Man, I Love Tacos!

I love tacos. But the fat! So a while back I thought- how can I make tacos more healthy?
At first I diced an onion and put it in the pan with a little less meat. It was good. Not mind bending, but good.
The next time I put in some eggplant and green peppers, and reduced the meat even more. Very nice indeed.
This last time I had about 1/4 the meat called for on the seasoning packet, tons of green peppers, eggplants, onions, okra, and......... a bowl of short grained cooked rice! The rice blended in so well, that nobody noticed it! I don't know how it would work with long grain rice, but good Japanese rice- wonderful! So now we have relatively healthy tacos. The only thing I would do different next time is to add some chili peppers, since the veggies toned down the heat of the seasoning.

Also, if you don't have tortillas, try making a taco salad on a bowl of rice. It is fantastic! Plus, it ends up in your mouth, not on your clothes, the table, the baby's head....

Back Home Magazine Issue 114, pg 42

Has the latest article by yours truly.
Pick one up, or order it at the website! Or pester your local library to add it to their periodicals. If you like reading homesteading blogs, you would like their magazine.

Issue 114, Sept. Oct. 2011,  Page 42.
"Are You Prepared? Advice From A Disaster Survivor."

Rice Update Sept. 07, 2011

Well, my diluted urine fertilizer test is working well. The color has really greened up, and the competing weeds are growing like crazy (That was not one of hoped for effects though).

Koshi Hikari rice, Takahagi, Ibaraki

You can see the heads are starting to get larger. I still only have about half the number of flowering stalks as the neighbors though. We'll see what happens. Harvest planned for beginning of October.

Water Source Infiltrator

I water my bottom garden with a gravity fed siphon from the creek above. I mentioned it in a previous post. It had some serious drawbacks though. When the creek was muddy, the sediment would clog up the line, small leaves and twigs would get in, or the creek level changed and the siphon sucked air and ran out.... Many kinds of problems.

So I decided to make a filtered infiltrator for the supply and hopefully even it out.
A few weeks previously I had stretched a piece of conduit from the "rapids" to the bank just below. I then put a little children's bucket in a hole and had water spilling directly into it. But this had the same problems- sand and silt, leaves and trash, and that was when the whole upstream intake didn't clog up and let the bucket run dry.

So I re-thought out the problem, and came up with a solution (I hope). I took a piece of PVC drainage pipe about the same diameter as the conduit (about 90mm diameter), and began to drill holes in it. Many, many, many holes in a staggered pattern. Finally I had enough. So I drilled some more to be really sure. Then I put a plastic close weave mesh bag over the pipe, and connected it to the conduit. Step one was complete, and the water was flowing OK.

Then I built a quick and dirty sandbag dam- only about 10cm high. But that was enough to fully submerge the infiltrator.
Since then, the water has been flowing OK, even though the bag has picked up some grime on it.

Banana Update

Japanese Fiber Bananas- I will try and eat one, stay tuned...

The bananas are forming. They are small and flat, still green as of yet. And they are pretty high up there, so I can't really get too close to photograph them well.

I was thinking of using the leaves of the banana for plates when we have our next BBQ party here.
You know in Japan, a BBQ is a lot different from back in the USA or Canada.
Here, we have a smallish grill, and the whole party takes place around the grill. Usually the host (but sometimes if there is a "BBQ Dad" as I like to call them, they will take over) will put the very very thinly sliced meat and vegetables on the grill. You watch, talk, drink some tea or beer if you fancy, and take a piece whenever you want. Then you dunk it in your sauce of choice, and eat it over a bowl of rice.

And I tell you, for dessert, put a banana in its skin on a cooler part of the grill, and let it turn black. Cook it until it starts to bubble and ooze out of the skin. Transfer it to a plate, open it, and put some cream cheese on it. Wow. You must try this.

Buckwheat Boy!

Took this picture yesterday, you can see the boy is wearing the same shirt. The buckwheat I planted August 15th has really taken off, and is growing like crazy. I am growing it in the old potato patch. After digging the spuds, I:
1. Raked it into some troughs
2. Added leaf mould in the first and third rows, and well composted steer manure in the second and fourth.
3. Then I raked the aisles over the trenches to give them a slight mound, and planted buckwheat in them.
4. And finally, since it was about a gadzillion degrees with not a cloud in the sky, I covered the mounds with some cut ferns and grasses to give them some shade before watering.

And now, they are doing well. I can't see much difference between the compost and leaf mould, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the compost plants will have extra nitrogen and grow just a bit taller.

Behind the boy, you can see the tower of compost I am making from cutting the weeds around the garden. That is how I pay the rent for it. In exchange for cutting it back twice a year, I can farm it. And I get to keep the compost. That is about 1/4 of the cut weeds, and it is 2.5 meters high...

Rice Update

My daddy is trying to grow some rice...

The rice is flowering! I am hoping for at least some crop. However, as you can see in the picture, there is a nitrogen deficiency problem. About half of  the crop is yellow-green and a bit stunted. After the typhoon passes by I will add some diluted urine to the problem areas to correct that.

Rice should be a much deeper green...

I can tell that the cold spring water has really affected the growth of the rice, it is at least a week behind the neighbor's rice, which was planted the same day as mine.

Already planning next year's paddy, adding another 25 square meters and sealing the bottom with 2cm of clay! And I will somehow find enough compost to give it a good 2cm across the whole bottom. So let's see.... 50 square meters times .02m... One cubic meter of each should be enough. Of course, will I actually have the time to do such a project? Hmm....