At Annapurna, we began our new year starting with the paddy harvest. As the sequence of sowing paddy in multiple seedbeds, we have paddy starting to ripen from late December to early March.
This year weather favored us with light rather than no showers close to this harvest. We hand-harvested early sown Bhavani (test field) and CO43 seed field for precision while the rest of the 3.5 acres were harvested using a track combine harvester – a smaller machine than a regular combine harvester; a bit higher on the price point but works efficiently in the wet field conditions without making deep tracks on the paddy fields.
Currently harvested paddy is being sun-dried, followed by winnowing to clean and separate filled grains from empty husks. This particular seedbed was into the heading – flowering stage during rainy-cloudy days which does have negative effects on the pollination process. We will be curious to see how many bags (KG) this early sown paddy variety fills.
