Thai Wheat

I really need to catch up on the numerous blogs that I planned to write before my holiday. There are two posts specifically that I wanted to write about - rice and water reservoirs. Interesting, huh?

Here at Legacy, teachers eat meals with the students. This means that our diet consists largely of RICE! (Personally, I do not eat breakfast with students - simple toast, jam, and tea suffices for me at that time!) Instead of the vast quantity of bread we eat in the West (and that I am extremely fond of!) Thailand has various kinds of rice to round out their dishes. Not only is rice important for meals in Thailand, but it's also important for the economy. Thailand is the number one exporter of rice (however, China is the number one producer).

For such an important thing, I really didn't know much about it. This year, though, we had a small amount of rice at the farm, so I was able to watch the process and help a little with the harvesting. I took some pictures to walk you through the process. At our farm we did dry rice, meaning that it was grown in a field instead of a rice paddy. I had hoped to have pictures of all the steps from planting to table, but our rice is not going to be eaten - it will be used for seed. I also missed the part where they beat the rice stalks - I think that would have been fun!

Rice in October.

The rice ready to harvest in November.

The rice field.

Cutting the rice and putting it in sheaves to dry.

Close-up: Cutting the rice.

Shaking the rice about three days later to get grass and other debris out.

Pile of rice from the field.

Rice out to dry so they can be saved as seeds.

Posted by: Aj. Erika