The bale lumbung is the rice granary of the Sasak of Lombok: a thick bonnet of alang-alang thatch riding on four hardwood posts, each collared with a flat disc — jelepreng — so rats cannot climb. The body is bedek, split bamboo plaited on the diagonal, and the floor is sundried clay mixed with buffalo dung and straw ash.

One opening only, a high window taking the harvest twice a year. Decades of cooking smoke have carried the thatch from straw-pale to dark umber-grey. This system borrows that logic: heavy top mass, open base, a single way in, and light content held above a dark ground.