Rice Harvest

Ok, so this may seem like a really mundane topic for a post, just bear with me for a moment. One of the interesting parts of this trip for me has been the closer interaction with where my food comes from. At first it was the meat. I think in the US I’ve gotten incredibly removed from what I am eating because I never have to think about it. There is this great line in the movie Leap Year (probably the only good line in the movie…) where Matthew Goode kills a chicken to cook for dinner with Amy Adams, and when she looks shocked, he asks “Well, where did you think chicken came from?” and she responds, “the freezer section.” It sounds dumb, I mean, I know chickens come from live animals, but I never have to think about it while eating my dinner! In Nepal, my dinner lives on the roof next door or eats grass next to us at a picnic or rides in the bus on the way to the temple with me. It really freaked me out at first, this having to actually interact with the animals before I ate them business, so much so that I almost turned into a full-fledged vegetarian. I’ve gotten used to it now, my vegetarian moment has passed and I’ve moved onto the next food whose origins I never thought about: RICE!

I have absolutely never thought about where rice comes from. All that comes to mind when I think of rice is dinners with Rachel and Melissa freshman year and the first time I tried to cook for Ryan and he ate two servings of 95% uncooked rice. Here, you kind of have to think about rice because it is everywhere: 2-3 meals a day, everyday are rice-based plus any space that is not occupied by a building has rice on it. Turns out, rice grows in fields just like wheat! I mean, it makes sense, it’s a grain too, right? I guess I just couldn’t picture how rice would come from a plant. The monsoons are officially over in the Kathamandu valley and that means its harvest time! Every time I go out and explore the valley, I get to see rice in vary stages of harvest and it is so unbelievably cool.

In the Terai, they have big rice paddies and use machines for the harvest. But in the Kathmandu valley, each family’s rice paddy is pretty small and they are planted in steps into the valley walls so everything has to be harvested by hand. 

Stairs of rice in various stages of harvest

From what I can tell, the process is this:

Tie rice plants into small chunks and cut off each chunk at the base

Carry the bundles across the field...

To the hand operated grain separator
(or in some cases, men would just hit the plants
against the ground to remove the grains)

Filter the rice

Package and transport!
(i.e., put on a guy's back for him to carry onto the public buses)

Dry the non-grain parts and make sleeping mats!

I love that this process takes over the town squares and roads. Walking through any town in the valley right now (these pictures are from Banepa), you have to dodge food production. It's such a big contrast to the US norm of gigantic farms and factories far from where anyone lives. I am told that the rice paddies next to my house should begin harvest soon (they are tied in chunks now) and I can't wait for the front row seat! I'm not sure I'll be able to leave the house that day!