Nou-En

In rural Japan, as in many areas around the world, small communities are suffering from rapid population decline as young people flock to the cities. A self perpetuating cycle develops in which rural communities lose their youth to entertainment and work opportunities in the city, which cripples the local economy by leaving behind small towns and villages lacking an able workforce.
Here in Sasayama, Hyogo Prefecture, the evidence of this can be easily seen on any walk or bike ride around the valley. In some villages more than half of the houses are vacant. Many fields have been abandoned and have begun the rapid transition back to a more natural state. Elementary schools with great facilities are being forced to close due to low enrollment. At our local elementary school this year's First Grade class has three students. Village elders possess a lifetime of priceless skills and knowlege that is not being passed on because of a lack of interested youth. Looking forward in time, it is worrisome to imagine the state of these communities if current trends continue.
Seeing these things, we here at Nou En have been motivated to work for positive change. Our aim is to encourage young people from around the world to return to rural communities. We organize enthusiastic volunteers (mostly through the WWOOF organization, http://www.wwoofjapan.com) to help local farmers in exchange for healthy food and invaluable local knowlege. We network and assist local organic farms with vegetable and rice production on a regular basis. We try to enthusiastically jump in and help local villagers whenever we can. In addition to these projects, we also have our own fields and gardens as well as chickens and goats that we care for.
Because part of our aim is encouraging people to want to live in the country side we also take time to enjoy the benefits of country living. We go hiking in the surrounding mountains, swimming in ponds and streams (especially during the hot humid Japanese summer!), barbecues with friends on weekends, kendo lessons at the local gymnasium and much more.
Mostly we try to provide a communal living environment where we work, learn, and grow together, all while striving to benefit and elevate the local community.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

potato planting.... finally!

We got our way (for once!) with the weather and spent this morning digging out trenches, planting potatoes, and doling out manure and rice hulls for each little potato. All in all we planted 20 kilograms each of Kita Akari and May Queen which will be ready to harvest in early summer. We also had a little time before lunch to plant some carrots, beets, daikon radish, spinach, small Japanese leeks, and a trio of rosemary plants.

These are supports for our pea plants which we made from our fruit tree prunings.

This is our wheat. Some of it is growing lush and beautiful because we added lots of manure when we planted it last fall. The rest of it is lagging a bit, but hopefully with the regular addition of the compost tea we've started making it will catch up soon.

Aidan and Kenya gathered some wild edibles from the banks surrounding the field: a mysterious, sour, delicious and abundant salad green that we love but rice farmers hate, plus some tangles of nobiru, which are sweet wild Japanese spring onions. They made a dressing of kumquat and vinegar which we enjoyed with curry udon and venison liver sausage just as the rain started to fall-- perfect timing!

off day activity (not for the squeamish)

Saturday we had a much needed break from the rain, but the ground was still too wet to do potato planting so we all had the day off. Blessed with nice weather, some of us took a bike ride into town to do some sightseeing, some went to help a friend in the process of constructing his own restaurant and then to a Japanese calligraphy exhibit, while Kenya and I stayed at the house to kill and butcher one of our older hens. Here she is being plucked:

It was Kenya's first time killing a chicken, and my second time, but thanks to these great directions we were able to do the job relatively easily even though we didn't really know what we were doing. When it came to gutting the hen, we referred back to the website quite a bit and got some guts on my keyboard in the process.

We learned how to take off the feet and the head, pull out the crop, cut off the tail, make a cut to take out the guts and then how to cut out the vent and rinse out the cavity.

We found all sorts of treasures inside. Guts, of course, but also countless unlaid eggs ranging in from normal egg size (with a very soft shell) to the size of a pinhead. The smaller eggs actually have no white around them and look like miniature egg yolks. Fascinating.

Because she was a tough old bird we decided to boil her (plus the feet) to make broth. Tonight we used it to make chicken and sourdough-herb dumplings that I adapted from this recipe.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

rainy day(s)

Sasayama is rainy, so sometimes instead of working in the fields we have to entertain ourselves by cleaning the house or shelling black beans or sorting merchandise for our upcoming flea market next month. This week we've been thwarting cabin fever by cleaning, organizing and redecorating the kids room of our English School. It's amazing to see people's creativity, especially when at the start of the day a person says they have no artistic talent and by the end of the day they are confidently coloring and arranging things on the wall and enjoying themselves. We had fun, but hopefully we'll have decent weather tomorrow so we can go ahead and plant potatoes. Here's a peek at some of the things we made:



Monday, March 22, 2010

workday 3-22-10



Last year, Gen acquired two big fields right by the Nou-en project house. One of them is slated to become a community garden and the other we're using to grow our own crops. We've got onions, wheat, strawberries, peas in the ground and now a scattering of turnip, komatsuna, mizuna, and shungiku (chrysanthemum greens). Today we got lots of work done: picking out rocks from the community garden field, weeding, building trellises for the peas to grow on, planting seeds, dropping off a truckload of horse manure, and setting up a water tank by the field to brew compost tea. Tomorrow, if it's not rainy, we'll plant potatoes, ginger, and taro root.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Nou-en meeting ~ thoughts from Aidan

We're getting ready to start up Nou-en again after the winter break. People have moved in to Tsuji house and are gearing up to assist neighborhood farmers starting in April. A few weeks ago we held a gathering of all the farmers we helped last season to talk about last year and how we can better work together this year. It was the first time we've held a meeting like this, with all the farmers involved.


One of our wwoofers, Aidan from Tasmania, attended the meeting and had these thoughts to share about his experience so far:

We live in interesting times, with machines as our hands and our food and friends coming from all four corners of the Earth. Maybe, whether by choice, or through necessity, we will all be affected by the principle of Nou-en.

How can we really put a money value on things?

Communities have changed from when people pooled resources. Infrastructure and methods have changed, and the environment and perceptions have been altered to suit the big corporations. Changes to food production and the environment have allowed us to rapidly re-direct our own place in the world, but at what cost?

With the resources we still have, and with the technology we have, there is great potential to explore the knowledge of our peers and forefathers.

Japan has the potential to feed itself if and when the 'ship' turns upside down. By fostering a lifestyle based on local and seasonal food, we can remove the life support system that keeps most of us alive.

It was motivating to attend a meeting for Nou-en with over 20 attendees, mostly local farmers, mostly over 50 years old. All that experience willingly being shared is definitely a step in the right direction.

We can all learn if we listen, and we can do anything if we try.

"...there are two types of people (paths)...the older ones, who understood everything, but did nothing with it, and the younger ones, who understood only partially or not at all, but immediately put suggestions into practice. We obviously trod the younger path in the agricultural movement, we did all our learning in the hard school of experience." (Rudolph Steiner).