It is the time of year when you harvest one rice crop and plant the next in the fields around us.

The walk down the lane to Bangunharjo village takes you past the newly planted on your left and the maturing and harvested on the right.
The former fields are neat rows of short bright green grasses separated by the still waters reflecting the sky.
The latter are a mixed bag, the green of the ripening, the yellower colour of many full heads of grain and the forlorn brown of the mud and grass stumps of the remains of a cut crop.

Harvesting is generally an entirely manual process. The rice is cut with a small sickle and brought to the roadside edge of the field. Here the ground is covered with tarpaulin in the middle of which stands the threshing machine. This consists of a horizontal cylinder with an uneven surface attached by a bicycle chain to a bicycle crank and pedal. With one foot turning the cylinder the operator holds the rice stalks against the cylinder surface whose unevenness knocks the grains off to fall on to the tarpaulin. A deluxe model will have two pedals, one either side, allowing for two operators and twice the throughput. As this work proceeds vehicles using the lane squeeze by.

There are powered threshing machines around. These are usually mounted on a motor tricycle frame or, in one case, on the chassis of a van with most of the bodywork cut away. However our local harvesters neither possess nor hire them.