That We May Serve Together: Rice In All Things

This week as the paddy fields fill with water, the frogs are coming alive, rising out of their winter sleep in the muddy soil. We can leave our windows open some nights and let their roak-roak lullaby drift in.

On the farm we have been busily monitoring our seedlings. The participants are transplanting them into their fields every day. Our rice seedlings are also nearly three inches tall. Our rice seedlings are still in the green house though some local farmers have already transplanted. Since we don't use herbicides or pesticides, we allow ours to grow a little stronger before we take them out of the kindergarten of our greenhouse. Some seedlings we leave out in the weather.

English Farm Campers observing the rice seedlings.

This week has been as busy as it was beautiful. We had many meetings to plan our English Farm event. Jenny has felt much better this week. We've been exercising and resting more. Right now Jenny is napping and I'm listing to the frogs, drinking coffee, and watching the sunlight fade.

We found some time to be kids

Our English Farm turned out to be a great success. We hosted nearly thirty people from Japan here on the farm. We spent the weekend talking to them about rice and showing them the countless ways that rice is used in our agriculture here.

Campers making charcoal from rice husk.

Watching kids learn about agriculture is really rejuvenating.

We also transplanted some seedlings into a field using bokashi and rice husk charcoal.

We learned how to make sandals from rice straw and also rope. It was difficult but with practice, I don't think I'll need to buy another pare of Chacos.

This is one of our young friends we met this weekend. He lives in Tokyo and came to the weekend because he wants to be a farmer. He ordered a small green house and assembled it on his families back deck. There he grows rice in a bucket!