Our Visit To A Rice Mill

Many of the public holidays this year have fallen on Saturday, which is considered a work day by many businesses so they do not get another day off instead. But when a holiday falls on a Sunday they do get Monday off, because of that the Service Center was closed today.

Last Saturday when we usually call our family we were in Kampong Cham and the internet was poor to say the least. We decided to touch base with some of our family this morning that we had not gotten to speak to very much on Saturday.

President Ul Phornn, of the Phnom Penh Cambodia South Stake Presidency, is the Operations Manager of a Rice Mill out in Steung Mean Chey. Since we had a holiday we asked if the mill would take the day off and he told us, oh no. So we asked if he would let us come and see the rice mill, which he agreed that we could. Not only did we get to see the Rice Mill but we saw a section of Steung Mean Chey that we had never seen before.

It was interesting to see the big 100 kilogram (220 pounds) bags of rice that were being poured into a big hopper to start the milling process. The first step is to separate out any foreign matter before it begins the sifting and milling process. Next the rice has to be sifted to separate the pieces from the whole grains, the pieces are used for milled rice flour. Both the pieces and whole grains are polished as they go through several more large pieces of machinery. All along the process there are areas where the "bad rice" is extracted into bags, which is used for animal feed. At the end of the milling the rice goes into 20 kilo bags, mainly for export to China, Europe and the U.S. President Ul Phornn told us that the best rice is the new crop Jasmine rice. The old crop grains have dried out too much. He even gave us six 5 kilo bags of rice to take home.

Since we were not around on Saturday we did our weekly shopping today. The car really needed a bath after the trip to the Kaits, so while it got washed we took care of  some things at the office. This afternoon we also got our weekly letter to friends and family done and sent off. We had a productive and educational holiday today.