Golden Rice Pours Out of Threshing Machine |
Looking at the paddies beyond the congregation of bikes, you will observe colorfully dressed Lao Loum people cutting rice, stacking sheaves of rice that has dried in the field for about a week, and threshing rice. The people are fully clothed for protection from the sun, dust, and irritation of dry plant materials.
Since the rainy season ended about three or four weeks ago the fields are dry and dusty. If the farmers are threshing the rice the air is filled with chaff. To avoid inhaling dust and chaff the farmers typically wrap a soccer jersey around their face leaving just a narrow slot for their eyes. One benefit to the end of the rainy season is that we often have brilliant blue sky now. The combination of brilliant blue sky, yellow straw, golden grain and various color schemes of the worker's clothing presents many interesting photography opportunities.
As Children Watch, Rice Is Threshed In the Field |
To minimize the time that the thresher stays at their paddies, the farmers spread a large fine mesh blue net on a flat piece of round. The rice that had been spread flat out in the paddies to dry in the sun are bundled into sheaves. The sheaves are gathered and transported to the blue net. The sheaves are piled high on top of the blue net. Any rice kernels that separate in the rough handling of the sheaves falls on to the net and at the end of the threshing is bagged. The threshing machine typically has a two man crew. One man sits on the side of the machine behind a cantilevered shelf on the machine. His job is to manually feed the sheaves, that are thrown on to the shelf by the farmers, into the machine. His partner monitors the various exposed belts and pulleys of the threshing machine to ensure smooth operation. The second crewman also repositions the chaff shoot as necessary during the threshing operation as well as monitoring the engine. Together the two man crew sets up and dismantles the machine for transport.
The separated rice grain streams out the end of the threshing machine in a golden flow into 50 kg bags. The filled bags are carried to the edge of the blue net where one of the farmers closes them and ties them off with thin strips of bamboo. Once the threshing is completed, the number of filled bags is tallied and the thresher takes his fee before he sets off to his next appointment.
A Woman Ties Off Filled Bags |
For some people who have too small a crop to afford mechanized threshing, threshing their rice is done the old fashioned way; by hand. When Duang was young she threshed rice by hand with her family.
Threshing Rice The Old Fashioned Way |
The farmer was very skilled in using the device to select a sheave from the pile, secure the selected sheave, lift the sheave high over his head and flail the sheave four to five times against the ground and growing mound of free rice kernels. With a quick movement of his wrists. the farmer released the sheave of straw flying to a growing pile of waste.
A Sheaf of Straw Is Sent Flying |
The Pile of Rice Grows As Spent Sheaf Is Discarded |
Farm Wagon Awaits A Pecious Cargo - Next Year's Food |
The normal 40 minute drive from Tahsang Village to our home in Udonthani ended up taking 3 hours on Sunday. Three great stops to observe the threshing had lengthened the duration of the journey. The time spent to observe and photograph was for me a worthwhile investment to learn and better understand the life of the Lao Loum farmer here in Isaan.
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