yes it's the Ume plum season

it seems like this year is a great year of fruits here in sado. a friend of my dad's gave us about 15kg of Ume plum picked in her back yard the other day. and today kuzuhara-san let me pick their Ume plum at their yard. the two trees were both full of big plums although his family and a friend already had picked a lot before me. i ended up picking maybe 20kg of ume- thats a LOT :0

each of my parents pickled 4kg of ume to make umeboshi, my mom also made ume wine and syrup and I made jam a few days ago, then today i started making an enzyme drink.

whats in the drink?
8kg of ume plum
a bunch of young red pine leaves
7 or 8 bamboo shoots (peeled and cut into pieces)
dokudami plants
japanese pepper leaves
sugar (this is to extract nutrients and water from the above ingredients)

i put all these ingredients in a big bucket in rayers, put a wooden plate and a 10kg rock on top. im going to let this mixture ferment for a few weeks and strain it and make a condenced wild drink. this is totally experimental and i have no idea whats going to happen but i feel this is gonna be fantastic.

well ill let you know how its doing along the way.

pictures: 1. boxes of ume plums, 2. making of umeboshi/pickeld plum, 3. the jam i made, 4. the enzyme drink ingredients, 5. inside the enzyme drink bucket

home made wine

I picked so much silver berry the other day so i decided to make wine out of it.
all i did was crash the berry in a glass jar, mix sugar and water, leave it on top of the fridge with a cotton cloth over the jar, wait for 3 days and strain it.
when stored in the fridge, it had become alcoholic and effervescent like beer or champagne. its a wild yeast's magical job. I dont drink alcohol but it sure was a fun experiment. I enjoyed it.

skies

fighting with weed

as you can see, theres almost no weed in conventional rice paddies (the picture above), but theres a ton in our rice paddy (the one below) because we dont use weed killers.
so my dad and i have been weeding it almost everyday in the past month in the muddy rice paddy in a semi-crouching posture.
its so much work and is hard on my back and thighs. Its no wonder almost all the rice farmers use weed killers.
i personally enjoy weeding our rice paddy cuz its so much better for the eco system and it feels good to soak my legs and hands in a cool mud:)

you are welcome to come play in the mud or help me weed!