About a week to a fortnight after the swiddens have been burned, the first swidden crop is planted. This is maize (Zea mays) which is a minor crop that the Palokhi Karen cultivate as a supplement to rice and it is usually eaten when stocks of rice are low. This seems to be a widespread practice among Karen cultivators (see Hinton [1975:189]; Kunstadter [1978:85]) but in Palokhi the role of maize as a supplementary crop is minor compared with that for the Pwo Karen described by Hinton. This is because the availability of wage labour opportunities in Northern Thai villages has led the Palokhi Karen to supplement their harvests of rice with rice purchased from the Northern Thai which, to them, is more preferable to eating a “starvation crop”. The maize is planted entirely on a household basis, that is, households providing the labour required for the task entirely from their own pool of labour. The work is carried out with the use of a digging stick, which is a short length of bamboo or wood tipped with an iron blade resembling a small hand-spade with a straight edge. The maize seeds are dropped into the holes made by the tool at various places in the swidden.
After the maize has been planted, rice is planted next. The planting of rice is the most labour intensive task in the cultivation of swiddens as the work needs to be done as quickly as possible, before the arrival of the rains, over a large area. Co-operation in this is, therefore, absolutely essential in Palokhi and it is during the planting phase of swiddening that the work groups are largest in the agricultural cycle with the possible exception of harvesting. Planting is done by dibbling, using long thin bamboo poles of about two to two and a half metres in length which are tipped with an iron blade similar to the blade of the digging stick. Indeed, often they are one and the same. Sometimes, if there are not enough of these blades, a short section of bamboo may be cut to tip the dibbles. Dibbling is invariably done by men while sowing is done by women, boys and girls. Most of the rice planted in Palokhi swiddens is ordinary, that is, non-glutinous rice, while small areas are given to glutinous rice. The Palokhi Karen recognise up to eight varieties or strains of ordinary rice and all are preferred to glutinous rice. The latter is usually used to make rice cakes on certain ritual occasions, for rice liquor and the remainder is eaten when stocks of ordinary rice have run out. The rice seed of these two kinds of rice are kept separate and are planted separately.[4] The seed is brought to the swiddens in baskets or sacks and they are distributed to the sowers who fill their sling bags with the seed and follow the line of dibblers, filling the dibble holes with seed. The holes are not covered after seeding.
The work parties usually commence work in the early morning and continue planting until noon when they rest for about an hour or two. At this time, the first major agricultural ritual is performed by the headman (if present) and by other older men in the party, after which food is served to helpers by the household whose swidden is being planted. This is also the first time that food is offered to members of work gangs; in clearing and burning, helpers bring their own food to eat at mid-day.[5] Planting continues in the afternoon until the swidden is fully planted or, if that is not possible, until the end of the working day which is normally at about 5 pm.
On the first day of rice planting, household members will also plant their other crops as well, but this task is less urgent than the planting of rice itself as they can return to complete the planting of these crops in following days. A list of the crops grown in Palokhi swiddens is given in Appendix D. All crops are planted in one of two ways: either mixed with the rice seed, or planted separately by broadcasting seed between dibble holes, and around the field hut. Tubers, which are also planted on this first day of planting and on subsequent days, must be placed into the ground; this is often done by digging up the soil with a bush knife, after which the soil is tamped back with the foot. At the end of the day, a brief ritual (called “planting the ritual basket of the yam”, chae’ lau nwae tasae’) is conducted (see Chapter VI). Thereafter, catch crops continue to be planted in swiddens for several days on a household basis. If there still remains rice seed to be planted, this is done with small work teams made up of two or three co-operating households. During the two or three weeks that follow, a variety of other tasks are also carried out in swiddens, namely, fencing and the construction of various traps and alarms worked by wind or water.
[4] Other Karen cultivators are also reported to grow several varieties or strains of rice (Kunstadter [1978:87]; Hinton [1975:93]). Unlike the Karen studied by Kunstadter, the Palokhi Karen do not make special efforts to cultivate certain strains of rice, particularly early ripening ones to reduce the waiting period for harvests, during which time their stocks of rice have been consumed. In this regard, they are therefore more similar to the Pwo Karen studied by Hinton. As far as their own rice crop is concerned, the Palokhi Karen prefer ordinary rice to glutinous rice although when they purchase rice from the Northern Thai, it is glutinous rice that they obtain because it is cheaper and it is usually the only rice available as the Northern Thai only grow and consume this sort of rice. Iwata and Matsuoka (1967:309) say that most hill communities in Northern Thailand (with the exception of the Hmong and Yao) cultivate principally glutinous rice, while Watabe (1976:87) says that in one Lua’ village he found both varieties of rice grown, presumably in equal amounts (but cf. Kunstadter [1978:87]). Most Karen, however, cultivate ordinary rice as the principal grain and glutinous rice in small quantities. On the basis of archaeological evidence, Watabe postulates that there is a high probability that hill or upland rice in early times was glutinous and that if deliberate selection of glutinous rice is not assumed, then this rice was progressively replaced by ordinary rice. The reason being that the genes responsible for the characteristics of ordinary rice are dominant and that hybridisation frequently recurs which would lead eventually to the predominance of this rice if selection was not practised by cultivators. If this is the case, then it is not impossible on the other hand that the Karen — given their preference for ordinary rice — have in fact enhanced the process by favouring ordinary rice in swidden cultivation.
[5] The manner in which food is shared in conjunction with the performance of agricultural rituals is significant because it appears to symbolically express certain sociological arrangements in Palokhi in relation to agricultural production. I have discussed the symbolic and ideological aspects of two modes of commensalism, that is routine domestic commensalism and feasting in the rites of the New Year, in Chapter IV; but in Chapter VI, I discuss other aspects of ritual commensalism in the particular context of agricultural rites in Palokhi.