No pictures can do the scenery justice. These rice fields by created by hand many generations ago. They utilize every inch of mountainous terrain by layering the planting fields. This region was where this kind of farming on terraces began. The art is dying away because the young people move to bigger cities to seek work.
All the terraces in this area are created with dirt walls. In other towns we saw they were constructed of rock. They primarily plant rice but we saw many terraces loaded with vegetables of all kinds. There is no irrigation, they depend totally on rainfall. It is so breathtaking to look down and see hundreds of terraces as far as the eye can see and growing crops on each of them. They have to walk from wherever their home is to the terraces each day to tend the crops, they walk on mud paths to reach them. If they live on the top of the mountain they have quite a commute to the lower terraces!
This is what the rice looks like close up, if the rice is more yellow it is about ready to harvest, if it is a deep green it will be a while before it can be harvested! We have seen them plant and harvest rice, it is hard back breaking work and done manually in the sun and humidity.
Rice is an important staple here in the Philippines, even with all the planting we see ongoing, they have to import rice from China. They eat far more than they can produce.
No comments:
Post a Comment