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Chapter 13 Digging Sweet Potatoes

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    Just after harvesting the millet, it was getting darker. Neither my sister nor I like this kind of weather very much.  Wanting to go out to play but afraid of sudden rain on the way, the most disappointing.

    After the grandpa collected the millet, he disappeared again. He was always like this.

    "Ren Tao, I'm going out for a while, and you will take care of Lei Danha at home." Grandma's voice came from the door.  "Okay, where are you going, grandma?"

    "Go to Zhangjia, the wind is blowing. It won't rain in this weather. I'll see if I can dig up the sweet potato." After saying that, grandma went out.

    "Zhangjia Fengchui" is a piece of dry land. The so-called dry land is the kind of land that is not usually flooded. Generally speaking, the dry land is about 50 centimeters higher than the field, and the surrounding area is full of fields.  In the middle, lead an area alone.  As for why it is called "Zhangjiafeng Blowing", I guess this should be the place where the old Zhang family used to fly kites. Then the wind was very strong at that time, and people gradually called the kite "Wind Blowing".  So it's Zhang's family wind blowing together, um, it must be like this.

    Zhang's family is as big as two basketball courts. Of course, it is impossible for such a large piece of land to belong to my family.  There are a total of nine families in our yard. In addition, there are several families in the yard below.  The entire dry land is divided into many rows, and each family has its own row.

    The land belonging to our family is in the fifth row, with a width of about three meters and a length of nearly twenty meters by visual inspection.  Every household grows something different.  For example, my family grows sweet potatoes, which are called sweet potatoes in our area, and my father's house next door also grows sweet potatoes.  (Yaodi is the daughter of Grandpa Yao, and Grandpa Yao is my grandfather's younger brother) Then there are two other families that also grow sweet potatoes.  In addition, there are those who grow vegetables such as peppers and eggplants, and those who grow millet and beans. The millet has been harvested, and there are still fresh grain stumps on the ground.

    After staying at home for a while and putting my sister to sleep, I also walked towards "Zhangjiafeng".  Sweet potatoes are quite rare in our area. I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s because of the land or the sweet potato seeds. It¡¯s rare to see sweet potatoes as big as those sold on the street.

    The sweet potatoes on our side are all crazy long vines. The vines are used to feed pigs and chickens, and the sweet potatoes below are relatively small.  Most are the size of an egg, or even the size of a thumb.  Fist-sized ones are hard to find, let alone grapefruit-sized sweet potatoes on the street.

    Digging sweet potatoes is also a very happy thing, so I can't wait to come here.  It's quite lively today, not only grandma is here, but also the grandfather who disappeared, and Yao's father and Yao Nai (Yao's mother) from the house next door are also digging their sweet potatoes at this time.

    "Ren Tao, come to see your grandma digging sweet potatoes," Dad Yao said to me while digging.  "Eat sweet potatoes, we have a lot here"

    "Yao Dad, Yao Nai, you are also digging sweet potatoes." I took the initiative to say hello.

    "Where's your sister? Are you asleep?" Grandma threw the dug up sweet potatoes aside and piled them up in a pile, so that they could be carried back home later.

    "Well, I didn't come out until she fell asleep. Did you dig a big sweet potato?" I ran to the area where the digging hadn't started yet, avoiding the cold sweet potato leaves, and stepped on the dirt, because I have been fond of light since I was a child.  He runs around on his feet, so he is very picky about where he steps.

    "No, they are all so small, look at them," said grandma, pointing to the thumb-sized sweet potatoes on the ground.

    In the distance, grandpa started planting the wheat needed for the next season on the ground where the sweet potatoes had been dug.

    Here we use a bean pestle (a kind of agricultural tool with two handles on the top, which is in an inverted triangle shape, and the tail is connected to something that looks like a paper cup without a bottom. For the time being, it is called a bowl mouth. I don¡¯t know how to call it in Mandarin)  To dig a hole, lift up the bean pestle, hold the handle with both hands, and push down hard. After the bottom mouth of the bowl touches the soft soil, then lift it up again, and a piece of mud in the shape of a paper cup will be placed in the mouth of the bowl.  , A hole in the shape of a paper cup will be formed on the ground, throw a few wheat seeds in the hole, crush the mud just now with your hands, sprinkle it in the hole, cover it with wheat, and plant one.

    I shuttled back and forth between the sweet potato fields, carefully looking for my target, the gap!  Grandma told me that wherever there is a crack in the sweet potato field, there will be sweet potatoes under the crack.  The bigger the split, the bigger the sweet potato.

    Adhering to my grandma's experience, I finally found a relatively large gap after giving up two relatively small gaps, but it was a pity that I got there first.  Beside the crack are all sweet potato skins, and there is still soil left by the mouse's hole, hey, damn the mouse!

    After walking a little further, I finally found a satisfactory gap. I pushed aside the surrounding sweet potato leaves with my hands, took the sickle prepared in advance, and dug up the surrounding soil bit by bit. I only dug about 2 centimeters.  I saw the skin of the sweet potato, whiteof.  I gently scraped away the dirt on it with a knife, exposing most of the surface of the sweet potato, hey, it¡¯s okay, it¡¯s half the size of a fist.

    Happy to dig up the soil around the sweet potato, use the tip of the sickle to gently cut off the stem of the sweet potato, then pinch the sweet potato with the index finger and thumb, pull it hard, and the sweet potato is pulled up by the root.  Pat off the soil on the surface of the sweet potato, blow it with your mouth, raise one hand above your head, shake it as if showing off, and tell grandma loudly: "Grandma, look what a big sweet potato I dug up!"

    "Oh, it's okay, this sweet potato is a bit big." Grandma responded to me with a smile, but the movements of her hands still did not stop.

    Stand up, pat off the mud on your pants, throw the sweet potatoes to the pile of sweet potatoes behind, and continue to move forward, looking for more and bigger sweet potatoes.

    Because of the practice just now, and wanting to really dig out the biggest sweet potato this year, I moved forward step by step, carefully observing the ground on the left and right sides.  There are many sweet potato vines. When I encounter an area where I can¡¯t see the specific situation under the sweet potato leaves, I will squat down, push the sweet potato vines away with both hands, and carefully check whether there are cracks in the area covered under the leaves.

    My eyes kept going back and forth, and I walked forward step by step. I was about to reach the end of the dry land, and I was still not sure where the biggest sweet potato was. Just when I was wondering whether to go back and choose to dig it, I saw a  By the time of the big gap, the dry land had come to an end.

    right here!  At the end of the dry land near the edge of the field, there is a slanted oversized gap of more than ten centimeters. The gap is not only big, but the soil underneath has bulged up very high. The key is to look in from the gap, and you can directly see the inside  Sweet potato skin!  (Remember the site URL: www.hlnovel.com
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