thanksgiving: every meal is begun with song and prayer

Mayu san: the tractor queen

garlic harvest

potato field

(foodlife) pigs: soon pork

Tomatoes: harvest continually changing with the season

mid morning break after weeding paddy

thunder rats: mama gaver birth to brown ones and white ones

2 ton potato harvest

mud wall in new chapel: in memory of the old chapel combining with the new

festival food

Sunday sunflowers

Goats: new additions to the farm, helping maintain grass and provide milk for breakfast

firework summer festival

transplanting rice by hand is now a lost Japanese tradition. where now most farming is done by machine and the Japanese cow is referred to as a tractor.  ARI  holds on to this tradition and a way to help build community. this practice of planting rice by hand is the way all participants do in their  home countries. Inspired by witness of many cultures as one and to understand the one important thing we all share. Food.

rice transplanting 2014

 Tokyo, suits and ties, smart phones, high heels, sardined in the middle of the busyness of underground traffic, lost in the order of the machine, but to simply ask  will surely stop to show you the way,  Japanese kindness shown to a foreigner is beyond hospitable.

Brody and Jacob: cousin and child hood friend came out to visit Tokyo

found small chapel while walking through Tokyo. needed a breather from the city and found a blessing.

Wheat: watched the wheat grow from seed, stomped repeatedly by foot on each row  in winter to allow the wheat to grow stronger  and thicker to produce a higher yield, fed it bio gas in spring when leaves became yellow lacking nitrogen and tended to the weeds day after day, and in summer it will turn brown and will be time to pull it from the ground. reaping the  harvest. 

camp fire songs

serpent

inspired by these people everyday, Grassroots

Hiking trip

 high place, sacred ground, at the peak

fallen Giant

shinto priest- we joined a group of Japanese hikers and him as our Guide

clean food clean life

Almost every day we’re in the paddies preparing for seedlings. As I walk through the mud I observe and come to notice all existence that lives in a single hector. One paddy consists of much life. When first flooding the paddies all creatures submerged from the soil. Observing monster earth worms, as fat as or even fatter than a Bic pen, frogs of vibrant colors, lizards with orange bellies, and many insects that fly and crawl of many kinds. I also noticed when looking in a neighbor paddy it was barren with little to no life, no diversity. The answer was also in the birds. When we plowed our field’s crows would come in flocks scratching and feasting completing the food chain. But when looking in a neighbor paddy there would be a lone bird scavenging searching for life. I came to realize and understand what I didn't notice during winter, when all life was resting, that majority of neighbor farmers were chemical farmers. That fertilizers and pesticides were applied killing all life. Where wheat is sown like sardines in very crowded, tight neat rows, and weed killer is applied. I also observed that neighbor farmers were old timers, aunties and uncles. With the younger generation abandoning the land to find success in the big city, with no one to take the role of caretaker, leaving the elderly to care for many hectors all on their own. Than I could understand that it would be impossible for them to go organic on their own. We are killing life to feed life, and it seems as though that the animals are wiser than we. This is not Japanese reality but ultimately the reality of all humanity and all living things. 

 Gathering 

The women group of the Anglician church of Japan, long time supporters, invited us and blessed us with a space to sell product at their bazaar in Tokyo. ARI product: shoyu, carrot juice, eggs, cookies, cooking oil, udon noodles.

3rd generation fish farm: also long term supporters of ARI allowed us to come and enjoy. inspired with new leaning

Farm raises both rainbow and brown trout

open ceremony: sitting with the founder Rev. Takami Sensei

  Agriculture specialist and philosopher: Thanks to Mr. Chatterjee for late night class for volunteers and staffs. 

 first community event: bonfire of song and dancing from home cultures

Brother Romeo: warrior of Christ, preacher man from Liberia

cherry blossom festival, dreamed of spring in Japan

sowing pataos: one of the many crops and vegetable going into the ground. everyday is  new learning

Yohei converting a diesel generator  to straight vegetable oil from kitchen

Main crop: Rice eaten three times a day with no exception.

mama sow gaver birth to 16