3 MIN READ

By RICHARD GIYE
www.nordis.net

The soil is being prepared for another rice planting cycle in the province this January. After months of rest, the grasses and weeds grew undeterred on the surface of the dried-up paddies. 

Meanwhile, the sunflowers brimmed at the edges, and the rocks that form the walls took on a deep red hue from the scorching sun. The purple buds of summer meadows cover the vacant gardens, and farmers have left their holiday rest to attend weddings, visit their families in the cities, and fix their houses. 

Others are content to watch the days pass as they harvest sugarcane, extract the juice, and cook it over fire for many nights until it reduces to muscovado for coffee, chocolately or tinva for the kids, separate juice for the wine mixture or fvayash for the elders.

At the coming of the first-year storm, or when the clouds gathered enough rain, and the nights stay longer, the farmers would need to schedule visiting the source of water, we call in our tongue arac, located in the nearby forest, they return its flow going to the rice paddies and count hours in different directions – the soil will now be toiled.

The smell of the earth, opening with warm heat, awakens the farmers with urgency and delight – one will know that the land is made alive again. Grasses and weeds will be uprooted, then mounted in different spots, laid until dry, and charred to return to the ground. The water will cover a ‘sincong’- a small paddy, and selected seeds will be grown from there. The scion of rice stems will wait a month of growing, we call ‘panar’, as the farmer will continue cleaning the rice paddies.

The harvest moon glowed during these many nights, reflecting its face in the watered paddies. The moon draws far and near in the stark darkness while the farmer dreams of a good harvest.

Rock walls or tuping will be restored from small slides we call ‘marwa’, and in the damage of bigger landslides, it would take days for farmers to dig the eroded soil and put the rocks together – this upkeep is made happen in order to preserve the hundred-year-old legacy of rice terraces in Sadanga,  Mountain Province. 

The back-bending work of rice planting will come at collective works of the farmers, sometimes they sing and throw laughter to ease the heavy toil, the farmers are knee-deep in the rice paddies- synchronize with each other and hands exact with darting the rice stems in the paddies we call in practice ‘erag’. 

For the next months, farmers live along the rice paddies, setting up small cabins we call bawi, and they wake up morning and night to water and cultivate the paddies. Others put up scarecrows to drive out birds or set up chimes to warn rats and other pests. Others have air guns too and practice shooting at the birds in the wide field.

When the rice grains start to shape in the stalks, the farmers will offer chickens and eat together, celebrating the abundance of the land. Until the harvest season, the farmers are filled with high hopes of the fruit of the land. The water, soil, and sun are elements farmers knew to worship and contend with each passing day for nature to sustain them with food throughout their lives. The golden grains will be stored in the agamang, or granary, to age longer; others will be pounded to produce the coveted, nourishing rice for the farmers to eat.

Rice planting is a tradition passed down from our ancestors, whose lives revolved around the farm and the community. Their sons and daughters whose living in the city should feel it in their senses that this month calls anew to rekindle this tradition, come home and by any means continue this legacy that ought to sustain our generation. #nordis.net