22nd September 2007
Almost 5 months since the planting season has passed and this is what the rice crop looks like!
A close up of the rice grains
A last minute decision by the neighbours and Naomi's family on this hot and humid supposedly autumn morning to harvest the rice was made and I jumped in the car and drove 75km from where I live in Tojo to help out! Check out the photos to see how the harvesting is done!
The above picture shows the nifty machine that is used to harvest the rice. It is capable of cutting two rows of rice crops at once. Once each crop is cut at the base the machine then rotates it to its side on a conveyer belt as you can see below which it then somehow threshes the grains one by one placing them into a bag which holds around 25kg of the small grains.
I wasn't able to have a go controlling the machine just in case I destroyed a years supply of rice but I did get to try cutting the crops the old fashioned way by hand! I was pretty much doing what the machine does except I didn't have to thresh the grains off the crop, instead, I collected a few bundles, tied them together ready to be put through the machine manually. It was fun for a while until I realised that it would take a very very long time to harvest the whole crop this way!
After it bucketed down with rain and blew a gale in the afternoon causing us to briefly retire for about 30 minutes, the guy on the machine working his way in from the outside in circles all day harvested the last row of rice! Naomi and carried the last 25kg bag in a wheelbarrow up to where we stacked the other 75 or so bags and wiping off the dripping sweat on our necks the pros came to transport the harvested rice to the rice centre where each grain will be dried and the outside layer peeled off and put into bags which will supply Naomi's family with their staple food for another year! Stay tuned for a photo of the first rice!
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