Spring harvest

Lately weather hasn't been reliable.  It's our winter weather, Rain.  I took a chance since it started out with good weather  in the morning.  by the time I started withering the sun has gone behind the cloud occasionally peeking out, but got just enough outdoor withering.  I will be watching tea indoor all night.
Leaf is in good condition.  Flush has vigor and not too stiff, not too tender.  I just have to work on making it a little more even.

Every time I am very impressed by how tea react to soil condition.  Tea is not vegetable, it's more like herbs.  We don't want tea to taste like vegetables.  It loses potency and wildness.

Waiting for the sun to come back before it's too late

Beside my truck is stuck in the muddy driveway, I have chayote cut up and salted and need to be dried before I can pickle it.  Somehow electric food dehydrator or oven don't do the same.  It needs to be in the sun for a good few days.

It is conventional knowledge to use the sun to dry vegetables for pickles.  They preserve better and have better flavor.  Plus no electricity needed.

I remember my grandmother drying some pickling melons on a bamboo tray until it's really soft.  Sometimes when we don't get enough sun shine, they start to get moldy.  Drying also prevents mold and removes excess moisture out of pickling vegetables.  What can I do? 

I'll just use oven or go to Kona and just leave it on the back of truck if I can get the truck out.

Muddy Driveway

Muddy driveway is a typical example of compaction +standing water + kneading of wet dirt.  This would create a great rice paddy to hold water, but when it happens on a driveway, only my truck slides down the hill and can't get back up to the house.

I left the truck in the field and walked back up.  4 years ago the truck was stuck for 2 weeks due to continuous rain.  Over time I improved driveway conditions by adding rocks and stones around the field, but still not enough. 

Today actually it felt different.  rocks were slippery.  Tires are big mud balls and have no traction. 

Best thing to do is just lay gravel or don't go driving down when wet.

Fermentation Days: live culture and making of Yogurt, fruit wine and homemade EM

Lately, somehow I got so fascinated by fermentation again.  A few years ago I had several jars of various fermenting fruits and EM occupying kitchen counter, but this time the jars got bigger occupying more space.  This time I am more particular about how much of what ingredients to use and writing them all down.

Yogurt is an easy one.  Milk and a spoonful of yogurt from previous batch. mix and keep it warm for a few days.

Natto is a fermented soy beans.  Quite easy too.
Soak soybeans over night.  Pressure cook soybeans until tender.  Prepare natto culture by mixing store bought natto (5-10 beans will do) with hot water and stir it.  It should feel a bit slimy.  Natto culture is very hard to kill by heating it.  It only goes into producing more spores.
Just pour the natto culture juice over the cooked beans and thoroughly mix it.
Keep it somewhere warm.  It likes warm like our body temperature so you can wrap around your belly too.

I generally incubate them on top of my rice cooker or hot water dispenser by zojirushi set "stay warm" and just drape a towel over to keep warmth.  It stays between 95-100F.
http://www.amazon.com/Zojirushi-NS-ZCC10-Cooker-Warmer-Premium/dp/B00007J5U7
http://www.amazon.com/Zojirushi-CD-LCC30-3-0-Liter-Electric-Dispensing/dp/B00009K3TE/ref=pd_sbs_k_5

Fruit fermentation is easy.  Just throw in some ripe fruits into a jar and that's it.  If sugar content of the fruits is not high enough, add some brown sugar.  If fermentation does not go smoothly, you can also mush fruits.  Generally juice start to ooze out and natural yeast on the fruits ferment the liquid into wine.

Guava grows wild here and easily harvested large quantity for guava wine.

Just try with different fruits and see what works.  I once had papaya peels chopped up in a jar with brown sugar stored for over a year totally forgotten, but when I opened it, it was still smelling good after good fermentation.

and at last but not the least, EM, which stand for Effective Microorganisms.  EM is a collection of beneficial microorganisms that are found in natural environment.  They are cultured and bottled for multitude of uses.

EM can be used in making bokashi in agriculture or cleaning contaminated site, remediation, even for human health.  We need one that's for intaking for internal use, but some people say that their health conditions especially of their digestive system improved.

How to make it at home with out original solution?  Mix Yogurt, beer, natto, molasses and water and any other good fermented foods.  I'll talk about it another time for more detailed recipe.

Cabbage is not growing..., but it was actuallly growing, we just didn't know

I came across an article written by one no-fertilizer farmer in Japan describing that his cabbage is not growing at first.  I have the same pattern, most things I plant, or transplant, they don't grow for 2-3 weeks.

He says that cabbage or most vegetables develop roots first so it doesn't get top heavy.  Like most organic or conventional vegetables grow almost immediately because they don't have to develop their roots because everything they need is given.

While no-fertilizer vegetables first send roots down deep before they reach nutrients or energy or whatever that help them grow, then start growing above surface growth. 

There is no worry if your vegetables are not growing at first as long as there is no nitrogen deficient environment.  The difference between nitrogen deficiency and no-fertilizer environment are nitrogen deficiency occurs due to fertilization.  no-fertilizer environment has no nitrogen deficiency because there is no nutrients. 

How do they grow then?  Cosmic energy?  paramagnetism? biological activity?  Whatever it is, it grows.  The important part is that it grows.  The most difficult part is to let go of conventional nutrient farming knowledge.