What I Have Been Doing

Against my better judgment, I have started using another new-fangled web application. I have found that keeping a blog is too much work with all that is going on. Especially keeping a photo blog. I only can take photos of a small fraction of all the great stuff that happens to us, and I never find myself with time to edit those photos, let alone write about the amazing experience. Yes, as much as I complain about the stress, I am always amazed about something every day. SO, I have started experimenting with Twitter. Here you can find short updates about what I am doing (or have just done) at the moment I write it. No photos, no pressure.

For those of you still stuck in the 2005's, I will also write about what I have been doing here on my old-fashioned blog.

Since I last updated:

The silkworms have finally started to grow, after I killed a bunch by dropping their box on the carpet, and then later leaving them in the sun where a hundred or so died. The survivors are strong and moving into life-stage II. I may be able to make that silk jock-strap I have always wanted.

Our rice paddies are ready to be planted. We just have to find time. We expect it to take ten to twenty hours of work to plant them by hand. We wanted to till it by hand as well, but were informed that unless it is well tilled, it will not hold water. It would be a major inconvenience for the farmer down-stream if we end up using all the water, so to keep he peace, we paid our neighbor to till it with his machine. Despite this, the farmer down stream was complaining again today (he complains every time he sees us) that we took too much water - despite the fact that we asked several neighbors how much we are allowed to take.

This down-stream farmer is actually great. He is our first "adversary" in this village. It gives us drama and something to gossip about (but only amongst ourselves - we would never talk about him to our neighbors). He hates the way we are trying to make rice shoots on our own, rather than use the village chemical shoots. He hates the way that we are weeding by hand, rather than using a gas-powered weed-whacker. He hates that we are planting the rice shoots by hand, rather than using a machine. According to him "nothing will grow" and "It will be a burden to all the fields around you". Although, the owners of all the fields around us (aside from him) are extremely supportive. The also say "it wont grow", but they follow up with "But it's great that you are experimenting. Good luck!". Everyone but him is rooting for us.

In fact, our rice babies are growing, and so are all the seeds we planted in the field. So far so good. Today our neighbor showed us how to use the rice-planting machine, but we are (for now) opting to do it by hand.

We have been trying to move forward on many fronts. The spring mountain vegetable picking is pretty much done, but we do have one more opportunity, where we will be picking bamboo shoots to sell at a local sansai (wild mountain veggie) festival next week.

We have been putting a lot of effort into cleaning the house, but even when we take all the old useless junk (that was here when we moved in) to the dump, we end up bringing back just as much useless junk. Well, maybe not so useless, but still, we have no place for it. Shovels, crow bars, bikes, snow-dumps. We actually took two crappy snow dumps to the junkyard, but brought home two slightly less crappy snow dumps. One thing I am happy about is two pairs of skis that have the old style back-country bindings. Something I have been looking for but not willing to pay for.

Speaking of collecting junk, the photos above and below show Tomoe rummaging through an old house that was set to be demolished over the Golden Week vacation. We found LOTs of great junk there - an old fashioned mino (rice-straw raincoat), ladders, lots of wood (which we used to build a composter and garage for our bikes), even a few rice-straw cat houses that are famous in this area and are sold for quite a bit of money. Now that the house is demolished, we are the proud owners of all the wood. Some time soon we have to borrow a chain-saw and turn it into fire wood for our not-yet-existing wood burning stove. One thing we will not burn, however, is the antique dresser we found there. The photo below shows us drying it in the sun after washing off many years of dust and mold.

Despite my constant whining about money, One Life is actually doing quite well. We have enough work that we are considering turning people away. While it is not actually enough to be profitable this year, it could turn into too much if we want to do the farming as well as keep our long-term focus, and work on what we want One Life to become. We also want to go hiking for a few days without worrying about our To Do list.

Finally, a few weeks ago I learned of a hunter in the area who had accidentally shot a mother bear, not knowing that she had cubs. In the old days, if a hunter accidentally killed a mother, he would raise the cubs himself until they could be released into the wild. This time, the hunter took the cubs home and turned them over to a zoo that specializes in returning wild animals to the wild. Still, I got a chance to hold a bear cub. It was the size of a dog, and it chewed on my fingers like a cute dog, but its claws were way more ferocious than its teeth. I have scars on my arm still from when it tried to wriggle its way out of my grasp.