Harvest time

Farm life has always enthralled me. I like the idea that one could conceivably grow and raise a good portion of the food that one family needs at home. It’s a world that I have little knowledge of, but much curiosity for. While I don’t currently live on a farm per say, just being in Cambodia puts me up close and personal with tomorrow’s dinner. My family has chickens and ducks that roam around the yard eating the rice scraps and whatever bugs they can catch. My evening commute home from school is often sluggish due to the traffic jam consisting of water buffalo driven carts, cows, and motos. All around me are miles and miles of rice fields.

I arrived in Cambodia during the planting season, so I’ve now seen one whole rotation of rice growth. I love riding my bike through the rice patties in the afternoons attempting to explore every road, path, and cow trail around my village. In August and September the feilds were nothing more than a billion brilliant green shoots sticking a foot tall out of the mud. Now that the raining season is coming to a halt, the rice has started to seed out at the top and turn gold. From a distance it looks vaguely like a wheat field in America (minus the palm trees).

On Tuesday my farm life curiosity got the best of me. I’ve been bothering my host family for weeks to teach me how to harvest rice, and they finally gave in to my requests. In the morning we headed out to the family’s plot about 4 miles from the house. My host dad rode his moto there while I followed close behind on my bike; peddling furiously to keep up. Upon arriving we were greeted by about 20 day laborers, who are paid 8,000 riel ($2) per day to cut rice by hand. I think this is the standard pay rate for harvesters, but it’s a wonder their families eat at all. You won’t find a Cambodian farmer with any body mass to spare.

First I’ll explain the rice harvest attire. Long sleeves are a must for sun protection, as is a brimmed hat. Most people wear mid-drift pants or roll their pant legs up since you stand in about 8 inches of water and mud all day. The women all wear kormas wrapped around their necks and faces. Nobody wears shoes since they’ll get sucked down in the mud after two steps anyway. You can imagine my hesitancy in kicking off my flip-flops and wading through the same mud that the Peace Corps nurse has warned us about. Most of the fish my family feeds me are caught from the rice fields, which are also habitat to snakes, frogs, mice, rats, birds and small crabs. Walking through snake water is not my idea of fun, but when in Rome…

To harvest, a big group of people stand side-by-side and make their way across the field while cutting the tops off of the plants. In one hand you grab a big bunch of the rice stalks and with the other you cut the top 8 inches or so with a crescent shaped metal tool. After gathering up a big handful of plants, you neatly pile them behind you. Someone follows behind the group of cutters and gathers all the small piles in one location.

The tools are incredibly sharp and you have to be careful to not cut yourself. I learned that lesson the hard way. I cut my hand without knowing it and suddenly I was bleeding all over. Guess I wasn’t ‘cut’ out for farm work in Cambodia. Thankfully it was just a shallow cut and didn't need stiches.

The woman who was teaching me how to harvest was great. She kept stopping to pick crabs out of the mud with her feet. Then she would shake the mud off and stick them in her pocket…presumably for lunch. It’s amazing how fast a group of people can clear a field. I was hypnotized while watching the workers’ movements as they made a path across the endless fields. My favorite part of the harvest though was the sound of people walking through the rice while their tools made the cuts.

Tuesday was a very good day.