The Lu family is located in the easternmost part of the village, with the mountain behind it. There is a mountain spring converging into a stream running through the backyard behind the mountain. The closest Mrs. Li's house is also fifty or sixty meters away. So the yard at home is extraordinarily spacious. At this time, four square flat bamboo mats are spread in the flat yard, and the collected rice is placed on them for drying.
This year's harvest is very good. After the rice is dried, restaurants in the town come to buy it. Every year, the Lu family only saves nearly 2,000 catties of rice for their own consumption, and sells the rest for money.
It's a pity that the land in this area is not suitable for growing soybeans. After trying for a year, Miao Cuilan used the soybeans grown at home to make tofu. The taste and color of the yuba were not as good as the beans bought, so she had to give up her plan to use part of the rice fields to grow soybeans.
This day was the last day of harvesting. When Lu Zhong came back in the evening, he took a dumpling of rice field dirt that looked like a small ball bigger than the mouth of a rice bowl.
When the three children saw their father, they rushed forward, shouting. Lu Xiaoshu raised his head and blinked, looking curiously at the mud ball in his father's hand and asked, "Father, what is this?" Dao dad rejuvenated? Childlike innocence? Is this going to be fired into small balls for the sisters to play with? Uh, earth balls made of clay, are you forbidden to kick them...
"I know, I know!" Lu Qi's eyes lit up, and he said, "It's a loach inside! Dad brought the loach back!"
"Where is it! I want to see it too!" Lu Xiaoshu became curious, and tiptoed to break Lu Zhong's hand.
When Xiaoxue heard her yelling, she also yelled, "Look!"
Lu Zhong smiled and said "Good boy" and told Lu Qi: "Get half a basin of water in a basin!"
Lu Qi likes to do this kind of thing the most, and said "Okay" in a crisp voice, and went happily. After a while, he came over with a tin basin half filled with water, put the basin on the ground, and looked attentively. Said: "Father, the water is coming!"
Lu Zhong squatted down, and the three dolls squatted down one by one. The father, son, father and daughter surrounded the basin in the middle, which looked very interesting from a distance.
Lu Zhong broke open the loach in his hand, took out a loach from inside and put it into the basin. Lu Xiaoshu suddenly realized that there were a lot of loaches in the rice fields, and his father caught them in the field for a while and there was nothing around him to hold them. Loaches have the characteristic of drilling in the mud, so his father used the mud balls as a tool to hold the loaches.
"Father, I'll come, I'll come!" Lu Qi quickly stretched out his hand and asked his father for half a clay ball.
Lu Zhong handed it to him, and Lu Xiaoshu also found it interesting and stretched out his hand eagerly: "I want it too!"
"Be careful, don't get mud on your clothes, and be careful, your mother will scold you." Lu Zhong always loves children, and when he sees that she is curious and wants to play, he gives them to her, and then asks Xiaoxue, "Do you want it?"
Xiaoxue held her chin with her white and slender hands, and laughed happily when she saw the loaches being pulled out of the mud by her brother and put them into the water. She heard her father asking herself, looked at the dirty mud, and then looked at herself With his little hand, he shook his head and said, "No, I'm afraid it will get dirty."
Lu Zhong chuckled and let her go.
Lu Qi and Lu Xiaoshu didn't care if it was dirty or not. The siblings had a great time playing, until they pulled out all the loaches and put them in the basin.
Lu Qi reached out to stir the basin, raised his head and said, "Father, I also want to go to the fields to catch loaches, can you take us there?"
"Okay, okay, Dad, I want to go too, I want to go too!" Lu Xiaoshu immediately cheered, impatiently.
Lu Xiaoxue looked at her elder brother, then at her second younger sister, and said coquettishly, "I'll go too, I'll be watching from the side."
Lu Zhong was amused immediately, and smiled at Lu Xiaoshu: "Little girl, you are only a little older, and you are also as naughty as your brother. See how clean your sister is."
"Father, dad, I'm very careful, and I'm clean too! Take us there!" Lu Xiaoshu hurriedly said.
Lu Qi saw the second sister acting like a baby and hurried to help out, the two brothers and sisters were grinding each other with each other as "father".
"I said you guys are in a meeting, what the hell are you doing? Why don't you drive me away after the chickens come in and steal the grain!" Miao Cuilan came out of the house, and saw the four of you squatting on the ground in a circle Angry and funny.
Lu Zhong hurriedly smiled and asked his children to get up, took the water basin and said, "Play in the yard obediently and help watch the millet not let the chickens come and eat it. Dad will change the water to raise the loach. After it is clean, fry it for the night." You eat."
Lu Xiaoshu happily agreed, then moved a small bench and sat under the eaves of the porch, waving a long bamboo pole tied with a few strands of rags to catch the chickens.
After all, Lu Zhong couldn't hold back a few little guys, and within two days the house was not so busy, so he took a bucket and a small shovel to dig loach in the rice field.
The mud in the field where the rice had just been harvested was still very wet, and the remaining straws were almost half a foot long.
Arriving at the edge of the field, Xiaoxue glanced down at her embroidered shoes standing on the ridge of the field and refused to take another step forward. Lu Xiaoshu and Lu Qi couldn't wait to take off their shoes and socks, rolled up their trouser legs, and stepped on the field. , The silver-gray fertile soil spread over the ankles, wet and soft, and every time a footprint was stepped on, the two brothers and sisters couldn't help giggling.
As soon as I entered the field, the problem came again. Lu Zhong only brought a small shovel. After stepping on the mud for a while, the brother and sister suddenly realized the situation and grabbed it by coincidence. This one said: "Give it to me." The other said: "I'll do it!" Both of them grabbed the shovel and refused to let it go.
"Brother is bad!" Lu Xiaoshu's small arms and legs are Lu Qi's opponents? But she has never played such a fun thing in her previous life, so why would she let it go when she sees something to play with? The little mouth made a gesture of crying.
Lu Zhong couldn't help crying and laughing when he saw that her puny little person was also robbing her brother. After all, he felt sorry for his daughter more, so he coughed and put on a strict father's expression: "Ah Qi, sir, how can I teach you?" Yes, you are a brother, how can you bully your sister?"
"That's right!" Lu Xiaoshu was very happy to see his father standing on his side, and snatched the small shovel over.
Lu Qi had no choice but to let go reluctantly after muttering twice, feeling very depressed in his heart. Xin Dao went to school for no benefit at all, every day is so boring, there are more reasons for parents to teach...
Lu Xiaoshu took a small shovel and began to bend down and dig the mud happily. Xiaoxue stood on tiptoe on the field ridge, stretched her neck and watched eagerly, and shouted: "Second Sister, Second Sister, is there, is there? !"
How could Lu Xiaoshu say no? Then he nodded indiscriminately and agreed: "Yes, yes! I'll show it to you later!"
Provoking a "giggle" smile from Lu Qi, she pouted at him and continued to work hard.
"Good girl, you are not good at digging loaches," Lu Zhong came over with a smile when he saw this. The harvested rice had about half a foot of roots, so he grasped the mud and pulled it out, revealing a big hole, then he pulled Lu Xiaoshu to point and smiled, "Look at the place with the hole, There are loaches below, you dig there and have a look.”
"Okay, Dad!" Lu Xiaoshu immediately nodded with a smile on his face after receiving the instruction, and dug down the loach hole with a small shovel.
Lu Qi saw it on the side, and also followed suit by pulling up a stubble of grass roots. When he saw a loach hole, he didn't need a small shovel, and just used his fingers to pick it up. There was no water in the field long ago, but the soil was very soft, which did not affect his five-claw skills at all.
"Wow, what a big loach! Dad, I caught it!" After a while, Lu Qi shouted excitedly.
Lu Xiaoshu also looked at him, and sure enough a fat loach was swinging back and forth on his muddy hand. Seeing his brother grinning at him as if intending to demonstrate, Lu Xiaoshu was very depressed. In addition, Xiaoxue also clapped her little hands on the field ridge and shouted: "I see, I see, brother is really amazing!" Lu Xiaoshu became even more depressed.
"Father will give you this, I don't want this, I want to use my hands!" After all, Lu Xiaoshu is small and weak, he can barely swing a small shovel a few times in his hand, and then he is powerless to follow up. She stuffed the small shovel into her father's hand, staggered to her brother's side and said with a smile, "Brother, brother, I'll help you!"
"You're going to make trouble!" Lu Qi said unhappily, and snorted a little, apparently quite concerned about what happened just now.
Lu Xiaoshu is very self-conscious as a family, so how can he care about his brother's face? Then he went to pull his clothes with a smile, saying "brother" on the left and "acting like a baby" on the right. Seeing her smiling and fawning, Lu Qi immediately lost his temper, so the adults, forgetting the villain's fault, gave her a loach hole, and the two brothers and sisters happily dug it out together.
"Be careful, you dirty your clothes and go back and get scolded!" Lu Zhong shook his head and smiled when he saw it, then let them play here, and went to check the canal by himself.
Lu Qi and Lu Xiaoshu agreed a couple of times indiscriminately, then got busy with high spirits, setting off crop after crop of grass roots. The ecological environment in this ancient time was good. Farmyard manure and plant ash were used for farming, and there was no pesticide or chemical fertilizer. Therefore, the loaches in this rice field could reproduce freely without any harm at all, and there were so many of them. Raising a crop of grass roots will not be useless, and some even have several loach holes underneath.
Of course, there are also some loaches that drill deeper, and the two guys dug their entire little hands in but failed to get the cave owner out; The deeper I drilled, the more I escaped, but in general, the rewards were quite substantial.
There are also places where the soil is slightly tight, and the roots naturally grow firmly. Lu Qi tried his best to pull it out like a carrot, but Lu Xiaoshu also helped to pull it out.
The two brothers and sisters are also idiots. There are many grass roots in the rice fields, but when they encounter a stubble and refuse to pull it out, they refuse to let go. Unable to hold back, Qi Qi sat back and was covered in wet mud. The two looked at each other, but Xiaoxue on the field ridge couldn't help giggling.