rice paddy farmers
Trip date: December 30, 2016
The morning of our only full day in Luang Prabang was spent at the Living Land Farm, a community farm that provides an interactive experience for tourists, showcasing each step of the rice growing process. The experience is a little pricey at 344,000 kip and might seem a little gimmicky, but as avid consumers of rice, Eric and I enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about how it's grown. The farm is run and worked by a small community of locals, with a focus on sustainability and giving back such as teaching English in the evenings, so we also felt like our admission fee was going to a good cause.
The visit to Living Land was a 3hr experience in the morning and included a tour of the farm, the gardens, overviews on how to make bamboo crafts as well as other tools, in addition to the various steps involved in making rice (as well as roundtrip tuk tuk ride to/from the farm). It was a sunny day and the farm was located in a gorgeous setting with the mountains as a backdrop, a lovely way to spend a morning!
Below, I'm going to outline each of the steps to growing rice that we learned. If you want to visit Living Land yourself and want to be surprised, then stop here and read about our visit to Kuang Si Falls afterwards and the beauty of Luang Prabang instead. Otherwise, continue below.
Here are the 14 steps to growing rice, according to the Living Land. This specific farm only has one harvest per year, planting rice in June/July and harvesting in Oct/Nov. They maintain a smaller area of rice year-round though for the tourist experience, so that each stage of the rice growing process is available at any given time. Note that many of these steps can probably be mechanized/automated, but this outlines the old-fashioned traditional way.
1. Using rice from the previous harvest, find the best rice grains by using salt water. The bad grains are lighter and will float to the top, which can be used to make rice flour or for consumption.
2. Create a nursery for the rice in a muddy area and spread the rice grains on top. Maintain the nursery, taking care to keep birds and animals away. The rice should germinate in 3-4 nights time and after 1 week, will start turning green. Transplant the rice after 3-4 weeks.
3. Use water buffalo to plow the field, turning the grass down and making it into fertilizer.
4. Plant the rice: split the rice strands and plant 1-2 at a time. Keep the terrace irrigated, plugging the hole with mud if less water is needed.
5. Pollination: the rice strands will grow and stand up to pollinate. Once pollinated, the stalk bends down and the pods contain milk. Constant weeding is needed during this time frame, as well as looking out for bugs and snails. The rice takes about 1 month to grow to the right height.
6. Use a sickle and cut the rice when it starts turning yellow. Use a stalk to tie it into a bundle and let dry.
7. Use numchuks to thresh the rice stalks, releasing the grains.
8. Sweep and gather the threshed grains into a pile. Use a fan to sweep the straw from the grains. If there's strong winds, the farmers just slowly pour and the wind blows away the straw while the rice grains fall.
9. Pack the rice into baskets using your rice paddy hat (multi-purpose!). There are 3 techniques for carrying the rice, depending on the ethnic group.
10. At this point, the rice can be replanted (step 1) or it can be taken home and prepared for consumption. Husking is performed using a mortar and pestle. It takes about 30-40mins to get about 3kg of clean rice, much faster nowadays using gas or water-powered machines.
11. Take the rice from the mortar and place it in a shallow woven basket. Separate the husk from the rice by flipping the basket (this is usually performed by the women).
The husks are sieved further, where it's then fermented into rice wine and the leftover husks are fed to the farm animals.
The rice can also be ground into rice flour at this point for making rice noodles or sweets.
12. Soak the rice for a minimum of 3hrs, preferably overnight. If the rice is soaked longer than a night, it will start to ferment. You'll know that the rice is ready for boiling when you can easily break it between your fingers. The water that the rice is soaked in will have a creamy complexion, and the locals use it as shampoo.
13. Cook the rice in a bamboo basket for 35mins. About halfway through, stir or flip the rice over in the basket.
14. Eat the rice! On average, the Lao people eat about 20kg of rice per person per month. That's a lot of rice! And a lot of work that goes in to growing that rice!
assorted rice snacks at the end of the farm experience
