The rice grains are completely dried now, even though harvest started in late October where the farmers who planted their rice before us have begun to bag their grains home.
Ours is just about to start .
The Rain stopped Abruptly in the Second week of OCTOBER and just like the typical weather elements we weren't aware that it was the last rain for the year. The stoppage of the rain made the thick and full rice hulles to dry up faster and today they are fully ripe and ready for harvest.
Our preparation for harvest mostly includes looking for labourers that will join us in the harvest
Preparation of all the necessary working tools, our sickle, knives, and the Sack to spay in the field.
Just like you should know that this is a manual harvest.
The rice grains are fully dried while a look at this pictures shows that some of the leaves are still fresh. It is a good counsel to harvest the rice at this stage. Rice grains do not get bad in storage like other grains and there is no need for sun drying unless we have earlier harvested when there was still water in the swamp.
Allowing the rice leaves to go completely dry during harvest will create extra work for us at harvest because the dried leaves become mixed with the harvest and we begin to look for the best possible means to separate them so that only the clean grains with no rice leaves debri get packed in bags for storage. There are no Mechanical machines here for harvest hence we look for the best method/practice and time to do this instead of creating more uneccessary work for ourselves.
All images are mine