HARVESTING rice is very different to what it was back in the ‘good old days’.

With all the modern machinery now, what used to take up to, sometimes three months is now done in a few weeks. We are talking about crops of 500 acres plus per farm, whereas in the early days, pre deregulation, farms were restricted to quotas, depending on farm size.

Crops varied from 40 to 120 acres.

It was strictly policed, with crops surveyed each year.

If farmers exceeded their quota, the extra crop could not be harvested.

Crops had to be grown on a three year rotation, the same ground could not be used each year.

Crops were all sown using a seeder whereas now most are aerial sown.

When the rice was ready to harvest, a contractor would come in and cut a track around each bay.

Because back then the headers harvesting comb was on the side at right angles to the header, that way no rice was wasted.

No bulk handling then, once the storage in the header was full, it would be put into bags, about  eight to 10 at a time, then dumped in a stack. Each bag weighed approximately 48 kilos.

Once most of the crop was harvested, a specialised bag sewer would come and sew them up.

They would work on a contract basis.

The bags were then placed on a sled or sometimes a flat trailer, using bomber wheels and “snigged” out, as it was called, to the nearest road.

The bags were then manually loaded onto trucks to be taken to the rice mill.

Back then, there were no dryers.

Rice had to have a certain moisture content before it could be stripped. 

Consequently, varieties like calrose and calora could sometimes not be harvest until as late as June or July.

It was all heavy and back-breaking work.

Very rarely was the rice straw burnt. A firm from Yenda would bail it and it was used for packaging, or added to other feed for sheep and cattle.

Do you have any historic photos from rice harvesting in the ‘good old days’?

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