Rice Harvest Day #1

After some waffling & indecision over the last few days, I decided today that enough of the grain had turned to the “ripe” yellow/brown color to warrant harvest. The subjective call was aided by the fact that every day it seemed that an increasing number amount of the rice was getting consumed by my local colony of house finches or perhaps the wrens or sparrows I’ve seen rolling through the garden form time to time.

First, what is yellow enough to be declared “yellow” and when exactly does the count of these subjectively color coded grains equate to 85% of the total? (This was what was suggested by my developing world rice growing website as the harvest signal.)

Yesterday I observed the following during my “inspection”:

I thought it was on its way but not quite ready.

I had drained the paddy Sunday in order to hasten the harvest and it seemed to contribute to a noticeable difference in the color just a day later:

So I harvested the entire lower paddy.

Details to follow tomorrow.