26 July 2008 - Rice Planting

26 July 2008 Saturday - Rice

It was another hot and humid day today in Isaan. We were off fairly early this morning to Duang's home village of Nongwha by way of public transportation - somlaw and songthaew.

The government today removed some of the tax on gas and diesel to help the people out. Amazingly all gas stations have reduced their prices by 4 Baht per liter.
After arrival in Nongawha and doing the family respects thing, we got the use of Duang's son's pickup truck for the day. I drove over to the rice paddies where her cousins were working. "Cousins" - it seems that in the area just about everyone is a cousin, aunt or uncle. Even on the songthaew out to the village from Kumphawapi, Duang was engaged in a animated conversation with an elderly woman who was carrying her grandchild. I facetiously asked if the elderly woman was a relative. Sure enough the "old momma" was a relative!

Duang's relatives were working some of their land. Rice cultivation is very labor intensive. Almost all the work in this region is still done manually. Water buffalo or small walk behind tractors are used to initially plow the ground but the remainder of the work is by hand.

Rice paddies here are flat diked areas of land about 100 feet by 100 feet. The plots are surrounded by eighteen to twenty four inch high earthen berms. The soil is a very heavy clay so the impounded areas collect and retain rain water. Since it is now the monsoon season, there is rain at some period of the day, usually late afternoon, everyday.

Rice seed is first sown in a small prepared flooded area by a hand broadcast method. The rice grows within the flooded paddy in a thick green carpet much like grass - which it is. When the young rice is about 18 inches to 24 inches high, it is harvested for transplanting. Yesterday and I imagine tomorrow as well as the day after; Duang's relatives were harvesting the young plants for transplanting them to other paddies.

Under the hot glaring sun, the farmers wade into the flooded nursery paddy and pull up the young rice plants by hand in oppressive humidity. The plants are pulled out of the mud with one hand and carried in the other hand. When a sufficient amount of plants have been gathered, the accumulated bunch of water and mud dripping stalks are dipped in the water and rapped against the farmer's upraised foot to remove excess mud from the roots. The bundle is then laid flat on the ground for the next step. The workers pulling up the stalks develop a rhythm to their activity and it becomes choreography of economic body motions.

While some of the farmers are extracting plants from the ground, others are collecting the flat bunches from the ground. The bunches are then individually tamped against the bottom of an overturned plastic tub to further remove excess mud and to square off the bottom of the bunch. The bunch is then tied into a sheaf and placed vertically in a cleared portion of the nursery pad awaiting transplanting into a newly prepared paddy.

In an adjacent paddy, a man uses a self propelled mechanical buffalo to plow a paddy. The mechanical buffalo is a diesel powered two wheeled tractor about 20 HP. The wheels are about three foot diameter metal paddlewheels that are able to traverse the muddy paddy.

In a previously plowed area, another man is using a hoe to further process the soil for planting.

To be continued ...