The funeral for Joy's father was Sunday, and held at their farm so that family could visit: instead of only a few let inside, they could sit outside under trees or in the gazebo, with proper spacing.
She is now home again, but mourning and exhausted.
Kuya has been busy at the rice harvest: first it was delayed due to the rain then they had to wait in line to rent the harvester/thresher and then the rented harvester thresher broke down and needed to be fixed. But it is working again so he is back at the farm.
We do have our own thresher and the alternative is to harvest by hand and put the rice bundles in the thresher, which is what we did in the past, but it is a lot more work. And on the very wet fields, hey, the thresher could be pulled into the field by the water buffalo instead of pulling it with our jeep.
In the past, people would come home to help their relatives harvest the rice by hand (I remember one elderly lady bragging she still was strong enough to help in the harvest). But as the younger folks move to the city and the farmers are aging or work under contract, it means fewer people to do this, and so machine harvesting is much more efficient.
The next step will be planting rice seedlings using a machine also.
We get two crops a year, but if you fertilize well and plant seedlings, we could get three crops a year, as they do in VietNam and other rice growing countries.
The next time you hear the rich elites and stupid kids insisting we get rid of petroleum products, just remember that farm machinery needs petroleum run machinery, as does non organic fertilizer.
Since we get a lot of our electricity via hydro electric plants, switching to electric vehicles might be cost effective (they are tyring to do this for Jeepneys in Manila) but the higher price means it will mean small and poor farms won't be able to afford these things.
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