The first day of threshing is again a ritually significant day for the household and another wrist-tying ceremony is conducted in the house before the household members go to their swidden. Threshing is also marked by an injunction that all those who thresh on the first day must continue with the work on subsequent days until all the rice is threshed. The effect of this injunction is that only household members end up threshing their harvest. Although I discuss the significance of this injunction and other rituals associated with the harvest season in Chapter VI, it may be noted here that this season has the largest number of rituals of all the phases in the agricultural cycle of Palokhi. The overall importance of the rituals at harvest time, however, lies in the way the association between households and their rice crops are symbolically expressed.

Threshing is done on a clearing along the slope of the swidden near the stacks of rice, carved out of the hill-side with a hoe. The threshing ground is made firm by placing retaining logs along the contour of the slope and packing the earth tight against the logs until a flat surface is obtained. On this clearing, a large threshing mat (khlaumy) is placed with its ends made to curve upwards by means of supporting posts, or merely by resting them on the side of the hill and the top-most retaining log. Sheaves of rice are taken from the stooks and thrown, beaten and shaken on the mat. Then a man or woman steps onto the mat and kneads the rice stalks with the feet while fanning the rice with a large winnowing fan in broad, sweeping arcs. The fanning creates a draught of air which blows away the chaff and broken stalks while the heavier grains of rice remain in the mat. When all the grains have been separated from the stalks in this way, the stalks are removed by hand and the mat is rolled up to bring the rice together after which it is scooped up by hand or by means of a bamboo cup (or any small container that is available) and poured into a 22 litre kerosene tin in order to measure the amount of rice. Each time the tin is filled, a tally is kept by making a bend in a long, flat sliver of bamboo, and the rice is then poured into sacks or baskets to be stored either in temporary granaries in the swidden but or taken back to the household granary in the village. When all the rice has been harvested, the amount of rice obtained can then be determined in pip, the Northern Thai term for the volume of the kerosene tin which the Palokhi Karen have adopted, by counting the number of bends in the bamboo splint.

Threashing may also be done in a different way, although it is not common in Palokhi swiddens. This is actually a practice adopted from the Northern Thai and which is more commonly used in threshing the wet-rice harvest. It entails building a small threshing rack consisting of two long saplings which rest on the forked ends of wooden supports implanted into the ground at the threshing area. The rice stalks are then beaten on the rack thus dislodging the grains which fall onto the threshing mat which is placed under the rack.