What's more, in front of me is the dear potato field.
Sitting quietly, my eyes crossed the small potato field, as if I saw a vast expanse of potato seedlings raging in the summer sun, my hometown Lujiagou like a boat, floating in the waves, even the sun is full of green.
The potatoes mean a lot to me, and to the folks in my hometown.
My hometown Lu Jiagou has a number of slightly sandy plots, potatoes and such soil, can be said to be interdependent, complementary. The first thing I'd like to say is that I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do this, but I'm sure I'm going to be able to do this, and I'm sure I'm going to be able to do this, and I'm sure I'm going to be able to do this. And I, wherever I go, there must be potatoes on the table.
Shredded potatoes, sliced potatoes, strips of potatoes, potato soup, potatoes stewed beans, potatoes stewed goose, potatoes dried stewed ribs ...... For me and my folks, potatoes as a staple food or cooking ingredients, never get tired of eating, and the pattern of new.
In any case, nowadays potatoes are basically a side dish on the table. In the past, there are not so many ingredients, coupled with the shyness of the folks, can not afford to buy ribs and the like, so most of the potato eating method is simple, simple as the sunrise and sunset days. In my childhood, most of the children's snacks are also based on potatoes.
From just remembering, I lived in my grandma's house. Especially in the winter, the children in the ice and snow are like tiny charcoal fires, so that the biting cold wind are able to sweat profusely. Ice skating, playing ice spindle, every kind of play is so addictive and unforgettable. Kids get hungry when they exercise a lot. That's what happened to me. When I was hungry, I ran back to my grandma's house. When my grandma saw me enter the house, she pulled out a ripe potato from the yellow clay fire pit and handed it to me without waiting for me to say anything. The steaming potato was so hot that I had to pour it back and forth between my two hands in an exaggerated manner. Peel back some of the burnt potato skin, revealing the charred potato, eat in the mouth hot, soft, noodle.
At that time, children could not eat any cookies, bread and so on, so they decided to burn the potatoes, the best food in the world.
Two
For most people, the way to eat potatoes is basically the same. But who has ever eaten the black "potato flour"? Such "flour", once let my folks, elsewhere in the case of starvation and even starvation, to be able to eat, nourish the life.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the payment of rations is a political task, to the time of the payment of rations, the production leader Yang Laobai may not dare to corn, grain, soybeans on the tampering, so the idea of potatoes. Later, my father told me that in the fall of that year, the members of the community were busy harvesting potatoes in the field. There was a man named Zhao, in his thirties, who worked really hard. When he worked, he didn't leave behind any potatoes smaller than his eyes. Yang Laobai, who usually felt pain when he lost a grain, kicked him in the ass. He snatched his head into the ground and stuck his mouth full of dirt. He got up and patted his ass and asked the captain, "Why did you kick me? Yang Laobai said to everyone in a bad mood, you see, this is not purely for our production team to lose face? We are the typical of the whole commune "to grasp the revolution to promote production", the potatoes should be bigger than other places, you pick up such a small one back, if the commune cadres saw, how disgraceful it would be. The first thing you need to do is to get your hands on a new pair of shoes or boots.
They all felt that this was the case, so they didn't think of anything else and threw the ping-pong ball sized potatoes into the ground. 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 the world," he said.
In a flash, it was spring, and the snow had just melted, and it was the time of the year when families were struggling to make ends meet. At this time, the members of the community ran to the ground, to pick up the potatoes thrown down last year. It is also at this time that they understand the real intention of the captain.
In early spring, the fields were very muddy, and the potatoes that had been frozen for a winter became black, and when they were clutched in the hand, they were immediately deformed in the body, and black droplets of water flowed out. This black potato, in the eyes of the folks, is tantamount to a flash of gold.
The practice of frozen beans is very simple, wash the potatoes, dry, make a flour-like, as for what to make, completely by their own imagination. When I was a child, I ate once, as for what flavor now can not remember. From this point of view, it tastes neither good nor bad, so it has not left a special mark in the memory.
Three
The sky at the end of April was so blue that it put all adjectives to shame. The sunlight was like the shoots of grass, suddenly arching out of the ground, fresh and vibrant. The fields around us were steaming, like watchful mothers calling the seeds home.
Lu Jiagou west of the field, is the production team of a row of large potato cellar, there are more than ten. On the outside, these potato cellars and other plots of land are similar to the appearance, just an extra row of cellar mouth blocked with beanstalks, etc. Each potato cellar has a few dozen square meters. Each potato cellar was several dozen square meters in size and four or five meters deep. The men were leveling the ground, and the women were the ones who did the light work of breaking up the potatoes and planting the seeds. Their chatter and laughter, bright, light, like a bird with wings hovering over the village.
At that time, I was only six or seven years old, and a group of children in the potato cellar climbed to jump around, because they had just taken off their coats, their bodies were particularly light, and it seemed to be able to fly.
In winter, the potatoes in the cellar next to the windy place, become a little sweet. Some women and children sometimes eat a bite, crunchy, slightly sweet inside wrapped in the earthy flavor.
Breaking potatoes "planted", simple, but requires patience. Take a knife, according to the layout of the bud eyes, the potato into four or five pieces of uniform size. Nowadays, in my opinion, a potato is like a mother who separates the seeds of her grown men, who need to go to their own homes and go to the ordinary life of the people.
Afterwards, these potato "plants" will settle in the soil. The buds slowly grow roots, wriggling like earthworms, looking for the most stable foundation in the soft soil; upward stem and leaves, to embrace the gesture to meet the sunshine and rain.
More than five months later, it was the potato harvest season. It is a grand festival in Lujiagou, and the community is busy and excited. Yellow and red potatoes (low yield, now rarely planted), like a cohesive flame, illuminating a stooping posture of picking up, illuminating the boundless potato field.
Four
The potatoes returned from the harvest were once again put to use - making vermicelli.
I remember the bungalow on the east side of the production team's yard was the flour mill. The coal fire in the stove of the powder room is very hot, above the large iron pot is a very high temperature of hot water, diffuse water vapor, each face is trance, covered with red, like the first sunrise. Several water tanks next to the stove were filled with clear, cool water. The members of the community will be ground out of the potato starch with water and dilute, add alum, and repeatedly kneaded speculation, so that it is rich in toughness, commonly known as "thickening". When we were kids, we would wander around the flour mill to see the best thing to see was the "leaky flour". Put and good paste of starch into the hanging funnel, forceful powder craftsman squatting behind the stove, with the palm of his hand vigorously beat the starch dough surface, popping sound exceptionally loud, pleasant. The battered starch paste, along the densely packed small round holes of the funnel spoon, and brushed to the bottom of the boiling cauldron. The vermicelli is cooked as soon as it passes through the pot. The people at the side of the cauldron fished out the cooked vermicelli neatly and put them into the big water tank near the cauldron to cool down. Then, with more than two feet long one by one small wooden pole pick up, every two meters or so hit a cut. Only at last do you take it outside to dry.
Children are not interested in the process of making vermicelli, interested in eating the vermicelli just out of the pot. The steaming hot vermicelli, mixed with chili sauce, is definitely a delicacy. Then, break off a piece of wet starch from the "noodle pile" and put it on the lid of the burning stove, and the spread of wet starch becomes a cake, which is chewy to eat.
After eating, the children went to the drying place to play. In the yard, rows and rows of vermicelli, from a distance, like a waterfall is spectacular.
Lujiagou is famous for its vermicelli, and some units in the county drove to buy it. I remember when I was eight or nine years old, once, a unit of the county to load the vermicelli to the car, ready to return. My distant third uncle just wouldn't let go, blocking the front of the car. He complained that Yang Laobai, the captain of the team, had made his own decisions and sold the vermicelli cheaply. The people who bought the vermicelli had to unload the car and leave. Later, when I grew up, I realized that Uncle San was not a calculating person. Understand the reason why he did that time, is the value of the vermicelli and labor.
Five
In recent years, there are people who have the brains to go thousands of miles away from my hometown to collect potatoes and vermicelli, and then to my small town to sell, and gradually become a small town of loud brand. Their prices are directly related to whether the potatoes in their hometown are abundant or poor.
Last year, it was rainy in my hometown, and I was in a distant border town with a cloudy mood. Potatoes do not like rainy, continuous autumn rain to the potatoes are composted in the ground. In those days, I often called my relatives in my hometown to ask about the weather. I seemed to have become a "left behind" young laborer in the countryside. Most of the young people in my hometown had gone out to work, so my phone calls might be able to give some comfort to the older folks. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Because of the potatoes, some people got rich, and some people lost their money.
Recently, my cousin came to the border city to talk about his hometown Wang San. A few years ago, the potato market soared, Wang San was inspired, then boldly made a more profitable thing - cellar storage of potatoes. It is said that he invested more than two hundred thousand yuan, dug more than ten potato cellar. Potato cellar of the big needless to say, the car can drive directly into. Unexpectedly, after the storage of potatoes, it snowed heavily, which was rare in the past years. For several days in a row, the roof of his potato cellar collapsed. The cold wind drilled into the potato cellar, but also into the heart of Wang San. The consequences are imaginable, his idea of selling potatoes at a big price in the spring has become a failure.
In any case, the life of my folks is still inseparable from the potato.
Favorite potatoes, my folks and I treat potatoes like family. Full, sturdy, thick, simple, potatoes in my life exudes the breath of sunshine. I prefer the storage qualities of potatoes, just put them in a bag. However, if you don't have a cellar and they sit outside for a long time, they will sprout due to the relatively high temperature. These shoots are proof that potatoes don't die even when they leave the ground, but keep breathing, and there is always the possibility and hope for life to flourish, until life dries up completely.
My folks and I are also breathing like potatoes, and the roots of our souls are tightly connected to the land. (Vernacular Literary Garden, contributed by Boat Since Heng)