29th Oct – 4th day at farm, harvesting day

Yeh, no weeding today. In fact, today was an interesting day, cause we were doing harvesting!! After lunch, Yuhei-san said we shall go to harvest if it didn’t rain. I was hoping so much it would not rain. There was still an hour to go. Took some pictures of the spiders around. There were spiders everywhere here; outside the house, inside the house, even right at the top of the electric cables on the streets! And they are huge!!! The colourful body made them very eerie. After a short rest, it was time, and off we went to the fields. Fortunately in this modern day, we already had machine to do it, and it was cool. The machine separated the grain from the stem and stored it in a compartment, which you can release a handle to pour them out to the grain bag. The remains of the stem will be discharged at the bottom of the machine. However, sometimes the machine is not perfect too, and we had to pick up some left over using the manual way, that is to slice the paddy plant using your hand! Imagine those days when farmers have to do it manually for all. Before we could use the machine, I had to cut away any wild plants with hard branches that may break the machine. We finished off one patch and moved on to another field, nearby, which was muddier. Yuhei-san then left a small patch for me to do it manually. Perfect spot with water almost reaching the top of my boots. It was tough to walk in the mud, and then Yuhei-san advised to walk on the stem instead, and it worked very well! Occasionally, we had to stop the machine in order to fill up the grain bags and carry them to the lorry. Eventually, we were done with 14 bags and I thought I heard Yuhei-san said he was very happy. In the lorry, I asked if today was a good harvest. He said not really. This year was not a good year because there were too many weed. Perhaps, today exceeded his expectation. Then, Yuhei-san surprised me with a question!! He asked me how did I found agriculture. I said tough but harvesting was interesting. Cutting the paddy plant gave you the self satisfaction. He said farming is tough and dirty work. He told me his dad was a not a farmer but he wanted to because he love natures and wanted to be with the nature, and wanted to eat something. Couldn’t catch his last sentence, but I supposed he meant to eat his own food. These farmers don’t eat outside or bento box, not to mention fast food.

In the morning, we went to check out the rice fields to see if it was ready for harvest. Yuhei-san picked up a grain and tasted it! After that, we went to mix some soil together. Then, we drove to the river to wash the plastic bags that stored the soil. We came back, carried some rice around and I was all sweat. After that, I removed all the grain remains in the grain bags, which took me almost the rest of the morning. Then, Yuhei-san tried the rice separator machine in which the end result was packed for sale. I wanted to play with the machine more, but it was time for lunch already.

We ended early today at around 5pm. I cleaned up my pant and the jacket which were all covered with mud, and went for early shower. Dinner was early too. Today, Aiko-san said one very long sentence in a single breath! No wonder they are great singers. Somehow, it just nice to hear the Japanese speaks. Perhaps, the different tones made it very soothing to the ears. I asked for leave at slightly after 7pm and finished off this. Since it was still early and not too tiring day, I decided to watch my long overdue movie on my laptop, “The Vengeance”, a HK show (Fuk Sau in Cantonese). Stupid show indeed.