Other than Farm Blog

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

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 no

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

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 proces

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 i

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

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.

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 a

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

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 flopp

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 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.

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

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?

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 .

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 l

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.

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 t

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 fertilizer

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.

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.

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

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.

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. Gene

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

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.

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, b

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.

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, an

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.

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&

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

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, d

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 thanksg

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

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.

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 f

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. I

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

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

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.

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)