Palay Harvest

In the Philippines they eat rice with every meal and there are three Tagalog words for rice.  Palay is rice with the husks still on, like in the field.  Bigas is rice that has been husked.  Kanin is cooked rice ready to eat.  We went to our Branch President's rice fields to watch the palay harvest.

President Bertin, mission president of the Philippines Quezon City North mission, where we are serving, had a daughter and her family out visiting the Philippines and they came out to our Branch to see the harvest and some carabao.  Our Branch President wanted some help while they were out so he invited Sister Swift and I to be there too.

Some of the local Filipino children in a small stand of bamboo.  The bamboo trees are huge out here and make an interesting creaking noise when the wind blows because they rub against each other and it sounds like they are creaking and about to fall.

Sister Swift watching the harvest with some Filipino children.

 A harvest machine driving down the fields.

 An older harvesting machine that had to be hand fed.  For these the rice had to be cut by hand with sickles and put in the back of the machine.

 After watching the rice harvest, we went to see some of the carabao.  They are used for plowing and leveling the fields before harvest, and for hauling in the rice bags on small wagons.  This one got scared when we came up and was swinging its horns around, so they decided he was not a good one for us to get up close too. 

 A smaller and calmer carabao let us get close and pulled people around in it's rice wagon.  President Bertin is near the front of the carabao.  Sister Bertin is in the wagon with her daughter and four grandsons.

 Our Branch President invited two of the Young Women along to help watch and entertain President Bertin's grandchildren.  Joyce and Micalyn.

Joyce and Micalyn riding the carabao, which they had never done before.