang An's house was not easy to deal with, so they went to other people's house.

So Zhang An is also happy to be idle, as long as he gets up every once in a while and uses a rake to turn over the rice on the ground, so that they can be exposed to the sun, so that the sun will be more thorough.

If you don't turn it over, the bottom layer will take a long time to dry.

Of course, drying rice is not only like this, you have to pay attention to the weather, and the reason why you have to look at it separately is also the weather problem.

Pay attention to the weather changes at all times, as long as God changes face, you have to pack up as soon as possible, because you are afraid of rain.

If the millet is drenched by rain, it will become moldy, and the rice produced by that time will be unpalatable.

Even people who collect grain can smell it as soon as they smell it. People don't want it, and they don't even eat it when feeding animals.

Zhang An was lucky, every time he packed himself up, the sky began to change his face.

The sun-dried millet has to go through a process of blowing off the shriveled millet or empty shell with a wind bucket.

This can also be done at home. The millet is poured in from the top, and the bottom is caught with a pocket. The other hole is just an empty shell. It is usually used to feed cows and horses. Pigs don’t mind it. It doesn’t eat it. .

After everything is done, the granary will be closed. The granary of Zhang An's family is specially made with one room, which can hold quite a lot of grain.

In the countryside, the storage of grain and rodent infestation have always been the biggest problems. Whether it is raising cats, putting traps, or administering medicine, the ultimate goal is to prevent rats from scrambling for food.

The granary in Zhang An’s house has only been renovated in the past two years, and it’s still in good condition. It’s sealed everywhere with cement. No matter how powerful the rats are, they can’t bite the cement.

　Can everyone cast their votes?

　　
　
(End of this chapter)