rice picking

On saturday I went rice picking. The farmer who employed us (I never find out his real name, everyone just called him farmer Bill) was a stylish man in his mid forties; short grey hair, shell toes and tan dungarees over a picasso-like stripey sweater. Farmer Bill has two small paddies ten minutes outside Onomichi city. The setting is ridiulously idyllic: mountains surrounding several dozen small farm holdings, each little road between the plots buffered by wild cosmos and other flowers offsetting the now golden rice fields. Farmer Bill sells his rice for premium price because it is hand planted and hand picked - this barely occurs anymore in Japan. He has been using JET labour for many years. I met a Scotsman there who was Onomichi's first JET, ten years ago. He is now married to the farmer's daughter and works at Onomichi university.

Using JET labour means farmer Bill gets free labour and we get the experience: symbiosis eveyones happy!

There were about ten of us JETS and as many Japanesees - locals from Onomichi town. The work was divided down gender lines: boys doing the scything, girls doing the gathering and tying. Once the field is scythed down and the rice stalks bundled, the boys set up metal tripods all the way down the field upon which are laid long, thick bamboo poles. You take a rice bundle and separate it half half, wedging the gap over a bamboo pole. When we stopped for lunch the field had been tranformed into corridors of hanging rice, rows upon rows much like the how they grew except now they are upside down. The work wasnt over strenuous but it was hard enough to make me realise why the Japanese eat every grain from their plate - rice is precious! When all the cutting, bundling and hanging was done we all went around the fields picking up every stalk of that had been left out - not a single grain was left unharvested! It took twenty of us a day to harvest two the small fields. The yeild farmer Bill told us is about 200kgs of rice, which is nothing: I have almost finished a two kilo bag on my own in under three months. And field only yeilds one crop a year.

Our payment for the day's labour was lunch cooked by the farmer's wife and served picnic style on the road below the fields. We started with a bowl of delicate Miso and veggie soup - white Miso I think (miso comes in white, red and black ranging from delicate to strong in flavour). then there were two enourmous piles of rice, one salty done with red Azuki beans, the other cooked with edamame beans which turned the rice a minty yellow. We ate the rice with boiled carrots from the farm and braaied salmon that we ripped straight from the carcas with our chopsticks. The carrots, we were told come out of the had been carved so each carrot piece was a heart. The salmon had been marinated in a strong sweet dressing and its juices had dripped down onto a bed of onions and aubergine. it was good. it was really good.

For dessert there were persimmons and as a final flourish the farmers wife brought out a three teir poppy seed cake decorated with frilly pink flowers... She sidled up to me (I was off down the lane having a smoke) and asked softly if anyone had had a birthday recently. Yes, I said, as a matter of fact two Jets just had birthdays.

She was pleased. The cake could now be a birthday cake! She pulled five little candles out of her pockets, placing them carefully and asking if I wouldnt mind walking behind and lighting them so we could sing happy birthday. Thats just what I have come to expect from locals I have met. Not only did the lady of the house do something cook a five star meal for ten gallumfing foreigners but then to think that maybe the beautiful tea cake should celebrate them, in all their gallumfing glory.


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