22 November 2008 - Threshing Rice

Threshing Rice
Saturday 22 November 2008

After Friday night's excitement at the hospital, we got a late start to Tahsang Village on Saturday morning. Rather than me driving Duang out to the village, her son and his girlfriend decided to join us.

We made our customary stop in Kumphawapi to pick up some leaves and twigs (Lao food), and some prepared foods for lunch. Food for 8 to 10 people cost less than $10 USD.

As we approached Tahsang Village we passed one of Duang's cousin's farm. There was a huge pile on rice sheaves stacked on a blue plastic net. At least 8 cousins, uncles, aunts, and friends were busy feeding the sheaves into a truck mounted threshing machine. It was a great scene - brillant blue sky, golden stalks of rice, colorful clothes - with chaff flying everywhere.

Duang realized immediately that I wanted to photograph the ongoing work. She was hungry, and since I am not especially fond of Kao Lao (Lao Food) I was not keen on eating lunch with the gang. She said that after she got out to eat with her family in Tahsang, I could take the truck back to photograph the workers. It was such a lovely day that I decided to walk the short ways back to work site.

I returned to the sight alone and started taking the first of what ended being a total of 547 photographs for the day. Although it was not a hot day, by the end of our visit, both Duang and I were tired. When we are out in the field shooting, there is a great deal of physical activity - squatting, bending, stooping, and walking, as well as mental concentration. Duang at her insistence carries my camera backpack - about 20 pounds (10 KG). From our many shoots, she has developed a very good sense for what I want to do next. Between the two of us changing lenses or adding a flash is accomplished quickly and effortlessly.

Today some of her relatives were threshing the rice. Duang remembers in the past she and others would separate the rice kernels from the stalks by beating them on the ground. That portion of rice processing has gotten easier but not necessarily easy. After the rice stalks have been cut by hand using sickles, the cut stalks lay in the sun to dry for three days. After three days the stalks are gathered by hand and made into sheaves using some longer stalks to bind the bundles together. The sheaves are loaded by hand into the back of the tuk-tuk farm truck and driven to the point where the machine threshing will take place. At the appointed place, a large fine meshed blue net is staked to the ground. The tuk tuk truck loads of sheaves are unloaded by hand on to the net. A huge pile of sheaves is created with the net covered with rice kernels that have separated due to the transportation and handling of the sheaves to create the piles. The fine mesh of the net allows these kernels to be recovered and not wasted.

A tuk-tuk farm truck with a mechanical thresher mounted on the back bed drives up onto one side of the blue net. The truck is situated between the stack of sheaves and the location where the pile of straw will be created. Today the pile of straw was created right next to the roofed crib where the straw is stored for feeding the cattle. Little effort will be required to relocate the new straw to under the protection of the roofed crib.

The threshing machine is powered by a separate small diesel engine. An operator sits on an elevated seat that cantilevers off of the side of the machine. Off to the operator's right side is a shelf that feeds the sheaves into the threshing drum. Most of the workers occupy themselves with feeding the belching thresher. They gather the sheaves and throw them up to another worker who is standing on a pile of sheaves to better access the feeding of the threshing machine. The sheaves go into one end of the drum. Straw is shot high into the air out of a duct at the far end of the machine. A screw feeder ejects the rice kernels out of a nozzle at the end of the drum below the shelf where the sheaves were fed into the machine.

Young boys were busy filling sacks with the rice that was ejected by the machine. The sacks held about 65 pounds (30 KG) of rice. Older and stronger men would carry the filled sacks to a storage area where another worker would close and tie the sacks. The machine owner's son kept busy by periodically filling the engine's small fuel tank with fuel from a plastic 2 liter jug - sort of like the large plastic bottles of orange juice from Costco or some other warehouse outlet in America.

When in operation the process was quite the sight to see and hear. There was no muffler on the thresher. The air was punctuated with the ebb and flow of the engine reacting to the loads of straw. The straw was shot high into the air, arcing, and fell into an ever growing pile except for the straw that was picked up in mid-air and blown around. From underneath the shade a tree at the edge of the work sight, two young toddlers filled the air with the sounds of their playing. Their grandmother watched over them and guarded the ice water and soft drinks for the workers. From the rice paddy located about 10 feet lower than the threshing sight, cowbells jingled as four head of cattle intently grazed on the straw remaining from a previously harvested rice paddy.

Past the grazing cattle, Duang's sister and four other people were harvesting rice. To their left another group of 5 people were harvesting rice from adjacent paddy. This scene was repeated all over the countryside - threshing and harvesting the current rice crop all around Isaan.
Duang and I walked down the hillside from the threshing area to visit and photograph her sister and brother-in-law harvesting their rice. The walk was rather difficult and presented challenges as well as risks. The rice paddies are bounded by narrow raised clay dikes. The dikes are used to impound water on the planted rice. In addition the dikes are used to control the water level in and amongst the paddies. The levels are controlled by cutting slots into the dikes.

Now that the fields have been growing since July, the dikes are overgrown with vegetation. The control slots as well as other types of ankle twisting hazards are hidden beneath a heavy mat of grasses and shrubs. Travelling across the rice paddies presents even more tripping hazards beneath the matted flat stalks. All this required a focus and careful selection of where to place your feet to avoid twisting an ankle or falling down. This was tiring.

We visited both groups of harvesters and returned back to the threshing sight - just as operations were wrapping up.

After all the sheaves had been threshed, the owner of the machine collected his payment. In this case it was four sacks of rice. The discharge duct was dismantled and the unit drove off to the next place where their services were needed.

The remaining filled sacks of rice were again loaded by hand on to the tuk-tuk farm truck. Once the truck was filled, several workers climbed up and sat on top of the stacked bags. With two people in front and 3 to 6 atop the load, the tuk-tuk farm trucks set out putt putting down the country road towards home. Upon arriving at home, the rice sacks were offloaded by hand into the rice barn. Rice barns are small heavy constructed elevated wood structures set atop concrete piles. The rice barns are about 10 foot by 10 foot by 8 foot. They are about 6 to 8 feet off of the ground with corrugated metal roof. The rice is stored in the barn for seven months prior to milling where the husk is removed from the kernel to create the rice that we are familiar in purchasing at the supermarket.

Duang surprised me by driving the truck from Tahsang Village to the work sight. She has been learning to drive and the farm roads are lightly travelled so there was minimum risk - to her as well as others.

With Saturday's photos, I now have the cycle of rice cultivation completed from planting to storage in the rice barn. A portion of the life cycle and rhythm of Isaan life in photographs. I am pleased but then again I am usually pleased.