The Goddess Of Rice

Bali's terraced ricefields have been described as an "engineered landscape", a collaboration between nature and human beings. Terracing allows rice to be planted on steep slopes and protects the land from erosion. Each terrace is irrigated by a complex series of channels controlled by small dams.

Rice seed is planted in a protected bed. While the seedlings mature, farmers prepare the fields by flooding, ploughing and leveling. Ploughing with oxen is slowily disappearing as mechanization is slowing taking over.

Seedlings are then transplanted into flooded fields by hand. Maturity will take 210 days, thus they go through this process just three times a year.

Harvesting is usually done by women, who cut the stalks with a small knife concealed in their palms so as not to frighten the Rice Goddess. The Hindu goddess of prosperity, Dewi Sri, became identified in Bali with the rice spirit of local belief and she is honored in the fields, the granary and the rice basket.



After the harvest the fields are burned off, producing a soil-protecting alkaline ash.Then the cycle begins again. This was truely a memorable experience for us-one we won't forget for a long time....