We have had a lot of questions about rice during our trip. Not just the kids asking... We all want to know - just how do they turn those picturesque fields of green into nice, delicious, multifunctional rice. In Southeast Asia they have an expression "Rice is Life", and we couldn't agree more.
In light of that, we signed up for the "living land" half day workshop. We were picked up at 8:00am and driven out of town about 20 minutes to a beautiful farm at the foot of a small range of hills. The farm is 20 acres and supports seven families with over fifty people as well as a bunch of students from hill tribe areas that have come to work, learn English and get an education.
There was a group of about sixteen or so tourists, so we split into two groups. Both guides had excellent English and definitely knew their way around the farm! So we began. Our guide walked us through the 13 step process from seed to mouth.
Step 1 - Seed selection: This was pretty interesting. They add salt to a volume of water, using an egg to test the salinity level of the water (once it stands up in the water, the water is salty enough). The rice grains are added to the water - the good seeds sink and the bad ones float. You skim off the bad seeds from the top and use them as feed for the animals (nothing is wasted!). To produce 4000kg of rice, you need just 30kg of seed. On this farm, they have enough water from the mountains to,do,two harvests a year - one they plant in July and harvest in October (that's the slower growing, higher yielding crop), then a winter crop planted in January and harvested in May (faster growing, lower yielding).
Step 2 - Germination - The good seeds are spread out on moist, muddy areas and left for a week to begin the germination process. Once small chutes pop out of the seeds, they are moved toms different area to let the chutes develop into a seedling. That takes up to 20-30 days. This step was one of the missing links for us - we have often seen farmers planting chutes, holding a big bunch in one hand and picking one out and planting them with the other hand.... But where did they get all the chutes! Ahh... City folk....
Step 3 - Preparing the Field - Have I mentioned that this workshop was hands on? Oh yes. In fact, that's spelled out in advance, so we found it pretty laughable that one person complained on Trip Advisor that "this place is a tourist trap, they trick you into doing all the labour for them while they sit around and watch!". Too funny, I'm sure we are not quite as effective at the job as the farmers are. So we all got our chance to plough the field behind a water buffalo. Walking through the cool, wet mud while being dragged by Suzuki (Rudolph was with the other group and was nowhere near as cute as our little Suzuki) was pretty fun. Admittedly this farm uses a guest Buffalo (power tractor) to plough their big feels nowadays, but seeing an animal driven plough like this is very common in SE Asia.
Step 4 - Planting - We all climbed in the mud, grabbed a handful of shoots and began planting them one at a time. The planting itself is very easy, but the bent over posture you are in all day would really make it back breaking work. I saw automated planting machines in Japan but only one in Vietnam. When labour is relatively cheap, it makes little sense to buy an expensive machine. Our guide tried to teach us a working song - it sounded nice when HE sang it :-)
Step 5 - Weeding - Abby's favourite step (and our lest favourite) was weeding. Twice during one crop the fields need to be weeded. Stepping between the chutes (that have multiplied into big bundles of chutes by now), you take the weeds, put them in the mud and bury them so they'll become future fertilizer for the fields. This farm has not used pesticides in over 10 years, though pests (snails, crabs, rats, snakes and birds) are a problem. Instead they use visual tools (like scarecrows and random hung up shirts) and spread tobacco and chillies to detract birds.
Step 6 - Harvesting - When ready for harvest (about 4 to 5 months after planting) the chutes turn pretty yellow, much like wheat. You grab the bundle of chutes and cut the bottoms with a sickle. When you have a couple of bunches, you take a long chute, tie the bunch then prop it up on some cut stocks to dry a little. Harvesting is pretty fun, but again, back breaking work. Not being an expert in the roots of communism, I can now see why the sickle was one of the two symbols of communist branding.
Step 6a - Washing Robin - We all had really muddy feet, up to the knees, but Robin for some reason had mud from head to toe. One of the elder farmers got s real kick out of this muddy city/farm girl and helped her get a little cleaner.
Step 7 - Thrashing - The bundles of rice are grabbed with a tool that looks like a pair of nunchaku - two short wooden poles with a small rope joining one set of ends. You smash the bundle against a wooden sloped plank and voila - out pops the rice seed on the ground. It was quite the feeling to relieve all of the chutes of their precious seed. The chutes are not wasted (nothing is!) as they are used for animal feed, growing mushrooms and making rice wine. Getting all of the rice seeds off the rice bundles on a twenty acre farm like this takes about one month and yields four thousand kilograms of rice seed.
Step 8 - Winnowing - Before getting ready to transport the seed back to the main farm (we are still out in the field doing some processing in order to save weight before transportation), we use a large bamboo fans to winnow the seeds from the small bits of husk and dead seed. When you use the fan, the dead, unwanted stuff just flies out of the pile of seed we've collected.
Step 10 - Removing the Husk - The way to remove the light brown husk from the white rice kernel is nude was a little surprising, and our guide told us that there are many ways of doing this. We used a giant morter and pestle (controlled with leg power!) to gently smash a pile of the seeds. Sure enough, within minutes, you could see the pile inside starting to turn white. This is a process where you would take rice out, put more seed in, sift, take some out, put more in.... A kind of Dante's inferno never-ending task that Beth and I were both thinking could be used for a great punishment task....
Step 11 - Sifting - Now we're getting somewhere. A woman from the farm demonstrated how to use a flat bamboo sifter to get rid of unwanted husks and seeds that were not yet separated. After two minutes she grabs a bowl, flips the sifter in the air and the bowl magically fills with pure white rice! Apparently every woman needs to get good at sifting rice, as it is one of the factors the men use when evaluating a good mate! I had Beth try the sifter and....well... we're already married.
Step 12 - Preparing the Rice - Getting hungry! We were told of the importance of soaking the rice (the rice we were making was sticky rice so very important). It should be soaked for at least three hours. Luckily our rice was already cooking! Interestingly, they don't dispose of the water they soak the rice in, they use it for shampoo!
Step 13 - Cooking - This sticky rice was simply steamed. It was placed in a bamboo sieve, covered and placed over an open fire with a pot of boiling water. Thirty minutes and it would be ready to eat!
What a morning. We were impressed at how efficient every step seemed to be and it,doesn't seem like you would get bored, as the girls asked if people specialized at one task or another and they don't - everybody does every job depending on what's needed. It seems like there would be a lot of downtime between some of the steps above, but there are always things to do, which we learned as we waited for our rice to cook.
Grinding Rice Flour - We tried our hand at making rice flour. We used a wooden mechanism hooked up to two grinding rocks. The flour would take a lot of refinement as it took a bunch of passes to make a very fine grain flour. The flour is used to make rice noodles, rice paper, yeast for rice wine and many more things.
Pressing Sugar Cane - We used a one hundred year old, carved hardwood press to make sugar cane juice from pressing sugarcane stalks over and over. We tried the juice.... Hmmmm good. Not overly sweet yet delicious.
Welding - We used a bamboo gadget that fed air to a fire pit like a forge and watch as the blacksmith used pieces of rebar to make a sickle and a substitute buckle for a wooden case... Pretty cool that they can do so much with very little.
Bamboo weaving - we watched, mostly, as one of the older guys took a bamboo chute and made all kinds of crafts and kitchen implements.
We were ready to eat! They served us up a whole wack of rice and rice flour products, and we had rice wine and Jaew Bong (a very tasty chilli dipping paste) to round out the snack.
The experience was great - we learned a ton, answered a lot of the kids past and future questions about rice(!) and met a bunch of nice people on the way. No rice, no life indeed.
There was a group of about sixteen or so tourists, so we split into two groups. Both guides had excellent English and definitely knew their way around the farm! So we began. Our guide walked us through the 13 step process from seed to mouth.
Step 1 - Seed selection: This was pretty interesting. They add salt to a volume of water, using an egg to test the salinity level of the water (once it stands up in the water, the water is salty enough). The rice grains are added to the water - the good seeds sink and the bad ones float. You skim off the bad seeds from the top and use them as feed for the animals (nothing is wasted!). To produce 4000kg of rice, you need just 30kg of seed. On this farm, they have enough water from the mountains to,do,two harvests a year - one they plant in July and harvest in October (that's the slower growing, higher yielding crop), then a winter crop planted in January and harvested in May (faster growing, lower yielding).
Step 9 - Transport - Like the old moving markets in Hanoi, we set up a balance on our shoulders carrying two baskets of seed with 20kg in each basket! Not very light. We are finally ready to see how we get the little white rice grains that we know and love.
Step 11 - Sifting - Now we're getting somewhere. A woman from the farm demonstrated how to use a flat bamboo sifter to get rid of unwanted husks and seeds that were not yet separated. After two minutes she grabs a bowl, flips the sifter in the air and the bowl magically fills with pure white rice! Apparently every woman needs to get good at sifting rice, as it is one of the factors the men use when evaluating a good mate! I had Beth try the sifter and....well... we're already married.
Step 12 - Preparing the Rice - Getting hungry! We were told of the importance of soaking the rice (the rice we were making was sticky rice so very important). It should be soaked for at least three hours. Luckily our rice was already cooking! Interestingly, they don't dispose of the water they soak the rice in, they use it for shampoo!
Step 13 - Cooking - This sticky rice was simply steamed. It was placed in a bamboo sieve, covered and placed over an open fire with a pot of boiling water. Thirty minutes and it would be ready to eat!
Grinding Rice Flour - We tried our hand at making rice flour. We used a wooden mechanism hooked up to two grinding rocks. The flour would take a lot of refinement as it took a bunch of passes to make a very fine grain flour. The flour is used to make rice noodles, rice paper, yeast for rice wine and many more things.
Welding - We used a bamboo gadget that fed air to a fire pit like a forge and watch as the blacksmith used pieces of rebar to make a sickle and a substitute buckle for a wooden case... Pretty cool that they can do so much with very little.
Bamboo weaving - we watched, mostly, as one of the older guys took a bamboo chute and made all kinds of crafts and kitchen implements.
We were ready to eat! They served us up a whole wack of rice and rice flour products, and we had rice wine and Jaew Bong (a very tasty chilli dipping paste) to round out the snack.
The experience was great - we learned a ton, answered a lot of the kids past and future questions about rice(!) and met a bunch of nice people on the way. No rice, no life indeed.
Very educational...thanks!
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