After I finished teaching on Wednesday I was offered the opportunity to go learn how to plant rice with the lady who helps cook lunch for the students at PlaPak Noi. The small village of PlaPak Noi is a sub-division of the larger PlaPak and is where one of my schools is located. This village, where my students come from, only consists of farmers and I thought that it would be a great experience to see what my students help with and learn more about how they live. Rice farming is an important and large part of everyday living here and I would soon learn is incredible tiresome and tedious.
I was not prepared for heading out to the field considering I was still in my teaching clothes. Who says you can't plant rice in a dress though?? I think it made it that much more funny for the farmers who stared at me most of the time giggling to themselves. I'm pretty sure I was the first farang to step foot into those fields. Throughout the 2 hours I was out there I was continuously being corrected in the proper technics of rice planting such as the way you hold the bundle of seedlings, what way your hand should be facing at when you insert it into the mud covered water, and what is sufficient spacing between each row. Lets just say I wasn't the most graceful. My feet kept sinking so far down into the mud I'd almost fall over if I tried to pull them out and my lines of rice were zig-zagged throughout the field. The lady I was with moved so fast and effectively never wasting anytime popping the seedling in only hearing a small 'plunk'. Her seedlings never tipped over as mine did and always made perfectly straight rows. I hope when it comes time to harvest the rice that the field the farang girl planted turns out okay!
It amazes me that all the rice fields in my village and surrounding area are planted by hand, and trust me that is a lot of rice fields! I wish my Thai was in better shaped to learn more about the exact logistics of it all and the correct way of planting and harvesting. I did manage to find out that they do 4-5 of the rectangle patches a day. Walking around the village you see many older people with permanently hunched backs from spending years in the field. Now that I have been in Thailand for 9 months I've made it through to see all the different phases that the fields go through. When I first arrived it was harvesting the rice which I got to participate in during our orientation month. Then, burning the fields to plant vegetable gardens in the cold season. Now, in raining season replanting the rice.
The fields in dry cold season and harvesting season!
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