Rice Separator Truck

I'm sure there's a more official name to this machine, but I don't know it. ;)

The pile of harvested rice stalks got separated today. Its remnants are on the left side of the photo, quickly being eaten up by this hungry machine. Early in the morning we heard the truck drive into the field and start up for separating the rice grains from the stalk.

After breakfast the field was quiet again. I was afraid I might have missed my photo opportunity, but as I walked over the the field, I found out it was just break time. No matter how discrete I tried to be, the guys working immediately noticed a foreigner standing off to the side. This little village doesn't see many foreigners. I asked if I could take a picture, and they were happy to oblige. Then they decided they better look like they were working, so they started up the machine again.

From my observations, the whole, long stalks of rice are fed into the machine on the side closest to us. Inside is a rotating cylinder that the rice bounces around in until it falls off the stalk. The rice grains go down the dark tube on the right and into the large bags. The left over stems and leaves are blown out the top into a new pile.

My Thai friend said that as a kid, she would jump in the pile of leftover stalks and leaves, almost like a trampoline. She and her friends would also dig in the pile to make a fort. It sounds like fun, but for some reason the itchy factor outweighs the fun factor as adults. Instead, the adults walk around older piles in search of eatable mushrooms that like to grow amongst the old, damp rice stems.

This truck and workers will probably be rented out to another field tomorrow. They each seem to take their turn, hoping the rain won't come before the rice can be separated. You know it's harvest season because the roads are full of either field trucks like this one or trucks piled high with white bags of rice like these, taking them wherever they go after being bought from the village farmers.