Rice Farming (more pix than info)

I grew up in a rural, mid-Michigan subdivision where a large field abutted our back yard.  Each spring I saw the corn (or beans, in alternate years) get planted by huge tractors; each summer my sister and I played near or among the growing crops (mature corn is a great place to hide, though its leaves give some nasty "paper cuts" and we always feared The Tractor coming); the crops were harvested each September by the huge combines and then the field was plowed for a long winter's rest.  All of the farming was done by machine; I don't remember ever seeing a farmer out there.

After a stint in Grand Rapids for college and then time in Chicago for graduate school, moving to Iowa was like going home: corn and beans everywhere.  Now living in Korea, where the garden-raised corn tastes like corrugated bark (I'm not sure Iowans would feed it to their cows) and the soybean fields are invisible (I have no idea where they grow enough to make the amount of soy sauce consumed here). As the campus is surrounded by rice fields, I've been curiously observing the seasons of farming.  And I quickly discovered that my dreamy vision of hand-planting rice fields in the dawning mist was a bunch of romantic crap, but, still, Korean farming is nothing like what I saw in the US. Thus, here is a selection of rice field photos and some ignorant commentary from my year here.

Early Spring:

Spring starts out bare and brown. The empty fields are plowed;
stacks of fertilizer arrive along roadsides (I assume they got put into the fields when I wasn't looking;
the fields get flooded through an elaborate, low-tech system of plastic tubing;
and flats of rice seedlings appear along field edges to grow for a couple of weeks under plastic.

Mid-Spring:

Planting time! The flats of seedlings get loaded onto the planter, which has little fingers
that pop out each rice plant and stick them in rows  across the muddy fields.
Even with an engine-powered planter, the farmers work hard to guide it in reasonably straight lines.

Late Spring:

Once the seedlings have grown for a couple of weeks, men walk about with leaf-blower-looking things that appear to spray chemicals from their backpacks.  I hope it's herbicide rather than pesticide, but I don't know.
 I loved seeing one farmer find a dry place to rest - this kind of tractor is a rare sight here.

Summer:

Summertime is for growing.  The gorgeously lush green waves are punctuated by great white herons who enjoy catching frogs and nesting in pine tree tops (looking ridiculously awkward).

Fall:

In October, fields of golden rice get harvested by small machines, then poured and transported
in giant tote bags to the grain elevators.
Sometimes hand-tied bundles of rice marked where ajummas made way for tractors entering the field.

Early Winter:

The rice stems are baled, usually into huge rolls;
some farmers have nearly-naked bales in the field for awhile, and some wrap them in white plastic
that looks a lot like giant marshmallows (or ghost poop, as one friend calls them).

Late Winter:

The shorn winter rice fields look as sad and lifeless as those in Iowa and Michigan - but without the snow!
These were taken mid-January.  :)

And, as a bonus for you faithful readers, a final picture from this week's spring rice field foray.  Too bad for the frog, I suppose.