The farmer's tools

The poem calls God 'the Seed and the Scythe'. A scythe is a real tool. Here are a farmer's tools: a reminder that a harvest is hard work before it is a festival.

The tools:

• sickle: a curved blade on a short handle; you bend down to cut crops close to the ground; the tool for harvesting;
• scythe: a long curved blade on a long handle; you stand and swing it in wide sweeps to cut tall grass (like the woman whose 'one sweep' cut the cherry tree in two);
• plough: pulled by oxen (or a tractor), it turns over the soil so seeds can be sown;
• trowel: a small hand tool for digging and making shallow furrows;
• rake: a long handle with metal teeth, for collecting hay or leaves;
• spade: a flat blade on a long wooden handle, for digging soil.

Notice: a short handle means bending; a long handle means standing.

Growing rice (paddy), step by step:

• 1. ploughing the soil;
• 2. puddling the land (working it into soft mud: the main step in preparing soil for rice);
• 3. transplanting the seedlings, after about 4–5 weeks in the nursery;
• 4. watering (irrigating) the field;
• 5. harvesting the paddy;
• 6. threshing the grains;
• 7. milling the rice.

The grain is dried after threshing so that it can be stored for longer.