IsaanAussie

I'm still around here in Sisaket but still absolute rubbish growing tomatoes. Can I suggest you check out "Gordon Tickle" on YouTube. He is a Pom in Chiang Rai with the greenest thumbs I know.

Depending on conditions (basically water level) either 700 or 800 baht/rai More reservoir discharge than rain. But yes this year has seen paddies very wet. Little wind but very sloppy conditions which meant lot of lodging. Times have changed. No real or iron buffalos ploughing any more. No DC60 bag filling machines let alone teams of hand cutters and thrashers mounted on clagged out light trucks. People here aren't traditional rice farmers any more, they are rice producers that minimise work and cost. The romance is disappearing

Two things now lodged in the our villager's brains. First forget small harvesters, too much mess with dirt and sticks picked up, and too high a loss rate. Two large harvesters did most of this area between them. producing a much cleaner paddy harvest. The second thing is, sell the crop straight off the harvester without moisture testing yielded better bottom line. The two big guys both ran large tip trucks that took the "damp" rice to be weighed and returned with the money. Farmer then paid for the harvest services. Quick and easy. From the weight/sale docket I saw, they were paying about 10.2 baht. We used pickup trucks to move bulk rice we would keep. That was then dried on blue nets and bagged. In total about 120 bags.

From a pond to rice paddy? Why not set up a syphon system from 4" plastic pipe?

Time will tell. We definitely need more rain so far we have had just enough to keep the surface moist-ish!