Rural people are no strangers to sorghum.
Perhaps, many, many farmers have planted sorghum with their own hands.
Sorghum, in our rural hometown, is called straw.
In the past, sorghum was grown in almost every household.
The reason is that our place is located in the hills, and there are many mountains and thin lands, and this kind of land, because of the poor watering conditions, in most cases, depends on the weather for food.
Therefore, everyone chooses to grow drought-resistant crops.
In contrast, sorghum is a drought-tolerant crop.
However, in recent years, with the improvement of planting conditions, the high places of the mountains and thin land have also been connected to water, and sorghum is a coarse grain, and the taste is almost poor, and the people who plant sorghum are getting fewer and fewer, and it is rare to see it.
It's a bit of a shame.
Because, sorghum is still very useful.
Even, sorghum is a treasure all over the body, "from head to tail", and even its roots are of high value.
Sorghum rice, needless to say, is a coarse grain with low nutritional value, although the taste is not good, but it is still good as feed.
In addition, friends who like to drink alcohol know that sorghum rice is also a good raw material for brewing.
The ears of sorghum, after the rice is removed, are a good raw material for processing brooms.
In the past, in our hometown, people didn't have to buy brooms at all, they all made them themselves.
In recent years, it has not worked, there is no sorghum planted, there are no raw materials for processing, and you have to spend money to buy brooms.
The stalk of sorghum, which is tall and solid, has a slender shaft, and is also a good building material of great use.
In our place, when people built houses, they used straw to spread on the roof as a material for supporting the roof.
Even now, we build houses in that place, and some people use straw to tie small bundles and spread them underneath for use.
Sorghum rice, sorghum ears and sorghum stalks, from top to bottom, there is no "garbage", and if you look down, it is sorghum roots.
Is there any use for sorghum roots?
In fact, sorghum root is a traditional Chinese herbal medicine, which is recorded in the "Compendium of Materia Medica", and friends can check it out for themselves.
The roots of sorghum grow a little unusually, part of it is exposed to the surface, and it is shaped like a claw, firmly gripping the ground, acting as a strong support to prevent lodging.
The root system that grows underground is very well developed, and the capillary roots can be more than a meter deep, which can fully absorb nutrients and water in the deep soil layer.
Therefore, sorghum is more resistant to drought and barrenness.
The traditional Chinese medicine name of sorghum root, that is, the image and sound, is called clawed dragon.
I remember when I was a child, I drank water boiled with sorghum, and when I drank it, I added brown sugar, which tasted very good.
I still remember that when the sorghum was harvested in the autumn, my mother would dig up some sorghum roots, wash them and dry them, wrap them in a clean cloth and store them.
The mother said, this is a baby, people eat bad stomachs, use it to boil water to drink, it is very effective.
From this point of view, it is not false to say that sorghum is useful all over the body and is a "treasure".
It's just that I don't understand one question, why do people grow less and less of such a good thing?