Planting millet (8/7/07)

Planting millet in early July beneath the soon-to-be-picked maize plants.





Extract from journal:

"The planting is intensely tedious. It involves unraveling a bundle of seedlings, of perhaps 100 seedlings and selecting a suitable sub-bundle, of perhaps 20-40 seedlings, to work on at a time. They are held by all in the left hand with the roots just below the hand, and the thumb and first two fingers prepare a single seedlings for the right hand to pick out by rubbing against the lower part of the stems near the roots. This rubbing action pushes forward a single seedlings from the bundle, if done skillfully, and the right hand picks it up with the thumb and first two fingers and pushes it into the mud-soil. Some people use the thumb above the fingers and horizontally (the thumb that is) push the roots in (men tend to do this for some reason), and others (women mostly) use the thumb upside-down-vertically held between the first two fingers to push the seedling in more neatly. A fast seedling planted can plant up to 15 seedlings in 10 seconds. A slower, (men tend to be slower) seedling-planter would poke 5 in every 10 seconds, or so. People tend to squat on their feet mostly, though women will also stoop, with their backs bent over, to plant rapidly, thum, thum, thum, it seems to make a noise as they bullet their seedlings in accurately spaced about three fingers wide-apart."