October

October is the dry month, the biggest rice harvest of the year for farmers. October is the month when I follow my parents to the fields to harvest rice. My parents harvest, and I catch fish.

Oh, I miss the plump green budgies so much, but the wooden budgies with their dry straw-colored wings, silvery white, are also plump and round. When the last stubble in the field is cut down, there is no place to hide, they frantically turn their clumsy bodies to find a place to hide, but it is only a futile effort. I wonder what they eat when the rice in the field is dry, the stalks are dry, the leaves are dry, but they are still so plump?

I remember October because I used to cut rice, do all these things during the harvest season when I was twenty. The sickle was twice as big as the cutting sickle. The curve was as wide as the beak of a Giang bird. When the rice was cut into rows on the dry, cracked field, the cutter began to work. The left hand lifted the mound of rice, the right hand held the sickle, the rice was gathered into a bundle held against the left foot. At this time, the sickle was pushed down, pulled up with a swipe and the rice was in the hand. Every three hands could cut a large bundle.

In October, no one’s left leg had any hair left because of the friction with the stubble, and all the leg hair was torn off. My thin skin was still rubbed, red, and my ankles looked like the necks of fighting cocks. I can’t forget the days when I worked as a rice cutter. At the age of twenty, I returned home with a sore back and cartilage, lying down all night before feeling better. In October, after a day in the fields, at night, every family would arrange rice in a circle in the front yard and then stand inside to lead the four buffaloes to tread the rice. If you wanted a buffalo to tread the rice, you had to borrow it the day before. Children like me were assigned to be on duty, holding a basket in your lap covered with straw, ready to catch the manure. After a day of eating and drinking, while treading the rice, the buffalo would often stand up and poop when they needed to. You had to quickly carry the basket to catch the manure so it wouldn’t fall on the rice.

Threshing rice on moonlit nights is still fun. If it is the first day of the month, you have to light a three-string lantern hanging in front of the door to get the dim light to control the buffalo and pick the straw later. Luckily, the October rice crop is not as prone to rain as the May rice crop. After threshing the rice, the next day is the day for my mother and sister to rake and pick up all the debris, leaving only the rice grains on the yard. They have to dry in the sun for a few more days, when the grains are crispy when bitten, it is done. That is when the straw is piled up and the rice is put in the barn. The process sounds simple, but one year I heard my mother complain, this harvest was exposed to the west wind, the rice was rotten, many grains were broken, the rice was not delicious. At that time, I did not understand why it was like that, what kind of west wind blew and when. There are some farming experiences that I still do not understand.

In October, a month after the harvest, plowing begins, the soil is turned over and dried under the dry sun for about a month, the water in the soil evaporates, the soil dries out. During that time, every household prepares for the Lunar New Year. After the New Year, water is poured into the fields. When the soil is dry, the soil becomes rotten wherever the water goes. Just a few harrows are enough to soften the soil and spread it with compost and green manure before watering. In October, sometimes after the harvest, a few households take advantage of the plowing, quickly making ridges and planting a few acres of short-season sweet potatoes, both to get green vegetables to eat, to get some more tubers and to improve the soil's color. But at that time, few households did it, for reasons unknown, but it may have been because the farmers at that time were less proactive.

My hometown, Ban Ngoai, has two winter-spring rice crops a year. But the winter-spring rice crop is short-lived, often having to be harvested in the rain, and the fields are muddy, not as exciting as the harvest of the summer-spring rice crop. For me, remembering my hometown means remembering October, remembering the harvest season and waiting for the most joyful traditional banh chung festival of the year!

Source: https://daidoanket.vn/thang-muoi-10294433.html