Month: December 2016

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It’s a Small World

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Impressed with the Shimonita onions I saw on TV, I ordered some seeds from Japan. They arrived yesterday: Thunder Emperor 雷帝 Shimonita Onions 下仁田ネギ! Much to my surprise, on the back of the package, it says that they were made in South Africa. According to various web sites, farmers in many parts of Japan have tried growing Shimonita onions, but they don’t taste the same as those grown in the village of Shimonita. I’ve read on some websites that once you get a few miles away from Shimonita, they taste different. So I was surprised that the seeds came all the way from South Africa.

They seeds were made by Sakata Seed Company, and they have operations all over the world. The description on the package says that the onions have a sublime, melt in your mouth sweetness. We shall see.

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While I wait for spring to plant the Shimonita onions, there are chicks to attend to. The Dark Cornish and Silver Laced Wyandottes are six weeks old now. It’s hard to believe that the Franken-chicken grown for the supermarket meat shelves are nearing butchering size at six weeks. A normal chicken is just a fluff ball that easily fits in one palm at six weeks.

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Ice is Alive

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If you watch long enough, you can see needle ice growing out of the ground. It’s as if it’s alive. The hoarfrost grows too, prickling the leaves and branches. December cold turns nature into a fairyland of ice.

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Burn the Bees

Every so often I read something that strikes me as odd. Maybe I should stop reading. I was reading a CNN article The Old Man and the Bee by John D. Sutter. The article is about vanishing bees and a Robbin Thorp, a retired entomologist from University of California-Davis, who has been obsessed with Franklin’s bumblebee, a bumblebee that has become extremely rare.

In the article, John Sutter visits Windset Farms in British Columbia. The farm grows peppers and tomatoes in green houses that cover many acres. They used to hand pollinate the crops, but they now use bumblebees. The farm hires bumblebees which buzz about pollinating the crops from sunup to sundown. It all sounds nice and peachy, but then I read this line:

… the bees are raised only for mass production and their colonies are incinerated after eight weeks of work …

It made me pause. Did I read that right? The bee colonies are incinerated? I’ve reached out to Windset Farms by phone and by leaving a question on their Talk to Us web page. I haven’t heard back from them yet about their bee incineration practices. I suppose it is to prevent the bees from spreading any diseases or pests into the environment. The bees aren’t native to British Columbia, but are shipped in from commercial bee operations 2,000 miles away. It also sounds like a convenient way to treat a tireless workforce. Instead of paying them when they have finished their work, burn them to smithereens. That sure cuts down on payroll and lowers expenses.

In the video below, Windset Farms describes how they use bumblebees to pollinate their tomatoes. “We let nature take it’s course, and let the bumblebees do the work for us,” Mike Brown, Senior Tomato Grower says, but he doesn’t mention that the thanks the bumblebees get for doing this work is being burnt to a crisp.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfISTtYHJAA&w=640&h=360]

I heard back from Windset Farms. They do not incinerate the bees themselves. They use them for eight weeks and ship them back to their supplier in Ontario who incinerates them.

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Book of Dreams

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The snow has been falling off and on all day. A good day to snuggle up with my book of dreams which arrived today, December’s Japan Railroads Timetable. Oh, if you’re concerned about the barcode label smack on the train on the cover, the label says that you can take it off without damaging the book. That’s considerate that they let you know that trying to peel off the label won’t mar your dream book.

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At over 1,000 pages, it is loaded with information. It has maps of all the JR lines from the very south to the very north of Japan listing all the stations as well as many bus and ferry lines.

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There are detailed train station guides of major stations showing the levels and platforms used by different train lines. With these guides you can quickly determine that if you get off from car 3 instead of the car 6 you are in, you’ll be right by the stairway or escalator to take you to the level and platform you need to make that two minute connection.

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The timetables are invaluable for deciding which train to take to where you want to go.

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The timetable is also chuck full of mysteries. For example, it warns you when a train arrives even one minute later or earlier on some days. In the example here on page 44, the Komachi 25 bound for Akita, arrives 4 to 7 minutes later on December 28 through 31, and 3 to 9 minutes later on January 1 through 4. What it doesn’t explain is why. In this case it must be on account of the New Years holidays, but why does the Kodama 753 train, listed on page 9, arrive in Kokura one minute early on February 2 and 9 at 21:26 instead of the usual 21:27? It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? If you need one additional minute in Kokura, those are the days to travel.

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Shimonita Onions – 15 Months to Grow

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hqfs-EmuFrc&w=640&h=360]

All around the world are special vegetables, and yesterday I heard about a leek type onion which is grown in only one small town in Japan, Shimonita 下仁田. It takes 15 months from seed to harvest. They are planted in October 10月. By November 11月 the sprouts are up. In February 2月 the sprouts are stepped on to strengthen their roots. In April 4月 they are pulled up and thinned. The largest ones are transplanted and the tops of the onions are cut off. In August 8月, they are dug up again, only the larger ones selected, and transplanted which makes their roots more vibrant resulting in more delicious onions. In September 9月 they are tilled. In October 10月 they are hilled. The harvest begins in December after frost has made them sweeter. They are only available from December through February.

Raw, Shimonita onions are three times as hot as regular onions, but when they are cooked, they are very sweet, and a much sought after onion. Farmers in many parts of Japan have tried growing them, but even after decades of trying, no one has been able to replicate the taste of those grown in Shimonita. It is said that onions grown even just a few miles away don’t taste the same.

The video above has no words and shows how the onions are grown over 15 months from seed to harvest. You don’t need to be able to read the short descriptions in the video to understand how they are grown.

I’ve ordered a packet of seeds and will try my hand at growing them next year. Shimonita is about 75 miles northeast of Tokyo.

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Shh, the Garden Is Sleeping

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The garden is fast asleep under a blanket of snow softer than down. It’s been four years since we’ve had a snow this thick. It’s not a heavy snow by no means. Eight years ago we measured the snow by the feet, we were snowbound for a week, our well froze, and we survived by melting snow on our wood stove for water until it warmed enough for the well to thaw.

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The garden may seem asleep, but underneath the snow, an army of bacteria and fungi are crunching through the remains of this year’s vegetables, breaking them down and turning them into soil. According to Dr. Elaine Ingham of The Soil Food Web:

The most rapid rates of decomposition ever recorded on this planet, in any ecosystem, occur in the winter, under the snow, in temperate areas.

According to her, at the surface of the soil, where there is free water in the interface between the snow and soil, conditions are perfect for bacteria and fungi to thrive. Deeper in the soil, garlic, shallots, and potatoes are sending out roots, preparing for spring, just a few months away.

On December 21, 2016, at 10:44 Universal Time, 2:44 am Pacific Time, just 12 days away, the northern hemisphere starts to tilt toward the sun again. For gardeners, it is the start of a new year.

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Winter Bites

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Winter bites leaving its prickly white teeth everywhere. Step outdoors on a frosty morning, and winter bites your cheeks and nips at your nose. You know you’re alive on a morning so cold.

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Farewell Green?

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Snowflakes danced in the air off and on today. Will the coming deep freeze mean the end of green? What will be left to pick for fresh salads by the end of the week? The kale and cabbage will survive. The fava beans probably. It takes a long, cold snap to zap them. The arugula and ruby streaks will sprout again as soon as the freeze ends. I’ve let them go to seed throughout the summer and their tiny seeds are in every inch of the garden. Arugula and ruby streaks sprout everywhere.

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But I doubt the beautiful potato plants I found today will make it through the week. But even if they succumb this week, they will be back in the spring more beautiful than ever.

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Takuma 拓真 is a steady companion when I am out tending the grounds. He and his sister are master rodent terminators, and because they will dig, and dig, and dig until they find their prey, I’ve banned them from the vegetable garden. It was looking like a moonscape with craters everywhere.

Even so, they are so useful, I wonder how people survived before dogs. Somehow we need to train them to bark at the hawks and eagles when they fly overhead. They see them and look up at them. “Don’t just stand there, bark!” we say, and go running around barking ourselves, hoping they will get the hint. So far that has not worked. Becky, Kuma-Hime 熊姫, and Hazel are counting on them.

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A Remarkable Hen and Her Family

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MiAsa Hime 美朝姫 is an extraordinary mother. Her chicks are more than three months old and she still spends her days with them and roosts with them at night. I’ve never had a mother hen attend to her chicks for so long. Some of her chicks are nearly as large as she is. Usually, hens raise their chicks for a month to two. For the ten years I’ve had mother hens raise chicks, this is the longest a hen has stayed with her chicks.

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This is pumpkin season. It’s impossible to be sad when you’ve got a pumpkin to roast. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cake, roasted pumpkin salad … well you get the picture.

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An ice scream scoop makes a handy tool to eviscerate a pumpkin.

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Eviscerated and cut up, it’s on to the pot to roast. I like to keep the skin on. It becomes very soft after a thorough roasting in a dutch oven, and when I make pumpkin pie, I puree the skin along with the meat. It gives pumpkin pie a deep undertone of earthy goodness.

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Way Off Topic – a Long Way from Here

Having grown up in Japan and having hitchhiked, biked, and ridden trains all over the country as a boy, literally, at eleven years old I took to the roads hitchhiking for days at a time, traveling over a thousand miles, giving my parents much to worry about, I’ve always had an interest in the trains and roads of Japan. At fourteen I went on an expedition from the far south where we lived to the northern tip of Japan, traveling alone for three weeks, incommunicado, riding trains, hitchhiking, sleeping in telephone booths, having the time of my life. I think fourteen year old boys need to do that. Explore the world on their own. My parents had no idea where I was. This was in the day before mobile phones and even long distance telephoning wasn’t easy. And when you are having fun, what fourteen year old boy is going to call home?

Deciding what trains and roads to try out on future trips is easier now. Train buffs and highway aficionados film their journeys and post them on YouTube. You can search any train line or highway and find videos of them to help decide which new route to take. Which led me to discovering some eye-opening facts about the Tokai-Hokuriki Motorway 東海北陸自動車道. It runs south to north from the Pacific side of Japan to the Sea of Japan side, connecting Nagoya and Toyama. It is 115 miles (185 kilometers) long and has 55 tunnels. 44 miles (70 kilometers) of the highway are tunnels, with the longest one 6.6 miles long. Eleven of the tunnels are more than a mile long.

I patched together a map of the highway. It is the purple line going from the top to the bottom of the image below. Where the purple highway is white indicates a tunnel. There are long stretches where the highway pops out of a tunnel only to pop into one a short time later.

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I don’t think a road like this would ever be built in the US. The toll to drive the distance of this highway is a little over $40. If you plan on driving in Japan, take into mind that the average toll on motorways is about 25¢ per mile, which comes to $25 for every hundred miles.

Below is a recent two hour video posted on YouTube which starts at the northern end of the highway and goes all the way to the southern end.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SeI2oYsOGU&w=560&h=315]