I realized I had not posted anything about the people we saw working in Bhutan. While there is some heavy machinery for the road work and quarrying, most of the work is done by hand. We saw a family using a brace of yaks to plow their fields in the Ura valley.
Later that afternoon we saw another family threshing their buckwheat. The man was doing all the work and his wife and 3 children were there, watching. He used the large basket to separate the buckwheat grains and the flat basket to scoop up the grain and put it in the sacks.
I'm not sure that I mentioned that Bhutanese society is quite different than Western society in terms of inheritance. The man moves in with his wif'e's family and the daughters inherit the property.
We also watched a woman with a hand scythe cutting buckwheat. These were situations where we noticed someone working in the field and we asked Chimmi to talk to the people and ask if it was OK to photograph them. Everyone was fine with it.
This is also the beginning of the season for the rice harvest. We saw a couple of fields where the rice had been cut and one where the threshing had begun, but we didn't have time to stop and photograph.
Weaving is prevalent in the northeast, but I found a few women weaving in the shops. I was in this shop one evening and the weaver had gone home, but she was there in the morning two days later. She was very fast. Most of the patterns are standard pickup and inlay, but there is also the use of what looks like a sumac weave that I originally thought was embroidered.
Later that afternoon we saw another family threshing their buckwheat. The man was doing all the work and his wife and 3 children were there, watching. He used the large basket to separate the buckwheat grains and the flat basket to scoop up the grain and put it in the sacks.
There is an infant in the mother's lap, although you can't see it in this picture. See below.
Here he is using the flat basket to shovel the grain into the sack.
Here' are the mother and her youngest. Families are encouraged to have no more than 2 children, but there is no enforcement. In this province and at this altitude, most people survive on subsistence farming. Buckwheat is about the only thing that grows up here. Chimmi said there were sheep and we did see some weaving with wool, but I never saw the sheep.
I'm not sure that I mentioned that Bhutanese society is quite different than Western society in terms of inheritance. The man moves in with his wif'e's family and the daughters inherit the property.
We also watched a woman with a hand scythe cutting buckwheat. These were situations where we noticed someone working in the field and we asked Chimmi to talk to the people and ask if it was OK to photograph them. Everyone was fine with it.
This is also the beginning of the season for the rice harvest. We saw a couple of fields where the rice had been cut and one where the threshing had begun, but we didn't have time to stop and photograph.
Weaving is prevalent in the northeast, but I found a few women weaving in the shops. I was in this shop one evening and the weaver had gone home, but she was there in the morning two days later. She was very fast. Most of the patterns are standard pickup and inlay, but there is also the use of what looks like a sumac weave that I originally thought was embroidered.
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