Polished

The final chapter of our rice-growing adventure!

A few months ago, I wrote about planting rice seedlings by hand with our neighbor, an organic rice farmer here in Tochigi. Then, a month ago, we went back to harvest the rice, cutting the stalks by hand, tying them into bundles, and hanging them up to dry.

A couple weekends ago, we returned for the final steps. The rice had finished drying, so it was time to separate the grains from the stalks, remove the husks, and polish the rice.

A long row of dried rice bundles hanging inside a farm shed with a translucent roof.

We started with an old-fashioned threshing machine, feeding bundles of dried rice stalks through a rotating drum to knock the grains loose. The kids got to see how this was done long before modern farming equipment made the process so much easier. (then we cheated and used the back of the modern combine because it would have taken us DAYS)

Kids gathered around an old threshing machine on a blue tarp while an adult feeds a bundle of dried rice stalks into it. The kids' faces are covered with emoji stickers.
A child in red gloves pushing a hand truck carrying a green tub partly filled with threshed rice grains.

Next, we collected the grains and put them through a modern rice-hulling machine to remove the outer husks. We got to take home the rice we harvested plus a bonus package of beautiful, colorful organic rice mix.

Rice grains in the open hopper of a modern hulling machine labeled Neo Rice Master.
A hand holding a clear bag of black, red, and pale green rice with a Bio Farm Toyoda label.

A huge thank you to our neighbor for sharing his knowledge, his time, and his passion for organic farming with the next generation. I'm not sure how much of the technical process the kids will remember years from now, but I suspect they'll remember getting their hands dirty and being part of something from beginning to end.