Chapter 36 old man harvesting mung beans

There are some clouds in the sky that look like broken leaves, and the sun shines from the edge of the clouds, outlining a golden maple leaf.In the field in autumn, the leaves of sesame seeds have all fallen, the sesame pods turn from yellow to brown, the branches of cocklebur on the ground bear blue hooked cockleburs, mugwort is covered with fluffy flowers, and Jerusalem artichoke flowers bloom like small sunflowers; There are also wild lettuce with small white flowers, hibiscus flowers by the fence with light purple hibiscus flowers, morning glory climbing up the slope, corn with purple-red whiskers, and Polygonum reddish-purple roadside scenery.There is a forest between Huangjing Mountain and Shuiyan. There are faint green mist scattered on the edge of the forest. Large camphor trees with spherical and fan-shaped crowns are scattered and intertwined, with dense branches and leaves, and the indifferent and long-lasting camphor fragrance.There is a row of metasequoia trees among the camphor trees, they are like a group of sharp triangles facing upwards; on the tall camphor trees, there are three egrets standing, and two big oxen and a small oxen are grazing under the tree; The yellow dog with lanceolate ears protruding forward stands on the slope and looks out, occasionally sneezing, and the turtledove cooing and flying back and forth in the dense forest.

Suddenly someone shouted.I turned my head to look, and there was a person squatting in the mung bean field on the ridge. Suddenly, it looked like a straw hat with a gray-blue cloth bag buttoned up. The person was squatting into a ball.He looked up and yelled again. I was sure it was me, so I walked over.When he saw me coming, he looked up and smiled, most of his face was exposed under the straw hat, and there were dense cat whiskers on his face.He moved his position, mung bean straws were cutting his gray pants, he was wearing black corduroy elastic shoes, and the skin color of his feet looked like he was wearing dark brown socks.An old man was squatting in a field of mung bean overgrown with weeds and pulling mung bean stalks.I said: Are you calling me?He said: Are you walking again?The mung beans are ripe.

I stopped and climbed up the slope. Above the slope was a large field with corn, sweet potatoes, sesame and mung beans.The old man had already pulled up two piles of mung bean stalks. The needle-shaped round pods of mung beans were black. There was a light red plastic basin beside him, which had already filled some mung bean pods, and some mung beans jumped out of the pods that exploded.There is also a cluster of red cockscombs on the edge of the ground. Green beans, I think, this is green beans.I knelt down, switched the folding fan from my right hand to my left, and helped the old man pull out mung beans. This was pulling out the bean stalks together, and it was the last time I harvested mung beans in a year.The old man said: Is it the fifteenth day of September in the old calendar?I said: Didn't you arrive?It's just passed the Mid-Autumn Festival.The old man said: Rapeseed will be planted on September 15th.I said: How much rapeseed can I grow?Do you squeeze the oil yourself?The old man said: Enough to eat, ten catties of rapeseed for three catties of rapeseed oil.I said: How much fertilizer do you apply to so many mung beans?The old man said: There is no urn for mung beans.Urn, a local dialect, means no fertilizer at all.Urn, bottle also ("Guang Ya·Shi Qi"), that is, a water-drawing device, holding the urn out of the pot ("Zhuangzi·Heaven and Earth"), it takes a little effort to translate such local dialects.What the old man meant was that his mung beans were green food.I estimated the land, about one-third of the area, inlaid in the middle of the neighbor's corn and sesame fields, and a sweet potato field in the northwest.I want to ask about the harvest, saying: How many mung beans can you harvest in this field?The old man said: enough to eat almost.I asked again: exactly how many mung beans can be harvested?The old man still replied with "enough to eat almost", but he added this: it can be sold at a good price, two yuan a catty, and the minimum is one yuan nine.

Are farmers not interested in metering?I was a little disappointed, so I asked the old man some other information: How many people are enough to eat?The old man said: I am alone.Pull out the mung bean stalks, shake off the fresh soil on the roots, and stack them in a pile.Mung beans are delicious.Seeing my disappointment, the old man changed the subject: the mung bean noodles are delicious. Soak the mung beans and eat them with noodles. They are melted and fresh. This kind of fresh mung beans is the best.When the old man was talking about eating, he looked up innocently, and the cat whiskers on his face spread out in an instant, and the ridge where Yue Sui Lou was there became much smoother.

Mung bean porridge is delicious.Put fresh rice and fresh mung beans in a pot and cook, add sugar after cooking, sweet and fresh.The old man smiled, picked a bean pod from the mung bean stalk with his fir-tree-like fingers, and rubbed it open with his thumb, with five fresh mung beans beating in his palm.Look, this mung bean porridge with sugar is delicious.When the old man is in a good mood, a good mood is always related to delicious food, right?The old man also said: This land can also grow corn. Grind the corn, boil it into a paste, add frosted cabbage, put lard and salt, it tastes delicious too.The old man raised his hand and pointed to the corn in the neighboring field.I said: If this land is planted with corn, how much corn can be harvested?Ahhh, sowing corn is enough to eat.I suddenly found that the old man didn't seem to be careless about measurement, but seemed to deliberately avoid the expression of harvest data.

Do you grow rice?It suddenly occurred to me that there were no rice fields nearby.don't plant.The old man said: There are no rice fields, so I went to buy rice to eat. The brigade gave me 30 yuan for retirement, and the rice was enough to eat.The old man nodded thoughtfully, and added: There is enough food in the countryside now, but there is no national economy.The old man said this really well. He alone may be a household with five guarantees.I said: Are you a Five Guarantees?The old man said: It's not the five guarantees, so don't worry about the five guarantees. You have everything, and you don't need to chop firewood.I said: Do you still chop firewood?The old man said: chopping firewood is more expensive than burning gas.

During the conversation, nearly half of the mung bean stalks were pulled out. I was a little reconciled, and I didn't ask about the output of mung beans.Just say: Can you tell me how much mung beans can be harvested in this field?The old man was bored by my questioning, he didn't say anything for a long time, but I waited for him while pulling out mung bean stalks.Suddenly, the old man straightened up, put down the bean stalks in his hand, stood up, pointed to the clouds in the sky and said: "Look at that cloud, there are people living on it."I said: I don't believe it, there is no one there.The old man said: Yes, the people living on it are higher than the people on the ground.Think about it, the old man was anxious by my question, why must he refuse to answer the output?

The old man moved to the corner of the field and started pulling mung bean stalks from there.After being silent for a while, the old man said: I also joined the labor union. In 1957, 1958, and 1959, I worked in a smelter.The smelter is a large local factory, and the old man has worked as a worker?Maybe, the factory is not far from here.I said: Why don't you work again?The old man said: I broke the law, I broke the law against a young woman.The old man talked about this, which made me excited when I was about to leave. The old man said that he is 74 years old, and it is always interesting to talk about the romantic affairs of the year.I said: Has that young woman ever seen her?The old man said: She is now in Laoxialu, she is a working class.I said: Do you regret this matter?The old man said: drink water?He heard regret as drinking water, and I repeated a few words of regret, but he insisted on drinking water, a local dialect. Regret and drinking water are homonyms. The subject changed.

I also served in the People's Liberation Army and had dinner in Shanghai, believe it or not?The old man stood up with a smile on his face, holding a handful of bean stalks in his left hand, and pointing north with his right hand: over there are Yingshan, Macheng, over there is Shanghai, over there are Fujian and Taiwan, and over there is Japan. Been to Fujian.I said: Have you ever been to Japan?The old man said: I have never been to Japan. They came once and gave me desserts when I was young. The old man was a soldier?I was a little skeptical, so I said: When did you join the People's Liberation Army?The old man said: In 1974, I joined the army.The old man said that he joined the army in 1974. I believe there is something wrong with it. I said: At what age did you join the army?The old man thought about it and changed his words: I joined the army in 1949.I said: Which army is it?Is it Shino?The old man said: Everyone is going to join the army, and there are still people joining the army this year.The old man started talking nonsense again.I thought, if I can't ask for a harvest, I put the folding fan on the waist of my trousers and patted the mud on my hands.

Are you a cadre in the village?Seeing that I was about to leave, the old man finally uttered what he had been thinking about for a long time: I think you look like a township cadre.I shook my head, saying no. I noticed some confusion in the old man's eyes, and added: You are the township cadre. While I was gone, the old man started picking pods.