Like a Hot Knife Through Butter...

I had the most wonderful brush cutting experience yesterday. Unbelievably smooth. It actually made me heat up a butter knife in a cup of warm water and try to cut the butter with it, just so I could have a comparison.

If you are looking for a brushcutter/ weed-eater blade, look no further than the Tsumura Golden Saws 255mm, 1.25mm thick, 30 tooth, Sasa bamboo grass disk. And at 1280 yen (about $15), it is a bargain. With proper sharpening it will last for years, as opposed to the chipsaw type, which are usually only good for a month or so.

I experienced absolutely no resistance for the first hour of use. The relatively woody stemmed weeds just fell like I was waving a light saber at them. It was truly a revelation!

Golden Saws 30 Tooth Brushcutter blade

Mister Kuroba 8 blade and Golden Saws 30 blade

 After using the Golden Saws for an hour or so, I swapped disks to the "Mr. Kuroba" 8 blade disk. While not as cathartic as using the GS, it was still orders of magnitude better than nylon strings or the standard chipsaw blades. If you are going to cut weeds and brush with a weed-eater, you deserve one of these blades.

Look at that thing. It is actually sexy!

It took less time to do a neater job in the Satsuma grove! Thank you Tsumura!

Self Watering Planters 2011

In a previous post, I wrote about making a self watering planter, or Sub-Irrigated Planter if you prefer. A lot like the Earthbox planters you might find in Walmart. I took some advice from the makers of the "Global Buckets" videos on youtube, and connected the planters with a thin aquarium hose and siphon. I must say, it is working great. The tomato planter sucks water like crazy, but the lettuce planter has water to spare. By connecting them, it is like having a single 50L reservoir shared by all the plants.

Well, this year's rooftop garden at my school has more diversity than last year.
I have (from left to right) lettuce, watermelon, bell pepper, cucumber, and tomato in the vegetable section.

And the blueberries I planted in the fourth planter last year have exploded in growth. Amazing growth. The honeyberries have not grown as well as the blueberries, but they look to be doing well.

Future plans for the self watering planter garden:

I am planning to make a large automatic waterer based on the traditional chicken waterer. I am thinking of taking a 30-40L barrel, and drilling a hole about 5cm down from the top.
Then I will fasten a deep tray to the top of the barrel. A second option would be upending and standing the barrel in a large plastic storage case.
The hard part will be flipping it over. 30-40Kg.... not impossible, but pretty heavy.
The water will fill the tray until it reaches the hole, where the vacuum created by the bubble at the top will stop it.
After that, connecting the nearest planter with a siphon will begin the watering.
The planters and the reservoir will seek the same level, and water will gradually be released from the barrel as the water lowers to the hole, where it will "burp" out some more and send a bubble to the top.

I hope to have enough capacity to last for a full week between fillings.

Rice Update

Well, the rice paddy is doing.... OK I guess.... it is not nearly as tall as the neighbor's chemically fertilized paddy, but....
On Wednesday, I scattered a five gallon bucket of goat manure into the paddy to hopefully get it growing a bit more. Goat manure is so funny. Looks like beans. Real easy to spread though.

June 10

June 12

Brush Cutter- Tanaka TB-21HS

My Tanaka TB-21HS Brush cutter with a Mr. Kuroba four blade disk.

Here in Japan, people have postage stamp lawns, if any. So nobody has large lawnmowers. And there seem to be a lot of mountains here. So brush hogs are not too practical for most rural people. At least not enough to make a market to sell them. So we are left with the ubiquitous "Kusakariki."
Mine is an utterly average machine. Works well, a bit noisy of course, but does the job.
In Japan, most people use a "Chipsaw" blade, basically a disposable sawtoothed cutter. I used to use one too, but the waste! Hit a stone and the teeth fall off, the blades dull and won't cut. Then my good friend who does this for a living showed me his machine. Wow. He has one mean looking blade on it. A thirty blade steel disk that he keeps razor sharp with a file. And they last so long! After a few hundred sharpenings, the blade will have worn down to 20cm or so and it will be too difficult to get the speed to cut properly, and you need a new blade.

I decided to experiment with a four blade disk by Mr. Kuroba. It is recommended for soft stemmed grasses and weeds, and general use. It is an OK blade. I think I will use an 8 blade disk next however, since I have noticed that it is cutting a bit raggedly. It is easy to sharpen. I just use a plain old metal file, give it a few strokes at a fairly steep angle. I try to keep the blade straight, but wear and tear on the outer edge is starting to round it.


I also use a string trimmer for work around the house, and anywhere there are too many rocks or tree stumps that a blade might catch on. It is an insert type. You just slip the 20cm long nylon cords through the holes, wrap it around and through the exit on the outer ring.

Disk and plugs

thread it through

flip it over and to the outside.

Square cords to cut more efficiently. 

Fava Beans

Man, I love Fava beans. Here in Japan, we start them in November. I just push them into a prepared bed and basically forget about them until spring. Of course, I do weed them from time to time.
Now it is time to pick them. And pick them I have been doing for the past few days. Shopping bags full of delicious, enormous beans.

The easiest way to prepare them is to just shell them and eat them in the garden. However, if you prefer your beans cooked, then by all means. I just shell them into the wife's new "Silicone Steamer." Looks like a rubber box with a lid, but it does a great job of steaming just about any vegetable. As I was saying, I just shell them into the steamer, rub some salt on them, and microwave them for 3 minutes. What could be easier?

Slap the lid on and get cooking!

The Fava Bandit Strikes Again!

Crab

Eriocheir japonica - Mokuzugani (Japanese Mitten Crab)

Coming home tonight after work, I saw a black blob on the road in front of our driveway. I was about to nudge it with my foot when it moved! I jumped back a step, and then peered at it in the very dim light. Oh my goodness, it was a crab! I believe it was a Japanese Mitten crab, due to the size and the furry claws. Then as I hurried up towards the house to tell the wife about it, two wild boars foraging for worms in the bank of the neighbor's rice paddy exploded out in front of me and galloped through the woodlot and my garden on the way into the bamboo grove. If you have ever startled two wild boars from three meters away, your heart will beat four times a second for the next five minutes. Well, not really, but it does give you a start for sure.

I made it to the house, and told the wife about the crab. She said "Can we eat it?" I love this woman. So I went down to the road, stuffed the crab into a cardboard box, and brought it up to show to her. But it was just so cute, I couldn't eat it. So I put it back down by the road again. All's well that ends well.

Cob Oven Pizza Becomes Reality

Our Pizza Team

We did it. We finally made the pizza in the oven. And you know what.... It was good. Even though we messed up the first batch, the second was so good, it made up for the first with flavor and texture to spare.

So, this is how we did it, and how it should have been done.

This morning, after walking the dog and tying out the goats, I took a cedar plank that I hand milled with my chainsaw mill and cut two slabs off of it. I measured twice and cut them- 30 cm by 16cm. Then I found a piece of scrap board that I could use to connect them into a single 32x30 plank. I used an old plate to make the curve of the top, and cut it out. Voila- a rough door. I then matched the door to the oven, marked, and cut out on opening to fit it. This is the last thing that went well for some time.

Topping the pizzas

At about 10:20, I lit a fire in the oven. It did not want to burn. After 40 minutes of coaxing, it finally began to burn well. I built it up to a fair roaring fire, and went inside to make the pizzas. It is hard to make pizzas with a 1 1/2 year old who loves cheese... The pizzas had a distinct lack of toppings where his hand could reach the pies. Oh well, gotta love them.

Not Hot Enough

Then, at about 12:10, we put the first pizzas in the oven. It did not go well. I guess my first clue was that I could put my hand inside the oven and not feel hot... The other pizzas were baked in the kitchen while I added more wood.
A bit disheartened by the whole experience, we looked online and found a bit of information that I should have discovered beforehand- Heat the oven for three hours- or until the soot on the interior walls burns away from the intense heat. So we made the decision to have pizza for dinner as well, and I kept the fire roaring for four more hours. At the end of that, there was no soot on the interior walls, I can tell you that much.

For the dinner pizzas, I pushed the hot coals off to the sides and back, and slid the pizzas in. This time they cooked in no time flat, with a wonderful browning of the cheese..... Mmm... .Delicious!



I Heart Pizza



I have heard that you don't need the fire burning in the oven when you bake, but we had the best results with the fire or at least the coals burning as we baked the pizza. Maybe for bread it isn't necessary, since it needs lower temps and longer times. But I think the coals made the difference.

To sum up the lessons learned today-
1. Thin crust
2. Properly preheat the oven- Three hours or until it burns the soot off the walls.
3. Push coals to side and back
4. One parent should distract the cheese stealing toddler.

Next time we will stack functions- Pizzas, bread, and finally sweet potatoes. I can't wait!