It was in the beginning of August when I first saw flowers of rice.
At the end of September, I stopped watering and waited for harvest day.
There were ears that came out late and they were still green, but I could not wait as I was afraid of the rain that should come according to the weather forecast.
I cut off the bunches of the long grown rice plants with scissors .
They said the rice ears need to dry under the sun and blow in the wind for a week or so.
I put them on the lattice and when it was going to rain I put them indoors.
My rice plants didn’t bear much fruit and my harvest was very small.
To thresh the rice, I used mortar and golf ball, and then to polish the brown rice I put the precious grains of rice into a tiny bottle and poked them with a chopstick many times until when I saw some powders off the brown rice.
The grains of rice were still brown. I probably could polish only 20% of them. (above photos)
Two pictures below are the brown rice and white rice that I buy.
At last I washed them carefully so as not to wash away any grain and put them in the smallest pan I have with much water. I boiled them until most of the water went away and put the lid on the pan and turned off the heat to steam for about 6,7minutes.
Look at the picture in the middle. Doesn't it look like porridge in a rice bowl?
To be honest, the porridge is not in a rice bowl but in a small sake cup.
I tasted it and ate it in 8bites giving 2bites to my husband.
It tasted warm and sweet.
Here, I’d like to share a picture of the beautiful golden rice field I took from a train window. It was soon after I reaped and hung my rice to dry. I was on my way back home to Niigata from where my young rice plants,"kinu-hikari", were sent in May. To produce plenty of rice we need a spacious rice field like this on which the sun shines without being blocked by anything and has abundant water from mountains as well. That creates my favorite scenery of beautiful Japanese countryside.
My harvest of rice was very small but I enjoyed learning about how rice grows and how to make them ready to eat. That was my big harvest.