Desmodium intortum- adopted weed as a cover crop

Desmodium intortum (or just desmodium) is a common pasture grass that escape pasture and become common weed in a garden and a farm, but once we know its great property as a cover crop, it is quite a useful plant.

Depending on a type of crops that you grow, desmodium can be utilized very effectively to break up the subsoil without mechanical means. Especially in a tree or perrenial crop system, it works really well much like pigion pea, and easy to kill by cutting at the taproot. Also, it is a legume that means it fixes nitrogen.

I have difficulty growing alfalfa and clover in acidic soil since tea likes acidic soil although I see clover and alfalfa still grows somewhat, other legumes that grows in acidic soil is preferable. Vetch also grows fair, but all these alfalfa, clover and vetch seem to have problem setting seeds and naturalizing without certain soil environment.

Desmodium is also a pasture mix for large animals like cattle and sheep and it does not tolerate heavy grazing so if it starts to go out of control, you can always set up the field in the way that sheep or other grazing animal can be introduced during rest period.

I was clearing some weedy patch and found that big growth of desmodium. I managed to loosen up the soil and measured about 5-6ft of root growth straight down.

Here are some useful info on desmodium intortum:
http://www.tropicalforages.info/key/Forages/Media/Html/Desmodium_intortum.htm
http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=DEIN2
http://www.hear.org/starr/plants/images/species/?q=desmodium+intortum

There are many other weeds that can be used quite effectively with combination of animals and some management practices. And best of all, it growns wild in the region and seeds are free.

No-fertilizer spring carrots

Many carrots got eaten by slugs this year from the long winter rain, but there are always some that make it. Chickens from chicken tractor got loose one time and half of the carrot patch got destroyed, then our mowing sheep got loose and ate bunch of leaves, but the carrots are coming back strong in the warm spring weather.

This patch uses no fertilizer, both organic and chemical and no spray of any kind. One thing that I use is leaf and wood shaving compost. Let it rot for a long time.
Typically, any gardening or farming book tell you to avoid high carbon materials alone like what I use, but amazingly it works well. One thing you notice is leaves are really light color. Where do they get nutrients from without fertilizer? This is still a big debate in no-fertilizer farming.

My guess is that soil organisms especially fungi creating symbiotic relationship since I see a lot of mycelium in the soil. One thing MOA natural farming says is to "keep the soil clean" meaning, don't add fertilizer to contaminate the soil. Clean soil already has enough to grow what you need.

Japanese red long Turnip - Hinona Kabu

I like kabu, or turnip since it's easy to grow and it can be prepared in many ways. Pickles, stir fry, miso soup, casserole, baked vegetables, etc. We keep kabu year-round. It's just a good root crop with lots of fiber.

One day I came across this beautiful Hinona kabu, purplish red and long. Looking more like carrot than kabu. It makes excellent pickle. slice the hinona kabu thin with a slicer and rub salt into it. Then put the kabu in a pickle press or a container with drop lid and a rock (this is my grandmother's method).



The kabu from the photos are from our winter planting. This winter was really rainy and a lot of vegetable just melted or got eaten by slugs, but some suvivors coming really strong with the arrival of spring.

Red Bean Bread - anko remix

I was going to make anko from azuki red beans and honey or cane sugar, but I didn't cook beans long enough so that it was still crunchy. Generally it gets soft all the way much like re-fried bean.
Anyway, instead of using this red bean chunky mush as anko, or red bean filling in a bun, I mixed it in a dough.

Here is the recipe.

4 cups flour (3:1 ratio of white and whole wheat)

1 1/2 cups water
1/2 tablespoon commercial yeast or use your own yeast culture
2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup chunky red bean paste
1 teaspoon ginger powder
black sesami seeds

note that there is no sugar added to yeast to rise. Instead of adding sugar, I use 1 cup flour, salt, ginger powder, olive oil and yeast mixed in 1 1/2 cup water and let it rise at 90 - 100F in an oven for 60 - 90 min.

Once it gets a little bubbly, add the remaining flour to the mix and keep kneading. Also mix in the red bean paste once the dough starts to get more maneuverable without sticking to your hands too much.

Make sure to mix the bean paste well into the dough and add more flour if the dough is still soft and sticky since the bean paste is very moist and can make the bread mushy.

Let the dough rise for 60 min or until doubles in size, punch it down and split in half. Put the 1/2 dough in a baking pan and let it rise again. I usually let it sit in a refrigerator and bake them in the morning. No sugar, low yeast makes the 2nd rising less vigorous and works good for morning baking. Sprinkle some black sesami seeds on top.

Bake for 35-45 min at 375F.

After baking the beans get softer too.



I personally like this recipe better than anpan or red bean paste filling type. Just like choosing chocolate filling or chocolate fudge? It's really your preference.

La Elelu cha - Cockroach in Bedroom

I was sorting my old blog site and one of baby koji's song reminded me to post it on the new site.
Elelu is cockroach in Hawaiian, if you live in Hawaii, you have to befriend with this little critter. That's why Hawaiians made a song of cliche.

----------------------

She says, "It is usual to find roaches in bathroom and kitchen, but bedroom shouldn't have any roaches!"
That's right. Kimberly found cockroach shuffling on the bedroom carpet.
First thing, you cannot let it go! They are fast. If you let that thing go behind wall between a small gap, they ain't coming back. You gotta catch it right then.

She yells, "Bring me a paper!"
I wonder why paper.
Anyway, I got a kitchen paper, thinking to myself, "should I get tissue paper?" for a moment.
Her occasional yelp raises the tension in the house.

Then I walk into the bedroom, finding her crouching on the floor.
....................
She caught a cockroach with her hand. She covered her hand over the cockroach on the floor so that it cannot escape.
Every time it walks on her hand, she yelps as if she practices to scream. Every time it only gets better.
She looks at me with puzzled eyes, "I don't need a kitchen paper, I needed a normal paper."
Of course, she needed to cover her hand. What she need is not a paper, she need exterminator or something.

If I were in her position, I would passed out. In my mind, people and cockroaches DO NOT touch each other.

Since it is not me holding a roach, I say "Hold on, let me grab my camera."
She is serious, "hey, come help me...", well, that means my photography is "veto".
I then thought about feeding it to chickens. They love eating little critters.
Centipedes, worms, grasshoppers, things that we would normally avoid, they get turned on...

I went to kitchen to retrieve a tupperware so that we can store the thing until tomorrow morning. Too bad chickens are not nocturnal.
well, she replaced her hand with tupperware. It was smooth. After that, not very smart move. She started to cover the tupperware with paper, hoping that it perfectly seals.
Truth is it does not.
Roach finds a little escape hole and crawl right out onto her hand.
"Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"
Perhaps it shook the whole house. it is past 10pm, but can't help it!
I can't help laughing.

Well, I take her tupperware and lid, calmly cover it in the container and close the lid.
sometimes I wonder why she exaggerate so much more for this simple matter.

Recipe: Ramen making 3 - Flavor sauce

Flavor Sauce

There are 3 basic flavors I describe here, but you can create your original flavor quite easily. Just make sure that it tastes right.

Ingredients:
Soy sauce (shoyu) flavor:

2 table spoon soy sauce,
1/2 table spoon oyster sauce

Miso flavor

2 table spoon miso paste, preferably dark miso or red miso
1 tea spoon chili sauce
1/2 tea spoon sesami oil

Fish Sauce

2 table spoon fish sauce
1 tea spoon salt
grated garlic


Directions:
simply mix your desired sauce ingredients in a serving bown and add 2 cups of hot soup base to your bowl. Adjust the proportion of the ingredients if you have non-standard size ramen bowl.
My standard size ramen bowl holds 1200ml of liquid.

Once the soup is made, add cooked ramen noodle and vegetables.

Also, you can make vegetable soup with the broth and sauce mixed in a pot for larger quantity.

Various garden vegetables can be added.
Some of my favorites are :
cabbage, daikon, komatsuna, carrots, snow peas, negi (green onion), cilantro, shungiku (edible crysanthemum), pickled mustard green, bamboo shoot, green papaya, Avocado

if you can find 4-5 seasonal vegetables, that's plenty.

Work tent back up

I have been postponing, but finally got my motivation to put a 20'x20' work tent back up from recent heavy rain after it got crashed in a big winter storm early this year. I even added center guava poll and it feels more secure too this time. This year it's been so rainy and we need some cover though we have been mostly working in light rain.

Simple chicken tractor

This is a simple chicken tractor that I built with PVC and chicken wire. It's light and flexible and doesn't rot so it makes very useful in moist warm Hawaii weather. size is 4' x 6'. slightly flexes, but structurally sound enough. Add a little log and board for shelter. I designed an add-on unit for shelter and nesting box, but haven't got around to build it yet (for a year or longer now!)

Simply we keep moving this chicken tractor to the next patch once the chickens clear the site. Then, after a few weeks we plant things like kabocha, a type of winter squash, which grows well in weed patch.

We started with 10 free range chickens, and gradually losing one by one from neighborhood dog attack and other suspicious death. Once day I saw io (or Hawaiian hawk) eating dead chicken, but do they attack adult chicken? or perhaps mangoose killed it and io scavenging on it.

Once the flock reached 4, I started to put them in the chicken tractor full time. I did with 10 chickens, but it required constant feeding. We only give our kitchen waste. Even 2 chickens, it only takes 3-4 days before the site is done without supplemental feed.

Anyway, for the size of our chicken tractor I found that 2 chickens worked the best and even get occasional eggs. If I can move them around more, perhaps 4-5 chickens would still work.

Outhouse near completion

This turned out that it was not totally from scrap materials, but finally getting close to finishing the outhouse project.

One of our recent farm volunteer said that he was interested in using scrap materials to do some building and claimed his adequacy for building skills so we did an outhouse building project.

He designed the building and made extra materials list that we needed to supplement with. he proceeded with his design only to find out later that I had to fix a lot of things.

I just need to add a door and it's done, but how do I keep the door light so it doesn't outweigh the entire structure.

Black bucket keeps wood chips. It's just a big planting pot so it drains water from rain. Wood chips keep the flies and smell away.

White bucket in the back catches rain water for washing hands and other uses.

Once the hole fills up this structure can be moved (with 2 people). and some things can be planted there to remove extra nutrients.

One common permaculture outhouse is to build the outhouse in banana patch circle so bananas keep utilizing the resources.

Rice germinated

I decided to grow rice this year to see how it will grow in wet Ahualoa climate. I selected 2 varieties that are known as dryland sticky rice.

so far most of the rice starts are looking pretty good except something is disturbing the soil a little under the fence I placed. I doubt that the wild chickens are scratching it since the fence wire is in the way. small birds? I am thinking it is earthworms since they do the similar actions where sheep droppings are. They bring the pellets in the ground and leave some dirt up on the surface. They are miniature tillers of natural mechanism.

Rice seedlings would probably grow a little better in a greenhouse, but I still need to work on the greenhouse modification before I can use it again.

Recipe: Ramen making 2 - soup base (or broth)

Soup base (or broth) is unflavored soup with no salt or sauce added to it. This is what makes farm lifestyle so great since not just vegetables, but also animal ingredients can be fully utilized. I used lamb leg bones since they are readily available from the farm and have surprisingly good flavor.

There is also a vegetarian version. Instead of using animal bones, simply use shitake and/or kelp seaweed base. Shitake alone is also sufficient for most people with vegan diet. It just tastes a little plain. Dried shitake has stronger flavor than fresh shitake.

Ingredients:

• 2 lamb leg bones (or in equivalent quantity)
• 3L water
• 2 green onions (or leek)
• ginger
• 10 dried shitake mushroom
  
• scrap vegetables (carrot, onion, etc.)

Directions:

1. Boil Sheep bones (also pig, chicken, etc. can be used if you have access) in a pot for 2-3 min. This removes initial meaty taste. Discard the boil water.


2. Clean the bones. Wash with water (scrub if necessary) and remove excess fat.


3. Break up the bones with a hammer. Need really solid surface. I usually put the bones in a plastic bag or wrap in a thick cloth and hammer it on a rock or concrete surface. Don't lose bone marrow juice from a rip in the bag because that's what you are after.


4. Add crushed bones, ginger slices, green onion to a big soup pot. Add other vegetables (carrots, celery, onions, etc.) for more complex flavor. Experiment different kinds of vegetables and find what makes the soup better.

5. Bring the soup mix to boil. Continue heating the soup at low to medium heat for 2-3 hours. Roughly remove foam on the surface.

6. Once you remove the pot from heat, strain the soup through strainer. If you want to remove finer particles, use paper filter (or coffee filter may work too).

Basically the soup does not have any extra flavors like salt. Look at sauce making below.

Turkey goes back to the wild

After one of our volunteer taking care of the turkey and keeping it warm overnight, she let the turkey hang out with chickens, soon the turkey chick run under chicken coop and never came out. Perhpas it went back to the wild since I don't see it anywhere.

Planting new field of tea

Finally, after a long soil conditioning and getting the plants ready, we just started planting our new tea field. The weather condition is great. We get enough rain, but dry enough to get out in the field.

Thanks to all the people who helped prepare and plant the field.