Last week was a very busy week. I had an exam every day of the week, and it was quite exhausting. So, what did I do to prepare for the extremely busy week? Well, the saturday before that week began I became a farmer for a day.
My friend Sho's family owns about an acre of farmland where they grow their own....(drum roll please)... Rice. What else would they grow? It was a very interesting experience. Me, Hide, and Sho went to Sho's home after a night of bowling and didn't go to bed till about 5am and we knew we'd be woken up at 8:30am... Not too bright, but what can I say. 8:30 rolled around and Sho's father, a stout, elderly man about mid 50's with a quiet and kind demeanor, that seems to exude a sense of wisdom, quietly sneaks into the room and wake up sho. I, in my half a sleep state, see Sho go from absolute lights-out asleep to beaming, ready to go consciousness in about half a second... it was amazing. Me and Hide on the other hand remained quietly asleep. As I began drifting back into full REM sleep, Sho bounds back into the room and screams, "Lets go Man!!! We've got to carry rice!!!" Hide and I spring awake and are ready in about the same time Sho was.
We ran down stairs and began carrying 30Kgm or 66 lbs bags of rice one by one to Sho's huge fridge where they keep their year's supply of rice. We carried approximately 24 bags. After that we ate a bit of breakfast then went to the fields. About a 5 minute walk in perfect weather, with the sun beaming and a cool breeze on our backs, we arrived ready to do whatever it was we were supposed to do. As we got closer to the fields, we could see Sho's father in the distance with another man who was riding what looked like an over sided riding lawn mower. What the man was riding on was an automatic rice shaker thingy... I unfortunately in my one day of being a farmer I was not able to gain the lingo that goes along with the title. Our job was to gather the bags filled with rice that the machine filled, and put the bags on the back of the truck. I suddenly began feeling a burning, itching feeling on my fore arms, at which point Sho says, "You should have worn long sleeves..." At which point I thought, "Helpful information at this point." The individual rice pebbles are covered in a flaky shell and this shell breaks off into very fine flakes and digs into the skin and becomes almost like fiber glass. After hauling about 16 bags of rice, we took the truck to a machine that dehydrates the rice and removes the flakes.
The one day of being a farmer was a wonderful experience. I learned a lot about farming rice and about how it doesn't use much ground nutrients, so there is no need for crop rotation and such, so the land lasts for quite a long time. I've now gained a better respect for those that provide us our food.
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