Season of Sowing Hope

The rice seedlings my mother sowed in the yard before Tet (Lunar New Year) are now growing lush and green, preparing to enter their flowering stage. My mother said that our family planted the rice later than anyone else in the village this year, but after a short time, the rice has caught up with the neighboring fields.

The spring rice seedlings carry the hope for a bountiful harvest.

No longer having to laboriously prepare the soil and enclose the rice seedlings in plastic sheeting during the cold winter days, in recent years, my mother has been using plastic trays to sow the seedlings. This saves time and seeds, and also reduces the hardship of transplanting them to the fields when the seedlings are ready. She fills a small area of ​​the yard with pond mud, then covers the plastic trays with plastic sheeting to protect them from the cold and spring rains. Every day, she checks the seedlings' growth rate and carefully examines for rodent damage. After about 10 days, the seedlings are quite green and healthy, with strong stems and good roots. My mother waits a few more days for the seedlings to mature before transplanting them to the fields. Looking at the fields of the neighboring households, where the early-planted seedlings have already spread their white roots, she feels a little impatient but isn't in too much of a hurry.

My hometown is Thai Nguyen , a midland and mountainous province located in the Northeast region of Vietnam. Each house practically occupies an entire gently sloping hillside, spanning several thousand square meters. The surrounding fields are also cultivated, with some plots higher and others lower, so planting and harvesting still rely primarily on manual labor.

After the first full moon of the lunar month, time flew by, and now it was the second full moon. My mother called to share the good news: the entire rice field was a vibrant green. This year, after planting, the water level was stable, and the weather wasn't bitterly cold, so the seedlings took root very quickly, their green color already flourishing in the warm spring breeze. The small field, only about 2 Northern Vietnamese acres (720 m²), my mother estimated that if the weather was favorable, she could harvest several hundred kilograms of rice, enough to last until the summer-autumn rice crop. She knew it was hard work, but she always said that the rice she grew herself tasted different, and she also had straw to feed the cows. "If the rice harvest is good this year, I'll send you a few dozen kilograms of our local rice so you can see how different it is from the rice in the city," she said excitedly over the phone.

In the rice growing seasons, the winter-spring crop marks the beginning of a new year, so each rice seedling carries the hope for abundance, prosperity, warmth, and good fortune throughout the year. It is a season of hope. The footsteps heading to the fields from the 4th or 5th day of the Lunar New Year also embody this aspiration. Before that, every step, from preparing the land, selecting seeds, sowing seedlings, and transplanting, is meticulously prepared. After transplanting, the seedlings are carefully monitored during their growth stages, with checks for water levels, pests, and harmful insects before applying fertilizer to ensure healthy rice development before heading.

In the gentle spring rains, accompanied by the last chills of the season, the young rice plants are vying to grow, waiting for the day they enter their mature stage, to bear ears of grain before the golden ears heavy with seeds under the scorching summer sun. For farmers, no matter where they are, this age-old wish remains as simple as that.

HAI DUY

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/mua-gieo-hy-vong-post847593.html