Rice Energy on the Table

Food is life, water is life, air is life and mother earth is life. I'm giving emphasis in food production because among all we need to have life, this is the only one that we need to work, we need to plant to have harvest and it takes a lot of hardship and dedication to make it grow, get good harvest and if possible meet the expected production. Unlike with the water, air and our mother earth, all of them were already given and blessed to us by our creator. All we need to do is to protect them to keep them going naturally good and never abuse them or else all we did to them will come back to us. Nature has its own way of fighting back to human once they are not protected. Eventually we experience these harmful effects like flood, poor water supply, air pollution which bring illness to our body and now the threat of global warming is one of our greatest problem to face in this modern era.

I grow up in the farmland and with a proud heart I would like to share to you how farming, specifically rice production before and how it evolve or improve or changes as time passed by and technology arises.

Planting rice is not easy but can be fun- because as long as you love your work, how hard and hot working in it under the heat of the sun - afterwards you will be happy and contented as it will be done accordingly.

Planting rice usually starts as the rainy days come. Farmers here in our province do it twice a year. Those who have the irrigation which supported their farms are blessed much than those who don't have irrigation, because in rice farming you need plenty of water in order for the rice plant to grow well. Some rice fields rely only in the rainfall they called it " rain-feed-rice field " and start the land preparation.

Before this is how it was done - way back  on the old ways of cultivating the land for its preparation for planting.

The old way of preparing the land - a man plowing the field using the plow pulled by the carabao.

It took a lot of time to finish a certain lot cause you have to stop plowing as the carabao needs some rest and let the carabao bath or swim in the muddy swamp. After an hour of resting, get it back again for work and do the cycle until the land preparation is fully done and ready for planting.

Now plenty of farmers are using the hand tractor machine to plow or cultivate the field and it works more faster then the old way with the use of carabao. They can plow the field at once and be planted with rice right away.

Part of the rice field will be used as nursery where they grow the seeds before it will be transplanted to its prepared area.

When the right age comes, they will pull it out from the seed bed and bundle it up as how it is, being ready for transplanting.

Farmers are now planting the rice - it's not an easy task to do. They usually do it under the heat of the sun and even also under the rain. As I said before, it takes a lot of hardship and dedication for a farmer to succeed in this field of living or livelihood. Sweat flows all over the body but on the other side it gives them also the advantage of losing more calories and staying fit.

Sometimes the silence of their work got broken when someone run over and look like playing (patentero) over the leeches that are chasing them, wanted to bite them. But some who are used to that, they simply and silently kick it off - away from their skin. Leeches suck your blood if they are able to bite you.

Before farmers not used to spray pesticides after planting but now they are obliged to do some spraying with pesticides because of the most common plant destroyers, these snails eat the newly planted (semelya) - they call it (kuhol) - if you don't spray after planting, by the next morning you can't see anymore the plants you planted because they vanish for plants are eaten by these snails.

This kind of snail is edible - some likes to eat but in our area it grows and multiply so fast that people need to kill them because they bring destruction to the rice farming industry. Training in different cooking method has been implemented to encourage the people to eat but in some areas many people don't like to eat - some locals used it to feed their livestock such as pigs and ducks but still the "kuhol" grow so rapidly that all the present alternatives to lessen them, could not eliminate totally in the rice field, not enough to eradicate them in the land. But when the rice grows and the stem gets thicker and stronger the (kuhol) could not attack anymore the plants.

After a week or two the farmer will do the fertilization. Some used the organic fertilizer such as chicken dungs and lime soil or other mixed organic fertilizer as starter and it is followed by the inorganic fertilizer which is now available in the market such as: potassium, urea, phosphorus, nitrogen, and etc.

In about three to four weeks after planting, farmers will start to smile when they see the plants turning color green, looking healthy and growing good.

During this period farmers will do the weeding because if the area is not so clean. Rats will hide and roam around and live and multiply under the weeds. Rats will become harmful to the plants. At this stage of the plants, the rats will eat the stem of these plants. One way to control them is to keep the surrounding clean, no weeds or grasses for them to hide as their habitat.

In some areas, people will like to hunt the rats and cook them and considered them as exotic kind of food because these are edible kind of rats. If you wanna try it for an experience, you can try to eat with them.

Some also used grass mower to clean around the rice fields. This is much faster and easier to do. You only need to hire one or two persons to work for you.

In few weeks time the plant will start to bloom and ready for bearing grains. The farmers will just wait until young grains appear.

As grains start to develop the farmer will put a device which could help those birds shun away from rice fields. They usually use the plastic twines as a trellis and when the wind blows it will create sounds and the birds will fly away cause it's like the tune of human beings who are about to catch them.

These are the flock of birds that will eat rice grains. They can consume large volume if you allow them to stay in the rice field  all the time. This will really affect the expected harvest.

The number of days that rice would reach into that harvest period depends upon the type of variety of rice they planted. Some can be harvested within 11 to 12 weeks and others involve 13 to 16 weeks from the day of transplanting. In this stage, sometimes obstacles to a good harvest is the weather disturbance that may come in an unpredictable moment and situation. The greatest thing to do is to pray and hope this calamity may not come, if its possible. Because if ever typhoons and heavy rains may hit your area it will certainly damage everything you are supposed to harvest in the next few days or weeks. The only thing you can do here is if ever bad weather pointing in your direction you can do immediate harvest but only for those which already reach its minimum age and can be harvested  before bad weather or typhoon hits your area.

If calamity hits, The strong winds that blow down the plants and the heavy rains that flooded the area will give impact to the loss of expected harvest and loss of the capital and profit. It also affects the food security of the family.

When they are able to surmount all the obstacles in farming, harvesting time will come. During this stage, all people around working in the field, will have good smiles in their faces. Even though it is a bit heavy carrying the harvest crop - they could now feel the food security of their family for the next months to come or even for a year. Farmers cut the stalk and filled them and bring to the thresher area.

In older times, farmers will do the threshing manually by their bare foot. It will take a while to finish because sometimes too much on this, it could break out the skin and can causes skin lesions also.

After the manual threshing by barefoot, farmers do the drying and do the winnowing of the grains, segregating the good seeds from the bad seeds you have to wait for what the direction of the wind blows and you will able to sort it out with the use of the wind blows.

Nowadays this kind of thresher is now commonly use by every farmers. Locally they called it "bolhot". It's engine power operated. It's much faster than all the manual ways of threshing. It only consumes less time and save time lightens up the job of every harvester, cause it will automatically sort out the good seeds from the bad seeds. You don't need to do winnowing or waiting for the wind blows. But  the operator has to be careful cause accident may also happen by negligence.

The oldest kind of rice transport a farmer has, is the wooden-carriage pulled by the carabao locally called "balsa". It's made up of the bamboo and some pieces of wood until now some were still using it to transport  wherever they need to be transported.

Those who have hand tractors they put steel carrier connected to the hand tractor, this could carry much heavier things.

Those who have plenty of harvest they are using trucks to transport their harvest from the threshing area towards the drier areas.

There are 2 types of drier systems used by the farmers in drying up the newly harvested rice. After the harvest, the rice needs to be dried because it will turn to be rotten or damaged if it will be left wet in the sack. This type of drier is called solar drier. It's made up of a cemented area or a tarpaulin and it's the heat of the sun used for drying it up and get ready for storage.

This is the other type of drier, known as mechanical drier. It's usually used when they harvest falls on rainy days. It dries the rice grains fast and or it takes shorter time to finish the drying of rice .This mechanical system drier has an amount to be paid compared to the solar drier system which is free of charge. Until this time they prepare to use the solar drier system. Good drying is required to have best quality result of your rice harvest for it produces good quality of grains when being milled and it can be stored for a longer period of time. The best way to preserve the rice harvest is to dry it well.

Several years ago, rice milling were located so far away from the farmers. They have to travel so far to bring the harvest for milling. People this time had no choice but to do it manually. Pounding the rice grains this way (as seen on the picture) to pop up the rice and get ready for cooking.

After pounding the rice grains, you have to winnow to clean and make it ready for cooking.

Rice milling is now available in every places of the farm area. It's already accessible to every farmer. It helps the farmer to bring easily their harvest for milling.

In the countryside or provinces, farmers living near the farmland cook food using the firewood for it's the most economical and easiest way, because firewood is abundant in the place.

Cooking in the rice cooker is the modern way and this is mostly practice all over the world.

Farmers or crop growers are all my inspirations of making this blog. And I want to throw them back my heart felt gratitude of their hard work and effort of helping us bringing food to our tables. How thick our money in the pocket if we don't have food to buy because foods are within the kitchen of every households and then our money becomes worthless, I wish our government will give full support to our farmers and such as giving subsidies to the farmers, or free fertilizers, and for the irrigation owned by the government managed by National Irrigation Administration (NIA) must be at the low cost for the farmers. Cause in our area they are charging high for water supply, and it adds the expenditures of the farmers. And may everyone of us will also support them and give value of their hardship like avoiding food wastage and spoilage and for the businessmen who handle their products in the market that they won't take advantage on them. I hope you enjoy my blog and thanks for your time.

My next topic will be green  leafy vegetables energy on the table.