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墨書 Inktalez
Not long after the land was redistributed, the time for harvesting the late rice arrived. Unlike the previous work in the Production Team, on harvest day, every household in the yard tried to send as many people as possible to help. Many children who were barely teenagers, who used to only tend to cattle and pick rice ears in the Production Team, were now pulled into the fields by adults.
My father was eating "state grain" and couldn't return from teaching in another city for a while. My younger siblings were still too small and not strong enough. So, my mother and I, who during the Production Team era could only be considered "semi-skilled labor," immediately stepped up to take on two or even more roles as full laborers.
Although it was said to be "full labor," I had never worked in the fields before, and I was completely inexperienced when it came to harvesting rice. I could only follow behind my mother, carrying a basket that was almost as tall as I was, wobbling my way across one paddy field after another, heading toward the plots of waterlogged land assigned to our family.
Harvesting rice didn't seem too complicated. Since it was late rice, the water in the fields had been drained early on. Walking barefoot on the ground felt slightly soft but not enough to sink in, and I hardly left any footprints. This eased my fear of hard work and gave me a more playful attitude and feeling.
Watching my mother swiftly wield the sickle, the sound of cutting echoed around us as she quickly harvested a large patch of rice, arranging the rice ears neatly and beautifully. I also began to move my feet and wrists. However, the rice was a bit stubborn; despite using all my strength, each bundle I cut required a tug-of-war effort. After cutting three or four bundles, I had to gather them into a sheaf.
Mom cut the rice ears, putting every two together to be threshed later. I quietly compared and gestured that at least three would be enough with my small hands, and they were always placed unevenly. On the ground, there were scattered intact rice ears. Mom knew it was my first time doing this kind of work, so she didn't expect too much from me. After briefly telling me how to use the sickle and my strength, she kept swinging the sickle forward, leaving me behind to deal with the disobedient rice plants. Thinking about Mom's usual strictness and the temptation of "having a full meal" after the rice harvest, although I felt a bit overwhelmed, I still persisted in slowly cutting the rice in front of me, even quietly eliminating the thought of straightening my back to rest.
Rice is truly a spiritual thing. When I settled my mind and persisted, the sickle in my hand seemed to glide effortlessly. One by one, the scattered rice ears on the ground disappeared, and the piled sheaves of rice gradually took shape. A sense of joy from success unexpectedly surged in my heart as time flowed by unnoticed.
When I casually lifted my head, I was pleasantly surprised to find that not far ahead was a paddy field. This three-acre waterlogged land allowed my mother and me, two semi-skilled laborers, to cut down all the rice in just half a morning.
Finishing with the rice ears was merely the beginning of harvesting the late rice; the more challenging tasks lay ahead. My mother immediately began to worry about how to move the threshing machine into the field. She wasn't a strong man and couldn't carry the hundred-plus-pound machine by herself. I was still too small to help her lift such a heavy object, so in the end, we called upon my younger uncle, who was around seventeen or eighteen, to assist us in moving the old threshing machine allocated to us by the production team into the field we were about to harvest.
In the past, at the production team, tasks like stepping on the threshing machine and feeding rice ears into it were typically assigned to strong, able-bodied men. Women like my mother mostly took on roles such as delivering bundles of rice and tying straw. But now, with only the two of us, my mother had to stand in front of the threshing machine, struggling to set up the heavy threshing drum and four side panels. After much effort, she managed to get everything in place and began to operate the machine with a rhythmic motion.
I ran around the field, handing her handfuls of rice ears. She would take them and feed them into the machine, tightly gripping the back half while spreading the front half across the moving drum. Amidst the rumbling noise, she worked diligently to knock as many grains of rice as possible from the ears into the storage bin of the machine.
After a while of this operation, my mother would occasionally pause her work to walk over to the grain bin. There, she would fish out any bits of straw mixed in with the rice and carefully collect the cleaner grains, placing them into a basket beside the paddy field.
Slowly, as she filled a load of rice, she signaled for me to stop and said, "Child, let's go back and have lunch."
Yes, my strength hasn't fully returned yet, and I can hardly lift the basket filled with rice. Looking at the sun in the sky, it has already passed two or three in the afternoon. After all the commotion earlier, the little bit of food I had for breakfast has long been digested. If it weren't for my childhood fear of my mother, I would have shouted to go home for a meal long ago.
Perhaps it was because it was my first time having control over the harvested rice that my mother seemed particularly cherished. She scooped all the leftover bits from the rice bucket into a large basket, saying there were still plenty of grains inside. She wanted me to take them back and store them in the drying area; it could feed our chickens and ducks for quite a while.
Thus, during nearly a week of "busy farming vacation," my mother and I worked together as two "semi-skilled laborers" in the fields every day. Occasionally, my grandfather and uncle would come by to help out as we approached quitting time. If it was getting dark and there was still rice left to be harvested, Second Uncle and his wife would each come to help carry a load back home.
Even so, by the time my vacation ended, our family's over five acres of rice fields still hadn't been completely harvested. Later, my mother called in a few more workers to get all the work done properly. After the autumn harvest, the amount of grain harvested was unexpectedly large, more than two or three times what the production team received each year. Both of our family's granaries were filled to the brim, and there was even a pile on the ground in the side room. As a result, for the first time in my life, I truly had my fill of food. My mother only made a simple dish of spicy scrambled eggs, and I managed to eat six large bowls in one go. It might not have been a pound and a half, but there was always more than enough rice, considering that at the time, I was just over eleven years old and barely over four feet tall.
Note: The old threshing machine provided by the production team was not very effective. It was extremely cumbersome, and both the gears and the frame were aging, often causing minor problems during use, seriously affecting the speed of harvesting. On two or three occasions, my mother had to borrow a threshing machine from another family as a temporary solution.
In the second year, we retired the threshing machine and spent our own money to build a new one. Nearly fifteen years later, shortly after I graduated from college and started working, my mother jumped on the trend and purchased a Power Threshing Machine. This new machine was equipped with a diesel engine that drove the drum, eliminating the need for foot operation; all we had to do was feed in the rice ears. By 2012, the Power Threshing Machine was retired as well, replaced by a new type of mechanical thresher that not only required no foot operation but also automatically removed debris and empty grains after threshing, allowing us to directly bag the clean grains for home. It was also smaller than previous models, making it easy for one person to move and operate. In our small mountain village, which was not suitable for large-scale mechanized planting and harvesting, it proved to be incredibly useful.
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