Hello Hivers!
Hope you had a nice weekend 😊.
Today is Sunday and my only day off of the week. This is the rainy and stormy season in Da Nang, the weather is also very cold so I can't go out. Through the rainy and stormy days, I appreciate the beautiful sunny days. It's raining heavily outside, sitting by the window holding a cup of hot coffee in my hand reminds me of the time at the end of October, when the weather in late autumn was very beautiful and I had the opportunity to return to my hometown to visit ripe rice fields. Emotions flooded back so I decided to turn on my computer and write down these feelings and share with you my peaceful but memorable weekend.
That time is at the end of October, the time to harvest rice for farmers. It's hard to find pictures of rice harvest in Da Nang but in Quang Nam there are so many so I invited another friend of mine to his hometown in a rural area in Quang Nam province.
Wet rice farming is one of the main and oldest occupations of farmers in Quang Nam. The rice fields spread endlessly, driving along the small road in the village to see the rice plants in bloom is enough to make me happy. Rice is the main food of the Vietnamese people, so farmers have to take great care to expect a bountiful harvest.
Here, the rice is ripe and shiny, and the stork flies all over the dyke. My favorite is the scent of ripe rice. Every year there are two rice crops here. After 3 months of hard work plowing, hoeing, tending, fertilizing, mowing and irrigation, farmers will harvest one crop in May-June and one in August-October. The whole field is golden in the sun, fragrant rice flowers sway in the wind, people rush to the fields to harvest rice.
After the rice is harvested, people bundle it up into large bundles, line it up in rows and then put it in a threshing cart, the threshing cart will separate the rice grains to one side and the other side is called straw. It is the dry, muddy hands of the people here that create delicious white rice grains. Even though it's hard to get up early to work all day in the rice fields, everyone still feels happy. Seeing these images firsthand, I feel more and more appreciative of the rice grains from the farmers' sweat and tears. I feel both love and gratitude for their hard work.
It has many large reservoirs and every sunset here is very poetic and peaceful. The image of a buffalo is not new to the countryside of Vietnam, but to me, it is very special. I am a girl who grew up in the Central Highlands, where mainly coffee trees, fruit trees, pepper, ... so images of golden rice fields or buffalo grazing are very rare. I hope my post shows you the quiet and peaceful atmosphere of the countryside in my country.
On the way to see the ripe rice fields being harvested, I came across a very special image - that is, ducks in the field. I don't know in your country, in what form are ducks raised? You can share with me below the comment section. As for people in the land of Thang Binh - Quang Nam, ducks are often raised under the "dual" model, meaning that they will both raise ducks and grow rice on a piece of field.
Around May or June of the lunar calendar, after the summer-autumn rice crop is harvested, when the rice fields are harvested only stubble, the "duck owners" come to the empty fields to set up tents. , camp and start a new season of free-range ducks. They only kept them in cages for more than 20 days and then released into the fields. People have taken advantage of the field area after the rice is harvested, the food is abundant from nature and the remaining rice grains. At this time, the duck farmer will not spend much food for the ducks.
Duck herding is a nomadic profession. This job is much more difficult than traditional captive breeding, because regardless of whether it is raining or sunny all day, you have to run after ducks in the field. Wherever the ducks go, the duck herder must follow them to avoid the ducks getting lost. In addition, raising ducks in the field is also more risky, especially in terms of disease because ducks often eat a variety of foods, which is difficult to control. The advantage of raising ducks in the field is that farmers save money on buying food for ducks.
By the time I arrived, these ducks had also grown, and under the rice fields were hundreds of ducks swimming. Watching ducks swim leisurely in the water adds a peaceful touch to this peaceful land. The sun is also slowly descending the mountain, the sky is covered with a red color of the sunset that is both poetic and brilliant. It's time for me to end my "excursion" of the fields.
This is the end of the year with a lot of work, so I have become busier and have less time off. Outings are also less and the weather at the end of the year is also very cold, so I will save it for the holidays to make up for it 😅.
Thank you for reviewing these memories with me. Have a nice new working week ❤️