It’s spring and all the farmers at Oyama Senmaida are busily preparing for rice planting season. This week, I lent a hand with 種蒔 tane-maki, which we’d call sowing in English.
On Monday, we prepared 220 seed trays for the Sake Owners program. The sowing is staggered to match the planting dates in late April through the end of May. Sake rice takes a bit longer to mature than the koshihikari variety, so it always goes first.
Each seed tray is mechanically prepared to ensure consistency. Shallow trays filled with special soil run through the machine like an EZ Bake oven. A slow conveyer belt passes under a shower bar, then seeds are scattered from the first hopper, covered with soil from the second hopper, swept flat, and slowly ejected onto a landing platform.
We humans (farmers, staff, and volunteers) fed the machine and carried the finished trays carefully from the machine to their assigned row in the greenhouse. Afterward, we covered all the trays with a very long plastic sheet to keep the seedlings safe from any frosty nights that might still come. The bed will be flooded with water and the seeds should sprout before long.
With six people carrying trays, one person placing them in rows, and three more working the machine, we finished the tane-maki in about two and a half hours.
That’s the first of many sessions that happen this year as Oyama Senmaida prepares for over 400 program members and 1200 schoolchildren to come plant rice.
