Annual Ceremony

Chapter 28 Grain in Ear (Part )

Orange racked his brains and thought carefully, and felt that he still had hope - after all, he was not an ordinary cat, but a cat that traveled through time!
As a cat that traveled through time, it should be reasonable for Qianqian to live for a hundred years, right?
Maybe it can even provide for Zhenyi's old age and allow her to wear mourning clothes.

When the orange thought about it, it was no longer discouraged and decided to take good care of itself and practice.

Orange climbed up the persimmon tree, jumped onto the roof, and began to practice seriously, absorbing the essence of the heaven, earth, sun and moon while sleeping.

While dozing off, the kitten's nose moved, and its shattered whiskers trembled slightly, and it smelled the harvest scent of wheat that was about to mature in the air.

When the Grain in Ear season comes, the heavy ears of wheat bend.

When Zhenyi went to the private school early in the morning, she saw that the fields were full of farmers busy harvesting wheat.

Zhenyi thought of Bai Juyi's poem: Farmers have few idle months, and people are twice as busy in May. The south wind rises at night, and the wheat fields are covered with yellow.

The most feared thing during the wheat harvest season is continuous rain, so the wheat must be harvested quickly while the weather is sunny and there can be no delay. There is an agricultural proverb that goes "Strive for days in spring and strive for time in summer."

The Wang family also had two acres of wheat fields to work with. Mother Zhuo cooked rice before dawn, kept it warm on the grate, and took Qisheng and Taoer to the fields early in the morning to harvest the wheat.

Wang Jie also took his servant to the fields to help. Mother Zhuo was unwilling to let Wang Jie get involved in farm work - how could a man who was going to take the imperial examination do such rough work with servants like them? Go away, go back to the room and study.

Wang Jie went out this time to hone himself seriously. He had been studying hard for these years and didn't care about anything. He couldn't even be a good person. How could he be an official in the future? If he didn't know the people's livelihood, how could he live and govern the country?

Besides, farming and studying have always been part of life, and now that the family situation is different from before, he should do his best to share some of the burden.

Seeing that he insisted and the old lady did not object, Mother Zhuo did not want to stop him, so she put a wet towel on Wang Jie's head to protect him from the sun and to wipe his sweat.

But when Wang Jie bent down to cut wheat, the sweat towel would slip off. Seeing Wang Jie repeatedly raising his hands to hold it, the towel would often come loose after being tied, making him flustered. Qisheng reminded him in a muffled voice: "Second Master, you must learn to do this from me!"

Wang Jie turned his head to look, and saw Qisheng biting the two corners of the sweat towel in his mouth, which was just enough to tie it tightly.

Wang Jie did as he was told and felt deeply moved. Although it was a small thing, it also showed that many details of wisdom often only appear in experienced people.

After the wheat harvest, Wang Jie was tanned, and his arms and calves were covered with tiny scratches left by the wheat awns.

A villager saw this and laughed and teased Wang Jie: "People always say that when the wheat harvest comes, the farmers are busy and the embroiderers go out of their rooms! But this time it's the scholar who goes out of his room!"

While harvesting wheat, the threshing floor must be threshed. The wheat can only be brought in after the ground has been rolled solid and flat with a stone roller. The wheat is then repeatedly threshed with a stone roller until the wheat grains are removed from the ears and husks.

It is not the end yet. The wheat straw that has been ground into a thin, smooth and shiny layer needs to be forked into a pile, and the wheat needs to be winnowed and hulled with a wooden shovel.

The summer breeze is the best helper in the threshing field. It blows the wheat against the wind, and the heavy grains fall to the ground. The light wheat husk fragments will be blown away by the wind and separated from the grains.

Qisheng was in charge of winnowing the wheat. Seeing the wheat grains piled higher and higher, with the grains sliding and splashing all around, Juzi also took care to help gather the wheat grains at the edge, digging them diligently with his two front paws.

When Tao'er saw this, she screamed, "Juzi! You can't use the food pile to bury your shit!"

Orange was so angry that his eyes went dark, but Taoer didn't give him any chance to speak and forcibly dragged Orange away and put him on the cart.

The orange on the cart withdrew its hand angrily and watched Taoer busying herself - everyone's name is Guozi, but Taoer didn't trust it at all.

Summer winds help winnow grain, but they can also easily bring dark clouds. Summer rains come quickly, and as the sun is hidden, the wind gradually becomes damp. The grain fields are bustling with activity, with Tao'er and Wang Jie fighting for the bag opening, and Qisheng and Zhuo Mama shoveling and loading grain.

Zhenyi came back from the private school, and Chen Ningtian followed her as usual. From afar, they saw people busy loading grain in the threshing ground, so they ran over to help.

With more people working together, work progresses faster. Everyone hurriedly packed the grain. Mother Zhuo gathered the last handful of grain with her palm, blew away the dust from her palm, and put it into the sack.

Raindrops as big as beans fell down.

"It's raining, it's raining!" Barefoot children ran and cheered. A sudden cool rain in the summer always makes children inexplicably excited.

The adults were not in such a good mood. Some of them had not yet finished loading the grain. Wang Jie asked Qisheng and Taoer to help, while he and Zhuo Mama loaded the grain bags onto the cart. Zhenyi, Chen Ningtian and the Chen family's maid also helped to carry the food.

Mother Zhuo pushed the cart and hurried home.

Zhenyi picked up Orange, who didn't like rain, and ran after him.

Wang Jie followed the cart, holding the grain bags on it, and walked very fast. The next moment, he felt the raindrops above his head suddenly disappear and his vision became dark. He turned around and saw Chen Ningtian following him with an umbrella.

“…Don’t let the food get wet!” Seeing him looking over, Chen Ningtian quickly moved the umbrella to his side, and walked in the rain while saying, “You worked so hard to collect this!”

The young lady from an official family who had never worked in the fields might not have valued and cherished a few bags of grain so much, just because he was the one who collected them.

The summer raindrops hitting the oil-paper umbrella make a light sound, and it seems like drops of rain hitting the young man's heart.

The raindrops were wrapped in wheat husks and dust, creating a mist of rain and giving off the unique earthy scent of a rainy day in summer. Zhenyi and Orange both liked this smell.

The rain came quickly and went away quickly, and the sky cleared up again the next day.

At this time, the watermelon is ripe. If you tap it with your index finger, you can hear a popping sound. As soon as the tip of the knife makes a small cut, the whole watermelon will impatiently crack open with a "click", revealing the crispy and crunchy flesh and the refreshing and sweet watermelon aroma.

In the evening, under the starry night sky, in the Wang family courtyard, Zhenyi's family ate melons and drank tea under the grape trellis.

The sliced ​​watermelons were placed on the stone table. The sweetness attracted flies. Oranges jumped onto the stone table to drive away these uninvited guests.

Watermelon is cool in nature, so Zhenyi did not allow her grandfather, who had not yet fully recovered from his cough, to eat too much. Wang Zhefu also listened to his granddaughter and only ate one piece before leaning back in the rattan chair and drinking tea slowly.

Zhenyi sat aside while chewing a melon, looking up at the stars and the moon with her grandfather.

Tao'er fetched some cool well water and brought it in a copper basin, and Zhenyi washed her hands and face.

The next day, after receiving instructions from her grandmother, Zhenyi went to her home in Jinling to write a letter. After writing what her grandmother had told her, Zhenyi also asked about her mother and Jingyi, and finally asked her father for a good prescription to cure her cough.

Throughout the evenings of the Grain in Ear season, Zhenyi ate watermelon by the grape trellis and watched the stars with her grandfather and talked about celestial phenomena.

When the bunches of small grapes hanging on the grape racks begin to turn purple in skin, and you pick one and taste it, and it finally tastes sweet instead of being so sour that makes you look distorted, the summer solstice has arrived.

　Second update, second update.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)