After Korean Thanksgiving, which is called Chuseok and was in the middle of September, Jeremy and I got on harvest watch. Around where we live there are lots and lots of rice fields (and green onion fields, pepper fields, various leafy greens and root vegetable fields) and it seemed to us that they were all becoming ripe (or whatever you call rice that is ready to be harvested). Soon after Chuseok, however, there had been no signs of the harvest and the rice started to grow bits of thick black on it and we assumed that it was going bad. We had already watched corn rot on the plant and fall to the ground without being picked and bean plants never put on anything to grow up so they just laid on the ground to die and there are hot red peppers going bad and falling off plants as I type, so we have become confused. Why plant all these things, go through all that effort, if you aren't going to harvest them? Is it for show? Does planting help keep the ground fertile? Was there a mix-up in communication?
Then yesterday, at long last, the rice harvest began.
A big machine that deals with strips of rice field a meter and half wide at a time was brought into our neighbouring field. It swept over it in the style of a zamboni, clearing the whole area of rice. The machine cut the rice stocks close to the ground, scooped it inside the machine where it then striped all the rice from the stock and dumped the remains back out onto the ground. As we watched, the machine rid the entire place of rice with incredible efficiency. When I think about watching the rice being harvested in South East Asia, people bent over at the waist, sickle in hand, I can not help but marvel at this very very cool invention.
So they didn't forget about the rice, but we still want answers about the peppers and the corn!
