Rice Update II

Despite slicing off my finger, Tomoe and I were able to cut and hang most of our rice. This photo is from a week ago and most of the neighbors' fields are already done now (it only takes 1/2 day with a combine). We were busy this past week with customers so we still have one small field left. My first vacation is today but the weather is grim, and now the TV people want us to wait until they can come and film us harvesting (what was supposed to be a two day shoot has turned into a year-long drama). It doesn't matter though, because we have another four-day trip to run starting Monday. It looks like, although we are the first to start harvesting, we will be the last to finish.

One we are done, we have to dry on the rack for at least ten days and then borrow our neighbor's harvester to take the kernels off of the straw. We won't be done rice for at least another two weeks. It may be so much of a scandal that we are not invited to join the harvest festival!

Though it was tempting to plant a field of soba (buckwheat), I am now so glad that we didn't. (photo below is a neighbor's soba field)