Rice Reaping , Hauling , Threshing , Cleaning and Stacking
While working in rice field, make sure to resume work early so that one can go back home before the sun gets too hot and uncomfortable as is the characteristics of the weather in this season.
Good morning fellow homesteaders.
Today marks the height of our work on the farm here. And as it has been the custom rice 🌾 harvesting work is really so tedious that we often call extra hands to assist us.
In the past we hire labourers and that is usually more expenses for us but now what we often do is to assist each. When Mr A is harvesting his rice, we move into his farm and assist with the threshing and cleaning and when Mr A is done we move into Mr B farm next .
In all the rice harvesting process that involves reaping, hauling , threshing , cleaning and stacking the only one I found easy to do is the reaping here.
So long as your sickle is sharp all you need to do is put it under the rice and cut. The only pain hers is that you have to stay bent over for a long time and ones waist might hurt.
I leave all the hauling and threshing to the older people here. Hauling is packing and arranging the rice on an already sprayed sack on the floor here
Sometimes we have our teenagers come to farm with us on weekend, they engage in the hauling most times since they love walking playing and moving around the farm, that job fits their playing criteria. They pack and arrange the rice as above while playing.
Threshing is done by my father, the men or sometimes women. You need a bit of beating for beating the rice against a surface for the grains to come out.
Like I have said earlier we need an empty drum 🛢️ to beat the rice against but we couldn't get a drum this year. And had to improvise with the use of the stick above.
I don't know how easy it has been for the people threshing because the stick is much lower on the ground compared to the drum that stays a good height away from the ground level.
The final step of harvest is cleaning and stacking
They hold up portions of the rice as high enough and beating it against the wind to remove every dirt therein in which they stack them in bags according to the quantities we can each carry. Yes we carry these home on our heads unless in some days we find cheap transport to help us move the rice but the farm had some river and steep places a car might not be able to pass. Hence we move the rice to the main road first then have car or bike help us move the rice home.
This is just how the work will be going in the farm today.
We have reaper enough rice down for others to be doing the other task and since there is more in the field, I keep reaping more in preparation for another threshing day tomorrow.