Rice planting of Survival class outing May2023

Mayuko’s Little Kitchen Outing 2023 May rice planting in Chiba🌾
So amazing to spend a day with 40 of you!

Pice planting we did

Though it differs depending on the places, May is generally the season of rice planting in Japan. Here rice is considered as important ingredients in Shinto culture. Like we can see in the term "gohan", which originally means cooked rice, meaning "meal" itself in Japanese lauguage.  

In May I took my guests to the farm in Chiba prefecture. I do not want to take them to the ordinary touristy farm but authentic, traditional place, and thanks to my friend I could find the best place. The farmer Kanichi-san has been producing his rice and other vegetables crazy organic over 20 years ago by even making his own compost for everything.

Before going into mud, we saw little frogs swimming in the paddy. Some screamed when entering, but the texture of mud was silky smooth and I felt very good better than mud spa. 40 of us planted together.

We enjoyed planting rice and then we moved to Kanichi-san's compost depot. It was big and the steam had been coming up from many places. This compost is made with coffee leftover, peanut shell, kepl, bonito flakes and sake lye. He told us to eat this and some of us including me tasted. It was tasty and tasted like rice seasonings.

Since it was fermented, the heat is produced. Some of us went into the special "sauna".

After the activities we enjoyed BBQ with the local ram and vegetables from the farm. Ram is not that popular compared to other meat in Japan, but in the area there used to be a lot of ram farms, and some still remain. So the area is the hidden spot for it! 

We also picked up trunips, which of course was procuded by the compost. To the question that "how do you manage bugs and insects for not letting them to eat the products?", he said that "I give 30% of the produce to them. That is the key to sustain the good circle".

The day passed with a lot of learning and of course, fun!