The expanse of green can be seen stretching from east to west and from north to south, the agricultural rice fields of the Rensing Bat Village farming community, most of which was planted at the beginning of January, is now growing lush and green, adorning hundreds of hectares of rice fields.
Lepok Hamlet is in the northernmost village of Rensing Bat. This hamlet is the first hamlet to plant rice early in the rainy season this year. The farmers' rice fields have started to look green since mid-December 2018. Most of their rice in this hamlet is between 1.5 months and 2 months old, a new hope for the farming community to immediately enjoy the results of their hard work once it takes 3 months to be ready for harvest. This is different from the two hamlets to the south of Lepok hamlet, namely, Rensing Bat Hamlet and Timuk Rurung Hamlet, the farmers' rice fields have just started to turn green since the end of January 2019. There is a reason in these two hamlets that the agricultural fields are slow to be planted. The water supply is not optimal because we have to wait for the water distribution schedule from the Pandan Duri Dam which only takes 1 to 2 days in one schedule so that agricultural areas of hundreds of hectares automatically cannot be fully irrigated and have to wait for the next schedule.
The green expanse of rice fields is now evenly distributed in all hamlets, only one or two farmers can be seen trying to continue planting other than rice, namely chilies, tomatoes and shallots. Seeing that agricultural commodities for these plants still appear to be not up to par on the market, chili farmers are trying to stop cultivating them. Falling prices are causing chili and tomato farmers to lose money, especially in the rainy season when the fruit will be damaged due to unpredictable weather. Now the farmers are just waiting for the happy day where they will have a new livelihood to reap the results of their hard work after planting three months ago. The rice harvest is a joy that is always awaited and in the future all farmers will have a happy day, the taste of new, fragrant rice that pierces the heart feels beautiful smiling infinitely happy. God willing, this year we will all be happy.
