Hello October!

When she was a little girl, every October, farmers harvested their crops - the most important crop of the year. The rice stalks survived a stormy season, then came the time to bloom, ripening to a golden yellow to repay people. Deep fields could only grow two main crops, the winter-spring crop and the summer-autumn crop, but in the highlands, people grew short-term rice to have a winter crop, called the early season. Kohlrabi, cabbage, sweet potatoes, potatoes... followed the carts and the heavy footsteps of the heavy baskets returning home. "The October days are dark before they smile", so people lit the lamps at 3am to eat rice and then went to the fields to pick potatoes and harvest rice.

In October, the frost was so thick that it felt like she could scoop it up with her hat. The little girl put her hat on her head and sat on the buffalo's back, following her mother to the field. Sweat poured from early morning until late at night, but in the garden, in the field, and on the beach, there was always laughter. The joy of a good harvest was evident on every face, in the chirping greetings and the calls to each other throughout the field. In the deep fields, the harvest season came but the water was still up to the rice stalks. People often joined forces of two or three households to harvest quickly. Small boats were pulled behind the harvesters to drop the heavy rice stalks. The flock of ducks foraging in the fields was very bold, often waiting for the moment when the mother twisted the straw and dropped the newly harvested rice to jump in to fight for food, making the rice messy. The mother pulled up the straw and threw it into the middle of the flock of ducks, but they only dispersed for a moment before gathering again, foraging behind the mother, looking for crabs, snails, and fighting to snatch the rice stalks the mother had just dropped.

In the fields that had been harvested a few days ago, the stubble had grown lush and green. The herd of buffalo and cows leisurely licked the young stubble with their tongues, not paying any attention to the storks that were calmly perched and pecking at the bloody red flies clinging to their rumps and backs. The water was too deep to wade into the fields, so the little girl had to wander along the banks, chasing grasshoppers and locusts and picking up the crabs and snails that her mother had caught and throwing them onto the banks. The children herding the buffaloes, seeing the “bait”, immediately ran to gather dry stubble and pile it on the furrows to grill the crabs and snails. The shiny black, plump snails sizzled in the stubble fire and gradually cooked. The smell of stubble smoke, the smell of grilled crabs and snails, the smell of buffalo and cow dung and the smell of mud, in short, the smell of the fields seeped into every vein, every fiber of her flesh, every strand of her hair and nourished her to grow up day by day. Harvest meals are quickly eaten on the rice fields with fried shrimp, kohlrabi or fragrant stir-fried cabbage, and after the meal, there is dessert of boiled corn or some sweet sugarcane. That is why the harvest is important, and that is why joy and happiness are also there.

Years passed. The girl was now a retired cadre. Her mother no longer waded in the fields because of her old age and because the fields had given way to new projects. Generations of young people and even middle-aged people flocked to the city to find work. The young buffalo herders were no longer as numerous as before. In the fields, there were only a few buffaloes and cows lying and chewing their cud on the concreted fields. The fields were dotted with production workshops interspersed with potato and rice fields. Every morning and afternoon, there were curling smoke curls rising from the fields, but it was not the fragrant smoke from grilled crabs and snails of the past. There were no more quick lunches on the fields or the cheers of the women to dispel their fatigue. The girl - the retired cadre tore the calendar page and sighed.

Hello October!

Spirituality

Source: https://baodongnai.com.vn/van-hoa/dieu-gian-di/202510/thang-muoi-oi-057092d/