A
In the crops of the Yellow River Mouth, the most delicious one is of course wheat, and the most beautiful one should be sorghum. Sorghum was born with a model's body, tall, slender, beautiful waist, pink face, like a star with a lot of flavor, swaying in the earth, charming shadow, colorful pressure of the group of the harvest.
The west end of the village of Tanmaqiao village, the ditch of the grass bridge ditch east of the slope full of crops are our village. After so many years, my infatuated eyes always like to go through the mottled sorghum leaves, looking at that piece of forever sorghum red.
Two
Since ancient times, sorghum is an important raw material for brewing wine, making vinegar and processing sorghum caramel. Whether it is Dukang, Maotai, Wuliangye, or Lanling, Xifeng, Xinghuacun, all the famous wine's preferred raw material is not sorghum. But in the era of food shortage, sorghum is first of all people's rations. The bad year, the other crops that poor yield is not enough to eat, high-yield sorghum on the field. Before graduating from high school, sorghum is a grain that I eat the most. At that time, sorghum was a life-saving thing for the people in the north.
Perhaps, the botany textbooks in the sorghum more people know - sorghum, also known as millet, Panicum, reed millet, wild rice, wood millet, Dili sorghum, and so on, there is a "fine grains, the long of all grains," the reputation of sweet taste and sex warmth, the Graminae, annual herbaceous plants, the height of the grain, the height of the grain, the height of the grain, the height of the grain. It is an annual herb with a height of 3-5 meters and a horizontal diameter of 2-5 centimeters, with some white powder on the leaf sheaths. Adults say, this white powder can stop bleeding, when I was a child eating sweet stick, was gabion cut hand, often jerked down some wipe on the hand, also really useful. China's history of cultivating sorghum has been at least five thousand years. The Compendium of Materia Medica", "millet planted in the north to prepare for food shortages, and cattle and horses, cover cultivation has been four thousand nine hundred years." Sorghum appeared early in the "Poetry": "Yellow bird yellow bird, no set in the mulberry, no pecking my sorghum." See, the birds pecked sorghum at that time is a headache.
There is an earlier record of sorghum in Zhang Hua's "Museum Journal" from the Jin Dynasty: "The ground is planted with marshmallow for three years, followed by seven years of more snakes." Whether sorghum and snakes have this mysterious connection, I do not know, but that year the Yellow River flooded, I really saw so many snakes in the sorghum field. Sorghum is resistant to drought and flooding, grows sprightly, and has a high yield, even if it is flooded, there will still be a small harvest. 1975, the Yellow River embankment opened up, but fortunately there was a second dam to keep the water to the northeast. The village men, women and children went up to the dam to prevent flooding. Women and children stood on the dam, looking out of the dam water and sky, short beans drowned in the water below the surface, has been cut off. The men waded through waist-deep water to harvest the sorghum. The river has flooded to the neck of the sorghum, revealing only the upper half of the head of the spike. The members of the community pushed a bucket, to go to the sorghum. Many of the sorghum spikes are coiled with long worms (snakes) that hide from the water, scaring the women and screaming, but in the Yellow River estuary of the vegetable snake is not poisonous.
After some days, the water receded, in the northernmost part of the northeast puddle, a few plants of sorghum on the hillock stood there forlornly. After a catastrophe, they are still in shock. Where the sorghums were bending over to drink, a school of fish swam around in the wild water. My sister asked worriedly what would happen to these fish when the water ran dry.
Three
In my hometown, sorghum is eaten in a variety of ways. The easiest way to eat sorghum rice is to stew it into dry rice, mellow and refreshing, keeping the unique fragrance of sorghum. The usual way of eating is to steam the sorghum flour into a nest or cake, sturdy and chewy, especially when full. In the village, who built a house, the folks will go to help free of charge, the main family tube meal into. Breakfast was rice crackers and shrimp paste. At noon and evening, fried turnip strips or stewed cabbage, one person, a sea bowl, two pieces of rice crackers, eat hot. I did all the work, including ramming, bricklaying, mud-making, and billeting. The adobe clattered on the brand-new roof, and the tamping song was so lively that it was like a big play in the village. There's another way to eat sorghum, cooking pita bread. Mother often with little white flour sorghum bread up, rolled into a pancake, put into the pot with a fine fire, the pancake on both sides of the white flour will slowly bulge, a drum two cover, a "package of skin cake" on the pot. A cake cut four corners, smeared with homemade pasta sauce, rolled a large onion, a big bite, crisp and sinewy. Of course, since I was a child, I drank most of my mother's sorghum porridge. I'm not sure if I've ever had a good time, but I'm sure I've had a good time, and I'm sure I've never had a good time. The first time I saw the movie, I was in the middle of it, and I was in the middle of it, and I was in the middle of it. In the past three years, there has been a large-scale promotion of hybrid sorghum, straw short, anti-pasture, can be densely planted, high yield. Members of the community took a movie on the big bully Hu Hansan parade when wearing the kind of paper hat, with a small stick tapping the sorghum spike, cross-pollination. "Sorghum beans, can't get enough." This refers to the high tip of the sorghum, short tip of the hybrid sorghum to eat to eat enough, because this hybrid red sorghum eat hard to digest, like a small lazy herdsman said, chewing to the mouth no strength, eat to the belly bloated stomach, pull up the shit to suffer. The better life of the family, can be mixed with a little soybean flour stick noodles, but also a little warmer, good digestion. But our family is poor, there is no way, can only use pure red sorghum steam nest. At a young age, I couldn't get my hands off it, I leaned on the ground with both hands, *** cocked high, I couldn't pull it out with all my strength, and I cried out in frustration. My mother used a hard straw to gently comfort me as she poked out a little bit. The first time I saw this was when I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and the second time I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley.
There is also a kind of sticky sorghum inside the sorghum, usually steamed rice cakes, sticky and corn, as well as the date can be very well wrapped. Folks have a saying to describe greedy and small amount of people: "A bite can not bite the date on the annoyance, but also threw the cake to the ground." Even in the days when a lot of sorghum was grown, sticky sorghum was only a supporting role. Now even more rare. Last year, after the fall back home, in the rugged side of the road, a few sticky sorghum silhouette occupies the October sky, silent beauty to the depths of autumn.
In the mouth of the Yellow River, there is no crop like sorghum so covered in treasure. Sorghum, the people really hardcore crop! Sorghum threshing after the sorghum spike, in my hometown called Panicum, sorghum glumes, before the bridge people called "shells,". The Panicum husk on the broomcorn is scraped off with a sickle and then called a broom seedling. Whisk broom seedlings can be spun into a long broom, used to sweep the floor, can also be spun into a short handle of the cooking broom, used to brush pots and pans and wash dishes, lightweight and durable, economical and environmentally friendly. Nowadays, Sangu sometimes brings me brooms or gaiten. "Gaiten" is made of a coupling, which is also called a pot lid. Probably because it covers rice, and food is the most important thing for people, so it is called "Gaitian". The small gaiten is usually used to put dumplings and hand-rolled noodles. Spinning broom, nail Gaitian these camps I will, these dense stitches, connected with a string of nostalgia.
Shells can be loaded with pillows, sleep on the soft and comfortable, and when you turn over in your sleep, you can hear the sound of sorghum rustling in your hometown.
Panic straw in the farmhouse use a little dazzling. Can be made into a book, covered in the roof, warm in winter and cool in summer; eight grandpa also like a magic trick, made of grain stacks, grates, baskets, wear into a bowl bed to place chopsticks, broken into scorn woven into mats; can also be tied into a thin staff (fence), but my favorite is still eight grandpa gave me a woven caddisfly cage, and beautiful and sturdy, a summer with not bad.
After the first snowfall, the earth was pale. The first time I saw this was when I was a kid, and it was the first time I'd ever seen a kid in my life," he said. The winter of the broomcorn pile is the children's paradise, where we practiced handstand, hide-and-seek, in the sorghum stacks drilling in and out, the joy of childhood left in the depths of those large stacks. At night, the stars can still see a young man quietly came to the village, drilled into the broomcorn pile, looking for the flavor of the sun.
Ah, hometown ***, mysterious broomcorn pile ah!
Five
"Yang Ye beat bam bam, all over the ground in the sorghum." Eight grandpa said, the festival of sorghum in the Qingming around the time of the proverb: "Qingming sorghum valley rain flowers, small full cotton does not go home." When the moisture is good, the sorghum in the ground to roll, four or five days can be seedlings. When the wind and rain are favorable, sorghum grows very quickly, "wheat fell head, sorghum diffuse over cattle." The first time I saw this, I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night.
When I was six or seven years old, the eight grandfathers who watched the slopes often took my sister and me to the sorghum fields in Hezi West to play. We still like hybrid sorghum, because it is sweet, I miss these "sweet stick", when adults do not pay attention, always love to fold a few. Let grandpa eight caught, inevitably have to be a lecture, looking at the sorghum ears thrown aside, his mouth issued a series of tsk sound: "Alas, waste of food ah!" But eight grandpa often sympathetic to the children's gluttonous naughty nature, but also to prevent us from "indiscriminate folding innocent", began to teach us to choose sweet stick: "to pick thin, broomcorn millet color to deep green, folded from the root of the bone knuckle when a force, a crunching sound, safekeeping sweet. " And personally folded a few show not spike sorghum for us to relieve.
In fact, in the sorghum field, attracting our attention is not only the sweet stick, there is umi (folks called Gumi), umi is a sorghum varieties mutated knot a spore, the appearance of the full attractive, white skin black flesh, slightly sweet hair surface, there is a special gas, my sister and I often eat a gray and black piece of the mouth, like a circle of black mustache painted on. Wu Mi is also a kind of medicinal herbs, can regulate menstruation and stop bleeding. The production team is generally not allowed to children to play Umi, because the temptation of Umi hidden in the head of the spike just packing, children can not recognize, often spoiled the crop.
Eight grandpa a bit rambling, sometimes I can not figure out, he mumbled to us or talking to himself. He said, eat red sorghum people's lives, the people is to eat red sorghum; and said, sorghum field is a good field to fight the ghosts, and then sang the "September 18th ditty": "sorghum leaves green and green, September 18th came the Japanese soldiers."
Follow the eight grandpa always have to eat also can not eat all the wildlife: grilled grasshoppers, burned groundnut, prairie green beans, hidden in the grass yellow, fragrant small wild melon, sorghum bag hidden in a doodle of umi, straight to eat my little stomach round. My sister sang in the sorghum field: "sorghum leaves, clattering, either you, or he", or sang: "sorghum leaves, blowing haha (oboe), my mother does not give me said in-laws".
This sorghum field is so big that we can't walk out in half a day. In the morning, the sun rises from the east of the sorghum field; in the evening, the sun sets from the west of the sorghum field, and the sorghum in the sunlight is red all over the earth, red to the sky. Dewdrops in the sorghum leaves quietly slipped down, snapped a drop to the following sorghum leaves, save energy and then slipped down, it is bent on wanting to jump into the embrace of the earth. The huckleberries are blooming, the grasshoppers are singing, and the spiders are busy in the sorghum field. The first time I saw this, I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night.
Six
As the main grain crop in the north, rough sorghum has warmed my rumbling stomach. When I was in middle school, the land was parceled out to households, and my sister and I were old enough to carry hoes and hoe the land. Good wheat and cotton crowded out sorghum's living space, and sorghum gradually shrank from people's eyes. But our family still planted five acres of sorghum in four fields. Twenty or so days later, to hoe all over the sorghum. My sister was worried about not gouging out the sorghum seedlings, I said, don't worry, take a Sunday, I called on a few students to help, a day on the hoeing finished. The first week I returned from home to school, I strapped four hoes to the back of my bike. To the next weekend, I got up early, called on Li Min, Xiu Shun, Zeng Hua, its text, from the Lijin two set off, has been to the north, to the town of Luo and then to the east, riding fifty to sixty miles to the four sites and sister rendezvous, the sun has just risen a pole high.
Hoeing work inside, the most technical is "gouge sorghum seedling". There are three processes. One to hoe clean grass on the back of the ridge. Secondly, to the sorghum pier. For a sorghum pier, must be three hoe dug out a nest, so that the sorghum seedling squatting in the middle of the nest, in order to prepare for the drought in the spring, even if only a little bit of rain can let the sorghum live. Sorghum drought-resistant, rooted deep, even if you gouge out seedlings accidentally hoeing off a few roots, as long as there is a root connected to the soil, it will not die. Three to inter-seedling. Sorghum can not be densely planted, or easy to fall. As the saying goes, "grain should be thin, wheat should be thick, sorghum ground lying cattle." Between the seedlings of the key is "a crow to continue the nest, a step to stay three," that is, within a step to leave only three sorghum seedlings, the other to hoe off. These three procedures make the treatment of sorghum in the crop is different.
At lunchtime, my sister brought from home to bring the sugar roast and pickles, which was the best meal we could get at home. A plastic water bottle was passed around, and everyone filled it with a bellyful of cool boiled water and sat down to rest by the sorghum field. Xiu Shun took out his harmonica, a song "campus morning", sticking to the sorghum seedlings roaming away, moved the sorghum tender leaves trembling ......
The second sorghum is the younger sister hoeing finished by herself. Sorghum is poetic, but hoeing sorghum is not much poetry, labor, sweltering, sweat sorghum powder sticking to the body, itchy and painful, this hard sister than I have endured much more.
Spring and sorghum a piece of sowing crops, has no more than sorghum. The time has come for sorghum to show its ears. Show spike is a new life of childbirth, only her head is upward delivery, the first to bear the sunshine is her rosy head. Sorghum showers are slow, and your attempt to watch a sorghum plant showers on a bright day will surely disappoint you. It is better to be like me, when the sorghum is packing, right beside her to build a shack for watching the slope, and to gaze at the beauty of her tasseling from a close distance.
In fact, to a person of their own beloved beside the camp, would have been a more happy thing, not to mention there are all over the textile maids in the day and night for me to sing.
The weavers in the sorghum field, sorghum field outside there, until I put a pile of children scarlet look fly on the face of the sorghum, they are still singing vigorously.
To say that dancing to the Yellow River mouth to see, corn can not, to see sorghum. Sorghum is a natural dancer. Compared to the two of them, sorghum soft, corn upright; sorghum leaves narrow and long, corn leaves wide and short. Sorghum like the wind to caress its bright leaves, if the wind blows, corn at most shake the leaves, sorghum is excited body up and down, and issued a rustling whisper.
Just after the show of sorghum, the first show of the wind, the first sinus. A bunch of spikes is a poem picked in the air by the sorghum stalks.
The sister then came to hoe the third time sorghum. Her heart also rose and fell with the sorghum. The sorghum flowers have fallen on the sister head, hoeing sorghum sister also grew up. The sorghum is red, the sister's face in the sorghum field is also red. I can't tell which one is the sorghum, which one is the sister.
Seven
Three times after hoeing, it's time to hang up the hoe.
The sorghum roots are thick and large, and they have grown into a tree, but they have not yet been rotated.
This period of time, in addition to bombing can not bomb away the birds, sorghum does not like anyone to disturb. She's going to tan the rice.
Sorghum in the sun day after day on the color, it deliberately absorbed the sun's energy, these energies are ultimately to be absorbed into the Tan Maqiao village of a poor boy.
After the fall, sorghum feet under the trailing grass will climb a ground, my sister and I will be a piece of the trailing grass cut down, sun a six or seven percent, loaded a full car, pull home silage, will be the winter livestock favorite. When I stepped on the car and climbed on the roof, I looked out and saw the red dragonflies in the evening sunshine were flying over the sorghum ears, and when I looked up to the sky, everything was y immersed in the infinite red color of the sorghum. I want to find a huge blanket, put on top of the pieces of sorghum, let the sorghum hold me and my youthful ideals, in the top of a few rolls, how wanton.
Sister said, when the sorghum is ripe, cut sorghum, only you can come by yourself, I enrolled in a class, to learn tailoring. I know, I can only go by myself, because the mother really find an in-law for my sister. My sister said, brother, I am not willing. Did not wait for me to say anything, a gust of wind came, sorghum leaves clattered.
In all crops, sorghum is the closest to the sun. I like the feeling of hiding in the crop field. It's a totally different feeling than hiding in a pile of people. The sorghum field hides too much dangerous happiness, as Mo Yan's red sorghum. Dense and deep sorghum field, the shadows, dark fragrance floating, the most suitable for the interpretation of ancient love, but the old mouzi's movie "red sorghum" to get a little too exaggerated, cheating and wild, ear hot heartbeat is just, but also have to step down so big a piece of sorghum. A good story happens, just need a piece of sorghum on the line, there is no need to spoil so much sorghum.
The harvest season is coming, the sun thinking of the mango from the clouds to come through, holding on to every sorghum spike, sorghum standing beauty is coming to an end.
It's late fall, and I'm going to see what kind of sorghum has grown up in those who have listened to Xiu Shun's harmonica solos. In the morning, I drove a donkey cart early to the four fields of the depression. In the wilderness, there is only one donkey cart de de forward. Autumn rabbits eat fat and scatter in the bean field after harvesting. The lark's call swept across the sky from time to time. In the distance, the people watching the slope put up a pergola on a few willows, and beside the pergola were two crow's nests. In the bright moonlight night, lying in this tree in the pergola, with a crow as a companion, smell the ripe crops everywhere, sleep on a sleep is how pleasant!
Four fields are coming up. Sorghum proudly stood in the field, it's noble, from its own height of the bottom - as a crop, long a year and a half, how can not thatch people? This sorghum in the puddle, but from forty to fifty miles away from the village of Qianqiao transported seeds. Perhaps, I am the bird that flies, this standing piece, is a loved one left me a landing stage. Seeing me coming, the sorghum twisted around in the late fall wind, the curvature of its figure mesmerizing. I know that it has been waiting for me for a long time in the depression of the old Yellow River Road.
I tied the donkey to the ground row of frame poles and let it nibble the grass by itself, and the donkey ate the trailing grass without lifting its head. I began to use my right hand to take a kind of sorghum knife called the sub rapid cuttings down, sorghum spike a upside down, a spike biting a spike, from the left hand to the elbow into a layer, put a cut Panicum on the straw, so that on the five or six layers of the pendulum, with Panicum waist a bundle, a sorghum head on the bundled up. When a field of sorghum spike cuttings finished, it was already late in the day. I carried the sorghum head to the ground row car near, hand in hand to reward the donkey a few sorghum ears, and then set the car, load the car, loaded to the tip of the mountain willow, and cut a few hugs of beans thrown on the roof of the car, rushed the donkey car, toward the village in the setting sun, the tip of the whip in the air swinging around. The night is getting deeper, I wear a little single, simply lying on the sorghum stacks, hot sorghum cob warmed my body. I seldom yell donkey, old donkey know the way, this road it has run I do not know how many times. The sky is full of stars illuminating a carload of sorghum towards my home yard gradually approaching ......
The sorghum stalks have been standing, standing in the field numb legs. Because the most important sorghum particles have gone into the hoard. Waiting for all the crops are finished, only a few deflated stomach cotton peaches hanging on the stalks, people then remembered that the clear sorghum straw. There are two ways to clear sorghum, one is to use a sickle without root chipping, the stubble head to stay in the ground for the winter; one is to use a pickaxe sorghum straw root Laos up. The sorghum stalks in my family's four fields stood until after the fall, or I spent a Sunday to Laos finished. I gathered a piece of sorghum straw, the pickaxe swung to the sky, "pop, pop", a day's work, sorghum straw are flat on the ground in the sun. Since then, our village can no longer find pieces of sorghum.
The red sorghum field is gone, the sound of sorghum leaves can not be heard, even if there is, but also in the field of the edge of the tip, point of planting a few trees, simply can not become a climate. Now children, few people have seen the appearance of sorghum, the swaying flavor of the earth is gone.
Who can tell me where my sorghum has gone?
Eight
I want my sorghum, I want to go home. I carry the name of sorghum home. But there are no more patches of sorghum on the ground. My old house has collapsed, parents have long returned to the land, sister has been married. The only thing that has survived is the two jujube trees in the yard.
Nostalgia for the hometown of sorghum, sorghum, the breeze diffuse smoke, sunshine horizontal. I miss the beauty of that piece of high pick on the ground - still beautiful and warm, simple and wild color, and the sky is the closest, and the earth with the far away.
Sorghum, is the hometown of the red dress, the autumn wind, a gorgeous piece, the train flying.
Sorghum, a poet in the field, always put the ageless nostalgia in the autumn wind lit.