Everybody Loves Poop

Today was eventful.

This morning I had another run-in with our "nemesis" who is tending the rice field below our own. I arrived in the morning to check the water level and he started screaming at me about how his field had no water. I tried several times to explain that my field had no water either because there was no water coming down the irrigation ditch for the past two days - and that, in fact, I closed my field yesterday so that his would get the water. When he wouldn't let me get a word in edge-wise I finally couldn't take it any more and started yelling back at him, telling him that he should stop complaining and squealing "gya gya" like a woman (wife), and instead try to be helpful, like a real man. (no of fence to the women out there - I chose that because I thought it would get under his skin as a typical male, insecure, power-hungry, bully type.) Until now we had spent a lot of effort trying to appeal to his sense of helpfulness, always countering his attacks with questions and pleas for his help to make us better farmers. Today it became clear, however, that as long as we let him bully us, he will.

Once that was out of the way, we took a trip to the local ski-hill where they are keeping a herd(?) of sheep. We borrowed two to test in our field as weed-eaters. What we found is that it is much more efficient to weed by hand. Putting the sheep in the rice field meant either setting up an elaborate gate system to keep them from running away or eating the rice shoots, or tying them to a post and keeping constant watch over them to make sure they do not strangle themselves. This time, because we were at the field anyway, we tied them to a post. In the time it took Tomoe and I to cut weeds over 50% of our field, the sheep had eaten about 3 square meters.

Still, it was a fun experiment, and we love the sheep. They are outside our house tonight because we were afraid to leave them unattended at our rice field. Tomorrow, we take them for a walk to the local grade school to share with the children. With any luck, they will poop and pee a lot. Seeing an animal poop and pee is always fun - unless it is in your car.