Rice harvest

At the weekend Mr and Mrs A harvested most of the rice growing behind our house. You can see here that the grains had ripened and changed colour and that the stalks were bowed with their weight. And in the background you can see our house :-)


All the water from the rice fields has gone now but the ground is still very soft. The rice was harvested using a little combine on caterpillar tracks. It cuts the rice stalks and separates the grain from the straw.

And here it is in action! The rice grains go straight into sacks to be taken away and dried in some kind of drying machine. After that they are polished completely to produce white rice, or partially for brown rice.

Meanwhile Mrs A was cutting the corners of the next field by hand, so that the combine could turn.

Here are her nice little bundles of rice.

Traditionally the rice is cut by hand and then hung from wooden frames to dry. There are still quite a few of those drying frames about so if I see some I'll take some pictures for you...