Just outside of the municipal hall where I work, there is a court under roof and every single day there are games going on - all day, all male, young and old alike! So, that makes you wonder, right? Why aren't these boys in school? Why aren't these men at work? Yesterday, I counted over 30 guys there... and Im talking serious basketball.... money on the line in most of these games.
So, to turn subjects in stark contrast - it is rice harvesting season here. As Ive learned, farming rice is really really hard work... You can be sure a rice farmer is NOT playing basketball right now! So, as you probably know, rice grows in a rice paddy... and a rice paddy is essentially a field that has been flooded in an inch or two of water. Rice itself resembles grass by the way, but it grows to about 2 feet or so. Anyway, they create the paddy fields by forming these little mud walls around the entire perimeter of the field. Then they contour the height of these fields to create intricate water flow systems - so that water from one paddy is actually (very very) slowing flowing into the adjacent paddy's that are like, 6 inches lower in elevation. Within each paddy, channels are carefully created between each plant in a crosshatch pattern to ensure that the water does not become stagnant. These channels are created by the farmer, who walks in this flooded field row by row. With a crude wooden tool that probably hasn't changed in millennium he does this mini plow thing to the mud below. So a rice paddy is like a gigantic checker board, where each plant is separated from the other by a channel of mud and water.
So that's about all I know about rice paddy design. Now you know too!! As far as planting.... as best I can tell, each rice plant is planted by hand - hard to imagine but Ive seen it. Men and women bent over in the mud planting seedling after seedling. When it comes time to harvest, men carry this large and heavy machine into the field on two poles. then, they pull the rice, run the rice through the machine and separate the plant from the grain. The workers then load the grain into huge sacks, which they carry out of the field on their backs, one sack at a time.
What happens next is interesting.... the rice is wet of course, and there is a covering over the rice itself that is called the chaff. So before they separate the chaff from the grain itself, they need to dry the rice. This happens in the middle of street. Right now, every street in my barangay has a layer of rice over it. First, the men or women must sweep the street... done by hand of course.. then they dump the rice into the street and use handmade rakes to even out the rice over the street.... trucks, cars, motorcycles, bikes pass over the rice... folks walk over the rice... chickens eat the rice... No problem because the protective chaff is still covering the rice grains that you eat.
Ok. next step... once the rice is dry (during this time, you certainly hope that it doesn't rain!) they have to fill those giant bags again... and then cart the bags to the mill where the chaff is separated from the rice grains themselves. I believe this is where the 'sale' occurs and the farmer actually gets to collect his profit from all the hard labor. Industrious folks then take the waste (the chaff) and somehow create charcoal out of this, which they then sell for people to cook with. The rice of course is bagged and sold.
One final step... after harvest, the fields need to be turned over before planting can begin. If he's rich enough, the farmer hitches a water buffalo to a till and then works that buffalo up and down the field - slow and deliberate work indeed. These animals are prized over here because of their obvious strength and the fact that without them... this stage of the effort would be the most grueling of all if done by hand.
So thats the process as I understand it. Hard labor in the serious heat and humidity.
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