What season is ploughing?

The busy farming season is generally in spring and autumn. After beginning of spring, spring ploughing began. As the saying goes, "after the festival of fright, there will be more farmland." At this time, spring sorghum, spring millet and spring corn are mainly planted in the field. After the autumn harvest, plow the land to prepare for the next round of autumn sowing. The autumnal equinox is the best time for autumn ploughing, which mainly sows winter wheat.

Farmers cultivate according to 24 solar terms. Twenty-four solar terms: beginning of spring, rain, fright, vernal equinox, Qingming, Grain Rain, Changxia, Xiaoman, Mangzhong, Summer Solstice, Xiaoxia, Daxia, beginning of autumn, Chushu, Bailu, Autumnal Equinox, Cold Dew, First Frost, beginning of winter, Light Snow, Heavy Snow, Winter Solstice, Slight Cold and Severe Cold.

Different solar terms correspond to different seasons of farm work. There are many agricultural proverbs circulating in Sichuan, Chongqing and other places in the southwest, such as: farmers don't understand, they sow seeds when they are surprised; Three servings of sorghum and four servings of vegetables; Planting cotton before Qingming, and planting beans after Qingming; Wheat died in the long summer; In the long summer, Xiaoman was transplanting rice seedlings, busy planting awns, and pregnant in the summer solstice valley; Ten days before autumn, there is no valley, and ten days after autumn, the land is full of yellow fields; Cold dew in the first frost, beans and wheat on the slope, etc. Various time nodes reflecting spring planting and autumn harvest reflect how ancient farmers used the 24 solar terms to realize the beginning and end of various farm work.

In the era without machinery, cultivated land was mainly pulled by animal power. The early animal power was mainly mules and donkeys, and there were fewer horses. Then I used cows. There are two kinds of plows: large plows and one-legged plows. A large plow consists of a large plow frame, a plow column, a plow bottom, a wooden shovel head, a plow handle, a tractor and other wooden objects. One-legged plough is used later than large plough, and it is composed of wooden parts, such as plough frame, plough handle, plough frame and wooden shovel head.