By Jia Xiuzhen

The sky is high and the clouds are light. Sitting on the porch in the courtyard at this time, the leaves of the tall locust tree are mixed with yellow and green. A gust of wind blows and swirls all over the ground.The fertile fields under the slope seem to be much closer for no reason at this moment, which is not the meaning of a picture in front of us as usual.Yingchun and Daiyu were both enlightened for a while, and they remained silent.

But Baoyu was wrong, hesitated for a while, and said to Li Wan who was smiling lightly, "Sister-in-law, what else should I do next afternoon? Why don't you let it go."

Baochai and Xiangyun glanced at him, but said nothing. Tanchun said first, "Sure enough! I'd better find another partner!"

Daiyu came back to her senses, frowned slightly, looked at Baoyu and said, "Second elder brother, let's go if he has other things to do, we are still enjoying ourselves, how can we do everything for others without saying a word?"

When Baoyu heard what Daiyu said, his heart was anxious and painful, "Sister Lin, you have always been weak. You must be tired after most of the day. Although it is fun, it should be done in moderation. If you don't like it later, let it go." Temperament tossing, I'm afraid it's easy to hurt your body if you're tired. The left and right sisters-in-law are like this every day, you want to play, but take a rest later, when can't you come?"

Daiyu sighed softly, couldn't help feeling a little impatient in her heart, she held back her temper and replied, "Where am I weak? In the past half a year, all of you have reported illnesses, right? Have I? Second brother, what about you? The thoughts in my head are just weird, but I don't know if there is any basis for those thoughts.

We are not just playing, but we can also realize many things.Even if I want to tell you, you don’t understand.I just want to tell you one thing, if you want to go, go by yourself, and no one will stop you.Just don't want to do it with our Lord at will, everyone is here, everyone has his own plan, why do you need to say it? "

Bao and Dai grew up together since they were young, and they had [-] or [-] quarrels, and Daiyu would talk about "dead" and "alive" when she had a temper tantrum, but she never had the same situation as today. These words are so alienated.Baoyu didn't hear what was next to her, she only said "you" and "I" clearly. It felt like two trees that had grown together were suddenly torn apart abruptly.For a moment, my heart was sour and unbearable, and I couldn't help showing something on my face.

Xiangyun has a rough temper, and he doesn't know about the love between children. Seeing that the two were arguing again, he said, "Okay! Second brother, you are really serious, and sister Lin is right. We both You had a lot of fun, what are you doing! My sister-in-law is worried. Sister Lin has always been unforgiving, and you know it, but today she suddenly can't bear such words, which is strange."

Baochai hurriedly stopped her: "Say less, lest there be chaos in the world. Are you the one who persuades people like this?" Then he said to Daiyu, "Sister Lin, Brother Bao must have seen you keep silent. You only say this when you are tired and hard to speak. You are wrong to blame him when you say that. "

When Baoyu heard this, her chest felt hot, and her heart became more and more sore and swollen, thinking: "I grew up with you since childhood, and we have been in love for many years, but now I don't know me as well as Sister Bao. It shows that you really don't care about me. .”

After listening to Baochai's words, Daiyu said with a smile: "Sister Bao knows what he thinks again?! It's just that he guesses people's minds like this, but he guesses wrong. Why don't I say a few words?"

When Baochai heard that she was just guessing Baoyu's thoughts, it was the same as her own excuse for Baoyu, so she didn't want to remember the last time she said "taunting others with what she has done", and felt bored. He stopped and said no more.

But Baoyu said: "Sister Bao is not wrong. I just thought that Sister Lin was tired."

Daiyu spread her hands together: "Okay, okay, okay, whatever you say is what you say. Anyway, the left and right are your guesses, your guesses, and your assumptions. It's none of my business."

Yingchun couldn't help stretching out his hand to gently tug her, Daiyu smiled at her, but remained silent.

Li Wan then smiled and said: "The work will be heavier in the next afternoon, and now we will be in a stalemate. How can we work together in the future? If this is in a farmhouse, if the family's hearts are not in harmony, then it will be God's punishment." .The food and vegetables that have been planted for half a year can't be harvested in time. When will a rain be able to drain half a year's hard work. You don't know how powerful it is."

Tanchun suddenly said to himself: "What kind of family, as long as their hearts are not in harmony, can they live well? But I don't know what kind of God's punishment..."

Li Wan's ears are so strong, he sighed in his heart when he heard this, turned around and said, "It's just some miscellaneous fruits in the morning, it was meant to be a joke to you. After a while, it will be serious work. This time we have to deal with the same people." It’s just a matter of dividing the process. You have discussed it and selected it. It’s going to be a big day, so you can take a break first.”

Everyone saw that the wooden sign had been replaced on the case in the morning, so they went up to take a closer look.But it is the words "cut", "beat", "sun", "pound", "mill".Just as he was thinking about the selection, he heard Li Wan say again: "Choose at random first, and take turns in a while, and you must go through this set all the time. It can be regarded as an eye-opener."

It turned out that it was just a matter of order, and I took it at will at the moment. Daiyu and Yingchun took the "cut", Baochai and Xiangyun took the "sun", Tanchun and Baoyu took the "beat", Xichun and Jialan chose "Pound".Xichun said again: "There is still a grinder left, sister-in-law, come?"

Li Wan said with a smile: "These are all methods of shelling. It can be done by pounding or grinding. If you choose the pound, just let go of the grinder."

Xiangyun smiled and said, "The elder sister-in-law tried her best to order us, but she was lazy."

Li Wan laughed and scolded: "What a heartless person! The farmer does the work, and there is no one to cook and boil water at home? Or do you want to come back from a busy half day and have a bowl of 'soak a nest of silk' that Grandma Liu said the day before yesterday?"

Everyone laughed and broke up after hearing this, for fear that if they really exerted their strength, they would end up in the end of "a nest of silk from a bamboo basket".

To say that the rice is harvested, one must first bend over to use the sickle to harvest, and a bundle is bound and crossed to dry on a long wooden stick erected on the ground.When it was a little dry, it was beaten in a large wooden box with a porous bamboo board inside. The rice grains were dragged down between the porous holes, and the remaining section in the hand was straw.

The felled rice has to find a place to turn it in the sun. On the way, it has to plow and shred the grass to remove the shriveled grass and valleys entrained inside.When it was dry, it was packed into bags for storage.There are also places where mats are used to form a valley, and they are scattered among them for food.

To make it into rice, you have to take the ridges of the soil and push away the chaff, or pound the rice paddle directly.Then sieve and raise again, the more refined the rice, the more times it needs to be pounded and milled.Therefore, farmers and farmers eat more brown rice. If the brown rice is pounded again, rice bran will be obtained.This rice bran is usually used as feed for chickens and ducks, but in times of disaster, there are times when even the bran is not available.

Sisters, brothers, aunts and nephews have never seen such a thing.This time I have seen each one of them, so naturally I will not let them really use their strength, but it is also a "labor" that has never been done before.There are also a few daughters-in-law who are proficient in farming to guide and talk about old stories.Xiangyun laughed: "Second brother, you stopped listening to Grandma Liu that day. She wanted to go home, and you even gave her a very rare antique. But it turns out that there are so many people who can tell stories at home. Old man, it can be seen that Madam Li said that you are right, 'you can only see others, but not your own'. It is really dark under the lamp."

Tanchun said: "That's not how it is said. Isn't there another saying, 'foreign monks are good at chanting scriptures'? The second elder brother is the most fresh, even if he said the same thing, the people outside said it better than the people around him It sounds reasonable."

Baoyu's experience today is something that he has never seen in his life. He doesn't know how many thoughts are spinning in his mind at this moment, and he doesn't care that his sisters make fun of him.On the contrary, he said in a somewhat stern tone: "In the past, it was said that it was rice, but it was just rice in a bowl. How would you know all the things behind it! It turns out that there are often sour words in books saying 'how difficult the people's livelihood is', and they have no brains. Now After all this time, I was a little more confident. Thinking about us, if we had to plow out this rice for steaming with our own strength, we would be busy for three or two days, and we might not be able to eat it. This meal still needs so much Kung fu, let alone others!"

Baochai laughed and said: "Brother Bao can say such words, but today's tiredness is worth it. It's not in vain for sister-in-law's hard work."

While talking, someone brought tea, and the leader approached. When everyone looked at it, it was none other than the attacker.Besides, Xiren couldn't help smiling when he saw all the girls and even his own men dressed like this.But he was worried. When he came up to see Li, he took Baoyu aside and asked this and that.

Baochai shook her head secretly when she saw it——from top to bottom, this family has always regarded Baoyu as a treasure to protect and take care of, but never thought of the saying that "the sharp edge of a sword comes from sharpening, and the fragrance of plum blossoms comes from bitter cold." There is no such thing as a bean-like Jialan to take care of.The knowledge of pneumatics can be developed slowly, but this kind of temperament is not easy to change. If things go on like this, I'm afraid it will only grow into a flirtatious waste.

That Baoyu has been "slaved" for half a day, Xiren's tenderness and care are what he knows as "the years in the garden"!Just looking around, even Daiyu was still pushing the roller to grind the grain with Yingchun, let alone Jialan and Xichun who were stepping on one end at the other end, jumping up and down happily pounding the grain with the pestle.So it wasn't too much trouble, just took two sips of tea, said a few words with Xiren, and still came to the crowd.

Seeing this, Xiren was both funny and sad, only thinking that this widowed grandma is inevitably weird, and he came up with such an idea to torture the second master and the girls.It's also thanks to these people who respect her and have a good temper that they can endure until now.In the next few days, I have to say a few words to my wife, so as not to have a good time, but I will tire my master.

Not to mention other people's thoughts, just say that everyone has been busy for almost two hours, when they suddenly heard the clear and crisp sound of gongs coming from the slope, especially for others, Jia Lan jumped up from the ground, grabbed his fourth aunt and said: "It's time to finish work." , Call it a day! Let's have a banquet, let's have a banquet!"

Sure enough, several daughters-in-law came up and took over the work from everyone with a smile, and said with a smile: "Today's work is over. Because it's the autumn harvest, grandma asked someone to prepare an autumn feast on the top, and the second master Bao and the girls are going now." Bar."

Everyone went in without knowing it, but Jia Lan cheered: "Oh, our family will also hold an autumn festival! A big scene, a big scene!" After saying that, he was about to run forward.Pulled down by Xichun, she asked him, "What about Concubine Ji Qiuqiu?"

Jia Lan said with a smile: "The meaning of offering sacrifices to the autumn harvest. The autumn harvest in the Zhuangshang, offering sacrifices to the gods of the five grains of heaven and earth, and a sacrifice to the temple of the five viscera at the same time. It's okay to eat, the important thing is that there are many people, eat a lot, and pile up mountains. Yes, just don’t eat, just look at it to make you happy. This is the meaning of a good harvest.

There are few people here, so the autumn festival in the village is beautiful.In the Zhuangtou courtyard, seventy or eighty tables can be set up, and all kinds of delicious food are served non-stop.Everyone has a big plate in their hands, and they take what they want to eat by themselves.Such a party, eating and having fun, did not stop until the middle of the night.The gentlemen drank with the elders and stewards who stayed behind, and it was dawn in a blink of an eye.I've been there once, and now I think about it, and I still feel that I still have more to say. "

After talking, he went up the slope.

After entering the yard, they all stood there dumbfounded—I saw three or four large tables connected to each other in the middle of the yard. On top of them were large pottery pots with a diameter of half a foot, original wooden barrels six or seven inches high, and a large steamer with an arm's width. , a three-foot-square lacquer box, and a low woven straw basket lined with clean primary-colored linen...

It contains steamed pastry with big stuffing, burritos, meat dragon, thinly sliced ​​and neatly arranged furnace meat, sauced beef, clear water sheep cake, sweet-scented osmanthus salted duck, rice-flavored goose, whole mud-wrapped beggar chicken, Crispy fried fish, fried chicken with batter, duck in purple sauce, goose wrapped in paper and buried in salt...

That's all, there are two rows of temporary stoves on both sides, one is frying hibiscus crab bucket and thin powder shrimp, the other is frying honey stuffed chicken and various mushrooms, and a charcoal stove is set up on the other side , Grilled various small skewers-scallion bead sandwich meat, eggplant rolls, diced lamb shank, beef tenderloin with pepper powder, crab claw skewers, green shrimp with pomelo peel...I can’t count them for a while.

There are two baking kilns attached to the wall. I saw this built in Daoxiang Village, and it was just a scene, but I didn't expect it to be really useful one day.At this moment, one is filled with oily roasted chicken with scallion and honey sauce, roasted duck with drum skin, burnt hooves, and roasted pork with fruit sauce; I don't know what is mixed in it, and a scent of wheat sesame oil, fragrant milk and sweetness floats around like it has been fried in the wind.

A group of people stood at the gate of the courtyard, watching all kinds of food piled up high, listening to the sound of oil dripping on the charcoal, and the tip of their noses is full of noodles, oil, and so on. The aroma of milk, charcoal grilled meat, fried meat, kiln burning incense... I can't move.

Xichun swallowed reluctantly, and sighed, "I'm afraid I won't be able to go back today..."