My farmer uncle
Whitewater
I went back to my hometown last summer and walked around the newly built old people's house in the village. The hometown has changed a lot. Most of the peasants lived in upstairs, and they also built buildings for the elderly, so that they could enjoy their old age in peace. There are two buildings for the elderly, both of which are four-storey buildings, with a total of more than 100 houses, two bedrooms and one living room, kitchen, bathroom, and convenient water and electricity. The village encourages the elderly to move in and waive some water and electricity bills. Slowly, most of the old people who refused to move and were attached to the old house moved upstairs. When I used to live in a bungalow, I said that the bungalow was good, but when I moved upstairs, I couldn't help but say that the building was good: clean, bright, convenient and comfortable...... It is said that old people will become like children, but right? This is also gratifying, wouldn't it be better to rejuvenate? Catching up with such a good thing and living upstairs is the same as the people in the city, but you can't dream of it.
Looking at the brand-new and beautiful buildings, I can't help but feel in my heart that it is not easy for the old people to endure hardships all their lives. Now take a good rest, have fun, enjoy life, and everyone is happy. The south side of the building is close to the mountain, between the mountains and rocks, the old people can't be idle, reclaim a small piece of land, plant a few beans, loofahs, eyebrow peas, etc., are growing vigorously, some bloom and bear fruit, and people like it. The old people have worked hard all their lives, and they can't be idle, the land is the root of life, and the crops are like their own children. In fact, there is a supermarket near the elderly room, with vegetables, grain, daily necessities and so on. If you don't expect to eat vegetables at this point, just grow and have fun, as long as you are happy.
A large vegetable patch suddenly appeared in front of me, about two meters wide and three or four meters long, with several kinds of vegetables planted in it, among the green branches and leaves, there were red peppers, purple eggplants, and long beans. Where did you get such a big piece of land? Looking at the many small stones piled up around the land, I realized that it took a lot of effort to dig out the stones to get this small piece of land. Farmers are really industrious, this old house, together with the nearby building community, are farmers farming, and enterprises, going out to work, etc., all year round not idle, only to have a good life now.
Someone was working in this field, a thin and rickety back, squatting under the bean rack, not knowing whether he was picking vegetables or pulling weeds. I slowed down and walked gently, for fear of disturbing people. The man didn't seem to care if anyone was passing by, just busy himself. He's slow, silent, he's old, isn't he? If you don't look closely, you will almost disappear under the branches and leaves of vegetables. Suddenly, the man turned his head and seemed to hear someone who wanted to take a look. But soon turned back again, as if he didn't see anything, didn't care about anything.
But I was surprised, isn't this my neighbor from my hometown? I often call him uncle, he doesn't know me? But I really barely recognized him. His face was emaciated, his expression was indifferent, his eyes were blank, his gaze was lowered, he seemed to be unable to lift up, and he wore a blouse, as if he were on an empty shelf. I wanted to talk to him, but I didn't dare. Is this still the uncle who works hard and works hard to get by? I was so surprised that I couldn't speak, and I didn't believe that the person in front of me was an uncle. I stopped and looked back, and the more I looked at it, the more I looked like an uncle, yes. The uncle got up and left, trembling and fluttering, like a leaf in the autumn wind. Yes, it's true, but it's not the uncle who can't get enough energy and is full of new ideas.
When I was young, my uncle was young, but he wasn't happy. His family was once classified as a rich peasant component, and he was in his twenties, and he had not yet married. What is the kulak ingredient? At that time, I didn't talk much about it, and I didn't understand it much. But the uncle's house is indeed relatively generous, with a blue brick and gray tile gate, a large threshold, and a large door pillow stone, and carved flowers on it. The hall is also made of blue bricks and gray tiles, and the upper and lower edges of the windows are inlaid with patterned stones, and there are also large stones and large pillows at the door. Most of the neighbors' houses have straw roofs and half-stone and half-adobe walls. I sometimes went to my uncle's house, and their family lived like the neighbor's house, and they were all poor at that time. The uncle has started to work in the production team, but because he is not tall and has little strength, he only does some light work.
Soon, the reform and opening up began, the production team was disbanded, the fields were divided into households, they farmed their own land, worked more and got more, handed over the public grain, and the rest was their own. The peasants' enthusiasm was aroused, and they conscientiously made efforts to farm the land, and the grain at home gradually increased. The uncle is the eldest son in the family, his parents are getting older, they used to suffer a lot, their health is getting weaker, and their younger siblings are still young, and some are still in school. The uncle consciously took on the responsibility of farming to support his family, which was impressive and very admirable. I couldn't do heavy work before, so where is the weight now? It's all your own work, and you do it yourself in the morning and evening, and if you don't do it well, if the crops don't grow well, you will have less food for yourself. Uncle has been busy all day long, and he doesn't know where he got so much energy. He pushes his own wheelbarrow, carries fertilizer to the fields, and harvests crops at home. In addition to cultivating the land allocated by the production team, he also opened up many small plots of land on the hillsides and beside the ravines and planted crops. Some plots are very small, only a few sweet potatoes are planted, but every point of hard work and harvest, the accumulation of small amounts is a lot, and everyone understands the crops.
Seeing that life is slowly getting better, and Dashu is also marrying and starting a family, which girl doesn't like such a capable and well-known young man? The uncle and aunt are both good at living, and within a few years of getting married, they built a tiled house and gave birth to a boy. Life is enviable, neighbors discipline their children, take the uncle as an example, bear hardships and stand hard work, is the real way to live, will definitely get better and better, food and clothing are not worried, and there is money to spend. But like an uncle, he worked hard, and not many people could learn it. When the farm is busy, the uncle is busy outside the house, and when the farm is not working, the uncle finds his own work to do and tries his best to increase the family income. In the summer, he went to cut the grass and dried it as fodder for livestock, and in the winter, he went to the hillside and the river ditch to collect firewood, and brought it home to cook in a pot and build a stove for heating. People say that he is a "good life", and he is bent on getting things at home, and he is not afraid of hardships and hardships.
But the uncle will not only exert his strength, he will also use his brain to find a way, engage in a variety of operations, find a new way to get rich, he raised pigs, fed sheep, and taught himself to be a veterinarian, to see a doctor for the livestock and poultry in the farmer's house, and to prescribe medicine and injections. People trust him, they want him to do this job, they think he is very suitable, because he is kind-hearted, upright, smart-minded, and knows what he can learn. And he was thin and not very fit for the work of the crops that sweated profusely. Once, the neighbor's sheep were sick, and they didn't eat much for a few days, and they always had diarrhea. I went to see the uncle, and the uncle didn't prescribe medicine or injections, so he asked the neighbor to feed the sheep fried sorghum and eat a few meals. The uncle knew that the peasants' lives were just a little better, but they didn't have much money. There are few people in the village, and the peasants can only eat enough food at most to grow grain, and they don't need money for seven things to open the door, people are sophisticated, and children go to school?
It's not enough to grow food, and you can't make much money as a veterinarian, so the uncle began to build plastic greenhouses and grow out-of-season tomatoes. Someone in the nearby village made money by growing tomatoes, and the uncle followed suit. The couple took their younger brother and sister, who no longer go to school, and threw themselves on planting tomatoes, squatting in the greenhouse almost all day long, watering, fertilizing, spraying, pollinating, pinching branches, picking persimmons, etc. The younger brother can also do it, and he is not afraid of hardship, so he installs a pannier on the back seat of the bicycle, rides thirty or forty kilometers, and transports persimmons to the wholesale market in the city and sells them at a good price. In the past few years, the family's income has improved significantly, and they have built a new house for their younger brother to marry and start a family. The neighbors saw that the uncle's family was doing well, and they all exaggerated that the uncle was a model worker, a good example for everyone to learn, filial piety to his parents, helping his younger siblings, and a rare good person. When the uncle heard this, he just smiled slightly, he was very busy, he didn't care about listening to people's gossip, he just worked hard to earn money and make the family have a better life.
There are more and more people planting greenhouses, persimmons have become worthless, and the uncle has a good brain, sees farther than others, and has more ideas. He stopped growing tomatoes in greenhouses and started growing ginger. Usually, every family can't cook and make dumplings without ginger, which is two or three times more expensive than tomatoes. This is the first family in the village, and the nearby villages have not heard of ginger, I don't know where he learned the technique, planting ginger should be watered frequently, pay attention to shade, etc. People went to his fields to see how ginger was grown. The appearance of the branches and leaves is very special, green and vigorous, with a little yellow tuber at the root, and ginger that is about to grow underneath. People looked at that piece of ginger land with envy, and admired in their hearts that the uncle really knew how to live, endure hardships and stand hard work and was willing to use his brains to think of a way, rely on science and technology to farm the land, and keep up with the development trend of the times.
My parents often exaggerated my uncle in front of me, saying that he was a rare good person, who worked hard to take care of the whole family's life and never cared about himself. Sometimes my father also said this: "Your uncle is so capable, ordinary people can't learn it." When the peasants are the most miserable, working from dawn to dark all year round, they actually can't earn much money, and there are many people in the village and little land, no matter how much they plant, they can't make any money. There are many places to spend money, and grain is not valuable, and there is not much surplus throughout the year. We must study hard and jump out of the sweet potato ditch in the countryside in order to have a way out. "I don't understand my father's words, and sometimes I think that my hometown is good, there are good mountains and rivers, the farmers are hard-working, the crops grow well, and I grow the land and harvest the grain, which makes the taste sweeter. But the farm work is also very tiring, and I work in the fields with my parents, and my hands are blistered and calloused. Although Mom and Dad work hard to farm, the family doesn't have much money, and sometimes when something happens, it can't help but make trouble. And although I admire my uncle, I can't help but feel scared when I want to do those jobs. Later, I heard that the uncle had also grown mushrooms, fed long-haired rabbits, raised chickens, and engaged in corn breeding, which was really strange. I once passed by the corn field where the corn stalks were smaller than usual, and one row was topped with flower ears, and one row was cut off, supposedly for pollination. As for what the harvest will be, I don't know. At that time, I had left my hometown to go to school in other places, taking the road of "entrance examination", and dreaming of jumping out of the sweet potato ditch in the countryside.
Decades have passed, and the old appearance of the hometown has been renewed, and it has become a residential community with a large number of buildings, as if it were a dream. I've long since left my hometown and wandered out on my own. Looking back on the changes in the past few decades, from the reform and opening up to the current urbanization, everyone in the rural areas of their hometown has experienced many changes in social life. From the perspective of the whole country, every village and city is changing drastically and developing with each passing day. At present, people's lives are generally well-off and prosperous, the country is more prosperous, ushering in the great rejuvenation of the nation, and ushering in the prosperous year of China. Looking back on the history of the past few decades, people can't help but be proud and proud, and also have infinite emotion, countless people have moved forward with heavy burdens, struggled hard, and made great efforts. In our village, my partners who are about the same age as me no longer rely on the land, and many families no longer rely on the land, and several professional households in the village contract most of the land, and they are all mechanized from planting to harvesting. But I can't forget the hard work of my parents in farming, and there are farmers like my uncle who are active and promising, and work hard, which makes people sincerely admire.
How did Uncle become like this? I deplore it in my heart. I know from some old neighbors that although the uncle has worked hard all his life, he really hasn't saved much money. In a village like ours, where there are many people and little land, no matter how hard you put in and how you think about it, an ordinary farmer has a very limited income from farming, and he has to go out to work or work in a nearby factory. But the uncle is old and reluctant to go to the factory again, and he is reluctant to give up his few acres of land. Especially in recent years, children have spent more money, and they all spend a lot of money. First, his son bought a building in the community, and then his grandson bought a building in the county seat, and they all asked him for money. He used all the money he had saved over the years and borrowed a lot of debt. Other people's children have bought houses, compare with each other, and run to the city, and life in the city has a future, which is the general trend of social development. The uncle was stressed, in a bad mood, and was getting thinner and thinner. Later, it was found that he had cancer, but it was already at an advanced stage, and the doctors were helpless. He didn't want to be empty, insisted on not going to the hospital, and was willing to finish the last journey of his life in his own home. A year ago, everyone helped him move into the old man's house, and he opened up a small piece of land in front of the building to plant crops. The family can't help it, let him be happy, do whatever he likes. He went to that field every day, and the eggplants, beans, and so on, grew vigorously, but everyone could see that he was slowly losing his strength.
I couldn't calm down for a long time. Uncle was a role model for us to learn from back then, but we didn't expect it to be such a late age, in fact, he was just in his early sixties, not very old. People eat cereals, there is no one who does not get sick, but the appearance of the uncle is really heart-wrenching, he was such a hard-working and hard-working young man back then! He never stopped all his life, so he had a good rest and a breath.
After the Spring Festival during the winter vacation, I came back from my hometown, and after the sting, it was when the earth was rejuvenated, everything was recovering, and the sun was shining, and suddenly news came from my hometown that the uncle had passed away. My heart sank, and I couldn't help but sigh long. Good man, my peasant uncle, the example of hard work and struggle in his childhood, finally rests forever at the beginning of farming, and never needs to farm again.
As I've gotten older, I've gotten better at reminiscing about the past. So I often see the appearance of the uncle when he was young, so confident, so energetic, and energetic to walk out of the house and work in the field. In that era of reform and opening up and the division of land into households, it was the hard work of countless farmers that made the land of China glow with infinite vitality and usher in the spring of vigorous development.
I always felt that in that spring, my uncle was the bright sunshine and warm wind, and he was the eternal hero in my heart.
About author:Bai Shui is a member of Shandong Writers Association.