Harvesting

Everyone’s hard work over the last several months is beginning to pay off (Thank you’s to all those that have come and gone). The broccoli, daikon, beets, negi, lettuce, spinach, turnips, and carrots have been great additions to our meals recently, but now the big harvesting has started. We have now harvested the onions, peas, garlic, and wheat. The house is beginning to look a bit strange with all the hanging food around. We still need to tie and hang all the wheat.

Nou-En Batake has been getting some much needed love recently. The plots are looking really good and soon we’ll be ready for those typhoon winds.

Friendship. In the last few weeks I have had the wonderful experience of living and working in Sasayama. By luck, I found the generous Nishimura family who welcomed a stranger as a friend and a friend like a part of the family. I have met French, Japanese, a Tasmanian, a New Zealander, a Singaporean, and other Americans, all of which with open-hearts and open-minds. Though we come from varying nations we are not defined by our country of origin but by our unique personalities. This is something I think we all forget while in the safety of our own hometowns. Each new friendship offers a lifetime of stories to share and infinite opportunities in store for the future. Friendships like these are formed in instants but feel like they have lasted forever.

Community. The Nou-en project has a clear communal objective but everyday is teeming with communal ideology. We work for our benefit. That “we” is not we as a family or we as a group of friends, the “we” I refer to is the global we, we as a part of the earth, reverent for the lives given for our food and always conscious of a balance we wish to return to and maintain.

Memories. The most valuable “possessions” I own are my memories. This chapter in my life has generated a multitude of unique and beautiful memories. Each day offers the opportunity for a new and exciting experience. Moments of humility, excitement, frustration, and elation paint the canvas of each day. Ceaselessly I am awestruck when I look around to see where I am and what I’m doing. Diversity and contrast have held new bounds in this magnificent world as soon as I decided to step out the door. Life has taken on a new definition. My reality has changed forever.

-Seth Paul

My stay at Tsuji house was what I was looking to experience in Japan.

It was really inspiring to live with fifteen other people from all over the world, to share food and stories and work. When I arrived I thought to myself, I can learn or make or do anything I desire here. Being able to work with the farmers, to sit in their kitchen or go to their field made this a very special part of my trip to Japan.

The mountains surrounding

The frogs sing chorus of rising intensity.

Beardog is Buddha.

Jeremiah Riehl

May 9, 2010

update

by Anna

I know, it's been a while since I've posted anything here. We've been SO busy this spring getting all the summer veggies in the ground, starting up the community garden, weeding (of course), helping out some local farmers, and dealing with some wacky weather and abismal drainage in our big fields (swimming, anyone?). And I just had a baby.

All excuses aside, I took a few pictures of my backyard the other day and thought I would share them.

This is some kind of Italian wheat that Gen got me for my birthday last year. Maybe it's farro?

This is one of a handful of peaches on our baby peach tree. Isn't it precious?

We're raising a small flock of akadori chickens. They're a local breed raised for meat that grow really large. They're still chicks and we're struggling to keep them safe-- we lost one to disease, one to the dog, and five to a weasel who, oddly, struck in broad daylight. 

The bread oven. We usually make a lot of bread but haven't been for the past few weeks since it needs a bit of repair work done on the inside. We've got to fix it soon-- I want to have a pizza party.

A japanese forest crab. I couldn't believe it when I first saw these little guys crawling around on the forest floor. Japan is full of surprises.

Welcome Mio!

by Seth Paul

In the last two weeks we have planted black beans in several fields, collected ume from a temple in Kyoto, harvested our yellow onions, and welcomed a new member to the Nishimura family; the latter being the most exciting, unexpected, and happy incident to occur.

Little Mio Nishimura entered the world a little earlier than we had expected, about one month earlier than expected. I personally don’t know many of the details of the event but the labor started on a very memorable day for me at very least. At 3PM I heard the crack of thunder to the East. This was the first thunder I had heard in Japan and I was uncertain if this was in fact thunder. Thirty minutes later the answer came in torrential rains, the likes of which I have rarely seen. It was as though a small ocean had been enjoying an afternoon nap in a cloud on this beautiful day and after waking was hurrying back home to its fish, ships, and beaches. This ocean seemed to have liked his nap because the same incident occurred for the two following days. Perhaps Mother Nature felt she had to do a little cleaning for Mio before she arrived. She is a little sweet heart and all her wwoofer “Aunts and Uncles” look forward to spoiling her with exorbitant amounts of attention.

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.