First Paddy Cut and Hanging
September 17, 2012 
This afternoon we had a class from Green Mountain College come out to the farm. After a quick tour around the farm we headed down to the rice paddy to do some harvesting. They didn’t have much time so we only had time to cut the top paddy. It was amazing how fast the rice was cut and bundled when 26 people were going at it. The variety we are growing stays on the stalk while it’s drying so I strung strung up some lines in the greenhouse to hang. After a week or too it will be dry enough to start hulling. We are working on a bike powered huller that should be ready by the end of the month.
We are going to try and cut as much as we can before the rain comes tomorrow. It should take us a couple of days to harvest and hang them ourselves. It’s nicer to harvest in the cooler weather. Rice is quite an itchy plant and long sleeves and pants make for a much nicer time.
2 Responses to First Paddy Cut and Hanging
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Josh says:
You have hit the hardest dilemma for rice growing on a small scale. A large portion of subsistence farmers are still hulling with a large mortar and pestals. In the united states finding a small huller is pretty much impossible right now. You have to import them from china or india or be lucky to find one in someones barn like Ben Falk. My dad has taken up the challenge of building a small huller for home growers and three prototypes later we are almost there. For the smallest home back yard growers he is working on a huller that if you have the right tools you can go to the local hardware store and build on for under a hundred bucks. He also has built a larger model that requires special rollers that gets us to around 50 or 60 pounds an hour.
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Can you tell me about how you hulled the rice? I had a nice little crop of Duborskian rice this year here in Maine, and think I’d like to grow more next year, but I’m getting a bit stumped at the hulling (husking) phase.