Note from Toby: I spotted a bunch of these little mills in a small town in Laos. I believe that they put rice in the pot and the hammer thrashes the rice. But it may be making rice meal or something else. Either way I thought they looked pretty cool.

I’ve never seen this before, but it appears to me that it’s a mortar and pestle that is powered by a windmill, otherwise a person would have to be at the other end, and use his/her foot (manpower) to move the pestle up and down, so the windmill seems like a good idea.

After the rice is harvested, the shelves need to be removed and to do so, we would put the rice into a mortar, and smash them with a pestle to free the rice from the shelves, and then you’d get brown rice.

As for the white rice, you would have to remove the thin brown layer, and to do so, my dad said that the rice get smashed again with a bigger pestle, this is to prevent the rice grains from breaking into small pieces during the smashing process. Of course, this is an old fashion way of doing things; they have machines that would process this now, but most farmers in Laos can’t afford to own one.

A good example of the manual one, photos and descriptions below are from mozemoua’s blog,

mozemoua: One or more people stands on one end of this long wooded stick and uses force to hit the rice inside the large hole. It takes a lot of strength to do this. a long string is tied from the ceiling for the person to hold for support. one person sit next to the hole to make sure all the rice are inside the hole.

This was taken couple years ago when my cousin from MN came to visit. We were preparing these rice for her mom.

It takes more than one person to work this thing! Believe me, it’s pretty hard!!

The whole cycle of separating the rice from it’s pod. the person in the blue, is separating the rice and pod after it has gone through the “machine” (sorry don’t know what to call it) two girls next to the hole to ensure all the rice are in the hole at all time, and the girls on the other end working it.