In class this week we harvest rice, more or less. Rice is the second most-produced grain on the planet after maize/corn and is the staple food of roughly half of globe’s population that of Vietnam. In class we pretend that our children are grains of rice and take them through the steps of production, from the field to the table. As we learn, unmilled rice is known as “paddy” and is best harvested when the grains are moist. After harvesting, which farmers mainly do by hand, comes threshing, which ideally takes place within a day or two after the harvest, and then the paddy has to go to a mill (or sit in the sun by the side of a road) where it must dry quickly to avoid becoming moldy. When the rice is dry, hullers remove the outer husk–another process that is often still done by hand. The hulling process can yield brown rice — the huller only removes the outermost husk, leaving most of the nutritional value intact — or white rice: further “polishing” removes the bran and the germ (and most of the vitamins). In class, after we harvest, we eat! (Or, just as we imagined the harvest, we pretend.)
We are revising the AllAroundThisWorld.com site — the information you’re seeking may still be here, but a lot of links are broken and details may be out of date. We are currently using a new (better!) site — ExploreEverywhere.com — to tell you all about our class offerings, our “pen pal” program and how to become one of our teachers, and will eventually be moving all the goodies from here over to there. So, GO TO THE NEW SITE!
