Rice and Rain

Everyone's worried about the lack of sunshine recently. The Koshi Hikari rice is behind schedule, making us very glad that we planted the equally as yummy, but still looked down up Akita Komachi variety of rice. Ours seems to be doing well and pretty much on schedule. Yesterday I even saw some drooping stalks, meaning that the kernels have started to develop. It is important for us to harvest our rice as early as possible, because the typhoon season might cause the river to flood, washing away all of our rice.

Our non-rice crops are moving along slowly. I like to blame the lack of any veggies even though its already August, on the lack of sun, but I guess it has more to do with planting them so late. Oh well, we get enough from the neighbors, and once this rain and cloudy season ends, we will have our own cucumbers to feed to the chickens.

Because we get so much from the neighbors, we tried to plant things that no one else grows, or that are in high demand. The peanuts are all doing well (though I really have to weed there), and the popcorn seems to be going great. We planted a lot of hot chili peppers so Tomoe can make lots of her famous Tabasco, but they seem to be waiting for the sunlight as well.

We did just harvest our potatoes which were not stolen by the monkeys (as they were last year), so we have way too many again, and this year they are huge (compared to last year). I would be happy if only we had not just received two big bags from neighbors. Now we will have rotting potatoes in our hallway again this winter and next spring. The chickens don't seem to like the potatoes that much, but I suppose if we boil them or douse them in nuka (rice husk powder)...

Or, maybe the reason the chickens wont eat the potatoes is that they now have free roam of the entire garden. While all the plants were small we locked them into their own little section of garden, which they quickly depleted of any bug/plant resources they might need for the next two months. Now that the plants in our garden (and more importantly the neighbors' gardens) are big and strong enough to withstand the chickens scratching and pecking, we let them run free. If I had a ticket to fresh worms and ant larvae every day I wouldn't eat potatoes either! (or is it the other way around...?)