Rice is a beautiful plant and wonderful to work with at all stages.
From tiny seedlings in the greenhouse...
...to transplants in the paddy mud.
Rice seedlings grow rapidly when the rice paddy water heats in the summer sun.
Like other "clumping" grasses, rice plants expand by adding shoots to the center.
By late summer, the rice plants send up heads and begin to change colour to golden green.
Different varieties really look distinct as some mature in our climate and others do not.
We dry down the paddies and harvest the best rice plants with a special rice harvester.
Rice is an incredibly productive grain - a ton per acre. From the rice "seed" we select a portion to plant next year and polish the rest to eat and sell.
Brown rice. Yum! Nutritious and delicious, rice has been feeding much of the world for thousands of years. Now we can enjoy local rice grown at NIKIAN Farm in Nova Scotia.