Pastoral pastoral in Shan Ye
? I remember there was an old cow at home when I was a child. At that time, I was still a child. I don't know anything. I just carried a small red plastic bowl with some cooked broad beans and followed my grandmother to the fields and the mountains to herd cattle. Although I was knocked over by an old cow head or fell into a stream many times at home, I still insisted on sharing delicious broad beans with the old cow head. At that time, I couldn't figure out why the old cow arched when I was so kind to it. I didn't know until I grew up, probably because of the small red plastic bowl I was holding in my hand.
? Sometimes, several children in our village go to herd cattle together. One day in June, at two or three in the afternoon, the sun was still so vicious. We choose a place where there are no crops and abundant grass nearby, and let the cows eat leisurely. For ourselves, choose a ridge or a small slope with our back to the sun and a view of cattle, and tie it up with shrubs that are more than half the height of people. At a distance of a few inches, we knock with stones, insert a few strong branches that have been connected or folded, smooth the weeds on the ground, and then go to other places to get some small shrubs with many branches and leaves and spread them by ourselves. When there are few people, a medium shed is enough. The shed will be bigger when there are many people. Sometimes if you don't want to play together, you can build two more.
At that time, not only did people have sheds for shade and cool, but sometimes we used mineral water bottles to bring water from home, or tied the bottleneck with thatch and put it in a field stream, or dug a hole in the middle of the stream to put it down for ice, and pulled up some grass or branches to cover it.
? When watermelons or melons are ripe, our peeled children will steal two from the mountains, put them on the ice in the stream, and then smash them directly on the ground and share them.
We sit in the shed joking or taking a nap, and occasionally look up at the sun. It is estimated that around four o'clock, we will leave the youngest partner to stay in the shed to watch the cows. Other children will take their sickles and bamboo baskets to cut fish grass or pig grass not far away, and when they come back, they will either take some in their hands or separate some from the baskets and fill them with the baskets of their partners who stayed to see the cows. When hanging honeysuckle branches, we girls never rest and are not afraid of the sun. We use plastic bags or cloth bags to pick flowers in the hot sun. At that time, we were not tall, and the boys would make us a "hook" with long branches, so that we could tear off the honeysuckle vine.
? When the sun sets in the west, smoke gradually rises from the village. We walked behind the cows in Shantian Temple, holding a cow rope and carrying a small basket. "The shepherd boy came back across the cow's back, and the piccolo blew without a cavity." Since ancient times, it seems that cowboys can play the flute, but we can't play without it. However, we will pick the leaves of crops or weeds, roll them up and blow them on our lips. Although it can't be in tune, it is full of fun. There is a small river next to the village entrance. We just need to drive the cow to the river to take a bath, tie the cow rope to a small stump on the river bank and go home for a delicious dinner. The parents of the cows in the river will take them directly into the cowshed when they come back from work.
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Later, I went to study in other places and stopped herding cattle. My grandmother is too old to hold the old cow, and the old cow is too old. My grandmother couldn't bear to be slaughtered and sold it with tears in her eyes.
Nowadays, my hometown is barren and overgrown with weeds. Occasionally, a lonely old cow lies wearily in the Grimer pond in the grass. The uncultivated rice fields were replaced by the primitive way of life cultivated by cattle and rumbling machines. The village is still old and weak, but the old are older and the weak are younger. The mature generation always likes to go out to work and never go home for many years. They think that the benefits brought by land are not as good as a bowl of porridge in cool thin. Perhaps, thousands of years of farming civilization is about to become a strand of homesickness in our souls, becoming more and more faint, more and more ethereal and farther away. ...
In this materialistic and fast-paced life, I am very grateful to the past for giving me such a quiet and beautiful time-herding cattle.