Turning untamed jungle into productive farm land

I feel like the enemy in the cartoon “Rio”. Bulldozers, herbicides, chainsaws, and poison; my favorite things for turning jungle into rice land. So? Just shoot me! The rice farm has been a busy place! The farm crew has been busy clearing 70 acres of new land, and it will be planted this month. Soon to be growing nice green rice! (My redemption?) So far they’ve only dug up two anti-tank mines and a rocket grenade. Thank God, all were duds!

The last of the planting of the 500 acres of current production land was finished in late April. It was followed by a five inch rain. This brought the rice out, but it was too deep for the young seedlings and needed to be drained. However, the excessive rain brought dormant land crabs out in force, and with scissor like precision they began clipping off rice, and had to be poisoned.

Following that, the rats came out to eat the young seedlings, and our crew got no sleep one night as they put poison around all our fields. The poison was developed in China, and I nicknamed it the “Chinese Three Step”. The rats eat it, take a drink, walk three steps, and keel over, dead! There were thousands of dead rats added to the soil fertility base the next morning. Those are now, “Good rats”. Then it quit raining. So, now we face drought. The long term solution is to develop resevoirs, but we don’t have funds for that, yet (hint). We need all of you to pray for timely rain in Balang.