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墨書 Inktalez
Three little mouths, eagerly waiting to be fed, grew bigger day by day. The rations allocated to the production team and the sweet potatoes from our small plot were far from enough to fill our stomachs. Mother watched this with concern, but in the era of collectivization, the land was highly concentrated, and what could be produced was extremely limited. Moreover, there was always the fear of cutting off the tail of capitalism, which made everyone anxious. In the late 1970s, policies began to relax, and engaging in family farming was no longer classified as "capitalist." With a strong-willed and hardworking mother, our family quickly became a paradise for various poultry and livestock. My siblings and I naturally became the caretakers.
Raising pigs was our most important task at that time, a long-term job that lasted almost all year round. Generally, after the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, Mother would go to the market and buy a piglet weighing over ten pounds. Except for the first ten days when we needed to help the piglet acclimate to its new environment and diet, the feeding responsibilities were mainly shouldered by us three children.
Every day after school, we would carry a basket and roam the hills in search of pigweed. While we called it gathering pigweed, a more accurate term would be searching for it because all the children in the yard had this task. The better and tenderer pigweed had long been picked by those sharp-eyed kids or those who didn’t have to go to school. By the time it was our turn, we had to venture further into remote areas to find any pigweed; otherwise, with just our efforts as three siblings, we wouldn’t be able to fill the pigs’ bellies when they were ready to eat. Fortunately, pigs were not very picky eaters. When we couldn’t find good pigweed, we could still gather some random weeds or leaves, and they would suffice for a meal.
The pig grass was pulled up and had to be washed clean in the pond, then chopped into pieces in a basin, mixed with a few grains of leftover rice and clear water that could be seen through. It was then served to the pigs, and one had to watch them finish eating before taking the basin out of the pigsty. Only then could the day's feeding work be considered complete.
Day after day, over three hundred days passed, and the pigs grew to a similar size. At that time, the policy did not allow common people to slaughter their own pigs for meat. They had to find two strong men to carry the pig on a roasting rack made of bamboo and take it to the Commune Food Station, where they could exchange it for some work points, a bit of money, and two or three pounds of pork. Throughout the year, an ordinary farming family raising a pig weighing over a hundred pounds would only be able to eat those two or three pounds of meat.
Back then, the pigs were fed on grass; they grew large in frame but gained little weight. By the end of the year, they would only weigh just over a hundred pounds. The Food Station's standard for accepting pigs was that anything over one hundred thirty pounds was considered first-class—an opportunity that was rare. Unlike later on, when a few dozen pounds of feed could fatten a pig to three or four hundred pounds in just two or three months, though the taste of the pork had changed and was far from as delicious as that raised on grass.
Raising ducks is quite a time-consuming task. When the ducklings were just brought home, in addition to feeding them leftover rice soaked in water, we also had to provide some live food like earthworms and maggots. The maggots could be found in the toilet, which was usually a job for adults, while digging for earthworms was mainly left to the children. There was a certain joy in this work; watching the long earthworms emerge from the soil and slowly wriggle away, while the little ducklings waddled quickly with their flat beaks stretched out. If it weren't for the fact that there were too many people digging for worms and we had to be careful not to hurt the eager little ducklings with our hoes, I would have particularly enjoyed this labor.
After some time, the ducks grew a bit bigger. Every morning, we would let them roam freely in the rice fields and then round them up again in the evening to bring them home. This required carefulness and patience—qualities that children often lacked. While adults could simply call out "Come here, come here" to gather the flock of ducks, we had to exert tremendous effort, wielding long bamboo poles and walking barefoot into a densely planted rice paddy. Ignoring the sharp blades of grass that scratched us and the entanglement of plants, we would drive them back home again and again. By the time we returned home, we would find our clothes splattered with mud and our legs covered in scratches.
Raising geese is a task that requires a higher level of skill. At that time, very few families in the village raised geese, but my mother was no ordinary farmer, so we had an additional responsibility compared to other children. Geese are quite picky eaters, especially during the first month or two after being purchased; they must be fed tender grass mixed with glutinous rice grains—more extravagant than what humans might eat—and they also have specific preferences regarding the types of green grass.
After several rounds of feeding, my younger sister and I discovered the trick: the geese had two favorite foods. One was pure grass, with stems sprawling on the ground and leaves no larger than a grain of rice. The adults vividly referred to it as "broken rice grass," which typically grew at the base of dryland crops like sorghum and rapeseed. The other was lettuce leaves, which couldn't be fed in large chunks but had to be cut into fine shreds, even thinner than Grandpa's tobacco shreds. I once used Grandpa's small knife and wooden board to slice lettuce leaves for the geese. Although I got scolded by Mom, Grandpa just patted my little head and smiled lightly.
What made us feel quite defeated was that despite finding out what the geese loved to eat, we had raised several batches of them at home. They grew quickly, but once they reached two or three pounds, many would inexplicably die, making it hard for us to enjoy fresh goose meat.
Raising chickens required the least effort from us because we could let them roam near the house, allowing them to find various foods in the fields without needing special feeding. However, hatching chicks was a bit troublesome: Mom would gather about twenty eggs and place them in a basket lined with straw and some old cotton fluff, letting the hen incubate them with her body heat. After about ten days, we had to take out each egg and hold it up to a kerosene lamp to check for developing embryos. Those without embryos were considered infertile and were boiled for us to eat, while the others continued to be incubated by the hen. Almost a month later, tiny chicks would peck their way out of their shells in front of us. Some chicks might lack the strength to break free on their own, so Mom would help by carefully creating a small hole in the shell near the chick's head, preventing it from suffocating inside. Chicks that needed assistance often took longer to grow than those that hatched independently.
There is another troublesome and interesting job. Every hen will have a "nest" time, but there are several hens in the house, and only a few of them actually hatch eggs. The rest must find a way to "stay awake and hold." The mother will use a feather to pierce its nose, and then tie some heavy objects to its feet, making it uncomfortable and forget its nest instinct, while preventing it from flying back to the nest. Our job is to follow it and not give it the chance to have a "local nest." Once it stops to doze off, we splash it with a basin of cold water, making it run around in a clear and awake state.
Although we are always raising these pigs, ducks, geese, and chickens, we rarely get to enjoy them. Adults rely on them to make money, and only slaughter one or two during the New Year, festivals, birthdays, when asking for help to repair the house, or when inviting craftsmen to make furniture, so that the children can have a good meal.
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