Separating rice from chaff.

Yesterday I was lamenting about the demise of the buffalo and the impending demise of the Samlor driver so I thought I should post about something traditional that is still being practised.

It isn’t often that you see this as mobile threshing machines are common everywhere these days and do the job so much quicker then by hand. When I saw the lady who lives opposite my house doing it I thought it would be good to document. She was doing it by hand because it was a different variety of rice and they had only grown a very small amount which wasn’t worth putting through the machine.

First you pound it to break the husk away from the actual rice.

Then you keep flicking it around and around on one of these.

Until the heavier rice separates from the husk. Look carefully and you can see it here.

Keep the rice to eat and feed the husk to the pigs!