Farm Blog - Living on a Hawaiian Nature Tea Farm

Cover crops minimize top soil and OM loss from heavy rain

2011-12-22T23:34:00.002-10:00

Though I was aware of benefit of cover crops in fields, after so many days of heavy rain I instinctively felt the real benefit and cover crop use.

Our primary use of cover crops is to let the plants do the work. It's vague when we just talk about it. Of course we can list the benefit of using cover crops.
- protect top soil
- improve/maintain natural tilth
- hold water
- aerate soil
- break up compaction
- add OM
- add nitrogen (legumes)
- smother unwanted weeds, or at least control better
- attract beneficial insects
- stable habitat for pests and predators
- reduce disease occurrence
- buffer and harsh environmental impact

The list goes on and it could be more specific to each type of cover crop used.

In past several days I have realized that the benefits are much more than what's listed. Consider all the lost top soil, organic matter, soil structure, natural habitat. It's much harder to rebuild than to protect them. It takes many years to build rich soil. As long as cost of production, work, materials are cheaper, it's still viable option to do conventional farming with chemicals and big machinery, but this is all changing fast.

As I walk down by the rows of tea, soil is well-drained and soft directly benefiting from cover crop presence. Also top soil and OM are kept in place in the form of plant matter. Different niche of cover crops also gives different functions. Some bunch grasses hold better grip with thicker root mass, while crawling habit of certain legumes and grasses catch loose runoff sediments and OM.

Each year weather pattern is becoming more unpredictable and intensifying. It's very crucial time to develop ways to protect our valuable farm resources with minimal effort. The work itself is not so hard to do. The hardest part is taming our greed and ego.

What's next to eat local?

2011-05-23T23:59:00.000-10:00

My next question is "what's next?"
I remember talking to Richard from Honey company that we always have to stay ahead of the current movement like organic and local, and being able to see and do the trend before they arrive.

Because big companies can catch up and come up with their version of organic and local and green, and change the law and change the perception through media, small businesses and producers have to be able to really see ahead.

Often times these new trends are only authentic part of good business practices so if one can maintain their core belief about good business practice instead of swinging left and right to tune in with what's popular trend, I believe that they are automatically ahead of the trend.

People are saying small farms are good, and I wonder how big companies can make themselves look small entities. They already do by buying up small companies.

so dry

2011-05-23T23:57:00.000-10:00

It's been real dry these days. Exposed soil is feeling dry, but weeds never stop growing. There are areas with nice mulch and under the mulch there is nice moist ground. only if my mower wasn't broken, I would be mowing.

Spring green tea harvest finished in time

2011-03-25T01:05:00.000-10:00

Just finished our first flush green tea yesterday and started raining. What better timing there could be!

We just had our slow drying and roasting left to do. Most of our teas are just waiting for the final roasting.

so we did our quick sensory evaluation (品茶)

Most of the spring green harvest is fairly tippy although we emphasize more on aroma and flavor profile itself than shape of the leaf. Flavor is light, but more potent. The color of dry leaf is dark green to black, but infusion brings green color of green tea.

Liquor is light yellow, and extraction is moderate.

Aroma is fresh and green. I always had trouble describing green tea as grassy, but some people might confuse as flavored tea or oolong due to sharp aroma of kama-ka, which is a unique characteristics of Aoyagi style of pan-fired green tea.
Astringency is low to moderate. Some Japanese tea farmers described as clean astringency as opposed to residual astringency of low quality sencha.

Spring tea is particularly more difficult to process due to higher moisture content. Occasionally, I see some uneven heating (oxidation) and broken edges on some teas, but I process all our spring tea by hand to ensure good thorough heating and even drying.

In fact, machine can do a decent job and sometimes even more uniform and clean heating, but I noticed that machine processed tea doesn't retain the same premium green quality over extended period of time.

釜香　Pan-fire Aroma

2011-02-13T22:32:00.001-10:00

釜香は釜炒り茶がなんで香りのいいお茶になるのか、の香りの秘密。５年かかって、なんとか釜香がわかってきた。

日本の釜炒り茶は香りがなんとかいっても、煎茶みたいに味のお茶になっているとおもう。品評会も入賞するお茶は煎茶の入賞するお茶とすごく似てきて、うまみ中心のフレイバーが評価のベースになっている。

何年かまえに熊本の五家荘で今でも釜炒り茶をつくっている船本さんのところに行ってきた。手炒りのお茶を作っていて、釜香のヒントがでたとおもった。

釜炒り茶はこげが入ると、味が煙くなる。でも焦げるくらいの気持ちで炒らないと、釜香はでない。

わたしも何回も失敗して、こげと炒り足りない間のデリケートなバランスの釜香が、炒っているときにその香りがときどき鼻ににおいがする。　花の香り。ウーロン茶みたいな深い花の香りじゃなくて、さっぱりした花の香り。何の花か？　できたと思って、お茶にいれると釜香はなくなっている。　青い鋭い香りはでるけど、違う。

私もこの青いさっぱりの香りが釜香とおもったこともあったけど、自分で出せないから、釜香は釜炒りのこおばしい香りでいいのでもない。

こおばしいだけなら、ローストのレベルででる。釜香じゃない。

船本さんが言ってたことで、「釜炒り茶の本当の香りは、みる芽じゃ出ない。」
リーフがソフトすぎて、思い切った炒りに耐えられないんです。

ウーロン茶をみればよくわかる。ウーロン茶はみる芽で摘まない。香りが死ぬ。出開きが基本。そんな硬い葉だから、揉む機械も台湾式のものじゃないともみきれない。

「おいしいお茶がのみたい」の波多野公介さんも、お茶の香味は釜炒り茶が一番よく出るといっている。でも本当の釜炒りの香りがでているものはいくつも飲んでみたけど、ほとんどない。今の日本で釜炒り茶を飲む人も煎茶みたいな釜炒り茶を飲みたい人が増えてるから。それとも、地域の食べ物が日本どこでも、もっと同じようなスタンダードなものになっているから、お茶もそれにあったような煎茶風の釜炒り茶になっているからか。

日本の釜炒り茶が釜香がでないのは、品種がやぶきたがメインになってるのもあるとおもうけど、肥料つかいすぎもあるとおもう。肥料いれると、成長はいいけど、葉が薄くなる。葉が薄いのは煎茶とか、抹茶とかは有利でも、釜炒り茶の釜香にはよくないとおもう。

簡単に言うと、釜香はいつもこげの裏側にある味みたいなもの。おもいきりで焦げるくらいの気持ちで、どの釜炒りの製法にもこのこげが出ないようにする対策がある。一回の葉の量、回転のスピード、水分とか、あと一回でできる処理の量でも、ぜんぜん変わる。ステンレスか、鉄釜かでも違う。

あるときに中国の安徽省の緑茶をいくつかもらった。とくに太平猴魁と六安瓜片は釜香のことがよくわかる。太平猴魁は中国の大葉の緑茶の品種で、大きいものは１０cmくらいのものもあった。野生種、在来種は小さいものがおおい、でも香りはいい。六安瓜片の珍品の香りはおどろいた。最初はジャスミンのフレーバーのついたものかとおもったけど、袋をあけて何日かあとでほとんどなくなっていた。葉の端の焦げかたも、あるのはわかるけど、煙くさくない。

焦げるのが問題じゃなくて、焦げ方。焦げても、煙くささじゃなくて、釜香に変わる炒りかた。今年のTest Batchで完全に焦げしすぎたとおもっても、できてその日にテイスティングしたら、ぜんぜん煙くさくなくて、ジャスミンとオーキッドの香りがある。でも３日で消えてしまった。

有機も化学肥料もなしで３年して、うまみのくささがなくなってきて、香りが落ち着いてきた。虫の害もほとんどなくなった。

最近の私の作る手炒り緑茶はウーロン茶かと聞かれることがおおくなった。最近はあんまり手炒りもしないけど、毎年新茶すこしだけ「初心」をわすれないようにで、手炒りもする。

Flavored Green Tea

2011-02-13T20:36:00.000-10:00

We just made a test batch of interesting green tea. Perhaps it's the unique characteristics of our new select variety that resides well in sweet honey flavor. We just call it "Honey green", but it sounds rather confusing as if honey is added to the tea.

The tea itself is a little bit off from what I consider as final product. I wouldn't serve it like that. so I started blending, flavoring and roasting at various degrees.

Certain spices work well with this honey green, but from the name implies, honey seems to work the best.
I normally don't add extra flavor to tea unless the tea is intended to be flavored, even milk or sugar, but if the tea demands it and there is certain kind of harmony between the tea itself and the extra flavor, I think it is delightful and I would publicly embrace tea flavoring.

chocolate oolong tea

2011-02-03T20:07:00.000-10:00

This is one of my biggest challenge. chocolate typically doesn't go with tea very well, but wouldn't it be great if it did?
I've been testing special blend which might go well with chocolate. Chocolate goes much better with oolong than green, but just don't quite harmonize yet. Perhaps it's extra spice.
Hot chocolate oolong tea, untraditional mix with a bit of surprise. I'm almost there, ask me at farmers market, you may get to try it one of these days.
Taka

アヒ・ポケ丼 Ahi Poke Donburi

2011-01-31T01:30:00.000-10:00

Ahi Pokeとご飯の丼にアボカドをつけただけ。でも、すごくおいしくなる。

これに、唐辛子をかけると、ピリとしていい。

ラーメンにもアボカドをいれると、おいしい。

アボカドは意外なところでおもしろいです。

End of the year cleaning

2010-12-26T20:30:00.000-10:00

It was always the end of the year that we did cleaning where we normally don't get to. Things like windows, walls, under tatami mat, etc, and even where we normally clean, we paid extra attention to do deep cleaning.

Having learned from the last few years mistakes, we started cleaning early this year. Perhaps it just coincided with our construction project clean up and just kept going. Now we are about 2 weeks into deep cleaning. Basically we took everything out of our tea processing space and cleaned every corner of the space and even applied fresh coat of paint. Also, work shop space was re-organized with extra metal shelves.

Even all the extra cleaning effort, more craps keep coming out. It's just amazing to see how much crap piling we normally do.

Thanksgiving chicken

2010-11-25T22:40:00.000-10:00

We cooked one of our chickens instead of turkey tonight. It was small and tough because free range pasture raised chicken. It made my mouth a little tired to keep chewing, but I feel good about eating chicken that I know how it's raised.
I forgot the name of the dish, but chicken was lightly fried and then cooked in red wine.

Green tea for medicine

2010-10-16T00:41:00.001-10:00

I watched The Gerson Miracle. It also reminds me of MOA natural farming and healing, but also made me think about how green tea may not be benefiting us.

There are so many researches done on green tea revealing how it can be healthy. Antioxidants are talked about everywhere you go and people talking about how habitual drinking of tea can benefit our health. Test results and the numbers are convincing, but I just feel that there gotta be something other than or more than antioxidants that benefit our well being and ultimately cure us.

Why in the original text of Lu Yu's "cha jing" describes tea as a medicine, but we consume it as beverage that acts like medicine and even Eisai "kissa yojoki" he describes tea as the best medicine for the heart which in turn controls all organs.

In Gerson therapy, coffee is consumed for cleansing, perhaps if tea is prepared correctly, it will have immediate cleansing effect.

Freshness of green tea is directly influencing its effectiveness as antioxidants. More fresh than dried processed leaves are fresh leaves, which may need to be prepared in a certain way to keep the enzyme active while still consuming green tea's fresh active ingredients. Would that combination of these in the body possibly create different effect on our body instead of oxidizing to oolong tea?

Heating the leaf in processing inactivates the enzyme and supposed to make green tea, but can it actually be disabling the essential elements in green tea? I've had fresh green tea brewed in hot water, but this also cooks green tea and enzyme gone....

How about juicing the green tea and consuming it immediately to intake both enzymes and fresh juice? Any combination with other foods?

Learning from Eat Local Challenge

2010-10-06T23:40:00.000-10:00

It's unfortunate that eating local has to be a challenge. Foods coming from close to home seem more natural choice, but since we live in an age of processed food and transportation, it's cheaper to produce with cheap foreign ingredients and industrialized food system. Price tag is especially a determining factor in recession.

We ate lots of vegetables. Main source of starch was taro and sweet potatoes. surprisingly enough if we look hard enough there are plenty of local source of vegetables. Some are not organic and hard to tell if the farms are conventional style. We can't look up.

Sometimes farmers don't bother to change a few little details to be certified organic. As long as people know that I don't use any chemical fertilizers and pesticides and non-GMO, etc, then most people are fine with it. Basically organic but not strictly to the NOP rule. often times they have lots of details that NOP organic rules don't allow such as field design, compost prep, amendment sources and ingredients, animal use in the field, etc...
At least, what matters the most is visibly natural than industrial organic on paper.

I had our farm tea after every meal which gave me peace of mind however unsatisfying the meals were. Since we drink tea after every meal, it became the way to conclude our meal time. It somehow gives a moment of peace and satisfaction. I noticed that there were lingering unsatisfied feeling of not having rice and certain spices like black peppers and shoyu, but tea just removed all the discomforting feeling temporarily.

Vegetables were plentiful between local farmers and our own garden. Our garden was not very well maintained since we put more effort in tea field and getting ready for new baby being born, but still had 5-10 different kinds of vegetables and herbs ready for harvest.

Vegetables from garden.
Taro, Sweet Potatoes, Carrot, Turnip, Green Onion, Komatsuna, Mizuna, Okinawan Spinach, Edible hibiscus, kale, lettuce,
Herbs
Rosemary, thyme, basil, ginger, turmeric, oregano, chives, lemon grass, garlic chives, parsley, ....

there are more wild vegetables growing here and there in jungle style like Fukuoka seedball style. like mustard and daikon, kabocha are found occasionally.

Challenge
Real challenge of eating local was not eating processed foods and convenient foods. Like noodles, snacks, canned stuff, prepared meals, etc. We just had to spend more time in the kitchen which took 2-3 hours more time each day. Instead of eating cereal or oatmeal, or rice, we just had to cook full meal.

Perhaps it's also a challenge to not just eat local, but natural and home prepared foods may reveal something else. If I lived in Japan, where I come from all the things I normally consider healthy diet can be obtained locally and even my family grows rice and various vegetables there so it's not the matter of local=healthy. The equation changes completely.

Why do we have to insist on local food only? I remember my grandmother telling me that she could live longer when I offered her some exotic vegetable ingredients because she thought by eating more variety of things she is balancing her diet and not being monotonous.

Anyway, I felt a lot of "why do we have to do this eat local challenge?" while actually still doing local ingredients only and pretending to feel good about eating local. Since I have a difficulty believing eating local is genuinely for good cause. Other than bragging rights, is there much more to be

Eat local movement is good for securing local food source, and finding out how much local ingredients are available for consumption for casual shoppers (non-gardeners), but we shouldn't mistake for only Local=healthy. Moreover, developing healthy local food culture seems important to get us healthy and also to create healthy network of local supply of food ingredients and being ahead of corporate take over.

I might have complained about not having rice daily, but I wasn't going to quit. Everybody else was more than ready to quit. I think only a few spices and oil was the only things that wasn't local.

While my living off the land experiment for 2 months was more about securing available food of any kind like I start to think like starving wild animal in a forest, this eat local challenge seemed more about realizing what would happen if we didn't have what we have.

Eat Local Challenge Week

2010-09-29T21:31:00.000-10:00

Eating locally produced foods became green trend now. My wife is excited to cook and eat local foods for 1 week that involves me and my son and her mother too. Personally, I don't mind eating 100% locally as long as food is good.

so why should we eat locally produced foods anyway? beside to avoid cooporate industrial food culture, large scale chemical farming and global distribution and long distance trucking being great concern to us.

fresh and has better nutrients because the harvest is at the optimal stage.
less transportation, less fuel used
farmer's market and food stand require less packaging.
require less or no chemicals (fungicide etc) and irradiation to preserve for long distance shipping and even required by law sometimes.
garden can store food in the landscape. fresh herbs, perennial vegetables.
wild harvest (fish, mountain vegetables, game animals) are typically not available at stores
locally produced foods are better adapted for our food culture and environment we live in.
taste better
we know where the foods come from or at least easier to find the producer

My biggest problem is eating rice. Since I grew up in Japan and eating rice has been a big part of my food culture so I don't know how long I can last without obsessive craving.

I grew mochi rice last year, but seasonality is not distinct to produce full yield. If I only want to get rice as a backup option, this will suffice, but it doesn't change the core problem of why we should be eating local food. We have lots of taro to eat from our garden. perhaps 100lb still stored in the ground.

Taro harvest - Eat local challenge

2010-09-26T23:53:00.000-10:00

Eat Local Challenge start this Sunday. It was a good timing so we decide to harvest 2 rows of taro, perhaps 20lb or so. There are some big ones and small ones. They are all good cooked together in pressure cooker with peel on. Once they are cooked, they peel real easy. We harvest taro once or twice a month so not so much different from our ordinary routine of harvesting. Taro doesn't store very well, but they store well in the landscape.
Natural farming crops are supposed to store well in ordinary storage condition so maybe i'm not doing something right. Taro also contains much water, so likely to rot, but cold storage may improve. Typically my grandmother was storing her taro in cool, but not freezing condition to keep it alive and keep it from sprouting until spring. If I can get enough refrigerator space, it may store well.

Photos show our harvest of taro. Not too bad for using no fertilizer at all. Natural farming taro (or any other vegetables) are extremely efficient. This is one thing I notice throughout in natural farming crops. because they are not provided with luxurious load of fertilizers and amendment, they adapt their natural nutrient cycle and local environment. and the resulting plant proportion is small and symmetrical leaf shap, yet large corm in proportion. sometimes even surprises me with such small leaves with decent size corm.

Another way of looking at this is that taro carry no excess weight from overeating. One thing I noticed was that the taro had weak root system. Not very thick, I should say, not too thick since there was reasonable amount of root holding up the plant and perhaps enough to get the plants' nutrient functions going. Perhaps it's part of natural farming plant efficiency to use least amount of energy to produce the most.

In the end, taro doesn't need large leaves or too many leaves. If their leaves are small, they can be planted denser together and still have good per unit area yield. Perhaps I need a comparison study to test standard yield. I planted about 1-2 ft apart, but felt it was too far apart and letting too much light through.

She is supposed to be our tea farm intern, but harvesting and separating taro and huli for next planting. Taro is pretty simple to manage. I don't think we do anything more than plant, weed and harvest.

Why is it challenge to eat local? what's the core problem?

2010-09-25T00:47:00.000-10:00

Thinking about Eat Local week, I came across some things that caught my attention that eating local seems like it's much more than just foods coming from local source.

In many ways, we think it's hard to eat local. Typically it's more expensive to buy local foods, they are not available at stores and it takes more energy to prepare meals from local ingredients. Of course, it's easier to pop frozen pizza in the oven, or go eat out.

OK, so if we live in a rural farming community like Hamakua coast on the Big island, where we are, it's still hard to get everything local because we have to plan ahead. It's not very flexible. Yes, once a week to farmer's market trip requires more planning than going to grocery store when we feel like it or when you can find time between work and kids demanding your presence.

Yet, my greatest concern is that our imported food culture has forced the environment to adapt us instead of humans adapting the environment. Like Hawaii already had a local food culture completely self-sufficient until new comers brought their food culture and changed the local foodscape, which in turn we have to import all the ingredients on the recipe to make thanksgiving dinner and fast food hamburger lunch.

Yes, I brought rice culture and I know giving up rice is not easy when growing up with it for my whole life, but how much commitment should it take to live on the new land or is it just a resort?

For example, to make thanksgiving dinner in Hawaii we don't grow those irish potatoes for mushed potatoes but taro and sweet potatoes and most people don't eat much turkey, but pigs. and we don't grow wheat to make pie crust and cranberries for sauce.

Adaptation can be good so instead of making mushed potatoes, we can make poi (mushed taro) or even my favorite mushed ulu (or bread fruits). and make kalua pork (shredded pork) instead of turkey for thanksgiving dinner. and what do we use for pie crust? and is thanksgiving really a part of Hawaiian culture?

I know some Japanese immigrant neighbors who have been living here for a few generations brought their original culture, adapted and replace with local ingredients. Hapuu fern is a local tree fern that Hawaiians didn't eat, but Japanese immigrants found a way to make it palatable by boiling it for a long time and removing the bitter clingy taste. It's texture is almost like a pickled bamboo, it's crunchy and not much flavor. so they added a little flavoring to make it savory. I can understand why it appealed to Japanese immigrant, but not Hawaiians.

Other adaptation was bringing and growing some edible plant source. Avocados and bananas grow like weeds and produce much foods. Chayote is a squash that just takes over and give us many squash looking vegetable that can be pickled or cooked. also some beans are pretty wild and wildest guava makes good jam, but why are they not being sold at stores? Too much work and too little money to be made, perhaps. Even people don't harvest macadamia nuts because they don't earn much money anymore.

Anyway, we tend to look at large scale farms and gardens to produce typical kinds of vegetables, but we need to look at a bit further to find what local foods really mean. It's not just what we can grow locally with imported fertilizers and amendments and machinery and even labor...., then it's just a new type of branding. I noticed that some manufacturers claim because they make their products here with all the imported ingredients, suddenly it becomes local. It's a very gray area indeed. Is it local or is it not?

A village without war and peace from One-straw revolution

2010-09-16T00:26:00.002-10:00

Next week, September 21st, Tuesday is the International Day of Peace (peace day) so here's another peace topic.

Why is it so hard to keep peace in this world? If making peace or keeping peace is so easy, there wouldn't be major conflicts and wars being repeated in human history. Then, is it natural for humans to make war?

Perhaps what is perceived as natural to most humans is far deviated from the rest of the natural world so that what is natural to us is no longer true naturalness.

Peace is a relative state that is dependent on the state of war, thus the best way of making peace seems to be getting rid of the notion of peace, that is, getting rid of the duality and relativity of peace and war.

If we look at the world as competition or cooperation, we are still looking at the world through relativity. There will always be high and low, strong and week, winners and losers.

The following is an excerpt from "A Village Without War and Peace," a small chapter from "The one straw revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka.

"The world itself never asks whether it is based upon a principle of competition or of cooperation. When seen from the relative perspective of the human intellect, there are those who are strong and there are those who are weak, there is large and there is small.
Now there is no one who doubts that this relative outlook exists, but if we were to suppose that the relativity of human perception is mistaken - for example, that there is no big and no small, no up or down - if we say there is no such standpoint at all, human values and judgment would collapse.
“Isn’t that way of seeing the world an empty flight of the imagination? In reality, there are large countries and small countries. If there is poverty and plenty, strong and weak, inevitably there will be disputes, and consequently, winners and losers. Couldn’t you say, rather, that these relative perceptions and the resulting emotions are human and therefore natural, that they are a unique privilege of being human?”
Other animals fight but do not make war. If you say that making war, which depends upon ideas of strong and weak, is humanity’s special “privilege,” then life is a farce. Not knowing this farce to be a farce there lies the human tragedy. "

"The ones who live peacefully in a world of no contradictions and no distinctions are infants. They perceive light and dark, strong and weak, but make no judgments. Even though the snake and the frog exist, the child has no understanding of strong and weak. The original joy of life is there, but the fear of death is yet to appear. The love and hate which arise in the adult’s eyes originally were not two separate things. They are the same thing as seen from the front and from the back. Love gives substance to hate. If you turn the coin of love
over, it becomes hate. Only by penetrating to an absolute world of no aspects, is it possible to avoid becoming lost in the duality of the phenomenal world.
People distinguish between Self and Other. To the extent that the ego exists, to the extent that there is an “other,” people will not be relieved from love and hatred. The heart that loves the wicked ego creates the hated enemy. For humans, the first and greatest enemy is the Self that they hold so dear.
People choose to attack or to defend. In the ensuing struggle they accuse one another of instigating conflict. It is like clapping your hands and then arguing about which is making the sound, the right hand or the
left. In all contentions there is neither right nor wrong, neither good nor bad. All conscious distinctions arise at the same time and all are mistaken."

Because we favor love, hatred is generated. Favoring one thing will inevitably create the opposite. How can we not see it this way? Are we too arrogant and mature to learn from infants? Because we are supposed to be teaching them? and we know better about the world?

It seems that who know how to run the world is only making the world less pleasant place to live. If we know what we are doing, why is the earth is only getting worse?

In Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching" (translated by Brian Browne Walker, 1995) relative existence of things also appear in chapter 2,

"When people find one thing beautiful, another consequently becomes ugly.
When one man is held up as good, another is judged deficient.

Similarly, being and nonbeing balance each other:
difficult and easy define each other;
high and low rest upon one another;
voice and song meld into harmony;
what is to come follows upon what has been.

The wise person acts without effort and teaches by quiet example.
He accepts things as they come,
creates without possessing,
noruishes without demanding,
accomplishes without taking credits.

Because he constantly forgets himself,
he is never forgotten."

Inner peace through tea

2010-09-09T06:18:00.018-10:00

Tea and peace are always connected together. Tea is a drink to calm and excite. Peace is ...what is peace? Peace gives great productivity and creativity to our mind. Peaceful time throughout history in many nations, people and culture proliferated. Peace gives people a creative outlet because there is less to worry about danger and possible control by instability of social conditions.

Tea is popularized by the practice of zen buddhism and mindfulness. Drinking tea was not only for its health benefit, but also to practice being mindful and to live the moment.

Zen Master Zhaozhou of Tung dinasty and "Chichaqu" are speaking:

Master Zhaozhou to inquires with Monk 1: Have you been here before?
Monk 1: No, I haven't
Master: Have some tea
Master Z to Monk 2: Have you been here before?
Monk 2: Yes, I have
Master: Have some tea.
Temple manager: Master, for one who has been here and for one who has not, you give the same answer, to drink tea. What is the reason?
Master to Temple manager: Have some tea!

Drinking tea is an act of being present. Rich, poor, young, old, man, woman, all these differences are out of context. We change our attitude toward who we are dealing with. In tea service, all our social and economical differences are disregarded and we treat everybody at the table fairly and equally.

Fishing with 2 year old

2010-09-08T00:07:00.000-10:00

We got much of the summer field maintenance done in the tea fields, thanks to all the helpers. so I took my son along and went fishing. He is 2 and 1/2 years old. He is obviously too young to fish by himself so he just stand by my side and watch. At least he knows how fishing is done. I'm talking about shore fishing. Set up gear, cast and reel. Pretty simple. He can't cast, so I cast, then he reels in, bit awkward, but since he's my son, he got a natural touch of fisherman. He thinks casting and reeling is fishing because we haven't caught any.

In Hawaii, Papio is a popular game fish. It's a small Ulua, once it reaches 10lb it's called Ulua. I spent much of youth fishing in Japan and my college years flyfishing in Sierra Nevada mountains and all over Northern California, catching many little ones and big ones so I know a bit about fishing, but just doing lure fishing with a little kid isn't as easy as one would think. Perhaps I will use a bait next time.

Damn Turkey!

2010-08-29T16:35:00.000-10:00

Lately, turkeys are coming to visit our tea fields every day. Not just visiting our farm, but I see them all the time, almost it appears that they decided to permanently squatting on our farm.

We recently put down fall / winter season cover crop after all the laborious maintenance, and as soon as the cover crops germinated, something is chowing on them.

For a long time, I thought it was some insect pests or cutworm. Over time we selected resilient cover crops and even ones that birds don't care so much. Also, they must establish well, and once established they recover easily and easy to manage.

Yes, we had it for the last few seasons, but somewhere along their path, they seem to have changed their diet and preference for foraging and behavior pattern. or maybe foods are scarce with economic recession and all. Perhaps they are just pulling them out to get to my nerves.

Whatever the reason is, it is really working to affect my mental calmness so I tried various things. Throw rocks, chase them down the hill, daily patrol, they seem to modify their daily activities so that they just go hide for a while and come back and continue their activities.

My neighbor came one time with a rifle and told me, "they are getting to my garden too. Go take this rifle and shoot them." It is a good opportunity to resolve the trouble, but I want no wasteful kill.

Perhaps we'll have an early thanksgiving party.

I had my fall beans and peas planted by the house, protected in a cage, and finally they crossed the line. I pretend to be calm on the surface, but screamed in my head, "I'll kill you damn birds, you'll be in a soup by the end of the day".

At the same time, calm and observant side of me tells me, "what would natural farming solution be?" Even though intense madness and frustration, I have to ask myself, what's the natural farming solution?

I went down to observe the pattern of their foraging. There is definite pattern of their travel and foraging behavior, and what do they actually eat from the seed mix that I use?

One most obvious thing was that they did not go in where weeds were tall on both side of the rows of cover crops. That's interesting. Personally, I get the same kind of feeling. When there is tall weeds growing, I would rather go around. Perhaps, weeds are acting as barrier. Perhaps it's a visual obstacles that discourage them to enter certain part of the field.

I remember the story of crows in Japan. Farmers suffered so much from crow damage and they came up with physical protection like putting a strong net over their crop, and metal sheet. All these protect them physically, but if they are not placed correctly, crows go around to get the tomatoes or peck through the net to get their fruits, or simply pull off the protective cover.

I had a small garden in Japan once and crows are known thief in vegetable gardens. Always hanging out up above. As soon as people leave, they come down to get what they want. They got all the time in the world to do what they do. Highest priority in their life is to get foods and go rest.

One farmer's observation gave me a big clue. He didn't call himself a natural farmer, but patiently and carefully observing crows' behavior revealed much things. "Crows don't like to get into bushes or weedy patches where they cannot see their surroundings. This is exactly opposite of how people want to maintain their farm and garden. Tall weeds makes our work more tedious and hard to find some crops. We are also at risk of getting snake bite, ticks, even some large animals, but this is exactly what the birds didn't like either.

Going back to turkey story, I noticed from a little weed patch that blocks the entry of these birds into now prolific cover crop germinants. This is only my observation and the clue should be giving me how to improve the situation.

Nature is self-sustaining

2010-07-02T06:15:00.001-10:00

When we talk about sustainability, we are too bound by our perception of sustainable and natural. Many people choose hybrid or electric car over gas, or local foods over imported foods, but are they really sustainable.

I have seen many farmers talking about local organically grown vegetables seeming more sustainable while using lots imported soil amendments, minerals, fertilizers, machines, tools, petroleum products and fuel. If things are grown at right place, right time, it takes lot less energy and materials to grow.

I am not saying that we do perfectly sustainable farming. We use a tractor and fuel too. I just want to say that instead of using our perception to achieve what it feels like sustainable or politically agreeable term of sustainability like whether to use plastic or not, or put a solar panel up. we should be learning from natural world since nature is self-sustainable.. Perhaps instead of putting one extra solar panel to light another room, we can use natural light to illuminate the room.

Yes, nature is truly self-sustainable. If we human are all erased from the surface of the earth, nature will go on with its own business bring the lost balance to stability. As long as what we do is in harmony with nature's course, she can maintain herself and benefit us at the same time.

Dry soil effect - 乾土効果

2010-07-01T23:15:00.001-10:00

"Nature has so many things that she is trying to reveal, but we just don't know how to look at them..." I don't remember where I heard this, but every time I am out observing natural environment and can't figure out what is going on, it pops up in my head.

Dry soil - first thing that comes to most minds are when soil goes dry, you have to irrigate. Dry soil is generally considered not productive in farming. It's true in common organic and conventional farming practice, but natural farming takes it quite differently

In natural farming dry soil is natural consequence of seasonal changes. There are wet season and dry season. There are many plants naturally adapt the changes, but our vegetables and flowers cannot adapt this!? Isn't there something wrong with us?

I found this dry soil effect as part of fertilizer poisoning. There was a seed germination experiment of brassica with moisture and fertilizer application and concentration of N level.

A1 - control No N fertlizer Moisure low Germination success - high	A2 N fertilizer applied Moisture low Germination success - Low
B1 No N fertilizer Moisture high Germination success - Mid	B2 N fertilizer applied Moisture high Germination success - high

A1 is no fertilizer applied and moisture is kept moist but low, just enough for the seeds to germinate. This is similar to natural farming condition.

What's so great about this experiment is A2 and B2 tell us when N fertilizer is applied or high concentration of N is present in the soil, germination is greatly affected by moisture level. This is also sometimes referred to as fertilizer burn or nitrogen burn.

Nitrogen and Moisture

Since nitrogen is highly soluble in water, concentration of nitrogen is highly affected by moisture level. This is why in fertilizer based farming both chemical based and organic requires irrigation in dry period. While natural farming actually improves growth when soil start to dry.

I have repeatedly experienced that plant growth suddenly improves when the soil start to dry when there is no fertilizer applied. Occasionally, there is residual fertilizer effect, but in natural farming when fertilizer is entirely cleaned out of the soil, it is said that the soil naturally create what is needed for plant growth.

Some researchers in Japan showed that available soil nutrient is generally not enough for plants to grow, but natural farming vegetables grow with such vigor that it is often confused with fertilizer effect.

Soil is much more than what nutrients are available to grow plants, but there are lots of microbial activities as well as yet unknown phenomena. First thing I notice when fertilizer is removed from soil is that certain types of microorganisms like mushrooms become more dominant. Not all kinds of mushrooms, but typically mushrooms are the ones that rely on carbon or lignin as source of foods. In natural world, there is nothing that applies so much fertilizer like we human do. Most cases here and there with bird droppings and so on, and most plants takes out nitrogen before they die in form of seeds or spores, and dispersed.

I noticed our native Hawaiian Ohia trees and grasses continuously dropping leaves to create constant cycling. Typically grasses and leaves that fall on the ground are hard, brown, and high carbon materials. Natural environment keeps high carbon environment. They naturally cumulate carbon. Soil builds more carbon and humus. Fertilizer burns carbon out of soil. If we work with nature, carbon is a part of solution and shouldn't be a problem.

Many things in nature are great at dispersing potentially harmful concentration effect. Pest and disease are part of this natural mechanisms of dispersion. We should be grateful that they are telling us that those vegetables that attract pests and disease have problems.

What I want to say is that dry soil shouldn't be a problem, but is a way for us to see how nature deals with seasonal changes and correct our behavior to respect and work with nature. Working with nature requires least work and most sustainable way of farming since nature is self-sustaining.

"Nature has so many things that she is trying to reveal, but we just don't know how to look at them..."
We just have to shed biases and look through pure minds.

Controlling weeds or being controlled by weeds

2010-06-25T05:54:00.000-10:00

Summer is here. Weeds are growing so fast along with cover crop and tea. In some area certain kinds of cover crops are growing more vigorously than common weeds so that they suppress weeds quite effectively. At the same time tea plants getting shaded by 6-7 foot tall grass. I wonder which is better, cutting back weeds or cover crop. At least the difference is more obvious in the soil.

This is another cover crop post. It may be obvious that I spend so much time studying cover crops.

Being controlled by weeds
A lot of times we go out to the field and do some weeding, we are controlled by weeds. We have to go out there and remove weeds. This obsessive thinking of getting rid of weeds create rather polarized view toward the nature. Nature does not judge what good weeds are and what bad weeds are. They grow where they are supposed to. They grow where they are called for. Each type of weeds has their own intention and purposes. Dandelion grow in disturbed open field and hard packed ground because they can stabilize the disturbed condition.

Controlling weeds
You want to be in this position when it comes to weed control. Since it's farming, we still have to get the result and get harvest in one way or another. In natural farming we have to remember that plants build soil since there is no fertilizer applied. The best way is to select the desired plants for the current soil condition. or we can also mix various types of cover crops, vegetables and weeds then they find where they belong and create beautiful landscape based on where they are most needed. This idea somewhat harmonizes very well with Mr. Masanobu Fukuoka's seedball technique.

Mr Fukuoka describes that we just have to know that we don't know anything and nature has her own way of doing things and we just need to assist the great cause.

Plants decide where they should grow, that's why seedballs make perfect sense

2010-06-23T22:45:00.002-10:00

All the cover crops are big and some are taller than myself. I went to care for tea plants that are totally buried in cover crop jungle. I cut back some 7ft tall cover crop grass and uncover tea plants. While I was doing this, I realized that certain cover crop plant grow only in certain places.

Whether it's soil condition or shading or moisture condition, some plants just don't do well while some other ones grow prolific. For example, grasses grow in rich soil much better than legumes or vetch and clover type. Then I also realized that when I planted cover crop there was some rich soil and some poor soil. Parts of the field where some trees dropping their leaves were naturally richer in soil condition and it made total difference in how cover crops grew.

Typically richer soil favored grasses and even legumes germinate, they tend to get overgrown by grasses while poor soil favored legumes and grasses stay small and look stunted. The same thing happened throughout our fields.

Mr. Fukuoka describes in his book that his trial to find good cover crop was long journey, tried so many and learned from trial and error. He finally reached conclusion that seedballs as a mix of various types of seeds are the best way to build soil naturally. They find when to germinate and where to grow.

We have tried so many different types of cover crops from commercial high yield cover crop to vegetables to neighborhood noxious weeds. Over time I realized that our approach in establishing cover crop system was more and more similar to seedball style. In natural farming we just need to know that we don't know what nature does. We can provide options and nature will pick which one to use.

There goes mushroom, soil health and cleanliness

2010-05-10T03:20:00.000-10:00

There goes mushrooms.

There is precise timing of mushrooms appearing in the field, which we replicated in the jar. What really build soil? This is a century old convention and tradition many farmers and gardeners claim that adding dark compost and lots of bugs in it, but is this really the best we can do? A lot of times we neglect to look at the signs. Signs are on the crop and in the soil. If we look at the plants and notice any disease or insect pests, there is apparently something happening. What do we do? spray pesticides or pick by hands, they are both the same. If a gardener continue to pick by hand just to say her vegetable is organic, it is probably worse. You are still looking at the superficial label only. You gotta fix the cause. When the pests appear, it is only the consequence of what she does. It's all what's in the soil.

So look at the soil. What's the sign in the soil. You hear that soil is full of diverse community of microorganisms. Billions of them in a handful of soil, but which ones? Most of them are harmless, but when we farm or garden, why are we adding more harmful ones to the soil? What kind of farming practice is that so that we have to keep moving to new patch to get the clean condition again, often called crop rotation.

Well, the biggest sign in the soil is earthworms. Somehow gardeners worship earthworms and falsely came to believe that earthworms are the sign of health. It's the opposite. They are the sign of your soil rotting and they are there to clean the soil.

When the soil becomes clean, you barely find any earthworms and most pest problems go away too. It's not mystery and I'm not making this up either. There are many natural farmers who already do this with amazing result.

Look at the crop. When you find your lettuce or spinach or peppers or cucumbers melting and turning into slim, this is a sign. The crop is not healthy. They are taking up the rot in the soil and the plant itself is rotting. And the most scary thing is when we eat it, we are rotting ourselves too. Then we get sick.

While most farmers try to maximize yeild by giving fertilizers and killing with pesticides, soil health and crop quality should really be measured by not just available nutrient level and yield, but health of people who consume the crops and cleanliness of the soil itself.

Growing mushroom - indoor culture to outdoor

2010-04-25T06:42:00.000-10:00

I have been trying to establish an outdoor mushroom culture directly in the ground, but not very successful so instead I started indoor culture and naturalize the outdoor patch from that.

Here is some jar culture of Pleurotus ostreatus. This is an easy mushroom to grow. In fact, this batch got contaminated with green mold, but miraculously recovered and mycelium completely dominated the substrate afterword.

This gives me a clue about contamination and succession of mushroom mycelium. Natural environment is more complex array of microorganisms and potentially contaminating ones, but as long as the growing condition shifts to what's more desired by mushrooms, then the previous contaminant organisms just give their place to succeeding mushroom.

In this case, easy sugar and starch got consumed by green mold and some bacteria, but once they are consumed, it no longer needed to be there and mushroom that can decompose more complex fiber and lignin was called for.

This condition also applies to gardens and farm fields. If we can keep the field clean or get the field cleaned by some organisms, then beneficial fungi can start growing, which in turn create nutrient cycle without fertilizers and potentially harmful side effect like pest and disease problems.

Often times, where I find mushrooms growing in tea fields and vegetable fields is barely disturbed by pests and diseases. The soil drainage is so good that right after heavy rain, it already feels dry to touch. Also, it keeps the soil dry in moist environment and keeps certain pest problems like mildew and fungal infection minimal. Though I haven't grown any tomatoes or cucumbers in recent years, I can't tell if this works as good as it should, since I don't mind not having tomatoes and cucumbers in my diet much, but we got some seedlings of cucumbers this year so we'll see how it goes.

Book: "Farmers of Forty Centuries, Organic Farming in China, Korea, and Japan" by F. H. King

2010-04-04T13:59:00.000-10:00

I have been reading this book on online book sites below, but got tired of staring at computer monitor, so I finally bought the book.

Another title: "Farmers of Forty Centuries: Or: Permanent Agriculture in China; Korea; and Japan"
Read online? go to the end of this page.

Book Description:

F. H. King lived before petroleum era of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and visited China, Korea and Japan and put his observation of their permaculture system and organic farming practices into this great book. Lots of in-depth look on many different aspects of local lifestyle. Many photos and illustrations accompany the text to make it easily digestible.

There are many examples of low tech tools and techniques that they use in Japan, China and Korea although it might be too costly for us now, I am sure that we can get good insight.

The book also discusses not only how they had sustained cultivation and farm-community designs for over thousands of years, but also means of distribution, trade and international trade in pre-petroleum sort of manner.

He also talks about specific industries like rice, silk and tea.

Online text
Google book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=NOpEn8H1wmsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Farmers+of+Forty+Centuries&source=gbs_similarbooks_s&cad=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

http://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library.html#king

Buy online at Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Farmers-Forty-Centuries-Organic-Farming/dp/0486436098/ref=pd_cp_b_1

Heavy rain and dry soil

2010-03-20T00:01:00.000-10:00

we got 5 inches of rain in a day and a half. It was raining so hard that water was spilling over gutter. From previous storm experience, when this hard rain happens, series of runoff water ponds fill up and bottom pond which has about 100 plants of taro are planted will fill up 2-3 feet deep.

Even though it was raining so hard and some rows of tea and vegetables are getting puddled, there are always some spots in the field that never get any standing water. and more surprisingly, it feels so dry to touch.

Generally the dry spot in heavy rain has such high level of biological activity. I am not talking about worms. When I find worms, typically the soil does not have this dry texture. Most time it is mycelium, actinomycetes and high level of carbon based organic matter that keeps soil from compaction.

Raw wood chips or lightly composted wood chips mixed in the soil in aerobic condition can create hospitable environment for those organisms and keep the soil clean, but a huge pile of wood chips makes the soil anaerobic and causes the soil to compact and has bad permeability.

Good organic gardeners work hard to make good compost, but it is such a waste of resources! Only if we can use the raw ingredients to feed the microorganisms in the soil, it creates good permeability naturally. when rain dumps, the soil stays amazingly dry and no erosion. It's the active colony of microbes grabbing the soil particles together and won't let go.

Spring harvest

2010-02-22T22:08:00.002-10:00

Lately weather hasn't been reliable. It's our winter weather, Rain. I took a chance since it started out with good weather in the morning. by the time I started withering the sun has gone behind the cloud occasionally peeking out, but got just enough outdoor withering. I will be watching tea indoor all night.
Leaf is in good condition. Flush has vigor and not too stiff, not too tender. I just have to work on making it a little more even.

Every time I am very impressed by how tea react to soil condition. Tea is not vegetable, it's more like herbs. We don't want tea to taste like vegetables. It loses potency and wildness.

Waiting for the sun to come back before it's too late

2010-02-20T01:20:00.000-10:00

Beside my truck is stuck in the muddy driveway, I have chayote cut up and salted and need to be dried before I can pickle it. Somehow electric food dehydrator or oven don't do the same. It needs to be in the sun for a good few days.

It is conventional knowledge to use the sun to dry vegetables for pickles. They preserve better and have better flavor. Plus no electricity needed.

I remember my grandmother drying some pickling melons on a bamboo tray until it's really soft. Sometimes when we don't get enough sun shine, they start to get moldy. Drying also prevents mold and removes excess moisture out of pickling vegetables. What can I do?

I'll just use oven or go to Kona and just leave it on the back of truck if I can get the truck out.

Muddy Driveway

2010-02-20T01:09:00.000-10:00

Muddy driveway is a typical example of compaction +standing water + kneading of wet dirt. This would create a great rice paddy to hold water, but when it happens on a driveway, only my truck slides down the hill and can't get back up to the house.

I left the truck in the field and walked back up. 4 years ago the truck was stuck for 2 weeks due to continuous rain. Over time I improved driveway conditions by adding rocks and stones around the field, but still not enough.

Today actually it felt different. rocks were slippery. Tires are big mud balls and have no traction.

Best thing to do is just lay gravel or don't go driving down when wet.

Fermentation Days: live culture and making of Yogurt, fruit wine and homemade EM

2010-02-14T01:37:00.001-10:00

Lately, somehow I got so fascinated by fermentation again. A few years ago I had several jars of various fermenting fruits and EM occupying kitchen counter, but this time the jars got bigger occupying more space. This time I am more particular about how much of what ingredients to use and writing them all down.

Yogurt is an easy one. Milk and a spoonful of yogurt from previous batch. mix and keep it warm for a few days.

Natto is a fermented soy beans. Quite easy too.
Soak soybeans over night. Pressure cook soybeans until tender. Prepare natto culture by mixing store bought natto (5-10 beans will do) with hot water and stir it. It should feel a bit slimy. Natto culture is very hard to kill by heating it. It only goes into producing more spores.
Just pour the natto culture juice over the cooked beans and thoroughly mix it.
Keep it somewhere warm. It likes warm like our body temperature so you can wrap around your belly too.

I generally incubate them on top of my rice cooker or hot water dispenser by zojirushi set "stay warm" and just drape a towel over to keep warmth. It stays between 95-100F.
http://www.amazon.com/Zojirushi-NS-ZCC10-Cooker-Warmer-Premium/dp/B00007J5U7
http://www.amazon.com/Zojirushi-CD-LCC30-3-0-Liter-Electric-Dispensing/dp/B00009K3TE/ref=pd_sbs_k_5

Fruit fermentation is easy. Just throw in some ripe fruits into a jar and that's it. If sugar content of the fruits is not high enough, add some brown sugar. If fermentation does not go smoothly, you can also mush fruits. Generally juice start to ooze out and natural yeast on the fruits ferment the liquid into wine.

Guava grows wild here and easily harvested large quantity for guava wine.

Just try with different fruits and see what works. I once had papaya peels chopped up in a jar with brown sugar stored for over a year totally forgotten, but when I opened it, it was still smelling good after good fermentation.

and at last but not the least, EM, which stand for Effective Microorganisms. EM is a collection of beneficial microorganisms that are found in natural environment. They are cultured and bottled for multitude of uses.

EM can be used in making bokashi in agriculture or cleaning contaminated site, remediation, even for human health. We need one that's for intaking for internal use, but some people say that their health conditions especially of their digestive system improved.

How to make it at home with out original solution? Mix Yogurt, beer, natto, molasses and water and any other good fermented foods. I'll talk about it another time for more detailed recipe.

Cabbage is not growing..., but it was actuallly growing, we just didn't know

2010-02-04T15:59:00.000-10:00

I came across an article written by one no-fertilizer farmer in Japan describing that his cabbage is not growing at first. I have the same pattern, most things I plant, or transplant, they don't grow for 2-3 weeks.

He says that cabbage or most vegetables develop roots first so it doesn't get top heavy. Like most organic or conventional vegetables grow almost immediately because they don't have to develop their roots because everything they need is given.

While no-fertilizer vegetables first send roots down deep before they reach nutrients or energy or whatever that help them grow, then start growing above surface growth.

There is no worry if your vegetables are not growing at first as long as there is no nitrogen deficient environment. The difference between nitrogen deficiency and no-fertilizer environment are nitrogen deficiency occurs due to fertilization. no-fertilizer environment has no nitrogen deficiency because there is no nutrients.

How do they grow then? Cosmic energy? paramagnetism? biological activity? Whatever it is, it grows. The important part is that it grows. The most difficult part is to let go of conventional nutrient farming knowledge.

Appreciating wonderful things while they are happening

2010-01-05T00:43:00.000-10:00

"Mama, I'm losing my mind," said the stressed-out young mother.
"You've certainly got your hands full," said her mother.
"Two kids and no child support have gott my hands full and my head spinning," said the daughter.
"Honey, I know it's bad, but you'll look back on this as the most fulfilling time of your life."
"Maybe for you and Dad, but not for me."
"You'll see. I only wish that I could have appreciated the wonderful things that happened - while they were happening."
"What wonderful things? Not enough sleep? Not enough money?"
"I've found," said the mother, "that the art of living is to seek in the present all that is wonderful and just put up with the rest..."

..."What's so great about this moment?" she asked, when out of the bed room clomped a gorgeous, naked three-year-old wearing his sister's rain boots and helmet made of underpants. The mother whooped and then felt such a stab of love that she skipped from tears of laughter to tears of joy without missing a beat.
Remembering what her mother had said, the young woman wrote a list of all the little joys of the last two days.
And then she started doing the same thing at the end of every day.

Her life stayed the same but her perspective of life changed and she changed- and only then did her life change.

from "Zen Fables For Today" by Richard Mclean
----------------------------

This story speaks to many of the devoted parents who share similar experiences. We know that it is difficult to balance the life of our own and our children.
We all have limitations of what we are capable of doing, but one small thing like writing down what joy they bring to our life makes us pause and appreciate the joyful moment.

Don't give a cow. Give seeds

2009-12-21T23:40:00.021-10:00

Holiday gift season. Giving a cow is still a popular program, but I wish there was some programs where you can give vegetable seeds or fruit trees to people who need them.

http://www.heifer.org/
I don't necessarily think giving a cow, chickens or a goat is bad idea considering livestock can add foods to diet of those people as long as the environment is right. When you give a cow or sheep, there must be grass growing naturally. or when you give chickens, there must be enough feeds naturally obtained from the wild area.

Why not Cow, sheep or goat?
Grazing animals require large pasture comparing to available garden space. Unless there is large pasture area for animals to graze, it is not very desirable. I have 4 sheep and they do not eat any grain feeds although they like them. I share some of my crackers or granola sometimes, but they are on their own eating grass most of the time. when grass is abundant and there is no garden space conflict, it is quite a good help to have livestock that can actually keep your weeds down and give you some milk and also share some happy moments, but if people are starving, perhaps it's much better to grow some vegetables to eat.
Also, cows don't produce milk all the time. They have to have offspring before they start producing milk and it doesn't last forever either.

Why not chickens?
I have a difficult time keeping chickens happy in a limited area. Mostly we feed them kitchen waste, but they are hungry all the time and don't produce eggs much. I found out that keeping our chickens free range and still producing eggs is about 3-4 chickens max with about 500 sq ft. I'm pretty sure that there are certain high protein vegetation that can feed chickens more naturally, but if we have access to that much of rich soil, I would rather plant vegetables.
Also chickens can be devastating to gardens. unless it's fruit orchard or certain crops it is hard to keep them away from destroying the garden space.

If people already have nice fruit orchard and garden, they are probably not starving.

Giving seeds
There are some programs that give seeds, fruit trees or other food sources or even other resources.
http://www.sustainableharvest.org/

Seeds are very adaptable in new environment. If we know what grows well in certain environment, giving seed program can be more productive. Even in desert environment, certain plants grow. Mr. Fukuoka's seedball restoration project actually took place in desert environment to bring back fertile soil..

Weeding your ego

2009-12-18T22:57:00.002-10:00

In the natural world plants can coexist and flourish together. However, in human eyes coexistence of plants appears as a conflict, therefore to grow one plant, the others become weeds, and to grow their crops, weeds need to be removed.

by Masanobu Fukuoka

We conveniently categorize anything that we disregard as weeds. Whether it is a small herbaceous plants or large trees, when I sprinkle some compost or organic fertilizers, it makes me wonder how much of fertilizers or compost actually goes to our crops, and how much to other weeds and yet more lost to leaching and air. Often times I find roots of large trees in the rows of tea.

Then I realized that there was beautiful dark soil even before I started farming. Who created that? Apparently certain types of plants are better at building soil than others. Under some trees soil is always better than open field.

If we leave some weeds and do not fertilize, it is possible that they enrich soil as they die. Of course, it is not just any weeds, but certain weeds do certain things, just like some people are good at math and others cooking, others writing, etc.

It is more about controlling our ego than controlling weeds.
I kept thinking that some weeds and big trees are stealing fertilizers from my crops, then I started to see those unwanted weeds as potential enemy. I searched ways to rid this negative feeling of hating weeds, the answer was no-fertilizer. When I stopped using fertilizers, I started to see weeds helping build soil.

How the soil is created

2009-12-06T06:47:00.001-10:00

Over quiet winter period I have much to ponder and observe while sipping our farm grade unfinished tea.

Soil, as it seems, is always there and we take it for granted, but it is a remarkable process of creating hospitable environment for plants and small creatures.

I walk on a dirt path after heavy rain or while in pouring rain following where all the rain water is carrying the top soil or what is keeping it in place. sometimes my boots become like high heels with mud stuck to the bottom of my rain boots, walking like not knowing how to walk in high heels. I then remember that the spot where it used be pasture for horses and sheep with only grass growing and dirt is heavy clay.

Clay in rain creates mud and get stuck to boots. I learned this first hand by walking in rain.

Some places down the path I come across beautiful dark forest soils in its natural state. Nobody did any work there but nature. Certain types of trees and plants growing there create that beautiful soil.

Good Soil
Good soil for crops is dark and soft, holds water and drains excess water, hold good air space inside, smells like forest. A lot of gardening and farming books define it this way. In nature we don't find this everywhere, but a lot of plants which we call weeds still grow in that somewhat undesirable conditions.

Nature teaches
More than any books, nature teaches better. Of course, books also help us guide to be a better farmer, but we grow crops in nature not in our head or in writing. It doesn't matter how eloquently we speak about farming and garden soil, we farmers still have to help grow a beautiful harvest and that's what speaks the most. Nature has taught me a lot through soil.

Soil, Genesis of forest
Easiest way to find a good soil is to go search for good soil and trace back from there, observing what natural elements are around and possibly creating the soil. Sometimes we need dynamic observation while it's happening like standing in a heavy rainfall and looking what soil is actually responding to that natural rainfall. We need to learn to read signs in nature more that reading a lot of general gardening books about it.

I have come across so many books saying what a good soil is and how you can make it by adding this and that, but many times it does not related to our particular natural environment, climate or vegetation that create good soil. There is an cover crop study released by CHTAR, talks about what each type of cover crop do, but the most amazing thing I found was that what I thought biggest weeds were the biggest helpers of soil as long as we can keep up with it.
http://www2.ctahr.hawaii.edu/sustainag/Database.asp

On a nice warm sunny day after log hours of field work, I was exhausted so I just lay down to take a break and fell asleep. The soil was soft and smelled earthy. Each breath I felt like breathing in the forest itself. What a pleasant waking it was. Since I am so obsessed with the conditions of soil, it is nice to have an area where there is naturally beautiful rich soil still exist on our farm land.

Soil and Tea
When it comes to tea, what soil makes good tea? I am not saying highest yield, or even certain flavor. Perhaps the word "good" is misleading because everybody has different expectations.

Our ideal natural farming tea expresses inherent nature of its own quality, like how people can be who they are.

Spring green tea or Winter green tea?

2009-11-20T08:50:00.004-10:00

Most tea drinkers blindly think spring tea is better than other harvest, but I have found out that there are different qualities in each harvest and different processing styles that bring out the best of each harvest.

Spring tea and seasons.
Sencha is a specific style of processing. Typically steamed at the initial processing stage and slowly rolled into dry leaf. This style processing benefit from young tender leaves and high level of amino acids because of brewing practices that follow the processing. It allows the leaf to bring out concentrated tea liquor and full range of flavor. Sweetness, astringency and bitterness in balance. Similarly each processing style is developed to express the best of desired tea type and their particular harvest.

If Winter harvest was used for sencha processing, undesired quality in sencha is quite obvious due to nature of sencha processing that expresses dynamic range of flavors and aroma.

Winter tea has its own unique quality and cannot be processed in the same way for the best winter harvest quality.

..., but why do they process it in the same way? No wonder winter tea in Japan received bad reputation about their quality because they use the same sencha processing style.

The most important part is its economy of tea processing. Since fall and winter tea generate little profit and a lot of people rather not harvest winter tea at all, but there are nearly extinct regional processing styles also unfortunately called bancha.

I looked at various other types of winter harvest that adapted completely different processing styles. In rural regions of Japan where winter tea was quite common until recently, there are handful of devoted grandpa and grandma still doing the traditional regional processing.

Winter Tea
I started experimenting with winter harvest a few years ago. There are a lot of regional recipes using fall and winter teas. They can be very wide range from green tea to black tea to post fermented tea. Even within green teas there are so much variations in how they processed. Mostly what was available to process tea at each household was the limiting factor. Iron wok, steamer, drying room, etc

Looking at regional green teas, I found that there are simple sun dried green tea tea, labor intensive pan-fired tea, half-finished tea and lots more. Perhaps I will talk about individual style in the future.

Green Pepper Rot Test

2009-11-15T09:26:00.003-10:00

I had a really good year with green peppers this year. I like slight bitterness of Hawaiian thin wall green peppers. Just as I like bitter melon too.

Anyway, so I did a rot test.

I found that as most green peppers left on the plants turn red and fall on the ground, harvested peppers did the same. They slowly dry and turn red. There are few that melt into slime.

The garden space that I grew the peppers were of course used no-fertilizers. No chemical fertilizers, no organic fertilizers, no chicken manures, no animal manures. Only thing used was ground where leaf litter naturally decomposed on the ground so much like planting in a natural forest environment.

Some people just don't get it. Understandable, I was like that too. Too much confidence in their organic fertilizers and natural things are all good. Once I said "using no-fertilizers even organic fertilizers" and a lady told me "oh, so it's the same. I only use chicken manure."
Chicken manure is an organic fertilizer. It's just not commercial organic fertilizer if you get it from your chickens.

Anyway, I need a comparison study to be able to really see the difference. I only know what no-fertilizer vegetables do, but typical organic vegetables with proper nutrients and minerals may not be as bad although I hesitate to contaminate good soil with organic fertilizers.

Vegetables that melt into slime

2009-11-15T07:17:00.000-10:00

I was reminded by one of farm helpers we have that some vegetables that are stored at room temperature are not safe because of salmonella and other potential food poisoning.

According to his findings, vegetables start to deteriorate after harvest and increase the population of potentially health hazard organisms.

I agree with certain aspects. If chicken manure or other animal manure are applied, there is always potential contamination. This is one reason natural farming insists on using no animal manure sources.

-----------------

So here is my testing method.

Store vegetables at room temperature or in a refrigerator and see how long it takes for the vegetables to turn into slime.

-----------------

I found that many vegetables I got from farmers market or stores melt into slime in matter of less than a week.

Have you had any experiences looking through vegetables in a refrigerator and wondering why the vegetables go bad so quickly? Natural farming slime experiment showed that there are too much free nitrate absorbed by plants. Generally nitrate comes from application of fertilizers both organic and conventional. Generally organic fertilizers tend to be worse because organic growers tend to overdo with organic fertilizers because they don't burn the plants as much as chemical fertilizers. so the result is not as clear when growing, but consumers are the ones that really see what's wrong.

Read next story of my Green Pepper storage test.

Bread recipe with millet and oat

2009-10-28T06:21:00.004-10:00

Got up a little too early again. Still dark in winter. so I started 2 batches of bread recipe with millet grain and rolled oat. I've been trying to finalize my ongoing millet grain bread recipe. I like the crunch of millet and oat add texture like oat meal. A little more chewy.

5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (or bread flour)
2 cups warm water
1 tbsp yeast (or sour dough starter)
1 tbsp salt
3/4 cup molasses or 3 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup millet uncooked
1 cup rolled oat

add some herbs as you wish. I added fennel. Rosemary is good too.

Just like regular bread recipe.
Mix ingredients and knead it to good consistancy.

Let it rise for 60 min. Punch it down. Shape it for baking and let it rise again.

Bake: 350F for 20-25min when wedge cut, or 35-40 min for loaf.

I also made a rye bread on the side, but maybe someday I will share that recipe too.

Digging Taro

2009-10-06T22:49:00.005-10:00

Now it's 3rd day harvesting taro and finished harvesting for the season.
Taro is an amazingly beautiful plant. It shakes its heart-shaped leaves in the wind like hula dancers in a charming manner. Gentle yet precise.
Its stems rise straight out of the ground to support the leaves to receive the sun's energy. Painters on a calligraphy paper these stems should be painted in a single stroke without hesitation. That's the way to depict its beauty.

Dryland taro is different from wet land taro. Taro farmers in paddies squat like sumo wrestlers ready to fight and continue to break the feeder roots around the corm and pull up the main root which most people call "Taro."

I personally like dryland Taro as I am a farmer of a highland. Standing water is not my preferred area. I thrust my garden fork right in by the foot of taro root and swing it sideway to snap the feeder roots and use the leverage to bring the root above the surface. Each root is unique in its size and shape just like us people. Is it the growing conditions? or inherent quality of each seed taro? Reminds me of how we people are.

After long hours of digging and grunting, my body expresses pleasant fatigue.

Starting my morning on the farm

2009-10-06T21:00:00.001-10:00

Morning at Mauna Kea Tea starts early as if every farmer is born under the same destiny to get up early and work. The days are getting shorter and the growing season is getting closer to the end, yet warm days and never ending loads of work await me. Am I just putting too much on my plate?

Walking through the tea fields, I can't help noticing the tasks waiting to be done. so I do a few things as I walk down the hill as if it gives me any contentment of actual work being done. In the end realizing that it is not just a few plants that needs attention, but thousands.

Why did I choose the hillside to farm? Why did I have to make it so much more inefficient?

For the amount of extra work that goes in, is it really worth it?

Only people saying, "You've done so much work. Your farm is looking beautiful," further continue my labor intensive farm landscape. Does it really matter how the farm looks in regard to how it tastes?

Maybe it does. Having the image of the farm where the tea is grown while sipping the tea, it gives some strange feeling of connectedness to the beautiful landscape and enhanced appreciation for the cup.

Exchanging a few words with one of the plants that I happen to see each other, I am reminded that I am happy to be a farmer.

Solar cooker reaches 180F in 1 hour

2009-09-30T06:09:00.002-10:00

2 sunny days so I tried using solar cooker.
You can definitely feel the heat in the reflector funnel when I stuck my hand in. Even in a cool condition it heats up pretty good.

I could get the temperature up to 180F, but it didn't get past that. I used a small black pot with glass lid. Replacing the lid with black lid might improve a bit. I just used sweet potatoes sliced about 1/2 in thick. After 3 hours it got soft, but doesn't have that high heat cooking kind of puffed softness.

2nd day I tried using larger pot with more vegetables (sweet potatoes, winter squash, parsnip, beets) but the temperature stayed at around 150F. The lid was shiny silver. Reflecting too much light? Same set up as the day before. Winter squash was soft and good to eat, sweet potatoes got soft, but somewhat fibrous. Beet and parsnip were crunchy. Need more cooking.

On the original website, they say it gets up to 350F. How can I improve it?

I also noticed that the sun shade was thin and floppy. Perhaps I need to secure that a little better too. I'll try with a bit more rigid type too.

I will try to get some dutch oven and get the whole setup a little more sturdy.

After all it feels nice to just come home and meal ready. The cooking behavior can be changed. Prep for lunch and dinner can be all done in the morning or the day before and eliminate necessity to cook 3 meals.

Solar Cooking

2009-09-27T23:34:00.006-10:00

I just built a solar cooker. Real easy and simple.

It's so much more efficient to directly utilize the energy than to convert it to electricity first.

The challenge is our climate. It's hard to get good sunshine in Ahualoa so I made it extra large solar unit.

I'll find out if that works.

Here is the recipe if you want to try.
http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Windshield_shade_solar_funnel_cooker

Fairly cheap to build.
Only thing I needed to buy was:

Large reflective sunshade
Velcro
Plastic Oven bag (19in x 23 1/2 in) Reynolds - Turkey size

I'll use a bucket and a metal shelf from an old oven that I happened to save.

OPEN FARM DAY

2009-09-21T06:18:00.000-10:00

OPEN FARM DAY was nice and sunny. It was nice to talk story and visitors got to see what we are up to. People kept asking us if they can come stop by and see what we are doing and we finally got to set a day aside and just do that.

In the end it is up to those who purchase and consume tea to decide whether our tea is good for their purposes. We do our part based on what we believe, but good to hear what people are concerned about and what they want and to incorporate their views into our practices too.

Nitrosamine generation

2009-09-03T22:28:00.000-10:00

We live in convenient and highly efficient world, but that made it easy to poison ourselves too.

Nitrosamines have been known to natural farmers quite sometime. Not only ground leeching and contaminated water source, vegetables that we eat also tend to accumulate nitrate which turns into nitrosamines in our body. That's one of the reason many natural farmers do not use fertilizers both organic and chemical sources.

Nitrosamines are known toxins in human body. "Nitrosamines are also easily generated under strong acid conditions, such as in the stomach...." as de la Monte points out.

How much nitrate each type of vegetables accumulate under fertilized condition? Spinach is a well known one. Babies are sensitive to this. In Germany, many babies lost lives from eating spinach that contained high level of nitrate.

there is a correlation between increased fertilization and higher level of nitrate concentration found in vegetables like spinach.

Mr. Kimura of Natural Apple grower describes in his book about "rot test" that fertilized vegetables rot while natural (unfertilized) vegetables wilt and dry up or ferment.

Some natural farmers point out that there is correlation between nitrate level and rotting. I am not certain whether higher nitrate level will lead to quicker rotting. and it's not only nitrate that gets generated from fertilizer use, but many other chemicals are synthesized by plants.

When we look at herbal medicines used in oriental medicine, they value wild herbs more than cultivated herbs. Potency is obvious.

Home gardeners can find substantial difference in garden herbs like parsley and basil. When they are grown without fertilizers and only depend on rain water, close to wild harvest, although they do not grow as fast as fertilized ones and not as tender, but they almost have medicinal quality in their flavor.

http://www.j-alz.com/press/2009/20090706.html

Nitrosamines and Cancer Richard A. Scanlan, Ph.D.
Dean of Research Emeritus and Professor of Food Science
http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/f-w00/nitrosamine.html

Thinking of flavored tea and genmaicha

2009-09-03T18:14:00.005-10:00

Lately I'm very interested in flavored tea. What happened to me? I have to say that I'm not interested in cheap teas just adding fruit flavors on low grade tea so that you cannot taste any tea at all. It is some extra flavor that enhances of experience of tea.

I came across a good genmaicha which uses really high quality sencha. Typically genmaicha needs high temperature to bring out the nutty aroma, but good grade sencha needs lower temperature. Their nature is opposite. Somehow during the processing the sencha seems to have received extra step that reduces typical high grade sencha taste. It doesn't retain the same look either. They don't fight, just harmonizing. I can guess what the process might have been.

Very faint green tea. what can we add to complement the flavor? It's much like a good cocktail, you don't kill the flavor of rum, but how can we bring it out better?

OPEN FARM DAY

2009-08-24T06:41:00.007-10:00

Saturday September 19th 10am -3pm

Mauna Kea Tea will be holding a public open house for an informal sampling of our tea . Please stop by to share tea and talk story from 10 am and 3 pm or reserve a seat at either the 10:30 am or 1:30 pm focused tasting session.

Also available for sale:

tea accessories (tea pot, cups)
Tea Cups by local potters
Potted tea plants, etc

If you like to participate in advanced tasting sessions, classes and natural farming workshops, please check our event list for future classes and workshops.

If you are interested in a farm tour that offers a full tea experience indluding garden tour and tea tasting, check out our Farm Visit page.

Earthworms are not there when soil is clean

2009-08-21T21:57:00.001-10:00

I am more and more convinced that earthworms are there to clean the soil. I first didn't really understand the significance of this statement when I read this thing about earthworms in an natural farming article, but as I continue more observation, it became more clear that if you see earthworms in your soil, the soil is still transforming.

Most obvious evidence is that where there is great forest, there aren't many earthworms. The soil is clean smelling and that forest ecosystem is mature and stable. and if you plant in this soil, a lot of things grow healthy, not necessarily big, but healthy.

Most organic gardeners tend to (want to therefore they do) think that the healthy forest soil has a lot of earthworms, but in reality soil with low nitrogen litter like fallen leaves have very few earthworms. on the other hand, places like under fruits trees or fresh mowed grass tend to have more earthworms due to high protein contents.

I am talking about low N, fibrous high carbon leaf litter and branch type of forest soil.

This also explains "cleanliness of soil" as opposed to "soil fertility". Many people talk about soil fertility being important factor, but not so much about cleanliness. Fertility is important because that's the soil's capacity to hold and create nutrients. It's hard to keep soil clean especially if you are sincere believer of "ORGANIC" culture.

If one knows what it means to grow healthy vegetables, I am not saying big or lots, but healthy and pure tasting, typically he or she first look, smell and feel the soil and it should resemble that of a great forest. and not any forest, but where the leaves provide dark black soil of high carbon environment.

Earthworms are signs of high organic matter in the soil. Most typically half-decomposed organic matter. Many organic gardeners think this is great since it says that you are working hard, and putting compost and organic fertilizers in the soil, but what they are doing is really uncleaning or contaminating the soil.

I still get a few earthworms when the field is going through transition from new to established beds and see various growth forms both natural or forest-type growth and organic growth. Best way to learn this is to find a good dark loamy soil in natural forest.

I am still skeptical about what I have so far at the farm is truly from the clean soil, perhaps there is transitional release of nutrients from weedy disturbed soil to mature beds, or whatever it is. need to see the result. Try the rot test.

Mr Mokichi Okada never laid out how to do it beacause it all varies depending on each situation. where you are. what soil you have, what climate, vegetation and etc. I am slowly understanding the depth of this simple natural farming as I shed typical organic farming and chemical farming theory.

Tropical storm dumped a lot of rain

2009-08-11T19:58:00.001-10:00

Hurricane felicia downgraded to tropical storm and to tropical depression, yet still brought a lot of rain. It was only 60 mm or 2.5 inches of rain in 2 days, but felt like a lot.
The tea field looks quite happy with lots of rain. Never have drainage problem since we are on the hillside with lots of weeds growing and holding soil.

This year it is wet like how it used to be around here. Last few years have been dry, but finally good to get some decent rain.

Could natural farming carrots taste so gentle and pure?

2009-08-09T06:29:00.005-10:00

I thought wild growth form of vegetables are mostly bold and pungent and have really wild quality, but this year we got good carrot growing in what is generally considered poor red clay soil, yet the flavor is so gentle and pure and mild. We eat it raw, cooked and sauteed, but all feels so different from regular store bought carrot.

Perhaps the variety of carrot has something to do too. Oxheart carrot from Seeds of Change.
http://www.seedsofchange.com/garden_center/product_details.aspx?item_no=S10919

Soil amendment I used was old leaf/wood branch compost. I shouldn't even call it compost because USDA NOP organic rule specifies that compost has to have c:n ratio between 25:1 and 40:1 and has to be cooked at a temp between 131F and 170F for 15 days and turned at least 5 times.
C:N ratio is really high, by calculation probably around 60:1 or higher. I think it's more like 100:1. and why carrot still grow so well? I don't know. I don't grow vegetables by scientific theory.

My hypothesis is that it is the surface area of these leaf and branch materials are small compared to shredded and ground up stuff. so they don't have to break down as fast to demand so much nitrogen to cause nitrogen deficiency.

Also when the soil is in high c:n ratio, the soil is really low bacterial activity level which inevitably shifts the system to fungal cycle. which means fungi break down the high C stuff while feeding the plants with necessary nutrients similar to mycorrhizal fungi.

Here is a link to a product from fungi perfecti. Although I didn't use this, it gives you an idea of how it works. I generally assume that there is already enough spore in the soil or leaf mix that I add to the soil.
http://fungi.com/mycogrow/index.html

Most gardening books say carrots need good loamy soil. Our carrots are growing in really heavy clay soil, and perhaps that is why our carrots look round like kabu or turnip.

Carrot leaves are also very light green as if there is not enough nitrogen. This is typical look of natural farming vegetables. Healthy soil feeds the plants, not human with fertilizers and compost.

I sometimes still think about NPK and compost C:N ratio and stuff, and it always confuse me for what I do, but as long as it works....

Forgot picture. Perhaps next time if I remember.

Why organic vegetables rot and natural vegetables wither. - Book: "What apples taught me (ringo ga oshiete kureta koto)" by Akinori Kimura

2009-08-07T01:01:00.009-10:00

We need more books like this in English too. How small apple farmer over years of experiments and observation finally finds a way to grow apple without pesticides or fertilizers (both chemical and organic).

Most important thing is to observe natural forest, but not any forest like Sugi forest is not suitable for vegetable cultivation, but deciduous broad leaf forest creates rich soil, and create the forest soil through natural process like growing weeds and beans.

What is most striking difference between organic and his natural farming is that his apples, vegetables or rice do not rot, but wither like how plants die back naturally and just dries up instead of melt into some black stinky slimy substance. His apple cut in half was left on top of refrigerator never rot, instead dried up.

What is causing the problem? Why organic vegetables rot while his natural vegetables wither or dry up or ferment. He points out that it is nitrate from unfinished high nitrogen compost and fertilizers are absorbed by plants. Especially manures used in compost affect in similar way.

He also goes on to say that vegetables or rice produced in conventional chemical based farming last longer than organic vegetables and rice in his rot test. It means organic cucumber rot before conventional cucumber.

Japan is a nation of small farmers and generally distributors demand that farmers use less fertilizers and pesticides or the distributors will not buy the vegetables from these farmers.

What does it mean to eat rotting vegetables? Vegetables in your stomach and intestine are rotting?

Anybody can do "rot test" easily at home. Get some organic spinach and conventional spinach and natural farming spinach (if you have access to it or if you can grow without fertilizer or compost) and stuff them into glass jars. Put plastic wrap on them and poke a few holes. Put them in sunny location. You might be surprised to see what happens.

木村秋則さんの本"リンゴが教えてくれたこと"

Tea study samples from Japan

2009-08-05T20:37:00.004-10:00

I have obtained several unique teas from Japan when I was there in late July. Some sencha, some pan-fire green with various styles of processing and hand processing too. Some of which are not sold, only experimental varieties which I received in exchange
.
Most of these teas I already tasted at the farms that I visited, but I can look a little more closely to see their quality and processing style.

Great big iron wok

2009-08-04T20:37:00.002-10:00

After so many years of searching for big thick iron wok for hand processing green tea, I finally found one in a rustic metal store in rural Japan, but I had no luck transporting it back to Hawaii. It measures about 1m diamter and 40cm deep. or pay big money.

The store owner said that the wok has been sitting there for over 50 years. Nowadays people like to use aluminum or stainless steel kinds since they don't need much maintenance like iron ones, but heat conductivity is totally different. They do not give the type of uniform high heat like iron one does.

I found bunch of small iron ones, smaller than 40cm diameter, that people would just give me, but too small. Maybe hobbyist might just like to make some tea with that although from my experience that small ones don't hold enough leaves and can't heat high enough to stop oxidation.

Mountain green tea grows in summer yet stays tender

2009-08-04T20:17:00.002-10:00

I visited some mountain tea regions in Japan where air was hot in mid July. The heat is known to give great growth spur on tea, but also harden the tender leaf, thus summer harvest in Japan is generally considered to be less value.

I returned to Honokaa in early August noticing that all the misty rainy weather is keeping the air cool and demanding me to pull out long sleeve. Who would think you need to wear long sleeve shirt in summer in Hawaii? Pretty typical in our neighborhood.

Tea, on the other hand, enjoys this cool climate in summer and send out tender shoot even in summer. This makes me reconsider that summer harvest may actually be of good quality. Plenty of rain and occasional sunlight of Hawaiian mountain weather actually keeps it growing without too much hardening.

Constant breeze from the ocean is another thing that keeps our mountain slope nice and cool. Where mountain tea grows in Japan is typically up along a stream that keeps the area nice and cool, but I realized that it was actually not that cool, knowing that our summer is much more pleasant even with high humidity.

Mushrooms pop!

2009-08-01T23:34:00.003-10:00

I see little mushrooms popping out of some logs. The log didn't have a label so I don't know which kind of mushroom it is, but most likely oyster or maitake. These are the kinds that I inoculated earlier.

I just hope that it is not wild poisonous mushrooms.

Shitake mushroom log cultivation in Japan

2009-08-01T17:22:00.007-10:00

While visiting tea farms in the mountains of Kyushu in Japan, I also had a chance to observe traditional shitake cultivation. Mr Saeki who has been growing shitake for a long time showed me around his work site and where he rests his shitake logs. Although it was not time to do any work on shitake logs, it was nice to actually see it.

Old time they naturally inoculated with existing spores in the air and the forest, but he explained that it does not naturally happen anymore. What has changed?
They use mushroom plug spawn or dowels that is colonized by shitake mushroom mycelium similar to what we can get in the U.S. at various places.

Logs traditonally used for shitake cultivation in Japan is called "Kunugi" (櫟), a type of oak tree. There are a few other trees used too, but by far Kunugi is the most common one in the region.

He peeled a little piece of bark and showed me the mycelial colonization on the log. The log on the photo was 2 years after inoculation. Generally logs of this size, 5-6 in in diameter, is known to produce shitake for 4-5 years.

-------------------
Interested in growing your own mushrooms in a natural method on logs? Try getting some plugs from Fungi Perfecti - http://fungi.com/plugs/index.html

Sustainability and Small farms in Japan

2009-07-21T14:16:00.007-10:00

Japan is a nation of small farmers, yet the traditional farming is very much marginalized. While it's really difficult to find those farms still engaging in the traditional style, there is new trend ,although very small, in more environmental farming approach.

I visited tea farms and shitake mushroom farms in mountains of Kyushu where a few farmers still engage in traditional farming although they are suffering very much from competition against conventional farming and foreign import.

One good news. There are a lot of farmers' coop type market popping up all over Japan, especially in rural Japan. I traveled long distance mostly relying on local produce and farm style meals. Coming from U.S., I thought most ingredients like rice and beans, potatoes, vegetables, etc are coming from a large farms in remote locations, but most ingredients if not all were actually produced in the same town.

Sustainability in Japan

In the U.S. I hear many people talking about sustainability, but in Japan I don't hear very much. I asked one time at an Inn I was staying if there foods were produced locally. They looked puzzled almost telling me why do you ask that kind of questions. In fact, I later found out that they produced everything that was on the table. It's not because this is the modern trend like how it is in U.S. where you can go to a farmers market and buy some local produce, but it's just how many of them live in the rural area of Japan.
I can't say this is all true in urban area of Japan, and I was lucky to witness the rural Japan where security of foods is important.

Also, much of their farming is based on local ingredients. How farming and lifestyle evolved over hundreds of years in the rural Japan, they had all they needed and adapted to grow rice, potatoes, vegetables, small animals and many mountain herbs.

Traditional farming in small villages are disappearing

Even though we can still observe this sustainable practice happening, there is a big change in younger generations leaving these rural villages to get a better job and more cash in big cities. Tradition is disappearing rapidly as older people are too old to grow their own foods and for the community.

Cash crops have also replaced traditional diversified production. Farmers are switching their gear to grow crops of high value rather than for local consumption. This creates more sustainability problems. Long distance trucking and unnatural preservation becomes common place.

To further reinstate this, there are big shopping malls appearing all over Japan. It appears that Japan is also following the unsustainable fate of the U.S.A.

Building a farm cabin

2009-07-20T23:25:00.004-10:00

We've been working on building a new farm cabin for farm volunteers and interns. The progress is slow as always, but starting to look like a cabin now.

The cabin is basically off the grid and relies on natural energy.

Eggs on the side of a driveway

2009-06-29T13:59:00.004-10:00

Since some time ago there were a few eggs on the side of our farm access road. I thought it was a mangoose that stole eggs from our chickens and left it there, but recently we found the actual owner of the eggs.

Mother turkey has been patiently sitting on the eggs even though we pass by frequently. most of our farm workers didn't notice until I pointed out. turkey is sitting still and blending well with the surrounding environment.

I walked up to the turkey once with little Koji, but it didn't leave the spot until I reached right over it. I wasn't really trying to be mean, but was just curious to see how close I can get. She had 4 eggs then. Perhaps easy way to catch the turkey is to put a cage over it at night.

Plants that grow with no fertilizers and what's going on with NPK?

2009-06-23T23:14:00.004-10:00

I still don't get it, but it works. A lot of farmers who practice no-fertilizer farming say similar things.

There is definitely some that grow well and some that don't do so well without fertilizers. I recently planted two varieties of rice with no fertilizer, and they are growing very slowly. Sun light and water availability greatly affect the outcome.

I still don't understand why weeds grow so vigorous and tall and a lot of vegetables grow so pathetic in wild environment. Is it the seeds? or unsuitable environment? or what is it?

Organic fertilizers help plants grow in rainy environment without much sunlight, but still plants are created to grow in the sun, right? Then, soil-sun-water connection is the most important elements. In fact, it is not all NPK value that determines how plants grow. according to Natural farming principle, soil (earth element), sun (fire element) and water (water element) in fine balance makes plants grow. It's not nutrients in soil, but forces... Starting to sound more like biodynamic theory...

I am still experimenting and solving this mystery, but if one is patient, he even sees some seeds come from fertilizer farming start to grow after 1 month of no growth. First 2 sets of leaves are from energy stored in seeds, but the rest of growth come from the surrounding environment.

Indian farmers go organic

2009-06-09T21:41:00.002-10:00

I heard it on the radio a while ago about Indian farmers, and not a small number, are going organic and government is also supporting it. Chemical based modern farming relies on external sources to provide all the materials needed so once farmers pay for all the materials, they don't have any money left. It's same in this country. If we farmers keep paying the big companies to supply us everything, we are not going to make any money. No wonder so many people just quite farming. It's tough life. It can even be true for organic farmers if they don't follow more sustainable approach.

Some biggest expenses like fertilizers, pesticides, GMO seeds can be eliminated from equation. We can always make our own or use cover crop to build soil for much cheaper.

Learning how nature works with no-fertilizer

2009-06-09T15:22:00.004-10:00

I have been growing various vegetable crops without any fertilizers both chemical and organic and finding out that there are a lot more than how much fertilizer and compost application to make plants grow.

The most obvious thing is where the soil is naturally rich grows more vigorous crops with no input. Sounds nothing new..., but our modern farming relies heavily on imported fertilizers and soil amendments. Aren't there anything that we can do to create this fertile soil on site with no fertilizers?

There is natural tendency for soil to accumulate organic matter in certain spots like valley and dips. It almost reminds me of feng shui concept of land design. Generally speaking, where energy collects also happens to be better suited condition for growing.

Also types of trees and vegetation in the area that add organic matter also has significant influence. old trees that drop leaves every year tend to support richer soil. I even planted spinach, beans, peas, peppers, beets, and daikon in the same area, but every time they all grow better under trees of ohia (native hawaiian tree) which gives very light shading. Soil is also darker and loamy deeper down compare to more open area where only grass was growing.

I also conducted casual experiment with cover crops to see which types of cover crops support better no-fertilizer environment. It's still ongoing, but first thing I see is that growth of cover crops is already influenced by the local soil conditions. Yet, there are some cover crops that grow in poor soil with no amendment. Guinea grass (Panicum maximum) and various other pasture grass are considered noxious weeds here, but some like guinea grass has great soil building potential which is also used in some part of the world. Although most places that utilize these kinds of weeds have critical kill factor like winter which completely kills the weeds, we can also utilize this weeds with other kill factor of just cutting them back and mulching. or Layering with more dominant plants.

Sweet potato overload

2009-06-07T22:33:00.003-10:00

I was clearing weeds in the front yard to set a new landscape and found a patch of sweet potatoes. I just can't imagine ever running out of sweet potatoes as long as we keep throwing the harvested vines here and there like our cover crop seeds. After half a year or so when I remember the patch of sweet potatoes, just go dig them up. Each one will produce good 5 lb or so easily.

I started using sweet potatoes for edible ground cover since it's low growing and looks pretty attractive. Warm tropical place like Hawaii makes it easy to grow this. It's quick to fill in empty spot and smother out weeds pretty well. I imagine some of them are more than a year old and should be dug out for eating, but looking so nice and hard to disturb the garden.

Besides, we keep getting more sweet potatoes from random areas so unless I need the space for other special purpose, I can't think of a reason why i want to dig them up.

Cover crop and Turkey

2009-06-03T11:00:00.001-10:00

Recently we planted cover crop seeds in newly planted tea field. Today I walked down to the field and found that there were some scratch marks like how chickens do.
Also, I saw some turkeys on the other side of the field scratching my new cover crop area.
Perhaps they are after all the grains and beans.
As long as someone is there, they keep distance, but when no one is around, they do what they want.

What's a good way to discourage them from pecking my cover crops?

One of our recent volunteers kept trying to catch a turkey. They are not very smart birds so if they get cornered, they get stuck and can't jump or fly.

He almost had it. He got close and almost caught it by hand, but got surprised how big it was. It's a bird, but it's BIG.

I once caught a wild peacock by hand, but it is a little scary. They have long neck and sharp beak that can peck your hands or face or eyes although I don't think they do once they get caught.

They are wild birds here, and I don't really want to look at them as pests, but seems like they are not very cooperating with my farming style.

Desmodium intortum- adopted weed as a cover crop

2009-05-24T08:18:00.004-10:00

Desmodium intortum (or just desmodium) is a common pasture grass that escape pasture and become common weed in a garden and a farm, but once we know its great property as a cover crop, it is quite a useful plant.

Depending on a type of crops that you grow, desmodium can be utilized very effectively to break up the subsoil without mechanical means. Especially in a tree or perrenial crop system, it works really well much like pigion pea, and easy to kill by cutting at the taproot. Also, it is a legume that means it fixes nitrogen.

I have difficulty growing alfalfa and clover in acidic soil since tea likes acidic soil although I see clover and alfalfa still grows somewhat, other legumes that grows in acidic soil is preferable. Vetch also grows fair, but all these alfalfa, clover and vetch seem to have problem setting seeds and naturalizing without certain soil environment.

Desmodium is also a pasture mix for large animals like cattle and sheep and it does not tolerate heavy grazing so if it starts to go out of control, you can always set up the field in the way that sheep or other grazing animal can be introduced during rest period.

I was clearing some weedy patch and found that big growth of desmodium. I managed to loosen up the soil and measured about 5-6ft of root growth straight down.

Here are some useful info on desmodium intortum:
http://www.tropicalforages.info/key/Forages/Media/Html/Desmodium_intortum.htm
http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=DEIN2
http://www.hear.org/starr/plants/images/species/?q=desmodium+intortum

There are many other weeds that can be used quite effectively with combination of animals and some management practices. And best of all, it growns wild in the region and seeds are free.

No-fertilizer spring carrots

2009-05-11T22:51:00.004-10:00

Many carrots got eaten by slugs this year from the long winter rain, but there are always some that make it. Chickens from chicken tractor got loose one time and half of the carrot patch got destroyed, then our mowing sheep got loose and ate bunch of leaves, but the carrots are coming back strong in the warm spring weather.

This patch uses no fertilizer, both organic and chemical and no spray of any kind. One thing that I use is leaf and wood shaving compost. Let it rot for a long time.
Typically, any gardening or farming book tell you to avoid high carbon materials alone like what I use, but amazingly it works well. One thing you notice is leaves are really light color. Where do they get nutrients from without fertilizer? This is still a big debate in no-fertilizer farming.

My guess is that soil organisms especially fungi creating symbiotic relationship since I see a lot of mycelium in the soil. One thing MOA natural farming says is to "keep the soil clean" meaning, don't add fertilizer to contaminate the soil. Clean soil already has enough to grow what you need.

Japanese red long Turnip - Hinona Kabu

2009-05-11T22:36:00.003-10:00

I like kabu, or turnip since it's easy to grow and it can be prepared in many ways. Pickles, stir fry, miso soup, casserole, baked vegetables, etc. We keep kabu year-round. It's just a good root crop with lots of fiber.

One day I came across this beautiful Hinona kabu, purplish red and long. Looking more like carrot than kabu. It makes excellent pickle. slice the hinona kabu thin with a slicer and rub salt into it. Then put the kabu in a pickle press or a container with drop lid and a rock (this is my grandmother's method).

The kabu from the photos are from our winter planting. This winter was really rainy and a lot of vegetable just melted or got eaten by slugs, but some suvivors coming really strong with the arrival of spring.

Red Bean Bread - anko remix

2009-05-11T21:55:00.005-10:00

I was going to make anko from azuki red beans and honey or cane sugar, but I didn't cook beans long enough so that it was still crunchy. Generally it gets soft all the way much like re-fried bean.
Anyway, instead of using this red bean chunky mush as anko, or red bean filling in a bun, I mixed it in a dough.

Here is the recipe.

4 cups flour (3:1 ratio of white and whole wheat)

1 1/2 cups water
1/2 tablespoon commercial yeast or use your own yeast culture
2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup chunky red bean paste
1 teaspoon ginger powder
black sesami seeds

note that there is no sugar added to yeast to rise. Instead of adding sugar, I use 1 cup flour, salt, ginger powder, olive oil and yeast mixed in 1 1/2 cup water and let it rise at 90 - 100F in an oven for 60 - 90 min.

Once it gets a little bubbly, add the remaining flour to the mix and keep kneading. Also mix in the red bean paste once the dough starts to get more maneuverable without sticking to your hands too much.

Make sure to mix the bean paste well into the dough and add more flour if the dough is still soft and sticky since the bean paste is very moist and can make the bread mushy.

Let the dough rise for 60 min or until doubles in size, punch it down and split in half. Put the 1/2 dough in a baking pan and let it rise again. I usually let it sit in a refrigerator and bake them in the morning. No sugar, low yeast makes the 2nd rising less vigorous and works good for morning baking. Sprinkle some black sesami seeds on top.

Bake for 35-45 min at 375F.

After baking the beans get softer too.

I personally like this recipe better than anpan or red bean paste filling type. Just like choosing chocolate filling or chocolate fudge? It's really your preference.

La Elelu cha - Cockroach in Bedroom

2009-05-10T10:18:00.002-10:00

I was sorting my old blog site and one of baby koji's song reminded me to post it on the new site.
Elelu is cockroach in Hawaiian, if you live in Hawaii, you have to befriend with this little critter. That's why Hawaiians made a song of cliche.

----------------------

She says, "It is usual to find roaches in bathroom and kitchen, but bedroom shouldn't have any roaches!"
That's right. Kimberly found cockroach shuffling on the bedroom carpet.
First thing, you cannot let it go! They are fast. If you let that thing go behind wall between a small gap, they ain't coming back. You gotta catch it right then.

She yells, "Bring me a paper!"
I wonder why paper.
Anyway, I got a kitchen paper, thinking to myself, "should I get tissue paper?" for a moment.
Her occasional yelp raises the tension in the house.

Then I walk into the bedroom, finding her crouching on the floor.
....................
She caught a cockroach with her hand. She covered her hand over the cockroach on the floor so that it cannot escape.
Every time it walks on her hand, she yelps as if she practices to scream. Every time it only gets better.
She looks at me with puzzled eyes, "I don't need a kitchen paper, I needed a normal paper."
Of course, she needed to cover her hand. What she need is not a paper, she need exterminator or something.

If I were in her position, I would passed out. In my mind, people and cockroaches DO NOT touch each other.

Since it is not me holding a roach, I say "Hold on, let me grab my camera."
She is serious, "hey, come help me...", well, that means my photography is "veto".
I then thought about feeding it to chickens. They love eating little critters.
Centipedes, worms, grasshoppers, things that we would normally avoid, they get turned on...

I went to kitchen to retrieve a tupperware so that we can store the thing until tomorrow morning. Too bad chickens are not nocturnal.
well, she replaced her hand with tupperware. It was smooth. After that, not very smart move. She started to cover the tupperware with paper, hoping that it perfectly seals.
Truth is it does not.
Roach finds a little escape hole and crawl right out onto her hand.
"Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"
Perhaps it shook the whole house. it is past 10pm, but can't help it!
I can't help laughing.

Well, I take her tupperware and lid, calmly cover it in the container and close the lid.
sometimes I wonder why she exaggerate so much more for this simple matter.

Recipe: Ramen making 3 - Flavor sauce

2009-05-10T09:41:00.006-10:00

Flavor Sauce

There are 3 basic flavors I describe here, but you can create your original flavor quite easily. Just make sure that it tastes right.

Ingredients:
Soy sauce (shoyu) flavor:

2 table spoon soy sauce,
1/2 table spoon oyster sauce

Miso flavor

2 table spoon miso paste, preferably dark miso or red miso
1 tea spoon chili sauce
1/2 tea spoon sesami oil

Fish Sauce

2 table spoon fish sauce
1 tea spoon salt
grated garlic

Directions:
simply mix your desired sauce ingredients in a serving bown and add 2 cups of hot soup base to your bowl. Adjust the proportion of the ingredients if you have non-standard size ramen bowl.
My standard size ramen bowl holds 1200ml of liquid.

Once the soup is made, add cooked ramen noodle and vegetables.

Also, you can make vegetable soup with the broth and sauce mixed in a pot for larger quantity.

Various garden vegetables can be added.
Some of my favorites are :
cabbage, daikon, komatsuna, carrots, snow peas, negi (green onion), cilantro, shungiku (edible crysanthemum), pickled mustard green, bamboo shoot, green papaya, Avocado

if you can find 4-5 seasonal vegetables, that's plenty.

Work tent back up

2009-05-07T21:45:00.003-10:00

I have been postponing, but finally got my motivation to put a 20'x20' work tent back up from recent heavy rain after it got crashed in a big winter storm early this year. I even added center guava poll and it feels more secure too this time. This year it's been so rainy and we need some cover though we have been mostly working in light rain.

Simple chicken tractor

2009-05-07T21:28:00.004-10:00

This is a simple chicken tractor that I built with PVC and chicken wire. It's light and flexible and doesn't rot so it makes very useful in moist warm Hawaii weather. size is 4' x 6'. slightly flexes, but structurally sound enough. Add a little log and board for shelter. I designed an add-on unit for shelter and nesting box, but haven't got around to build it yet (for a year or longer now!)

Simply we keep moving this chicken tractor to the next patch once the chickens clear the site. Then, after a few weeks we plant things like kabocha, a type of winter squash, which grows well in weed patch.

We started with 10 free range chickens, and gradually losing one by one from neighborhood dog attack and other suspicious death. Once day I saw io (or Hawaiian hawk) eating dead chicken, but do they attack adult chicken? or perhaps mangoose killed it and io scavenging on it.

Once the flock reached 4, I started to put them in the chicken tractor full time. I did with 10 chickens, but it required constant feeding. We only give our kitchen waste. Even 2 chickens, it only takes 3-4 days before the site is done without supplemental feed.

Anyway, for the size of our chicken tractor I found that 2 chickens worked the best and even get occasional eggs. If I can move them around more, perhaps 4-5 chickens would still work.

Outhouse near completion

2009-05-07T20:35:00.005-10:00

This turned out that it was not totally from scrap materials, but finally getting close to finishing the outhouse project.

One of our recent farm volunteer said that he was interested in using scrap materials to do some building and claimed his adequacy for building skills so we did an outhouse building project.

He designed the building and made extra materials list that we needed to supplement with. he proceeded with his design only to find out later that I had to fix a lot of things.

I just need to add a door and it's done, but how do I keep the door light so it doesn't outweigh the entire structure.

Black bucket keeps wood chips. It's just a big planting pot so it drains water from rain. Wood chips keep the flies and smell away.

White bucket in the back catches rain water for washing hands and other uses.

Once the hole fills up this structure can be moved (with 2 people). and some things can be planted there to remove extra nutrients.

One common permaculture outhouse is to build the outhouse in banana patch circle so bananas keep utilizing the resources.

Rice germinated

2009-05-04T21:42:00.000-10:00

I decided to grow rice this year to see how it will grow in wet Ahualoa climate. I selected 2 varieties that are known as dryland sticky rice.

so far most of the rice starts are looking pretty good except something is disturbing the soil a little under the fence I placed. I doubt that the wild chickens are scratching it since the fence wire is in the way. small birds? I am thinking it is earthworms since they do the similar actions where sheep droppings are. They bring the pellets in the ground and leave some dirt up on the surface. They are miniature tillers of natural mechanism.

Rice seedlings would probably grow a little better in a greenhouse, but I still need to work on the greenhouse modification before I can use it again.

Recipe: Ramen making 2 - soup base (or broth)

2009-05-04T21:29:00.001-10:00

Soup base (or broth) is unflavored soup with no salt or sauce added to it. This is what makes farm lifestyle so great since not just vegetables, but also animal ingredients can be fully utilized. I used lamb leg bones since they are readily available from the farm and have surprisingly good flavor.

There is also a vegetarian version. Instead of using animal bones, simply use shitake and/or kelp seaweed base. Shitake alone is also sufficient for most people with vegan diet. It just tastes a little plain. Dried shitake has stronger flavor than fresh shitake.

Ingredients:

2 lamb leg bones (or in equivalent quantity)
3L water
2 green onions (or leek)
ginger
10 dried shitake mushroom
scrap vegetables (carrot, onion, etc.)

Directions:

1. Boil Sheep bones (also pig, chicken, etc. can be used if you have access) in a pot for 2-3 min. This removes initial meaty taste. Discard the boil water.

2. Clean the bones. Wash with water (scrub if necessary) and remove excess fat.

3. Break up the bones with a hammer. Need really solid surface. I usually put the bones in a plastic bag or wrap in a thick cloth and hammer it on a rock or concrete surface. Don't lose bone marrow juice from a rip in the bag because that's what you are after.

4. Add crushed bones, ginger slices, green onion to a big soup pot. Add other vegetables (carrots, celery, onions, etc.) for more complex flavor. Experiment different kinds of vegetables and find what makes the soup better.

5. Bring the soup mix to boil. Continue heating the soup at low to medium heat for 2-3 hours. Roughly remove foam on the surface.

6. Once you remove the pot from heat, strain the soup through strainer. If you want to remove finer particles, use paper filter (or coffee filter may work too).

Basically the soup does not have any extra flavors like salt. Look at sauce making below.

Turkey goes back to the wild

2009-05-03T22:17:00.000-10:00

After one of our volunteer taking care of the turkey and keeping it warm overnight, she let the turkey hang out with chickens, soon the turkey chick run under chicken coop and never came out. Perhpas it went back to the wild since I don't see it anywhere.

Planting new field of tea

2009-05-03T21:23:00.002-10:00

Finally, after a long soil conditioning and getting the plants ready, we just started planting our new tea field. The weather condition is great. We get enough rain, but dry enough to get out in the field.

Thanks to all the people who helped prepare and plant the field.

Adopting and domesticating a Wild turkey chick

2009-04-22T21:26:00.006-10:00

We found a wild turkey chick in tea field. One of our farm volunteers is now a foster mother.
She is a vegan and don't eat meat so I assume that this bird is not for our thanksgiving turkey.

Taka caught 3 wild turkey chicks about a year ago and domesticated them. He fed them and took a good care of the birds for about 3 weeks. These birds can actually fly at the age of 1 month or so and eventually they figured out that they could fly over the fence of their coop that they were in. About 4 feet high.

One day Taka sow the turkeys walking in the tea field and immediately caught them again. After a while they took off and never returned. Then he found out that his neighbor across the street adopted the turkey for a while. The birds just walked right up to them. Taka wondered if they knew that the birds were domesticated at that time since they were such friendly wild turkeys. A few weeks later they released the birds, but were they thinking about keeping the turkey for thanksgiving?

Movie: The Beautiful Truth

2009-04-12T10:33:00.002-10:00

The Beautiful Truth Website
(http://www.thebeautifultruthmovie.com/)

The Beautiful Truth emphasizes that what we eat and what environment we live in is directly connected to our well being and eating well through Gerson therapy can cure termical cancer patients. Sometimes even when the cure is so simple and possible, politics influence and greed of pharmaceutical and medical industries deliberately disguise the truth about curing cancer.

The message I got was stay away from processed foods and eat organic, local and pure whole foods. No irradiation, No GMO, no additives (MSG, etc.),

The beautiful truth description reads, "... Growing up on an Alaskan animal reserve, Garrett’s father recognized his son’s interest in the dietary habits of their animals. That prompted him to assign a book written by Dr. Max Gerson, which maintains that there is a direct link between diet and a cure for cancer. Fascinated and curious, Garrett embarks on a cross-country road trip to investigate the merits of The Gerson Therapy. He meets with scientists, doctors and cancer survivors who reveal how the multi-billion dollar medical industry has made it their mission to dismiss the notion of alternative and natural cures."

It is very sad that we are only ignorant customers of big companies to make profit off of our health, but it is also encouraging to see some community actions that improve this conditions.

I have read many books in traditional oriental diet and natural medicine that foods are medicines. Therefore, what we eat should be healing and maintaining our health.

Also natural farming talks about vital energy in vegetables grown under natural conditions without any fertilizers as Mokichi Okada clearly explains that fertilizers both chemical and organic origins are poisons that contaminate the soil. When the soil is kept clean, and seeds with residual poisons removed, vegetables grow without pest problems and many previously terminal cancer patients documented their recovery from cancer. but why are we hesitant to believe this?

I do believe that healthy foods heal sickness, and Iwill continue to farm to keep the soil clean and produce pure and healthy foods and lifestyle.

Photos: Living on a Hawaiian Nature Farm

2009-04-09T06:52:00.000-10:00

Harvesting Tea

2009-04-08T07:21:00.000-10:00

It's been so rainy this year which makes it hard to find a good day for harvesting. We had some hours of no rain recently and decided to harvest.

The photos show that some of our farm helpers carefully harvesting our tea.

How we decide to be tea farmer

2009-04-08T05:05:00.214-10:00

It's a long and complicated story. Knowing my background might give some understanding too.

Natural farming and tea are not two separate things. In my mind, natural farming provides a raw ingredient, tea leaves of natural purity, and tea processing helps to bring out that natural purity in a more visible and detectable form. Tea is one way of showing what nature can do. It could have been any crops, but the world of tea allows me to look deeper into differences in quality and there are people who actively seek the true quality and subtle details.

I never have been a believer of destiny, but I do believe that the universe designs things to work for us in some mysterious way and it sends energy to take our dreams to reality. But, just like that, the idea of organic farming came into the reality of my life at the right time. When my wife and I got to the big island, the land we were going to farm was surprisingly suitable for tea cultivation. Nursery stock was available from USDA and University of Hawaii, and I discovered mentors who can taste and judge the quality of tea from Japan. My wife and I just had a trip to China which exposed us to the great tea culture of China and made me realize the connection between man and nature through tea.

Reinventing the wheel: Reviving an old tradition

There was already much information and many resources available to make good tea in Japan, but I didn't want to replicate the Japanese tea production where prices are based on auction rates and rich flavor is developed with high fertilizer use. What I wanted to pursue was the natural quality of tea, with inherent flavor instead that which is artificially created. Coming from a background of modern Japanese tea culture, producing tea in a natural style seems like reinventing the wheel. As I have looked deeper I have found that in many regions, some traditional tea producers still exist but are quietly disappearing. I have found myself on a path of reviving these vanishing traditions and back in Hawaii, giving a new twist to help them naturalize on the island.

Nature creates from nothing

What is so intriguing about natural farming is the discovery that nature makes visible the mystery of creation. Farming with nature is allowing creation to happen using nothing other than soil and seeds. Nature creates everything from nothing, but where does everything come from? When we use fertilizers, we become blind to nature and tend to think that fertilizer is the one that grows plants. But when we use no fertilizer nature teaches us to look deeper to find the true cause of things.

Tea is like a mirror that reflects my farming practice and just show us what nature is. Nature does not judge, it does not tell us what we are doing right or wrong. Through farming tea, nature manifests in a tastable, smellable form.

Natural farming is a way to look at the world without judging

Because of our judgmental minds, we say what's better and worse. We compare and we make ranks and grades. Its the same with tea. There are so many grades and ranks. To me each tea has its unique moment that harmonizes with us at some special point in time, and at that point, good or bad doesn't matter. Nature teaches us about having the right thing at the right time. Natural farming is a way that teaches us how to look at the world without a judgmental mind. Once we realize that, we can appreciate true quality of natural tea and natural farming.

Natural farming in general is a natural option. Because it doesn't rely on external source of input, it is highly sustainable farming practice. It is economically sound option as a long term plan because it is not affected by the price of imported fertilizers or pesticides. At our current time, we seem to get our labor and resources cheaper than how nature can provide, but if we look at the true cost of what we do, CO2 emission from all the machinery use and importing, cultivation practices and depleted soil and erosion problems. On one hand, we seem to have great harvest and abundant food supply, but on the other hand we neglect to see the true cost of our sacrifice. Natural farming is a way to bring back the lost balance and cheapest way to get farming job accomplished when all true costs are considered.

Tasting the difference

Just like any vegetable crop, farmers can learn to taste what type of fertilizers, if any, go into producing their crops. Tea is especially explicit and honest to respond to what we put in the soil, how we process the tea and how we pour the finished tea into cups.

Ikigai
Becoming a tea farmer is a commitment. Harvest has to come at the right timing under right weather condition. When tea leaves are harvested, they need to be processed in a timely manner. "Heaven, earth and people have to come together to produce great tea." says an old tea proverb. Perhaps attraction to tea making is that when various elements for making great tea come together, we can find great joy in making tea.

And it is attraction to the unique lifestyle of tea farmer. In Japan, the lifestyle of devotion to our passion is described as "ikigai." It is something to live for and search for self which brings great satisfaction and happiness to our lives. Being a tea producer and a natural farmer bring us closer to natural rhythm. Finding harmony with nature through tea leaves and tasting the great result in a cup is ikigai and happiness of tea farmer.

Organic Tea Growing Guide for Home Gardeners in Hawaii

2009-04-07T07:07:00.000-10:00

Growing tea is rather natural gardening experience for gardeners in Hawaii. When I first moved to Hawaii, it made perfect sense to grow tea because of the hilly terrain, rich deep soil, warm climate with no frost, and abundance of rain. Many of these requirements are met for quality tea growing.

Preferred Growing Condition for Tea

Climate

Tea grows in tropical to subtropical climate with average temperature 14-16 degree celcius, annual precipitation 1300mm or more. Tea plant is very vulnerable to frost damage. If you get frost in your area, plant should be protected from cold weather and frost damage.

Soil

Soil is very important medium for growing most plants, but for tea it is critical to have good soil because the flavor and aroma is greatly influenced. Tea grows in many places in Hawaii, but exceptionally refined taste and aroma of tea is generally found in places with deep weathered soil.
Soil pH is also an important factor. Generally 4.5 - 5 is desired for optimal growth. It can grow in higher pH and some varieties prefer even lower pH than 4.5. Growing environment should make sense to you when you understand the original conditions. Tea evolved in southern mountainous region of China where abundance of rain washes off all the soluble nutrients from the soil along with Calcium which keeps soil pH high.

In the book of Lu Yu "Tea Bible" (or Cha jing in Chinese) written in 760 AD, he describes the soil type and the corresponding grade of tea. This is used for good soil type for many tea types throughout Chinese tea history and even today.

Obtaining your Tea Plants

Now that green tea is very popular, a lot of people want to plant their tea in their yard. You can go around the island and ask people since many people already have in their backyard. If you can find one flourishing in your neighborhood, it is a good sign that the plant is well suited for the environment.

If you really care about what quality you want to get from different varieties, particular varieties of tea should be used.

I found tea plants in many locations, such as local nurseries, plant sale, farmer's market are the easy place to just go and buy. Many of them are not organic and you can tell that the plants are expressing some signs of disease and discomfort.

How to choose a healthy plant

Good plant stock has
1. strong main stem,
2. multiple branches from the base,
3. mature and healthy leaves on branches.

Look for signs of disease. Aphids and leaf rollers are typically found on young leaves. Brown spots, or anthracnose, are also common in some varieties, but healthy growing condition will improve once planted in your yard.
Look at the bottom of the pot for root growth. Healthy plants should have root-to-shoot growth balance in equal proportion. Too much chemical fertilizer will burn the root and you tend to see gorgeous upper body growth, but very small feet.
Generally tea plants for home gardens can be grown organically without much pest problems

Planting

Site Selection

Once you obtain your plants, design the site. Flavor and aroma of tea is greatly influenced by what grows around your tea plants. Make sure you don't have any plants with strong smell such as garlic unless the effect is intended.

On a sunny location, dig a hole or trench 16 inches deep by 12 inches wide. Plant them 16-20 inches apart for a hedge. Add organic matter such as compost and manure to improve moisture retention and drainage. Avoid using lime and alkaline amendments. Tea plants are happy with low pH soil. (pH4.5-5).

Once the plants are in the ground, mulch and water well. Keep the soil most for a first few month with frequent watering.

Care

Tea plant does not require much fertilizer once established. You can give fertilizer high in nitrogen and potassium after each harvest as thank you. Check pests and diseases and treat if you see any significant damage. Trim back in the fall. For home gardener this is much like maintaining a hedge.

Harvesting

Wait for first 3 years until the plants are established. Keep in mind that when you start harvesting, you are also taking away their solar panels. They need to produce energy to use for their own growth.

Once the plants are mature and well established, you can pick in the spring, summer and fall, but the best tea is generally in the spring. Pick the stem with leaves. 2 or 3 leaves for better quality, but you can harvest up to 5 leaves for more volume harvest. Note that the flavor get affected by how many leaves on each stem you harvest.

Once you harvest, keep the leaf in cool and shady area until you are ready for processing. Semi-oxidized (or oolong), and fully oxidized (or black) tea go through different processing.

Building a natural shelter

2009-04-07T07:00:00.000-10:00

One volunteer was interested in using what is around and build a little shelter or a shack. We cut some bamboo for floor, guava wood for frame and ginger for walls. No nails or screws. In fact, we only used a rope to tie it together. Roof is not up yet, we just used a old tarp that didn't have too many holes. Not too bad for 1 day project for 2 people.

I first saw a similar structure in the mountain village of Thailand. They get lumber and bamboo from the mountain.

What do they use to carry the logs? People.

Framed with logs and bamboos. Cut a notch in a log and tie them together. It's quite incredible how strong these structures are. Also, bamboo is sprit open and laid on the floor.

Here is what the bamboo floor looks like. Pretty solid and comfortable.

The entire community gets together to build a house.

Young or old, men or women, all have something to do.

Young kids also learn what their roles are when they grow up.

Photos: Foods from the Field

2009-04-07T06:46:00.002-10:00

The photos show what we grow and harvest from our vegetable field without input of both chemical and organic fertilizers. Of course, no pesticides.

Voices of the Farm Interns

2009-04-06T07:34:00.003-10:00

This page is for the farm interns and volunteers who got to spend time at Mauna Kea Tea Farm.

I am sure that all participants had different experiences both good and bad since everybody has their own expectations and their unique circumstances.

Please post your comments to reflect on your personal benefits and experiences from your stay at MKT farm. Also, if possible, please include your background and expectations before stay so that future participants can judge adequacy of their responsibility, skill levels and commitment to natural farming while their stay at the Farm.

Thank you for helping us improve the Internship Progarm,
Taka, Kimberly & Koji

Movie: The 11th Hour

2009-04-06T07:09:00.001-10:00

There are more and more people aware of global warming, peak oil, and many other environmental crises and this documentary narrated and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio poses last minute change we have to make on peak oil, global warming and environmental degradation.

I have seen some peak oil and global warming documentaries and stay updated with current environmental conditions because as a farmer we have to be.

Nature is always there, but we are temporary resident in her space. We can try all our best to change nature, but it will do whatever it wants in the end.

This topic puts us in deeply troubled feeling, but they show various solutions that we can do right at this point and what we can develop.

Book: Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture

2009-04-06T06:32:00.000-10:00

This book is a good introductory permaculture book. It covers many aspect of growing plants in natural ways with detail explanations of how things work e.g. how soil is created by natural cycle of insects and weathering, and specific gardening techniques you can apply to your garden and farm, e.g. sheet mulching, cover crops.

I especially like tables of useful information such as cover crops, compost c/n ratio, beneficial insect habitat plants, etc which you can refer to when you are designing your garden space.

Eventually, I found that the plant list on this book was not enough so I started to compile all my data from field and other sources, but this book is still one of many that I refer to for that purpose.

Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture (amazon.com link)

Book: Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets

2009-04-06T06:30:00.000-10:00

If you are interested in growing mushrooms or understanding what mycelium can do to improve your garden and farm, this is a good book.

I like how Paul Stamets introduces the idea of casual cultivations that anybody can do at home from cardboard spawn to natural spore methods. I thought clean laboratory was essential to start mushroom culture (and still is for most pure culture), but he shows various methods that we can use to start our mycelium running.

I have experimented with cardboard butt spawn, wood chip spawn and it works quite well. Natural mushrooms are of course better adapted than commercial mushrooms, but it gives ideas that you can be creative.

Many of the supplies can be purchased from his store at fungi perfecti (fungi.com) and it's organic too.

Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World (amazon.com link)

Book: The One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka

2009-04-06T06:06:00.000-10:00

I came across "The one straw revolution" when I was studying in college, trying to find a way that is more sustainable. The idea is not as striking as it might have been when Mr. Fukuoka initially published a few decades ago while no one else was doing this in peak chemical farming time.

Even now we read this book and one will inevitably realize that this book is full of inspiration and Mr. Fukuoka talks about how he got to his method of natural farming. This book is almost considered as a classic alternative farming book, yet the theory of natural farming and attitude toward the current farming practices always sound fresh and alive perhaps because the ultimate purpose of his pursuit of his natural farming is to harmonize with ever-changing flow of nature.

It's good to have basic farming knowledge to read this book, but you will still be inspired and learn much if you do not have much knowledge in farming or gardening.

The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming (New York Review Books Classics) (amazon.com link)

Book: Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison

2009-04-06T06:01:00.000-10:00

A classic permaculture book. Really good resource for permaculture garden and farm design. I have used it quite frequently and still refer to it occasionally.

Diagrams and sketches are nice, but I would like some photographs. Also, instead of using plastics, like pond liner, it would have been nice if the book showed how you can do without plastic like how they do their rice field in Asia.

Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison (amazon.com link)

Internship, work trade program at Mauna Kea Tea

2009-04-05T20:50:00.035-10:00

We focus on:

Natural Farming (or nature-centered farming)
Observing natural environment- find out what in nature builds beautiful fertile soil
How to utilize weeds and microorganisms to grow your crops and improve your soil

We speak both English and Japanese.

Participating in our Internship / Work Trade Program

Our internship / work-trade program provides hands-on learning experience in natural farming and permaculture. During your stay you will receive food, tent site and shared use of kitchen and bathroom facilities in exchange for your work and intellectual contribution on the farm. Please respect our farm activities, facilities, and other workers, and keep the farm a clean, positive, and productive environment for all.

We enjoy working together to pursue and further develop alternative ideas about farming and sustainable living, but please be aware that this is an operating farm. It is not a retreat facility. We work hard and expect you to do the same.

Since this work-trade program is designed to introduce farming experiences, but you are highly encouraged to pursue and study natural farming on your own. You may wish to sign-up for workshop which we may have sporadically and community gathering where people share ideas and experiences.

Tasks and projects vary depending on the season and current needs. Farm maintenance including weed control, soil preparation, starting seedlings and harvesting are always in need in tea fields and the vegetable gardens.

Our farming style is quite different from typical organic or conventional farming and we do not lecture the full philosophy and theory of natural farming, thus you are highly encouraged to independently study and read the necessary materials.

>>> Voice of past interns.... - What did our past interns think our internship and volunteer program?

Internship or Work Trade Volunteer Position

We accept farm interns based on their level of farming experience, commitment, and duration of stay.

- Farm Internship position involves more responsibility and overall farm management assistance. Previous farming (not gardening) experience is required. Stipend after trial period. Talk to us about special arrangement.

- Farm (work-trade) Volunteer position is for people want to get more farming experiences, or short-term stay (between 1-3 month).

Some people who may not qualify for Internship position, may gain experience first as farm volunteer. After you gained enough experience we could discuss possible internship position.
We do not offer internship in tea only. If you are interested in tea education, sign up for our newsletter for upcoming tea classes and workshop or send us email at info@maunakeatea.com

Terms of the Internship / Work Trade Program

We generally ask for 25 hours of work time but would rather have people who are excited about work/learning rather than counting the hours until they've completed their responsibilities. Long term preferred.

* This is not a party farm or retreat facility that sometimes found on WWOOF listings. This is a working farm and we work hard. Please respect our farm activities and privacy of other participants.

Farming does a lot of repetitive tasks unlike gardening you may plant or harvest 5-10 plants, we plant and harvest hundreds to thousands. It takes persistence and patience.

Accomodation

A community cabin with kitchen, shower, and bathroom facilities are provided. Tent sites with platform and cover are available for work trade volunteers. Organic produce from our garden is also provided as available.

We have a small library of books that you can check out during your stay.

Community Cabin

You have an access to shared community building (or The Cabin). The space is for various social events for the farm as well as for your own experience on the farm. Art, music, reading, intellectual discussions are all welcomed. Please respect other volunteers and neighbors for their privacy.

The cabin is not for sleeping. The space is for all.
No smoking, No drugs.

Foods

You will be provided with basic raw ingredients of staple foods (grains, beans, etc) on a weekly basis. You are responsible for preparing (harvesting, cooking) your own meals and cleaning the kitchen/ dining space. The kitchen is equipped with basic cooking tools (pots, pans, cooking utensils, plates, etc) and spices.

Use pressure cooker, solar cooker and energy conserving cooking methods. Learn how to use them. You will be surprised to see how well beans and grains cook in pressure cooker in 15 min.

Volunteer’s garden space is designated for you to grow seasonal vegetables for your own consumption. You also have community chickens. Take a good care and be rewarded with eggs.

If you have particular needs or an unusually large appetite, you may need to supplement with additional food or snacks. Please let us know if you have any allergies or require a special diet (e.g. vegetarian or vegan). Please don’t take more than you need and help prepare meals and clean up when you can.

We grow most of our own foods and trade with fellow farmers. The way it's been working is that you will help with vegetable gardens off time to grow foods for next season. Understand that people before you are providing foods for you and you will be providing foods for next people. In order to see the result of your work in the garden, generally it takes 3-6 month minimum.

Applying for Internship / Work Trade position

Please email the following information to info@maunakeatea.com.

Name
Age
Address
Pnone #
Email address
WWOOF ID (if you have one)
Date of arrival and length of stay (1 month minimum)
Where did you hear about us?
-----------------------
Background education
Job experience
Farm and garden experience, and what you learned from it
Interest / Hobby

Answering following questions will help us understand who you are, what you like to accomplish while staying at our farm and your future goals.

- How do you describe your personality? (The best way is ask somebody you know what kind of person you are. )

- What do you expect to gain during your stay at our farm and beyond?

- What types of work do you expect to do at the farm? What do you think natural farming requires you to do?

- How do you describe your level of sustainability? In other words, WHAT ACTION DO YOU TAKE TO BE SUSTAINABLE AT THE FARM AND BEYOND?

If you are applying for Internship Position, please include following information as well.

Reference (at least past 2 farms or if you worked at 1 farm for a long period of time)

Farm Location

Mauna Kea Tea Garden is located in a rural area on the slopes of the dormant shield volcano Mauna Kea. The garden is located 5 miles from the town of Honoka’a which boasts a movie theater with occasional musical performances, health food and grocery stores, Saturday farmer’s market, banks, library, and a few other shops. In your free time, arrange a trip to local beaches at Waipio Valley or the Kohala Coast, a 30 minute to 1 hour drive away. Public transportation is available on the island but is limited.

If you are interested and motivated in learning and developing natural farming experience, email us at info@maunakeatea.com . Please tell about yourself, your interests and experience, and what you hope to get out of your time with us on the farm. and let us know about your past farm or garden experience.

View Larger Map

How to get to Mauna Kea Tea Garden

Take a bus from Hilo

Hale on Bus schedule from Hilo to Honokaa (Waimea)
Get on a bus (Hilo - Honokaa or Waimea) at Mooheau Bus Terminal in Hilo.

Map of Mooheau Bus Terminal in Hilo - Google map
We will arrange a pickup in Honokaa.

Farm Blog - Living on a Hawaiian Nature Tea Farm

Cover crops minimize top soil and OM loss from heavy rain

What's next to eat local?

so dry

Spring green tea harvest finished in time

釜香 Pan-fire Aroma

Flavored Green Tea

chocolate oolong tea

アヒ・ポケ丼 Ahi Poke Donburi

End of the year cleaning

Thanksgiving chicken

Green tea for medicine

Learning from Eat Local Challenge

Eat Local Challenge Week

Taro harvest - Eat local challenge

Why is it challenge to eat local? what's the core problem?

A village without war and peace from One-straw revolution

Inner peace through tea

Fishing with 2 year old

Damn Turkey!

Nature is self-sustaining

Dry soil effect - 乾土効果

Controlling weeds or being controlled by weeds

Plants decide where they should grow, that's why seedballs make perfect sense

There goes mushroom, soil health and cleanliness

Growing mushroom - indoor culture to outdoor

Book: "Farmers of Forty Centuries, Organic Farming in China, Korea, and Japan" by F. H. King

Heavy rain and dry soil

Spring harvest

Waiting for the sun to come back before it's too late

Muddy Driveway

Fermentation Days: live culture and making of Yogurt, fruit wine and homemade EM

Cabbage is not growing..., but it was actuallly growing, we just didn't know

Appreciating wonderful things while they are happening

Don't give a cow. Give seeds

Weeding your ego

How the soil is created

Spring green tea or Winter green tea?

Green Pepper Rot Test

Vegetables that melt into slime

Bread recipe with millet and oat

Digging Taro

Starting my morning on the farm

Solar cooker reaches 180F in 1 hour

Solar Cooking

OPEN FARM DAY

Nitrosamine generation

Thinking of flavored tea and genmaicha

OPEN FARM DAY

Earthworms are not there when soil is clean

Tropical storm dumped a lot of rain

Could natural farming carrots taste so gentle and pure?

Why organic vegetables rot and natural vegetables wither. - Book: "What apples taught me (ringo ga oshiete kureta koto)" by Akinori Kimura

Tea study samples from Japan

Great big iron wok

Mountain green tea grows in summer yet stays tender

Mushrooms pop!

Shitake mushroom log cultivation in Japan

Sustainability and Small farms in Japan

Building a farm cabin

Eggs on the side of a driveway

Plants that grow with no fertilizers and what's going on with NPK?

Indian farmers go organic

Learning how nature works with no-fertilizer

Sweet potato overload

Cover crop and Turkey

Desmodium intortum- adopted weed as a cover crop

No-fertilizer spring carrots

Japanese red long Turnip - Hinona Kabu

Red Bean Bread - anko remix

La Elelu cha - Cockroach in Bedroom

Recipe: Ramen making 3 - Flavor sauce

Work tent back up

Simple chicken tractor

Outhouse near completion

Rice germinated

Recipe: Ramen making 2 - soup base (or broth)

Turkey goes back to the wild

Planting new field of tea

Adopting and domesticating a Wild turkey chick

釜香　Pan-fire Aroma