Chapter 58 Seed beans - 1

At this time my beans, already planted row by row, must be seven miles long, and I am in a hurry to weed and loosen the soil, because the last batch has not been sown, and the first batch has grown well. There is no longer any delay.What's the point of this little Hercules' labor, with so much labor and so much self-respect, I don't know.I'm in love with my rows of beans, even though they're a lot more than I need.They make me love my land, so I get strength, like Antaeus.But why should I plant beans?Only God knows.All summer I have labored so wonderfully—on this part of the earth's cuticle, which used to grow only berries, foxtails, blackberries, and the like, and sweet wild fruits and pretty flowers, and now let it grow beans. up.What can I learn from Douzi, and what can Douyu learn from me?I cherish them, I weed them, I tend them from morning till night; that is my day's work.The broad leaves are so pretty.My helpers are the dew and rain that moisten this parched earth.And what manure does the soil itself contain, though much of it is barren and exhausted.Bugs, cold days, and especially groundhogs are my enemies.Groundhogs have eaten up a quarter of my acre.But what right do I have to uproot plants like foxtail and destroy their herb garden since ancient times?Fortunately, the remaining beans will grow very strong immediately, and they can deal with some new enemies.

I remember very well that when I was four years old, when I moved from Boston to my hometown, I passed through this forest and this land, and I went to the lake.It is one of the earliest images of the past etched into my memory.Tonight, the sound of my flute has awakened the echo of the same lake.The pine trees are still standing there, older than me; or, some have been cut down, and I use their roots to cook, and new pine trees have grown around, giving the eyes of the new generation a different look.Just from the same old root in this pasture grew almost the same foxtail, and even I later added a new dress to the fabulous scenery in my dream, you know what happened after I returned here Influence, look at these bean leaves, corn tips, and potato vines.I planted about two and a half acres of ham land; the land had been felled once about fifteen years ago, and I had dug up two or three "coads" of roots, which I had not fertilized; during those days this summer When I was hoeing, I turned up some arrowheads. It seems that before the white people came to cut down, there was a vanished ancient nation who lived here and planted corn and beans. So, in a certain To a certain extent, they have already exhausted their strength and gained something.

Before any woodchucks or squirrels scurry across the road, or before the sun rises above the oak coppice, when everything is covered with dew, I begin to pull up the proud dead weeds in the bean fields, and pile the earth upon them , though some farmers will not allow me to do it,—yet I advise you to do all your work while the dew falls, if possible.Early in the morning, I worked barefoot, like a plastic artist, making mud in the shattered sand of Chenglu. After three poles in the sun, the sun was about to make my feet blister.The sun shone on me to hoe, and I walked slowly up and down on the yellow sandy hill, among the fifteen rod-long rows of green leaves, which extended at one end to a scrub oak forest, where I often rested. The other end extends to the edge of a berry field, and every time I walk back and forth, I can always see the color of the blue berries there deepening slightly.I weeded the roots and planted new soil around the bean stems to help the crops I planted grow, so that this piece of loess expressed its summer thoughts not with wormwood, reed tubes, and millet, but with bean leaves and bean flowers. - This is what I do every day.Because I don't have the help of cows, horses, hired labor or children, and I don't have improved farm tools, I am very slow, so I am very close to beans.To work with the hands, to the point of drudgery, is not the worst form of laziness.There is an evergreen and indelible truth in this, which for scholars has the meaning of classical philosophy.I am an agricola laboriosus compared to those travelers who go westward through Lincoln and Wayland to places no one knows; Hanging like a festoon; I am the earth-worker, the house-worker.But my home and fields were soon out of their sight and thought.Because for a long stretch of road on both sides of the road, only my piece of land is cultivated, which naturally attracted their attention; sometimes people who work in this field hear their criticism.That was not intended for him to hear, "The beans are so late! The peas are too late!"—because the others have started hoeing, and I'm still planting—I, an amateur farmer, never thought over these. "These crops, my boy, are for livestock only; crops for livestock!" "Does he live here?" said the man in the gray coat and black cap; His grateful old horse asked me, what are you doing here, and why there is no manure in the furrow, and he suggested that we should remove some fine trash, any waste, or ashes, or mortar.However, there are only two and a half acres of furrows here, and there is only a hoe instead of a horse, which is dragged with two hands--I don't like carts and horses--and Xiweizi's garbage is far away.Some travelers who drove by loudly compared this field with what they had seen along the way, and this made me aware of my place in the agricultural world.This field was not in Mr. Coleman's report.But, by the way, who will calculate the value of the crops which nature produces on wilder, unimproved ground?England's hay is carefully weighed, and its moisture and silicates and potashes calculated; but in all valleys, depressions, woods, pastures, and swamps grows an abundance and variety of corn, and is only left unharvested. That's all.Mine seem to be halfway between wild and cultivated; and as some are civilized, some semi-civilized, and others are barbarous, so my fields may be called semi-civilized, though they are Not in a bad sense.The beans happily returned to their wild primeval state in which I bred them, and my hoe sang their idyll.