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Showing posts from 2010

End of the year cleaning

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

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

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

Learning from Eat Local Challenge

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, compos

Eat Local Challenge Week

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

Taro harvest - Eat local challenge

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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

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

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

A village without war and peace from One-straw revolution

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

Inner peace through tea

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 reas

Fishing with 2 year old

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 n

Damn Turkey!

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.  T

Nature is self-sustaining

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 l

Dry soil effect - 乾土効果

"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.

Controlling weeds or being controlled by weeds

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 har

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

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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

There goes mushroom, soil health and cleanliness

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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. 

Growing mushroom - indoor culture to outdoor

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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 condi

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

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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

Heavy rain and dry soil

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

Spring harvest

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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

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

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

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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 c

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

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 t

Appreciating wonderful things while they are happening

"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.  T