Kai Nattie or Machine Nattie ……..?

 

It  is early June and the buzz going around among the few farmers who are still cultivating rice is – “Kai Nattie / Machine Nattie?”

Nattie means Transplant and the question is “Do you plan to get the rice transplanted manually – by hand – Kai Nattie OR  do you plan to hire a Rice Transplant Machine? The locals have mixed opinions on the Machine transplanting – but I for one was keen on doing it this way.  It saves a tremendous amount of time and money. 

The seed sowing method is different for Machine transplanting and that is how the discussions and questions start in June when seed sowing is to be done.  For those of you who have not read my earlier blog posts, the nursery preparation for manual transplanting is linked here.

So  the difference starts with preparing the soil in which the seeds are to be planted.  You have to mix the soil with the compost and then sieve the mixture.  There should be no stones or pebbles in the mixture else the machine gets jammed. 

So I decided to have the rice nursery on the terrace as it would also be safe from the cows/wild boars and peacocks!

A set of 50 plastic trays was purchased.  My farm hand Yogesh brought a few basket loads of fine soil and compost up to the upper room and a large net for sieving the mixture.  I started mixing the damp compost and the soil- it was similar to making pastry dough – you have to get it all crumbly first – no lumps.  The netting did a good job of sieving the mixture and soon the trays were all filled and levelled.  

A prayer in my heart and I started sprinkling the seeds on the trays.

  Rice germinates very easily and there is no need to cover the seeds with another layer of soil.  Hay is laid evenly over the seeds and then a generous sprinkling of water.  The very next day I could see the sprouts and the third day the rice saplings had pushed the hay up by an inch.  

A week later the rice saplings were ready to be exposed to the sun and I removed the hay gently.

  A carpet of green adorned the terrace!

Just a regular watering was all that it needed.  And July first week, the plants were ready for transplanting.   

The rice transplanting machine is a fascinating one!  After the field was ploughed and muddled up with a 2 to 3 inch deep water level, the machine was brought in.  A note about where the machine comes from :

We have a local “Dharmasthal Sangha”  which has most of the modern machines required for farming.  They let out this equipment for a very reasonable hourly rate and the trained operator brings the machine to your farm. He  starts  the timer when he starts the work and charges you for the total time that the machine was used on your land!  Amazing isn’t it?   (You can read more about this here https://skdrdpindia.org/agriculture/chsc/)

We had already rolled up the ‘Mats of Paddy saplings’  out of the trays in which they were planted. 

They rolled mats were then carried out to the paddy farm.  Several  mats are unrolled and placed on an angular tilted frame and operator sets off pushing the  machine.  It trundles along and a set of hooks pulls out clumps of the saplings and plants them into the slush as it moves on. 

It briskly covers the length of the field, is turned  and then brought back to plant the next several lines of saplings.  The whole process of transplantation which would have taken 8 to 10 labourers a whole day, gets done in an hour and a half!

After one year of not planting anything and then one year of a failed crop – due to destruction by the wild boars, I hope this time things are better.

I plan on getting an electric fence to protect the crop from boars.  I hope the Jeevamruth works its magic and pray for a decent harvest. 

Rice - Post Harvest Processing!

What goes into the conversion of the freshly harvested rice grains (paddy) into the fragrant rice that we consume daily, without probably a thought about this process?  We learnt a great deal in our search for a method to dehusk  our rice perfectly :

1.      The rice can either be just de-husked and polished OR “Boiled” and polished to create the boiled rice (Ukade Tandool as we know it)

2.      Once the rice is processed, unless you put some boric powder or some chemicals, it lasts only for a couple of months without getting weevils or the small black mites in them.  On the other hand, the paddy can last a whole year without any problems.

3.      Polishing the rice removes the nutrients from the bran layer, but ensures that the rice lasts longer.  

4.       The local mills – (there are at least 5 of them within a 3 km radius!!!!!) will accept your paddy, but will mill it with the all the other rice that is waiting to be milled on that day. Each mill has capacities in the range of 20 to 25 quintals. So if you want a miniscule quantity like 50 to 75 kgs milled, you have to watch your lovingly grown organic paddy being poured into the giant chutes along with all the other inorganically grown rice........(sob).   Besides, when such a huge quantity is being mass produced, you cannot have a wee bit of it unpolished........tch,  tch tch.......

 

Sun drying the paddy before taking it to the Rice Mill

 

So we were stuck in a strange situation. We even contemplated buying our own dehusking machine, but that wasn’t so easy either.  And after a lot of asking around,  we finally located a Rice mill whose owner agreed to dehusk our rice without polishing it. So 75 kgs of our paddy was loaded into the car and taken to the mill.  The mill owner was a very friendly guy who assured us that our rice would be done separately.  And indeed, only our paddy was poured into a huge pit and he switched on the giant  machinery. At the other end, the dehusked rice started falling into a channel with a sieve at the base.  The fragmented grains were separated and the whole grains were all collected into another bag.  The weight of this bag came to approximately 55 kgs.  The 20 odd kgs of husk and fragmented rice was packed separately  and we could use it for our bovine family.  As we walked out of the mill, the friendly owner warned us that this brown unpolished rice has a very short shelf life.  We assured him that we were aware of it and came back home with our precious booty. 




The Rice Dehusked and unpolished - just as we wanted it ! 



And what can I say about the taste of our own home grown, organic brown rice?  That the flavour as Wikipedia puts it is indeed mild, nutty with a chewy texture?  And it tastes heavenly with just salt and a generous dollop of ghee in it? Or that the very humble rice-gruel or conjee as some may call it , made with a sprinkling of freshly grated coconut  accompanied by some papad can hold its own against a gourmet meal?  And the dosas made with this rice have a crunch and flavour that sets it apart ...........

 

So now we have a neat stash of paddy that we can dehusk, as and when we want, and yes our harvest is much more than what we can consume so if any of you would like a taste of this rice, you can visit our online store on our website http://hulidevana.in/collections/all  or drop  a line on info@hulidevana.in.

Till then happy reading! 

Rice Harvest!

Tillers and panicles,

the rice puts forth,

heavy grains swing,

the gentle breeze sings,

O what sweet notes,

the harvest season brings!

 

 

 

It is finally harvest time!  Our very first Rice Harvest!

But the weather has been playing truant for the past several days. Our all-weather tent which we had pitched in the farm to keep the boars away, had become soggy and there was an inch of water on the floor.  We had to haul a cane cot all the way and manoeuvre it into the tent for the last few days. There was a brief dry spell misleading all into thinking that the bout of unseasonal rains was over.  A whole lot of farmers immediately got down to harvesting their grain, and were caught in a fix as the rains lashed down on the harvested grains, forcing everyone to halt their work mid way.

 The method followed here, is spread over 3 to 4 days. On day one- the bunches of rice plants are cut as close to the ground as possible.  If you have read my earlier post on rice transplant, those small clumps of saplings which we held in a pinch and shoved into the sludge have grown into bunches which I can barely clasp. A brisk slash with a sickle, bunch after bunch is collected and laid on the ground in rows.  At the end the field is covered with neat windrows of cut stalks.

They make light their work by merry chatter

It is left out to dry for a day and then collected into bundles and carried to the threshing area which is near the house. The bundling of the stalks and carrying takes almost a whole day. This is irrespective of the size of the field, as the larger the area, more are the people involved.  The third and fourth day is devoted to threshing. A large wooden table is placed in the centre of the threshing area which is covered with large tarpaulin sheets. 

The wooden threshing table  in the centre, tarpaulin sheets covering the ground

Everyone in the village seems to join in, each one lifts a bunch and holding it high above their heads, whacks it down onto the wooden table. The impact scatters the grain all over.

 A couple of times more, and most of the grain is separated from the stalks. These stalks are tossed onto one pile, from where a group of men collect them and stack them neatly to make a ‘Hay stack’.  This  will provide fodder for the cows in the lean dry months when fresh grass is no longer available. The scattered grain is swept together by a group of women and filled into gunny bags.  The whole area bustles with activity.....

See the haystack being built in the left corner.

As for us, we were caught in an un-welcome situation. A pre-scheduled trip which we could not postpone, a crop waiting to be harvested, and the work-force caught up with their own harvest, unable to attend to our field....added to that gloomy warnings in the Rice Cultivation manual about how delayed harvesting causes grain shattering and grain losses.....  






Waiting to be harvested

We had to do something.  How about hiring a ‘Rice Harvesting machine’?  Our farm hand was not too keen... we would still need people to collect and thresh, besides the machine cuts it several inches above the ground  and a lot of hay would get wasted he said.  Do you think a harvestor-cum thresher would be a better option? We asked.  That would be a good thing he said, but expressed doubt whether it would be available in our area. Anyway, off we went in search of the machine.   Asking people along the way and trying to figure out their directions, we finally found 2 machines parked in the open ground near the Sharada-holle (locally pronounced as Sardoli) bridge.  The owner of the machine could speak Hindi, so we could convey to him that we wanted to hire his machine. We fixed up the next morning for the harvesting.

 So at the appointed time, the humongous monster named “Crop Tiger” trundled into our farm.

Making its way thru the dried stream bed, Johnny and Phoenix unperturbed by the noise.

 The operator perched high up on the machine surveyed the field, taking in the tricky corners and the semicircular jut-ins which housed the coconut palms on the border of the field. “Mark the time” he said and started the noisy machine. 




The path into the farm which is normally blocked by a fence.

Two rows done already

The name Crop tiger seemed apt as the machine seemed to devour the standing crop. Spewing the hay stalks on either side, chugging the grain through a funnel like chute on top, the machine cleared row after row.




Crop tiger moves into the next section of the field

Not bad eh? The cut is close to the ground and the hay is piled in rows.



 In an hours time, the entire crop was harvested, threshed and piled neatly on a tarpaulin sheet.  The work that would have taken a team of at least 6 people working for 3 days was done in an hours time!  Oh the marvels of technology!
 




Spewing out the collected grain.

We filled the grain into sacks and carried it back to the house where we could weigh it and see if our ‘stubborn’ refusal to use chemicals and do it the organic way could be called a success.

The Harvest!

Keeping Boars at Bay.

Oh so delicate - the rice panicles

 

 

It is the second week of October now, and the paddy fields are now lush green and heavy with promise. The slender stalks have put forth delicate looking panicles.  Every day the colours change – from lush green to a pale green and then a golden tinge begins to show in places.  Each day the panicles look a little fuller – the grains are growing safe in the tough husk which protects it. 

Changing Colours - now only the grass on the embankment is green

 

But then this protection is just not enough to protect these fields from the wild boar. O yes, the wild boars from the adjoining forest are making nocturnal sojourns into all the surrounding fields and making a merry meal of the tender grains. And along with it a whole lot of destruction! Surely they could eat their fill standing on the embankment and chomping only on the grains, could someone teach them some table manners please?  But no, they stamp around, roll around when their back feels ticklish, and in general ruin  a sizable area of the field. 

 

The boar has been here

 

 The villagers have all taken to sleeping in their fields at night, each field has a neat elevated machan in the middle. Sometimes groups of youngsters pitch in and I guess they party out in the open, you can hear music and then some fire-crackers and loud hoots. And they successfully drive the boars away from their fields, right into ours as our fields are directly in the path back to the forest.

A machan built in one of the fields

 

So now the only solution is for us to sleep in our fields!  And that is exactly what we did. Since we did not have a machan ready, we decided to use our tent. Our farm-hand Manjunath cleared a small area of the thorny shrubs and weeds which have grown so abundantly in the rains, and we pitched our tent in a little circle of Arecanut palms. A thick blanket on the floor a couple of pillows and blankets as it gets quite chill during the night, and we were ready.  Of our four four-legged companions, we decided to take Johnny with us as he is not fussy about where he sleeps unlike Phoenix and Misty who would insist on snuggling into the tent. And Zuki is like the breeze, you just can’t confine her, she would spend the night wandering around and cry if she is tied. So Johnny it was

Johnny can make himself comfortable just about anywhere.

 

. We had dinner and armed with a plate and a ladle and torches, made our way thru the farm to the tent – our paddy field is beyond our areca plantation. Walking in the thick canopy of the palms, you suddenly realise how thick the undergrowth is, and not wanting to risk putting our foot on any unsuspecting snakes, we clanged the plate and ladle all the way.   We tied Johnny to the nearest Areca palm and got into the tent. It is fully sealed, so we had no worries about mosquitoes, bugs or even snakes.  And it is supposed to be an all weather tent.  But I guess all-weather does not include Malnad rains!  The brilliant moonlight soon got obscured by a thick cloud cover and soon there was a good drizzle..... gentle to begin with and then heavier by the minute. And it continued the whole night long. we started getting a gentle misty spray of rain into the tent as well. This was rather unexpected and we had no umbrellas even if we wanted to walk back home. So we slumbered through it, lulled by the musical sounds of the night.
The moon glistens,
a silver sheen,
the breeze ripples,
rustles and sings,
an arecanut falls,
with a resounding plop,
And the tent is drenched,
drop by drop!
  

Johnny did not seem to mind the rain at all and slept curled up. A couple of times we awoke to his low, deep warning growl and sure enough we could hear the heavy footsteps – we clanged the plate loud and long and the boar moved on. It was indeed a good thing that we brought Johnny along.

At daybreak, the rain ceased and we walked out to check whether the fields were safe. Yes they were, and we would have to continue this right until we could harvest the rice.

Rice Transplant!

Some folks transplant rice for wages,

but I have other reasons.

I watch the sky, the earth, the clouds,

Observe the rain, the nights, the days,

keep track, stand guard till my legs

are stone, till the stone melts,

till the sky is clear and the sea calm.

Then I feel at peace.

A Vietnamese poem after my own heart!

Our rice nursery, after its tryst with  a bunch ofbovine grazers, still survived and after 4 weeks is now ready to be transplanted into the main field.  These little,  baby rice plants, lovingly protected so far are now ready to venture out into the big world!

So D-day dawns with a clear bright sky.  It has been raining quite consistently but the field is only wet and not yet waterlogged.  So our irrigation channel has been opened up and the water is flowing into the fields.  Ganapati is ready with his bullocks and plough at 7 am. 

Ganapati, with the pair of beautiful beasts! 

 This is something new that we learnt – just tilling the land is not enough, you have to ‘muddle up’ the land to a fine squelch now!  As the bullocks walk through the field, the plough churns up the soil with the water .  Up and down, over and over again, till the mud looks like brown porridge.

Muddling up the mud to a fine squelch!

  By 9 a.m. one section of the field is done and the 6 women have arrived for the actual transplantation. They walk over to the nursery, their sarees tucked up to avoid trailing in the mud. When they near the nursery I hear an audible cluck-cluck of sympathy.  “What is it?” I ask them.  “Oh these saplings are so small – You don’t put fertilizer is it?  You should have,  the saplings would then have been this high” one of them explains holding her hand a good 6 inches above our saplings.  It is alright I explain – Fertilizer is not good – it will ruin the soil I say, but their blank look seems to say “Oh these mad city folks”. 

Anyway, they start pulling up the saplings.  Their movements are smooth and swift, they work with both hands – a fluid movement akin to churning buttermilk with a rope wound around the churner. When the bunches in their hands reach a particular size, they bind them with  a couple of saplings and toss them aside.  They find it very amusing when I do the same, gingerly, not wanting to hurt the roots of the delicate looking plants. But a swift brisk movement is what you need to uproot the saplings and with a little practice I get it right. 

Geeta (leftmost) is amused at my slow, gentle tugging of the saplings.

Bundles of Saplings lined up swiftly.

By mid morning, all the saplings have been uprooted and tied into neat little bundles. 

A short break with a meal of idlis, chutney, a sweet potato patty, some tea and it is time to do the transplantation.  Squelch, squelch , the mud is unbelievable soft and squidgy – all you do is pull out 3-4 saplings from the bunch and push them deep into the squidge. The trick is that when you pull your hand out, the saplings should stay in and stand erect.  Mine looked pathetic at first but soon I learnt the trick and could do it almost as well as the others, though not at that speed.  And definitely not for that long.  My back was already beginning to sing a different tune. The others continued until the entire field was covered with neat rows of saplings.    



 

Ohhhh, this sad looking lot is mine.



Experienced hands - see the difference?

 The evening sun reflected on the still waters in the field and the little saplings  revelled in their new found space.  Have we really made a mistake by stubbornly refusing to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides.  Will our home-made mixes of Jeevamruth andPanchagavya work?  Well, all I can say is Wait, and we will soon find out.

Rice Nursery.

It is now more than a month since we got our paddy area prepared to a fine tilth.  We had purchased one sack of rice seeds, which is actually rice with the husk itself.  The only available variety was a local variety called MTU1001, so we brought it. When I opened the sack, there was a small sachet double wrapped in a plastic with an instruction sheet in Kannada. I asked Manjunath about it, he said it will help the seeds to grow better. Now I better check this I thought, and tried to decipher it, without much success. But the last sentence helped me figure out what it was.  It said  in Kannada ‘Poison - Wash hands after touching’.  so obviously it was some pesticide.  So I kept it aside to discard it appropriately, as we had planned to do everything organically.



Rice Seeds for the Nursery

 Preparing a seed-bed for the rice nursery is indeed an art.  The seeds are strewn around, artfully does it, in a small patch of land.  If you get it right, then the shower of seeds looks well spaced, you cannot have clumps and heaps of seeds in any spot.   About 20 kgs of seeds were strewn around and then Manjunath demonstrated the method of picking the soil with a large spade and hurling it over the seeds. The soil is picked in such a way that it creates a neat channel around the border of the nursery.  The soil hurled onto the seeds raises that level a bit. And there - you have a neat raised seed-bed with a well-defined channel around it, through which we can release some irrigation water.  On the third day a pretty green carpet could be seen on the seed-bed , our rice saplings had pushed their pretty little heads above the damp soil to see the sun!

 

The rice nursery at the far end of the field

 

The saplings grow at an amazing speed and within a week the saplings were rippling in the breeze and looking taller.  But we were not the only ones admiring them.  a group of local cows had noticed them too and one morning I found a whole herd of them merrily chomping on the tender greens.  I whooped and yelled and drove them away.  But something needs to be done! Maybe I could make a make-shift fence out of old clothes and sarees.  I spent a good part of the day doing it, my sewing machine happily humming a tune after a long hiatus.  Towards evening I picked what looked like a small mountain of coloured strips of cloth and carried it to the rice nursery.  The entire length of what I had stitched did not cover even one complete side of the nursery!  And it had taken me so much time.  So I had to think of a better option.  The Jute and Plastic sacks in which we buy the cow-feed!  Yes they would do fine, I had to cut open two sides of each bag, shake the remnants of husk, bran and whatnot out and then join them together.  My sewing machine was not very happy with this rough course material which left a layer of grit and lint all around, but it still complied.  The next day, we rigged up the fence around the entire nursery.  I was worried about the saplings that had their heads shorn off, but Manjunath was confident that they would still grow. 

 

The makeshift fence of jute and plastic sacking in place, but you can see the gaps where the cows have munched.

 

We kept at our schedule of spraying Panchgavya on the saplings and hoped they would turn out well.  The majority of them looked quite ok, though there were patches of pale and short saplings in the nursery, which might need to be discarded later. 

Another week, and we will be ready for the transplantation!  The plants seem to be thriving and the cows are casting longing looks at the green feast that is now cordoned off for them.

    

A Fine Tilth....

Land Preparation :  Clear out the weeds and plough the land to a fine tilth................reads the manual on Rice cultivation. 

Five years before the previous owner sold the place to us, he realised that rice cultivation was not commercially viable.  And he had stopped it . It is now our third year on the farm, so in effect our  paddy area has been lying barren for the past 8 years. 

 

The paddy area overgrown with weeds

 

 But this year we felt we must go ahead and try our hand at rice cultivation. 

So a few days back, I heard about a new tractor which is available for hire in the village.  Apparently some enterprising fellow from TamilNadu is travelling across villages and tilling for the willing.  i.e those willing to pay his steep charges of Rs. 1000 per hour.  Well, we decided it would be worth a try – for two reasons – First - because our land was untended for so long, it would be really rock hard;  and would take much more time to get it done by bullocks - probably cost more as well.  Secondly, the new tractor could apparently work even if the tough weeds were not removed. 

 So Saturday afternoon at 4 pm, Ponarasu – the tractor driver who spoke no Kannada and just a smattering of English , drove into the farm on his monstrous vehicle.  After assessing the place, he asked ‘ one or two?’ meaning one round of tillage or two?  We agreed for two as we wanted the land to be done really well.  And there, the noisy monster rumbled around raising a huge cloud of dust, pulverising everything in its path.  Its huge rotor blades cut through the weeds and churned them along with the mud. 

 

 I walked in its wake to see how the mud was churned up. The soil below the surface had a rich moist feel.  And I could see scores of white thick grubs that were disturbed from their homes, scurrying about. In a few moments a couple of white egrets flew gracefully and landed on the upturned mud. They were followed by one more and then two more... and soon there was an entire flock.  Pecking, gobbling, scurrying around, they were having a feast.  I was amazed at the perception and communication skills of these birds.  Did one of them first notice that here was a field being ploughed,and then spread  the message- “Come one Come all, lets feast”   or were they all flying high overhead to distant places and decided that this was just the spot for their afternoon break?  Whatever it was, these birds were having a merry time- and were they insolent?  they hopped around in the wake of the tractor and in its very path, unmindful of the monster as it bore straight down on them, taking off just as it was close enough to touch their wings.

 

 

  In the midst of all this, I noticed Misty; Zuki, Phoenix  and Johnny making their way through the arecanut trees.  They had not noticed me leaving the house and now they all surrounded me with a ‘why didn’t you call us when you left?” look.  And then they saw the birds!  As they ran to chase them, the wonder of the soft – sink-your feet-in feeling of the freshly tilled soil, caught on to them and they raced around in joyous abandon. 

It took the tractor an hour and a half to prepare our half acre paddy area to a fine tilth. We will now sow the seeds and like the rest of the farmers across the state, await the first rains and hope and pray for a good bountiful crop.