my new rice paddies

I just came up the hill from the rice paddies. My new project consists of some rice paddies, a reservoir pond, and a system of canals that connect the two.

So far we have a modest size pond, half built but already brimming full of water. In order to plant at all this season we had to dig in the spring when conditions aren’t favorable for heavy equipment. But we did okay. The project area looks pretty torn up but we have the basics to hopefully grow 4000 lbs of rice this season.

Starting April 7th I planted my rice seeds. I grow all northern Japanese strains of short-grain rice that are adapted to our growing season. Hokkaido, the northern island in Japan, is actually quite a bit colder than my area of Vermont. They grow rice in Hokkaido just fine. But the seeds have to be started in a hoop house or similar. The crop has a 5 1/2 month growing season, beginning with soaking the seeds in early April through harvest in late September.

On wednesday May 18th, 100 high school freshmen from Vergennes Union High School came to transplant seedlings to the field. In many ways we weren’t ready, but the date was fixed and no way to postpone it. The paddy floor was not totally level. The seedlings were still very small. I had not yet gotten the transfer pump running to pump excess water out of the paddy. But we did all right. Total disorder did not prevail and once started the kids transplanted about 20,000 seedlings in about an hour.

I was just down there. The water level has since dropped about half an inch and some of the high spots are above water and the clay starting to crack a bit. There is a little exit ditch from the paddy and water was trickling out of it. I dammed that up with some more clay to add an inch of height. We’re expecting rain so no need to pump. About half of the tiny seedlings are alive and rooted, which is all I expected. I have plenty more seedlings still in the hoophouse so when they get taller I can replant the open spots.

We have a second paddy that is not yet planted. It needs a lot of shovel work to clean up the dikes and knock down high spots. To do a good job with that will probably take a couple days. I got started on it to see how it would go. The sun was shining on the water, which was just a couple inches deep, and shoveling was very hypnotic, with ripples traveling the length of the half acre paddy. Then it started to thunder so I had a quick swim in the reservoir–my first swim on the farm, unless you count falling into the swamp.

We also have 100 ducklings standing by to weed the rice. We will probably need those suckers. Most of the sod was scraped off by the excavator bucket and set aside during the leveling process. But some low spots in the original field still remain as sod in the paddy, and the grass is sprouting through the water. If we introduce the ducks they will eat that stuff, but not the rice, because rice leaves are high in silica. Before the rice goes to seed the ducks will be removed.

I don’t know yet if there will be a strong need for animal tillage. Maybe running the beef cattle around in there would suffice! For harvest we are intending to use the reaper-binder and the thresher, as we do for other grains.

Pictures soon.