Another Rice Harvest

Harvesting Rice Outside of Tahsang Village

Our rains. in Isaan, ceased about three weeks ago.  The rice paddies that only a month ago were covered with standing water are now parched.  The rice plants that a month ago was a vibrant green a month ago has been transformed under the hot sun into straw with heavy drooping heads of rice kernels.  Another growing season has concluded and the time is here once again to harvest the rice.

As you drive along the highways, country roads, and dirt trails of Isaan you will come upon many locations where people heavily clothed and in anonymity under large hats along with tee shirt masks are stooped over cutting the rice stalks.

We have been travelling the highways and roads a great deal lately due to Duang having to care for her father either in the Kumphawapi Hospital or at his home in Tahsang Village.  I bring her out and her cousin returns her to our home in the evening.  As the youngest daughter, Duang has a great deal of responsibility for taking care of her father - it is the way things are in the ethnic Lao culture.  Fortunately her sister and two brothers help out so Duang does not have to spend nights away from home and gets a break during the early morning.  I use our trips out to Kumphawapi and Tahsang Village to reconnoiter locations for photography on my return trip.

Along the the highways and byways you will come upon places where motorbikes, farm wagons, and sometimes even bicycles are parked - a sure tip off that harvesting is going on in the nearby fields.

In other locations you can see people working in the adjacent fields sometimes with little more than their broad brimmed straw hats visible above the standing rice plants.

In addition to the rice harvest, people are also occupied planting sugar cane while others are harvesting reeds that are used to weave sahts.

There is much more work related to the rice harvest than going out into the dry paddies and cutting the stalks.  After the rice has been cut, the stalks are laid out in the paddy to dry out further in the sun.  After drying the individual stalks are gathered up and bundled into sheaves - several stalks held together at their base by using a couple rice plants as string to tie them.  After the rice in a paddy has been bundled into sheaves, the sheaves have to be gathered and brought to a central location.

At the central location the sheaves are either loaded on to a farm truck or placed on blue plastic netting.  The sheaves that are placed on the plastic netting will be threshed either by hand or by a truck mounted threshing machine at that location.  The sheaves that are loaded on the farm truck will be transported another location for threshing.

Loading Sun Dried Rice Into Fertilizer Bags

As part of the threshing process, the rice kernels are placed in recycled fertilizer bags - 50 kg (110 pounds).  If the rice is sufficiently dry, the bags of rice are put inside of raised granaries in the yards of the farmers.  If the rice is not sufficiently dry after threshing, which appears to be the case this year, the rice is spread out once again on the blue plastic netting in front yards, backyards, side yards, parking lots, vacant lots, and even on Wat grounds to dry another 3 or 4 days in the sun.  After the rice is dry enough it is placed back into the fertilizer bags for long term storage.

Around Tahsang Village I often find myself amongst family members.  As I approach the good natured shouting and laughing start.  The family is well aware of my passion to learn and photograph their culture.  They seem to enjoy my efforts and will often call Duang to inform her of "interesting" things that they will be doing the next day or day after.

My efforts to photograph ethnic life here in Isaan is not limited to people that I am familiar with or even restricted to the times that Duang is with me.  I venture out on my own when Duang's family obligations prevent her from coming with me.  I often find myself photographing total strangers. 

Like the family members the people have no objections to be observed and photographed.  They seem to be as interested in me as I am of them.  I suspect they may find our interactions as entertaining as I do.

I hope that they learn a little about American culture from me as I learn more of their culture.  Some how with my limited Thai, their limited English, and a great deal of pantomime we are able to communicate on issues such as rice farming in America, working in America, and ordinary life in America.

I do not discuss Thai politics.  I know about "Red Shirts" and "Yellow Shirts" but I laughingly tell them foreigners are "Blue Shirts".  I am a guest here and good guests do not interfere in their host's affairs.  I tell the people that I just want whoever is in power to let me stay.  That ends, with a good laugh, any further attempts to discuss local politics.  Like it is often said here "Good for you. good for me"

Threshing Time

Golden Rice Pours Out of Threshing Machine

Driving along the country roads of Isaan this and last week, you will see many activities in the parched golden rice paddies.  The first indication of what may be ahead as you travel is three to five motorbikes parked along the paved road or just off of the road.

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 thresh the rice the farmers contact a person who has a truck mounted threshing machine.  The truck mounted threshing machine go from paddy to paddy all day long with the emphasis on speed.  The farmers typically compensate the owner of the thresher with a share of the resulting rice.  Typically the fee for threshing is one 50kg bag of rice for every 20 bags threshed.  For 100 bags threshed the fee is typically 4 bags.

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

The farmers then load up the remaining bags of rice on to farm wagons or trucks to be transported to their home.  The bags are offloaded and placed in elevated small storage sheds next to their house.  Eventually most of the rice will be taken to a miller to remove the husk but that is subject of a blog to be written soon.

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

Just outside of Tahsang Village I came upon a man and his wife threshing rice by hand.  I found it very interesting so I stopped to learn about it and to photograph it.  Just as with the farmers who were using a mechanized thresher, these farmers had laid out a blue net and placed their sheaves upon it.  The man used two pieces of bamboo that had cotton rope which connected them together - sort of like "nunchucks".  Two pieces of bamboo connected with cotton string?  I had seen that once before!!  It was during the event that I documented in my blog entry, "Two Funerals and an Excorcism", that I saw young village men using smaller versions of this device to capture the "Phii Ling" (Monkey Ghosts) that had infested their village. http://www.hale-worldphotography.blogspot.com/2011/01/two-funerals-and-excorcism.html  Life can be seen as a serious of isolated events much like the pages of a coloring book with a collection numbered dots.  I still find great satisfaction and joy in being able to connect today's dots to see the depth and magic in current events just as the child connects the numbered dots to discover a hidden picture.  Coloring the ensuing revelation, or in my case photographing it, only adds to the wonder.  Last week's connections of the Royal Barges to the paintings at the Grand Palace and further back to the Thai Epic, "The Ramakian" is another example.

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.

A Good Harvest

Saturday, 21 November, was the completion of the family rice harvest.


Cutting the ripe rice had taken three days of many family members in the heat and under the glaring sun. Four rhai, 1.58 acres of rice had been completely cut using only sickles. After laying in the sun for three days to further dry out, the cut stalks were bundled into sheaves using stalks to bind the sheaf together. Many of the sheaves had been gathered the previous day and transported to a central location of the paddy to create a large mound atop a fine mesh blue plastic mat. The mat captures for storage any rice kernels that fall off the stalks due to handling of the sheaves. It is surprising how much rice separates from the straw just through manual handling. The family are subsistence farmers so there is a great deal of motivation to minimize waste. The harvested crop will feed the family for the next year. Although there was a large mound awaiting the arrival of the threshing machine, there remained many sheaves scattered about the paddies.

The first task of the day, was to gather up the scattered sheaves and transport them to the large mound. Workers gathered up the dried sheaves from the field and tossed them up to another worker who stacked them up in the back of the farm truck. Once the farm truck was filled it brought the sheaves to the big mound where they were off loaded by hand.




The family uses the services of a local man who owns a rice thresher. The man is from Tahsang Village which was fortunate. The family field could be accessed using dirt roads through the sugar cane and rice fields rather than on the public highway. The threshing machine was mounted on the back of a pick up truck frame. It appeared to me that the vehicle could have been a 1957 Chevy. The vehicle was handed painted blue and I would not be surprised to determine that the paint was largely holding it together. There were no doors on the truck and the interior was completely gutted with wires, and remnants of fabric. I did not see any registration plates on the truck, or an inspection sticker on the windshield.


The man with the threshing machine does not get paid in cash for his services. He charges 4% for threshing a crop. For every 100 50 KG bags of rice product, he receives 4 bags of rice in payment. This may explain the dilapidated condition of his transport vehicle. The actual threshing machine was in better condition so once the machine got to the field, there were no problems or concerns. The Thresher goes from paddy to paddy, by appointment, each day threshing the rice of his neighbors. At the end of each day he returns home in his rig with his bags of rice payment stacked around his machine. On a typical day, he earns 8 bags in payment. Each bag is 110 pounds, 50 kilos, of rice and is sufficient to feed an Isaan family of four for two months.

The thresher eventually showed up at the paddy and was set up on top of the blue mat next to the large mat. The thresher is set over the mat to capture any spillage of rice from the process. Family workers took their work stations and the process was ready to commence. The owner of the threshing machine took his place on a small seat that protruded from the side of the thresher. In front of his station was a flat shelf that served to feed the sheaves into the thresher. With his hands the owner ensured a smooth and constant flow of material into the thresher. Workers atop the sheave mound threw sheaves down to other workers who through a combination of tossing and placing got a constant stream of sheaves on to the feed shelf. A chute located on the opposite side of the threshing drum forcibly ejected the waste straw, dust, and dirt off to the side to create a large pile of straw that will be used for animal feed. The afternoon winds blew the debris everywhere. To get the sun at my back to ensure better photographs I was often in the vicinity of the debris stream. When I changed locations for different perspectives, I was surrounded by straw cast about by the winds. The workers were also in the predicament - just a part of the job. Immediately upon returning home, I was banished to the shower to wash away the dust and straw that I had accumulated over 4 hours of watching and photographing the threshing operations.

At the end of the threshing drum, a screw conveyor ejected the rice. Other workers manned this station to fill the grain bags. Local hardware stores sell the bags for 6 baht each $0.18 USD each. Many of the bags have advertising on them for fertilizer as well as grains. These bags are apparently surplus, rejects, or recycled from others. Little is allowed to be wasted here in Isaan. The heavy flow of rice from the thresher filled the bags rather quickly and constantly. There was a choreography of motion to ensure that the bags were completely filled, removed from the discharge chute, and a new empty bag put into position to be filled without wasting rice as the machine continually shot out rice.

Several workers shuttled back and forth from the threshing machine to an area where the filled bags were being stored and sealed. One worker ensured that the filled bags were placed neatly and vertically in neat rows. He twisted the tops of the bags closed and tied them off with bamboo strips. The bamboo straps for tying the bags had been cut and shaved from local groves.

As the sun came close to setting, the threshing was completed. For the 4 rhai (1.58 acres) of land that had been planted in July, 38 bags of rice had been produced. The yield ended up being 2,645 pounds per acre - well below the United States average yield of 7,039 pounds per acre - a testament to the poor soil in Isaan as well as the lack of applying fertilizers. When the rice seed was first sowed, fertilizer was hand broadcast lightly - the first and only time that fertilizer was used. I have tried four times to grow some vegetables and herbs at our home - I have failed every time. The closest to any degree of success was squash which did at least sprout!

The thresher was paid one bag for his services. Thirty six bags were transported back to Tahsang Village to be stored in the raised rice shed at Duang's parent's house. Two bags will be reserved for seed to be used next July. The remaining 35 bags will be milled in about two months and used to feed the family and others over the next year.

The family will have plenty of rice for morning, noon, and night for the next year, so despite the low productivity when compared to United States standards, this year's harvest was a good harvest.

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.