Buttar Rice Mill

Buttar Rice Mill is located in Village Balyal, which is a quiet place most of the time. We are surrounded by fields, so you can see the weather coming from a long way off. When a storm is brewing, we have to hurry to get everything under the roof. The mill is basically our second home. We spend more time here than anywhere else. My brother and I take turns watching the scales and the cleaning process. It’s a lot of repetitive movement, but we’ve got a system that works. We don’t have any fancy break rooms, just a wooden bench under the big tree outside where we sit when the machines are off. The birds like to nest in the rafters, and we usually just leave them be unless they get too messy. In Balyal, everyone knows whose mill is whose, so we don't feel the need to be loud about what we do. We just focus on getting the husks off the grain and getting it into the sacks. Sometimes the machinery breaks down right when we are in the middle of a big job, and we have to spend half the night getting it back together with whatever tools we have on hand. It’s just part of the life of a small-town miller. We don't ask for much, just a good harvest and machines that run.