Today is the first day of the rice harvest, with the first field I have seen being harvested right outside my back door. As one would expect, everything is done by hand. The rice is cut and tied into small bundles that are threshed one at a time on a rock surrounded by plastic to catch the grain. All the men take turns threshing, while everyone else hangs around and chats.
It looks like a good harvest. Off a field of perhaps 400 square yards they expect to get as much as 200 pounds of rice. The extended family that owns this field owns the next one as well, but it will have to wait to be harvested until next week. Saturday is the only day people have free to work in the field.
After about a month or so, the field will be dry enough to plant another crop, perhaps onions, peppers, or mustard greens.
This is one of the many things that gives me hope for Nepal. The land is very fertile, and people know how to grow good crops. Right now people are very poor, with an average income of just $250 US per year, but if they could get a good government and a good economic system in place, they have the resources to pull themselves from poverty.