Chuseok has passed and October has arrived. The once deep green rice fields are now golden and are beginning to get harvested.
While this post is not as in depth as the one for rice planting, I thought it would still be interesting to share a little about the machine that harvests the rice that we planted back in May of 2021.
The machine that harvests rice is very different than the one that plants it.
My mother-in-law’s field was planted May 28, 2021, and harvested October 23, 2021. I did not participate in harvesting the rice, but I did take a quick video of the machine going through a field here in Goseong.
I am pretty sure I have seen one of these going much faster through a field before.
The leftover stalks or “hay” gets wrapped up by another machine in large, white bundles.
The rice gets organized into 40 kg sacks (88 lbs).
Prior to consumption however, the harvested grains of rice need to be peeled.
My mother-in-law has a machine which peels the grains of rice. So in our case, the 40kg bags are unpeeled, and she uses the machine to peel them.
But I have also seen the rice put into 1,000 kg bags. That’s more than 1 ton at 2,204 lbs of rice per bag.
And that’s about it for now! Thank you for reading.
한국어
Thank you for this valuable information about the Korean rice harvest, which, I presume, is just a tip of many cultural treasures in Korean life.
Thank you! Koreans can tell their rice from other white rice grown in other regions of Asia, is was great to participate and share in its planting and harvest.
What do they use the "hay" for?
Hi Joan! I am told they feed it to cows. Thanks for reading and asking!