Rice Planting

It has been fascinating to watch the fields be transformed from oats to rice during the few weeks I have been in Kashmir. When I first arrived in April, the oat harvest was just beginning. The oats are harvested as a green crop, and dried for use as hay to feed the animals. A few paddies of oats are left to ripen completely for seed for this fall. Then the fields are plowed under, fertilized with a bit of cow manure (not too much), flooded, and planted. The small paddies of bright green that I have been photographing during this process were the rice seedlings. Now I was to see how the paddies were planted.

















































First the rice seedlings needed to be bundled up, for transport to the field. This was a fun job, wading into the squishy mud, digging down below the roots of the rice seedlings and pulling up 50-100 at a time for tying off with some dried grass. I helped several planting teams along the road during planting time with their work. They all were amused to have me join them, and did their best to teach me the correct procedure. I was of course not very good at it, and slow, but it didn't matter. I was a diversion for them.





































Then the bundles of seedlings are transported to the field. If it is close, they are tossed. Ishtiyak shows his form. Good practice for cricket.










































Sami and Tahir's father has a few fields, and one day we all helped plant them. In this photo, Sami is on the far left.













It is traditional that the family who owns the land and hires the workers provides morning tea and lunch and afternoon tea. Here the workers are coming in for their morning tea. The tea is carried out to the fields in a samovar. Tahir is carrying this one. The samovar has a fire inside it and the tea is boiling hot. It is salt tea, and I don't care for it. So morning tea includes the salt tea and the same tsot bread I have for breakfast every day. The landowners do not have tea or bread until all the workers have eaten and had as much tea as they wish.




















The bundling of the rice plants doesn't take long. Then it is time to plant. I planted with several teams, and the team hired by the Wani family was unbelievably fast. I had to go find my own corner of the paddy to work in, to keep from being trampled.







































Lunch at the Wani planting was rice and vegetables and meat. Tahir's wife Zabida is a great cook. The lucky workers got to enjoy her cooking. It is a bit spicy for me (my eyes water), but I like it!







Afternoon tea is salt tea again and a different kind of bread - flat bread cooked at home with ghee in between two thin layers of bread - like a big wheat tortilla.

Throughout the planting work, the surroundings are so beautiful. It is such a pleasure to be out there. At the end of the day all the fields are planted, and people can relax a bit.