time for the harvest

 Kuya is trying to get the rice harvested: in the past we had it cut by hand and used a small thresher to separate the grain, but now we rent a harvester thresher, so have to wait our turn to use it/

We only have a few fields because years ago, land reform forced the sale to those who worked the land an limits the amount of land a person can own. (and no I don't own land: Non citizens cannot own land, houses or businesses here.).

When we first moved here, our employees would take a few days off to help relatives on their farm to cut the grain by hand, and we had a small thresher for our famers and friends to use. Now, however, the owners are often elderly and seeking to sell their land, and the younger ones don't want to do that heavy work, so we rent a harvester/thresher machine for harvest.

Right now, we have to take our turn using it, and today it is cloudy and supposed to rain, so we are postponing the harvest of the second fields to tomorrow. 

In the future I suspect we will also start planting the seedlings by machine instead of by hand.

Traditionallly you prepared the field by flooding and turning it over, and then you planted seedlings. 

You can grow seedlings yourself in pans, or buy them (usually good hybrid rice) from the local rice institute etc.

The winter harvest depended on rain, which was not always available, so you just cast the seeds and hoped it grew. we now irrigate for the second harvest, but this is expensive.

After you cut it, you have to dry it, usually in the sun on a flat surface (roadways are commonly used) or if it rains too much, by the rice dealer which costs money.

the first few minutes of this video show how it is done:

the discussion is about keeping the price of buying rice from local farmers high, because right now with the high price of diesel and fertilizer it is going to be hard to make a profit. There is a narrow line between keeping the price high enough for farmers but low enough for poor people to eat rice... and to complicate things, importers of rice want to import more to make a profit. 

Alas, smuggling cheap rice (and even selling fake rice) is a big problem.

Theoretically, with fertilizer and irrigation, you could just fertilizer, plant seedlings etc. and get three harvests, but so far we still rely on rain for the main harvest.