Rice is Nice (1)

Rice is the foundation of most people's diet in this area, and I am fairly certain in most of the Philippines.  In the last posting, I began with a similar statement about FISH.  There's not a contradiction, as these two ingredients certainly make up a large portion of the volume, and the calorie content, of the traditional eating-habit here.The largest-volume item is rice; followed by cooked greens and vegetables (carrots, squash, potato, eggplant), fish, local fruits (papaya,banana,coconut, pineapple, mango and many not heard of in the USA), and on "special" occasions chicken, pork or beef.  There are a fair number of possible ingredients, but it is the rice which "holds it all together."
   As I begin to write this on a Monday, it appears that a large portion of our activities this week will be concerned with producing rice on TWO field locations which we are currently trying to farm.  Today, a group of 17 "hired hands" is gathering and transplanting seedling rice in the field-area we recently acquired use of, as it is now strong enough to allow for this - a "routine" task which distributes the rice evenly and efficiently in the field, as simple  "seed-scattering" could not do.  Bernadette and one niece have spent most of the morning preparing the large meal for the crew, which was taken to them around Noon.  And on Wednesday we are scheduled to cut and thresh the rice from our farm property which was planted in mid-July.
   The plowing and planting I wrote of in "Filipino Pharm," which  was posted about four issues back at the end of July. Here, I hope to describe the rest of the rice-process from harvesting and threshing through drying and machine-polishing.

Just after morning break time, the workers are heading back into the

fields; the bundling, moving, and transplanting of the seedlings to cover

the field evenly is pretty much the same as described in my earlier posting.

The difference between locations is that this "flat-land" field is a much

larger space, and receives enough water through the year so that it

can produce three rice crops.  The "Farm" can produce one crop of rice,

and then another crop of vegetables, etc. which don't require flooding.

"Meanwhile, back at the house . . ." the kitchen crew prepares the

lunch meal.  A large iron re-bar "trivet" makes it possible to put

fire under pots which are 3- to 4- gallon or larger.

During the workers' afternoon break, Bernadette tried her hand at
planting some seedlings for a few minutes.  She said she used to do
it for pay, but  the last time was 1973 or 1974.  Each seedling
is about 12- inches long, and has about a dozen grasslike blades.
The purpose of the transplanting is to distribute the rice plants evenly
on about 6- to 8- inch spread pattern, where they will grow strongly
and produce the maximum amount of grain.  We had an excess of
"scatter seeded" transplants, even though the portion of the field
they grew was quite small - scatter seeding places them too closely.
This crop should now mature in 90 days - about Jan. 20, 2014.
 
The mark of a rice field worker is gray-brown "knee socks."  They
wash off pretty easily.

Brief refresher: Use the archive-list (if you have an extra minute) at the upper-right of the page, to take a quick look at  the "Pharm" posting from the end of July.

  This photo is about 2 or 3 weeks  after the transplanting which I
featured in "Pharm," and the rice is growing and filling in nicely.  The
Passion-fruit in the foreground are tennis- ball sized.
 
The same place 3 weeks later; the water bottle is a 12 ounce, so the
rice is about 24- inches.  For another 6 to 8 weeks it will grow thicker
and set its grain heads, until this week, late in October - HARVEST!

This is not a pharmacy - - more like a "farmacy." We would like to grow

"all natural heritage type" rice,but it will take us a while to "wiggle over" in

that direction.  Almost EVERYTHING grown here is some type of high-

performance hybrid, which requires fairly intense and specific chemical

feeding (fertilizer) and insect-protection.  This short shelf in the a local

Ag- supply store is just a little sample of what may be needed to farm.

The crop looked pretty good on harvest morning.  The leaf in the
center of this photo was 3/4 inch wide, to give you an idea of sizes.
The 6- to 8- inch seed heads are considered "good" if they have
upwards of 200 grains; two that we counted were 267 and 300+.

The harvesters are each given an area of field to cut, and work their

way across in arm's-length swaths.  The rice knife is like a smallish

sickle, about 9-inches, slightly larger than a dinner plate. 

 Each  armload is cut a few inches below the seedheads, and laid in a
row to be easy to pick up and move the the threshing area.

By lunch-time, the harvesting is done and each reaper has moved his

cut rice to the threshing area; each worker's pile is separate, and the

amount each one cut will be used to figure out the "shares" he gets

.The arrival of the thresher is not unlike the Ark of the Covenant - it
is carried by poles, on shoulders.  Before the cover is put in place,
the working parts are displayed.  Rice stalks are pushed in on the far-
right side;  the long "comb teeth" rotating will grab and force them through
the "grills" below, also moving them to the left.  Just above the pulley, there
are flat paddles rotating which throw the lightweight stalks up and out the
discharge chute, lower left.  Grain and husks drop out the bottom.

To the right, and down from, the pulley in the previous photo, this

full- width housing holds a three-paddle blower which spins rapidly

providing a lot of "wind" to blow stalks and chaff out of the machine.

The 12- horsepower heavy diesel engine arrives in the same manner

as the machine's cabinet.  It will be installed in about 5 minutes.  The

heavy fly-wheel visible is about like a 50- pound barbell weight; its

spinning momentum helps the engine to crush its way through the stalks.

(MENTAL NOTE: I have some ideas of using a 16- inch pulley to

cast a cement flywheel, to help power pedal- or- treadle machines like

grain mills, scroll saws, meat grinders, etc.)

Set up and running, the crew rapidly pushes stalks through the "works."

The blur in the upper right corner is stalks being thrown 30-  to 50-

feet beyond the machine.

Heavier grains fall directly below the machine.  Grain with excessive
straw and husk is blown further away, under where the hoe is. Some
difference in color is noticeable - more greenish grain has more chaff in it.

It takes a hoe-man, a basket-man and two baggers to keep up with
the flow of the best, heaviest grain.
 
 (Not shown:) On the fringes of the threshing mat the "cull" rice (lighter-weight husk-
laden grains) was picked up (gleaned) by several people. They and their families will
put this in water, skimming off whatever doesn't settle to the bottom; the heavier
grains that settle will be dried and processed.  Much effort produces at least a little
rice for them to eat.

After the threshing and bagging came a part of the process I wasn't expecting -

so I learned something new!  The thresher crew had also brought a 4- horsepower

large-blade fan and this "tipi" style platform and sieve.  Only the best grain threshed

was passed up to the platform to be dumped through the sieve and winnowed one

more time.  This assures that the final raw rice grain - called "palay" -  has

the highest possible percentage of actual usable rice in it.

This shows the fan blowing most of the remaining "chaff" from the rice

which will be stored and dried for final polishing.  At the edge of the

winnowing mat there was more gleaning, and later when the mat was

rolled up the area was thoroughly picked over. It makes sense that
THIS rice would have higher quality "culls" than the earlier threshed rice.

ANY conventional farm tractor is a surprise to see around here.  This one

was used to bring all the threshing equipment out to us.  The driver named

the manufacturer - three initials that I didn't "get" - but explained that the

maker is Isuzu.  Except for minor details it is very similar to the 1960s

Massey Ferguson I had the last several years in Kentucky.

The driver made a very nice reverse-three-point turnaround, and off
they went.  When we left a short time later we found the crew setting
up to thresh again about 300 m.  down the road from us.

I'll save the drying and polishing of the rice for some other time.  I've cut a few photos from the above and condensed what I wrote, and I'm hoping that it is still clear and understandable.  As things turned out, "nice-looking seed-heads" isn't the determining factor for a crop of rice (fourth photo after "refresher", above).  They also need to have solid, mature grain kernels in them.  Despite our efforts, a combination of insect damage and immature kernels caused our net harvest to be one-third to one-half less than it might have been.  So this time the rice cropping process was an educational experience, and we learned several things which may come in handy to know as we continue small- farming.  We "wholesaled" the freshly harvested palay rice the following day, as the amount of labor and time to sun-dry it and the cost of having it machine-polished didn't seem worthwhile to us, for this time around.  Another time, a different crop, maybe different results.

The next issue may have views of some other occupations I've seen nearby.  I've also found a few "misplaced" photos of some aspects of earlier topics, which I'll post from time to time.

Meantime, we hope you all have a great weekend!

Tim and Bernadette Larson,  Philippines