Greetings!
Today, I am happy to share with the community what I am currently doing on our rice farm. This is actually my first post on Agricultural Mindset. I am excited to share with the community some of the work that I have done in the past couple of days, it is not finished yet though, also, I will be sharing a short video of me while I am doing a visual checkup of our rice farm/rice crops.
Digging an Irrigation Canal
A few weeks ago, when I am irrigating our rice crops I realized that I need an irrigation canal to make the flow of water faster from one section of our rice field to another. I started digging a couple of days ago as can be seen in the gif image below.
There is actually an irrigation canal in this section of our rice field but when one of our relatives decided to build a road a few years ago the canal was covered with soil, gravel, sand, and stones used to build the road. The road was built when I am not the one managing our rice farm. The road is where I am standing while I am digging.
Digging an irrigation canal at the side of the road is quite daunting because I hit a lot of large stones whenever I use my pickaxe. If I only going to dig on soil I am sure I am going to finish in just a couple of days. After initially digging I realized that I don't have to rush digging because the canal will be used next rice farming season which starts in November and December later this year.
Also, I realized that I don't have to dig every morning or every afternoon because the sunshine is quite hot even if the majority of the day of this season is mostly cloudy and with light to heavy rains. With that being said, I am just going to dig every afternoon at 5:00 o'clock.
Aside from the pickaxe, I also used a shovel to move the soil that I dug. Digging wet soil with clay and stones is actually a lot harder than digging soil that is mostly composed of clay. Check out the gif image below large stones can be seen near the shovel.
When I started digging the road is quite wet as can be seen in the image below. Patches of water are visible on the top left of the image. Digging wet soil is messy because a lot of sticky soil will be stuck on whatever kind of footwear that you are wearing (I am wearing rain boots while I am digging). When wet soil got stuck on my boots it makes the boots heavier which is kind of annoying whenever I move.
Below is a snap of the canal that I dug. Water began to flow from the adjacent section of our rice field.
Visual Checkup of Our Rice Farm / Rice Crops (with corresponding short videos)
July 2, 2022, is the day when our rice seedlings were transplanted into our rice field. From then on, every morning, it is my SOP to visit the newly transplanted rice seedlings. Visiting it every morning is a must because it is the time when they are very vulnerable to "Golden Apple Snail" or "Golden Kuhol" as we local farmers call them. By the way, below is a photo of the left section of our rice farm.
I sprayed a molluscicide one day before transplanting the seedlings but there are still a few Golden Apple Snails that are left alive. Those that are left alive will eat the young and newly transplanted rice seedlings. My job will be to spray molluscicides on those that are left alive and then replace the rice seedlings that they have eaten. Below is a photo of the right section of our rice farm. And that dog on the right side is our beloved dog named Chu-o.
Here is the video that I recorded just this morning. I apologize because the video is not edited and pardon my voice and my grammar because I am very nervous while I am recording the video. Also, in the video, I said Saturday, when I should be saying Wednesday.
Close Up of our Rice Crops (with a short video)
In the afternoon, I took some video close-ups of our rice crops (which I originally planned in the morning). Today is July 20, 2022, so, our rice crops are now "19 days old" (if you include July 2). Below are some screenshots that I took on the video that I recorded.
And here is the video close-ups of our rice crops that I recorded just this afternoon.
That is all for now guys, catch you up with the next one. Wishing you all safety, good health, and abundance.
