Our paddy (rice) harvest continues to go well. We have cut and thrashed a little over half of our fields. The remaining crop needs a little more time to fully mature before we will cut it also. Rice grows on a long grass called paddy and at the top of the paddy plant grows the bushels which contain the grains of rice (held in a husk or sheath).

To separate the husks from the plant we use a machine called a thresher, it basically smashes up the plant and the husks containing the rice come out one side while the left over straw comes out the other.

We then spread the husks (which we call paddy) out in a thin layer over our kulla (or cement drying floor) and let it dry in the sun. After several days of being turned over the rice is dry enough to be either stored for our consumption later, sold or sent to the mill for immediate consumption.

At the mill a big machine is used to separate the rice grains from the husks. Depending on the quality of the rice, the moisture level and the quality of the mills equipment we get anywhere upto 70% of the weight of the paddy coming back as pure rice ready to be cooked.

While we do harvest some of our crop by hand the majority is done by combine harvester. This machine does both the cutting and the threshing of the paddy. The only downside is that it does waste a little bit more of the paddy than doing it by hand. It is much faster and cost effective though.

The rice that we get from each harvest is more than enough for the consumption of our staff and children. We sell whatever we don’t need for our own use both from our monsoon rice crop and our summer wheat crop.