a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: Reflections

  • In the Sink Today – August 15, 2014

    NagashiThin

    I spend much of my life around the kitchen sink. The Japanese word for a kitchen sink is 流し-nagashi, which loosely translates to the flowing place, in reference to flowing water.

    When I was growing up, honeysuckle vines grew on the wall outside the kitchen sink. In the summer when they were blooming, their sweet fragrance filled the kitchen. I can remember smelling them as I washed the dishes in the sink. Much of my grade school years were spent in a dormitory. We children took turns helping our dorm parents make the meals and wash the dishes. I have many memories of that kitchen sink in the dorm.

    Now when I look out the window over the kitchen sink, I see flowers, chickens walking about, and beautiful alder trees. Every day, I bring in a variety of produce out of the garden to eat. It all passes through the sink to be washed and prepared. Here are some of the foods which were in my sink today.

    InTheSinkToday140815A
    InTheSinkToday140815B
    InTheSinkToday140815C

    The character 流 is a beautiful one made of the radical on the left side which means water, and the part of the right which adds the meaning of movement. Together they mean water flowing.
    Nagashi explanation
    NagashiHistory

    The word 流し-nagashi has many meanings in Japanese besides a sink.

  • Adz-ercise and the Rise of A-Hoes

    adz-b

    Maybe this will become the newest exercise equipment craze. Swing an adz hoe for an hour and sweat will pour out of every pore. The New Oxford American Dictionary says that the word adz, also spelled adze, comes from the Old English adesa, but that the origin of adesa is unknown.

    The problem with working out in a gym is that you’re only exercising. Your exercise isn’t accomplishing anything, other than to make you sweat and get your blood churning. Exercise for an hour with an adz, using it to cultivate a vegetable bed, and not only do you burn through calories faster than a marathon runner, after an hour of sweating, you’ve accomplished something. You have a well cultivated bed to plant. Your satisfaction is doubled. You’ve burned through hundreds of calories and done some good, something you can see and feel.

    adz-a

    When it comes to gardening and farming tools, Japan is the place to go. Do an image search for 唐鍬 and you will see a bewildering variety of adz hoes. It wouldn’t take much enterprising to associate each type with a specific muscle group. Swing this one for your abs. Swing this one for your pecs. Swing this one for your gluts. This one will make your six packs pop.

    With the right marketing, small farmers could turn their fields into outdoor exercise gyms, with customers paying them for the privilege of working off the pounds, while they till the soil with an array of unique adz hoes.

    touguwa

    “Hey, Bruce, how’d your routine go?”

    “I’m wiped. I used the glutinator adz hoe to firm my butt, swung the abdominator adz hoe to crunch my abs, and bulked up my pecs with the pecsmaximator adz hoe.”

    People will go to work on Monday with bodies so well toned after a weekend of adz hoe swinging, that when someone calls them an a-hoe, it will be a compliment.

    “Hey, A-hoe, you must have worked out all weekend, man. You’ve got abs of steel!”

  • 秋-Fall: not as complicated as it seems

    Aki

    秋 is the Chinese character for fall/autumn. In Japanese, it is read as “aki”. Chinese characters may seem like a very complicated way to write, but there is a method to them. Understand this method, and you can often make out what a character means even if you’ve never seen it. Most Chinese characters are combinations of a radical and additional strokes. The radical provides a base meaning and the additional strokes supply the sound and additional meaning. It’s similar to being able to understand English words that are made by compounding Latin and/or Greek words. For example, in medical terms, “itis” means inflammation. Anytime you read about a condition that ends in “itis”, you know you are dealing with a type of inflammation. Know the meaning of the part of the word before the “itis” and you know what is inflamed even if you’ve never seen the word before.

    NogiHenIn the case of the character for fall 秋 the radical is on the left and means a grain like rice or wheat. Originally, the shape of this radical looked like a stalk with an ear of grain hanging at the top. Over time it transformed into the shape it has now as shown on the right.

    This grain 禾 radical is combined with the character for fire 火 to signify the time of the year when grains are harvested. The character for fire 火 supplies the sound “shu” which is used when reading the character 秋 when it appears in compound words like 立秋 risshu which means the beginning of fall, literally when “fall stands up”.

    There are 214 radicals and these form the base for all the thousands of Chinese characters. Often, by looking at the parts that make up a character, you not only can get a good idea what it means, you also know how to read it. That said, the history of Chinese characters is thousands of years old, and at different times, characters had different meanings and different sounds. So even though the basics are simple, it is still a complex method of writing, but one that provides a depth to writing that alphabetical writing systems like English lack. For example you can make puns not only based on the sounds of words, but on the letters of the words.

  • The Subtle Influence of a Single Plant

    Buson

    Yosa Buson 与謝蕪村 (1716 – January 17, 1784), famed painter and poet, painted the night scene of snow falling on Kyoto near the end of his life. It is one of his most famous pieces and was designated a National Treasure of Japan in 2009. Looking at the painting, you would never guess that there is a connection between this painting and the rapeseed plant which paints swaths of countryside with brilliant yellow when it blooms.

    Zwei_Bäume_im_Rapsfeld,_blauer_Himmel

    Attribution: Baum im Feld von Petr Kratochvil

    It was during the time of his life that the production of rapeseed oil greatly increased in Japan. It resulted in a supply of affordable oil which was used for cooking and for lighting. LanternRapeseed oil was poured into small bowls with wicks. When the wicks were lit and placed into paper lanterns, they cast a soft, warm light. The abundance of rapeseed oil enabled people to have light at night. And it is this soft, warm light which Buson captured in his famous painting of snow falling at night. In the painting, he shows this light filtering through the shoji screens of the houses. If it were not for the rapeseed plant, the houses would be completely dark, and he may not have made this masterpiece at all.

    The painting is titled 夜色楼台図-Yashokuroudaizu, and to create the effect of falling snow, Buson used flakes of oyster and scallop shells. He also used a foundation of chalk to bring out the colors of a snowy night. 51 inches long and 11 inches tall, this ink painting is considered the first panorama created in Japan.

  • What’s Old Is New Again

    PitchForkA

    From the The Farmer’s Friend at the Bow Little Market, I purchased this old pitchfork. It should come in handy for cleaning the chicken roosts, turning compost, and gathering hay. The only mark on it is “I-D-L Top” stamped on the handle. There are no manufacturer’s mark on the tines

    Even though I’m calling it a pitch fork, it may be a dung fork.

    Pitchforks typically have only two, three or four tines while dung forks have four or five, other types of fork even up to ten tines with different lengths and spacing depending on purpose (Pitchfork – Wikipedia).

    It could also be a straw or silage fork.

    The number of tines would mostly depend on personal preference and the job it is being used for. Over the years most forks have been made with two to five tines. The two and three tines forks (the ones most commonly referred to as pitchforks) were used for loose hay, straw, and bundles of grain. In fact they are sometimes referred to as bundle forks. The four and five tine forks are in fact manure forks and were made for that purpose. Other forks of six or more tines have been made for silage, potatoes, beets, etc. Even saw one listed as a compost fork recently (hobartwelders.com).

    PitchForkB

    In any case, the fork is now back at work, helping out at a man and his hoe®.