We started the week with some weeding exercise in our groundnut farm, we were able to push that a little and are now heading towards the potatoes farm that also requires some weeding before we retire back into our rice planting and transplanting work.
It has been about three weeks now we have had any drops of rains, I can't remember the exact day of the last rainfall we have had but this is the situation now. There is usually a periodic break in rainfall even during the raining seasons itself but often times we pray and hope that the dryness doesn't affect our crops during any period of rainbreak before the downpour returns.
Sometimes it takes even more than 6weeks and whatever crops is planted at that timing may die off, this phenomenon is what we have locally termed as "August break". The reason for this name is because the rains often cease during that particular month and that has been the experience for years, now that same phenomenon is now being repeated in the month of July in this state where I am now.
When the rain ceases in one state, that doesn't mean that it is not falling in another city or location and due to this, some locations in the country have started harvesting one or two crops based on how early the raining seasons stated there and some of their crops are now ready for harvest.
This is about the third week we have planted these rice and since then it had not rained on it, maybe a little drizzle and that was all. There are both benefits and disadvantage to almost every step taking on the farm. The advantage of having a dry ground like this is how it makes it very easy for us to plant our grains fast, planting is often faster than transplanting and it's safer for us as farm workers. Transplanting is often done when the farm is submerged and dry planted seeds can't survive. The seedlings grown in nursery are them planted in such swamp.
After planting, it is required that the soil stays damp enough to keep the crops alive. These germinating rice plants should hopefully stay alive until the rainfalls resume back again. They can actually die off if the lack of rain lingers but rice plants takes a little more longer period before they start to wither off if the lack of rain lingers.
It's a good thing that the plants have germinated very well and afe currently continuously growing with no challenge.
