Today

Yesterday Tomoe and I went to our neighbors field in the mountain where she has lots of left-over veggies. I don't know if they grow more than they can ever use as a hedge, or just because it would look irresponsible to let a piece of land fallow for a year. Anyway, we brought back a van-load of daikon (huge radish), nozawana, and hakusai (Chinese cabbage)

Today I woke up early to start a fire so that it would be warm when Tomoe came downstairs (more importantly so the neighbors would see smoke coming out of the chimney). I then went back to bed for a short morning nap.

Once we had properly been awakened by a breakfast of Tomoe's persimmon bread and our homemade cheese, we set about to wash and pickle the nozawana. My job was simply to ask the neighbor if we can use her outdoor sink with the clean mountain water, and to carry the bundles we picked yesterday. Tomoe washed the nozawana.

While she was washing, I was sawing off branches of our persimmon tree. The neighbor wants to cut it down (its his tree) but we are using it so I have to keep it in shape. We already have many times more persimmon drying now than last year (about 400 at the last count) and there are still a lot on the tree.

When I finished taking what we can handle peeling tonight, I spent an hour at the rice field finally completing the compost pile for next years rice field. We have been working on it for weeks, but with the impending snow, thought we should just wrap it up. The compost pike is made of last years rice straw, dried chicken poop, dried fish flakes, nuka (the waste product of polished rice), and a vomit-like brew Tomoe made with various things I have no clue of.

The rain started while I was at the field, and it turned cold and windy, so I was surprised to see Tomoe toughing it out when I got home. She finished the nozawana cleaning despite the almost sleet conditions.

When I got back I helped Tomoe clean up from the nozawana washing, and proceeded to cut and chop wood because much of what we had prepared for last year is ever-so-slightly too big to fit in our new stove. Once I had enough to keep Tomoe warm for at least two days, I turned my attention to preparing daikon radish leaves from yesterday for drying. I only got as far as cutting them off the daikon before being invited for tea at the neighbor's house to meet one of our daughter's young suitors. Shiyu was born a month ago or so, but has been at his mother's parents' house so this was our first time to meet him. He is one of three boys the same age as Kemoe that she will have regular contact with.

We brought some of our newly semi-dried persimmons as a gift, which turned out well because two other neighbors were visiting as well, one of which would eat a whole bucket of persimmons - fresh, bitter, dried, sweet, rotten, whatever - if given the chance. While one neighbor leaves us her waste persimmons for the chickens (who love them), instead of the chickens, we give most of them to the other lady whenever she walks by. She has started walking by much more often recently.

After what seemed life forever, the tea party was over and we came home to finish up whatever we had hoped to be done with two hours earlier. After a dinner of great-none-the-less leftovers (can't go wrong with leftover fresh rice and veggies), we set about cutting the nozawana for pickling. This process consisted of simply chopping them and stuffing them into a container in layers with salt and red peppers we grew for this purpose (and to make tobasco).

Then, as I sat down to edit the photos and write this write-up of our day, Tomoe started preparing the persimmons that are too soft to dry for sawashi gaki - soaking them in liquor in order to remove the astringents. I think I will have orange shoop for a year after eating this much kaki (persimmon). Fortunately, it was too finally too difficult for her to move around the room, so I was allowed to bring down the ultra-comfy office chair with wheels (the one we bought for 2,000 yen for you dad), and now, with the wood floor, she can navigate anywhere without even standing up.

There will probably be something else I would like to take a photo of and share, but I gotta sleep sometime.

Oh Wait!!!! We did get this freaky egg as a gift from Lucy (one of our chickens) today. Anyone know what would cause this? Until now it has only been the very tip of the egg that was wrinkled, but today was the first time the whole egg was shaped like a single-ball scrotum (sorry mom).