I have discussed farming, and rice farming in particular, on this blog many times but am posting this as an actual log or journal entry.  In Gangwondo, I kept track of the first snowfall through my seven years in residence there and the record became more interesting as more data points were added.

On May 9th of 2010, I was involved in the first planting of rice. This year, it was may 5th, although there was more to do after we left.

A lot of rice farming is done with machines but there are many steps to the process so we were busy enough.  First, the rice seeds are soaked in some mystery liquid – I presume it was connected with fertilizer or pesticide.  Then the seeds are placed in trays and left to sprout until the trays look like they are full of grass sod.  This is the first planting.  Then, after a month or so, the sod trays are loaded into a machine that plants them in flooded fields and they are left until harvest – with a few visits for spraying pesticide and such.  Around October, the rice is harvested.

Here are my first-planting photos for this year.

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8 years ago, I wrote about farming at my earlier blog and I wanted to access that material here so this is the link.