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① Small Vegetable and Bouquet Set 2,500 yen (tax included) - A set containing vegetables grown using Amedoji's natural farming methods worth 1,500 yen and an organic garden bouquet grown from seeds worth 1,000 yen.
It's been as hot as midsummer since the beginning of July this year. How are you all doing?
The heat has prevented the early harvest of spring vegetables, but the summer vegetables are thriving and starting to come into harvest much earlier than usual.
The period from late June to early July was packed with farm work and manual labor.
First, we weed the rice fields where rice has been planted.
Three days after planting the rice, we started weeding using a method called chain weeding.
The tire chains are cut and straightened, attached to a piece of timber, and then pulled sideways over the flooded rice paddy. This stirs up the mud, suppressing the growth of weeds that are about to germinate. The chains also come into contact with the rice seedlings, but within three days of planting, the seedlings have already grown roots and are able to stay in place even when they get caught in the chains.
Chain weeding was performed three times in total: once three days after the first weeding and once a week later.
Once the rice seedlings have grown, it's time to move on to the rice farming.
This is a weeder that can be pushed by hand, rolling a toothed wheel to bury weeds in the ground. The rice field we rented this year was slightly uneven, with shallow water on the west side and deeper on the east side. In areas where the water is shallow and the ground is exposed, there is a lot of oxygen, which makes it easy for weeds to grow, so we carefully bury the weeds with the rice field wheel. In the areas with deeper water, the initial weeding was successful, and almost no weeds have grown.
Do this vertically and horizontally several times, every other week.
The rice paddies are home to many living creatures, including water shrimp, water mantises, diving beetles, and rice scoopers. The food chain of these creatures in the rice paddies provides nutrients that help the rice grow. It's been about three weeks since the rice was planted, and it has already grown to about four to five times its original size, and the rice has begun to bloom.
If we use a rice paddy cart to remove weeds one more time, the allelopathy of the rice will make it harder for other weeds to grow.
Going to the rice field every day and watching the rice grow is a special time that brings me an indescribable happiness. My daughter, who will soon be three years old, is also curious about the rice field from time to time, and when we go out she says, "Let's go and check out our rice field to see if the rice has grown." We all look forward to the rice harvest.
During the short rainy season, I worked hard on plum blossoms.
Plums are harvested from plum trees grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers and pickled in 18% natural salt.
I got soaked in the rain, but I was so absorbed in picking plums. I quite liked it, and I could easily keep picking them for an hour or two, even while being hit by the rain.
The harvested plums are left to ripen for a while, and are then prepared once they begin to change color.
Amedotojin's umeboshi are made when the plums are halfway from green to fully ripe. This produces just the right amount of citric acid, resulting in beautiful umeboshi that are satisfying to eat while still having medicinal properties.
It's fun to prepare the ingredients while chatting with various people.
I got together with my mom friends and watched our kids playing with each other while busily picking out the stems.
After removing the stems, drain the water, place the plums and salt alternately into the barrel, and then place a weight on top to complete the preparation.
Since I started working in a job that requires physical activity, umeboshi have become an essential part of my life.
When you spend every day working with your body, there are days when you feel good and days when you feel heavy and sluggish. When that happens, if you eat a single homemade pickled plum, you will mysteriously instantly feel energized and be able to move around with vigor.
When I experienced the medicinal properties of plums with my own body, I began to believe that they must be something truly necessary for the Japanese people, and I wanted to share them with as many people as possible, so I prepare and sell a lot of umeboshi every year.
This is an important handicraft during times when rain makes it difficult to work in the fields.
In between rains, we sow soybeans,
I mowed the grass, trained the tomatoes that were growing,
They will be doing a variety of tasks, such as making onion koji and harvesting and salting pickled radishes.
After this comes the wheat harvest.
