Clearing exercise was the major work we did at the farm yesterday
And this is how work on the farm yesterday went. We have gone to transplant rice as usual but we're unable to do so as the grasses within the farm hasn't been withered off completely. We have applied a non selective herbicides to this farm but even weeding of grasses with herbicides is not a 100% guaranteed exercise. Some of the grasses will not die off and if you transplant your seedlings among them in this manner, it will end up choking the seedlings.
You can see through here how that some of the grasses have completely withered off while some are very much green and not affected.
Now before we can transplant any seedlings here, we are meant to cultivate the land and the manner in which the field for planting rice is being cultivated is somehow different from how the land is cultivated if it is for planting corn or any other kind of food.
In fact there are different methods for cultivation of the land.
There is one they normally do for the planting of yams, the other type is the one they carry out for the planting of corn and legumes while yet another one I know is the one for planting or transplanting of rice.
For the method being used for transplanting of rice, all they do here is to turn the land over and bury the grasses. When this happens all the grasses that are not dead here will die off as soon as the land is turned over.
We normally have some young labourers boys who engage in this. They often help out with turning the land manually using hoes but recently we have had a lot of this young people withdraw themselves from farming, no body wants to engage in such hard labour anymore and there are no tractors nearby that could be of assistance.
Since help is not showing up with this exercise we have to device how we can transplant our seedlings in a more clearer field where they will be unaffected by any of these grasses while they grow up.
So rather than transplanting rice yesterday we were here clearing and uprooting all the grasses that are very much alive so that we can continue with our transplanting by today.
The weather is drizzling rain already and maybe it is about to disrupt our morning activities.
