Chopped Wheat

Chopped Wheat
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho.

Well the main reason I took this photo is hard to see. In the background you see a mound of white and some people/animals around it. Well I believe that mound of white is chopped/ground straw. I have seen (but unfortunately do not have photos of yet) machines that hook up to tractor PTOs that seem designed solely for the purpose of grinding up straw (not the grain itself but the stems, straw).

Here people are stuffing the ground straw into large bags (like 3-5 times the size of large feed bags) and loading it onto an animal (probably a donkey). I have seen large bags of this ground straw for sale on the side of the road and it occurred to me that this is probably sold for mixing with mud for stucco. Many structures here are covered with mud stucco of sorts that clearly has some sort of grassy/straw mixed in with it. In talking with my Afghan colleagues I found that the walls, many of which are made at least partly of this mud straw mixture, are rebuilt/repaired every year so I imagine the stucco is also repaired annually which would make this a product that has a constant market.