Rice Planting

We planted rice in our rice-field "Jiyu-den".

In recent years, we've been trying to grow organic rice by ourselves.
The farming is basically carried out in traditional agricultural ways, such as planting rice by hand, removing weeds without agrichemicals, drying harvested rice under the sun.

The first step of planting rice is to set the field ready for farming.
Plowing makes the soil soft and easy to absorb water.



Then pour water into the field.

Before planting by hand, we rolled a special tool on the field.
It marks lines on the muddy field and we can plant rice straight following these lines, though it doesn't work when there is too much water...

pastoral landscape..

Planting was very hard without a planting machine.
It took two days to complete two small rice fields, which may be reduced to just 3 to 4 hours with a machine.

Planting 3 to5 lines at one time.

Finally put a net around one of the fields, where we will feed wild ducks.

Straight? Almost.

to be continued...