Planting out the seedlings

I don't know what it's like all over Indonesia, but the fertile equatorial islands of Java and Bali not only host three full harvests a year, but there is no season to the cycle (though rice is best planted in the wet season, and crop rotation is often practiced in the dry season - maybe sweet potato will be grown then, or soy).

So it was that along one small country road in one day, I was able to see all the steps of the cycle - harvest; the mature grains ripening; tall green shoots with no grain yet; delicate small shoots; the planting out of the new seedlings; a bed holding the seedlings in their first days; and ploughing the muddy fields.

It's hard work planting out the new seedlings, which are tied in little bundles and flung into the drowned paddies, then separated and planted painstakingly by hand. It's work mostly done by women, who in old age are often permanently bent, with rounded spines. These women were working cheerfully and energetically in the heat of the day just outside of Yogyakarta in Central Java, stopping to wave and smile as I called out Terima kasih! (Thank you).

There are seasons to other things though, and seasonal beauties just now are avocados, rambutan, salak, sirsak (soursop), and durian. It would be fun to come back when the cloves ripen on the trees - but whatever time of year it's incredibly green here. And full of friendly smiles.

Ine, Kome, Gohan

Rice, of course, is the staple food of Japan and as such has great cultural importance. So much so, that there are different words for it in its various stages. I went north to Fukushima prefecture to stay on an organic rice farm and among many amazing experiences, learned a few new words.

Ine is the rice plant. I arrived in the last days of the rice harvest on the farm, so I was able to work with bundles of ine that had already been cut. The host farmer built a frame of wood and bamboo and then we twisted the rice stalks and hung them over it to cure for a few weeks before they can be threshed. I went crazy taking photos of the gorgeous green and gold bundles! The wild pigs who come out at night also go crazy for the ine, so one of my tasks was to help raise the electrified fence to preserve the carefully placed rice stalks.

Kome is the uncooked rice grain. While it was too early to sample this year's crop, there were huge bags of the farm's rice still remaining from last year. The small farm, which is totally organic and largely tended by one person, with sporadic volunteer labour coming and going (much of it, like me, totally unskilled), produces about 1200kg of rice per year. Most of the farmers in the area have their own threshing machines, but they tend to store the grains whole (as brown rice). Vending machines are of course practically a symbol of Japan in their omnipresence, but rice-producing areas have their own particular kind. There are apparently small machines dotted over the country roads that, for a 100 yen coin, will polish a bag of rice from brown to white! Sadly I didn't actually get to do this myself as I really loved the idea of it.

Gohan is the word for the cooked rice, as well as basically meaning meal or food, as it does in many Asian languages. And we ate gohan every day, sometimes three times a day.

Coming as I do from Canada, I've never before been able to eat rice where it was grown. Here, I could look out the kitchen windows and see the fields that it came from. I can't possibly express what it was like to eat this rice. I could have happily eaten it on its own with no seasoning at all, and needed no more to my meal. It was so full of flavour, so bright and shiny, each grain soft and sticky yet retaining a subtle chewiness, a feeling of being alive. We ate it polished white, we ate it brown, we ate it cooked with a few grains of black rice, so that there was a scattered purplish colouring through it. We ate it in the mornings with miso soup, and at lunch patted into little onigiri and flavoured with tsukemono (pickled vegetables).

Rice.