The Provincial Life - Preparing the Rice Grains for Milling

Here in the Philippines rice is a major part of our diet. We buy rice or if lucky and you have your own rice land, you have your own supply.
Every year our tenant gives us our share of palay and this year we got 20 sacks of unhusked rice grains or "palay".

These are some of the sacks. We got them when they were newly threshed and the day was sunny so it was not wet, but we still have to sun dry them.

We buy these big bamboo mats because it is easy to use and it dries the palay faster. It is kind of expensive but lasts long if properly kept and if the rats don't chew it. The first one I just bought for 1,200 pesos. You can see the difference from our old one.

Here they are putting only 3 sacks per mat so it won't be too thick and it won't dry well. It really depends on you but with the unstable weather 3 per mat at a time is good enough. As long as they get sun dried at least 1-2 times before storing them, then dry again one time before milling.

Then they rake out a little at a time. They keep doing it until all the grains are spread out. Then continue raking every so often so the grains are shifted around and distributed properly.

Here it is being sun-dried. They will go to it at least every hour or less to rake and shift it. We usually place it in front of our house. Sometimes across the street, not too far from our house. We place it where the sun is at most of the time.

They collect it in the middle so they can place them in sacks when it is late in the afternoon.

Collecting the very last. Ready to be placed in the storeroom.

Placing them for the meantime in one of the empty rooms in the boarding house.

Now we rice grains to be milled. We will have enough supply for 4-6 months. If we get more palay from our other tenants, we will be good for a few more months more, Maybe we won't have to buy anymore till next year when we get our share again.
But the disadvantage is we can't choose the outcome of the rice. Sometimes it will be a good quality, sometimes not so good. So we just have to accept it.

That's how We get our rice for consumption.

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