More Fava Beans

I planted my fava beans with our youngest child today. Eleven beans in the packet, so we planted six by the house, and five by the Chinese cabbages in the wild boar danger zone. Hope they make it.

We are in the yellow area of the map, so we plant from early September to mid November.
We can expect to harvest from mid May on.

The beans are from the Atariya Seed company. The variety (for those of you who don't read Japanese well) is "Kawachi" strain of the "One sun (pronounce it "soon") fava bean" A sun is about 3 cm. They appear to be an open pollinated strain- there is no mark indicating it is a hybrid.

A rough translation of the four pink bullets would be:

• Characteristics- The standard fava bean. Soft and sweet 3cm beans are delicious. Very hardy and easy to cultivate, with lots of 3 bean pods, it is well suited to home gardens.
• Planting and Care- Planting from late Sept. to November is best. Dig in 5 handfuls of compost per square meter, and one handful of lime. Plant one seed each, 30cm apart in raised rows 60cm wide. Supplementally feed small amounts of a low nitrogen, high phosphorous and potassium chemical fertilizer throughout the growing season.
• Hints- Planting too early can lead to winter damage. To prevent the plants from falling over, shoulder some soil around them.
• Harvest and Suggested Uses- In May, when the pods have plumped up, harvest like corn on the cob. Shell the beans and use for snacks or with beer. 

Can't wait to see if they work- my whole family loves favas!

My City the Lucky Winner of New Radioactive Dump Site

Yesterday, the Japanese government, in its infinite wisdom, decided to give one hour's notice to our Mayor  before announcing our city was to host the Ibaraki Prefectural Radioactive Waste Dump.

This is from the Daily Yomiuri:

Ministry selects 2nd N-waste candidate site
Jiji Press
The Environment Ministry said Thursday it has chosen a national forest in Takahagi, Ibaraki Prefecture, as a candidate site for the final disposal of radioactive waste from the prefecture.
The decision makes Ibaraki the second prefecture, after Tochigi, to have a candidate site chosen where radioactive waste released from Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will be dumped. Both Ibaraki and Tochigi share a border with Fukushima Prefecture.
Senior Vice Environment Minister Katsuhiko Yokomitsu informed Ibaraki Gov. Masaru Hashimoto of the ministry's decision when the two met at the prefectural government office.
Yokomitsu said the ministry intends to carefully explain to local residents why the site has been chosen and reassure them of its safety.
Hashimoto said he will make his own decision after hearing what residents have to say.
After the meeting, Yokomitsu told reporters that the ministry has no plan to provide subsidies to regions that host final disposal facilities.
However, he said the ministry wants to discuss the possibility of providing subsidies if requested by local authorities.
Takahagi Mayor Yoshio Kusama said at a separate meeting with Yokomitsu that the city will not accept the ministry's decision and strongly opposes it.
The mayor added that the city finds it difficult to trust the central government as it made the decision without prior notice.
As of Aug. 3, the prefecture had 1,709 tons of waste, such as ash, contaminated with radioactive cesium of more than 8,000 becquerels per kilogram.
The government is in charge of the disposal of all such waste found in the stricken Tohoku region.
(Sep. 28, 2012)

I know somewhere has to accept it, but it sure feels like garbage problems are following me around. First the hazardous waste disposal site proposed up the road, now this.....

Because it is a national government project, protesting it will not make much difference, but I plan to anyway.

Hot and Cold Until the Equinox

Here in Japan they have a saying, "Atsusa Samusa Higan Made" (a pronunciation note, the "Made" is pronounced as "mah-day"). Literally "Heat and Cold until the equinox." And it is true! Until last Sunday it was unmitigated summer. Just beastly hot and humid day and night. But this week- we closed the bedroom windows and put a blanket on the bed for the first time since the end of June! I spent most nights up to the equinox just sweating without any coverings at all. It got down to almost 65 F last night!
So now I am wondering where did summer go? Where was the transition? Or is this the transition?

It happens every year, and every year I am surprised by it.

So here are a bunch of random summer pictures since I hate posts without pictures.

My carrot puller and his spoils

My split bamboo dome experiment.

A lizard my son found in a half filled bucket of water.

The dragon waterspout at a local Buddhist temple.

Snowy white eggplant with some sweet banana peppers.

A 1,000 year old Cedar tree at the local Shinto Shrine.

Yours truly on a family trip to Fukushima

Yours truly on the kitchen table.
(Ok, I cut the mouth by accident trimming around the
eggplants with my brush cutter. We added eyes later)

Kudzu Blossom Jelly

It is that time of year again. The smell of Kudzu blossoms is everywhere, and the cheery purple flowers are hanging down like bunches of grapes. Bees are everywhere, and there is Eric, stripping kudzu blossoms with his right hand while catching them in a bowl held in his left.

The past few tries have ended up in Kudzu syrup, due to either a lack of pectin, lack of acidity, lack of sugar, or lack of skill (I think maybe all four..) This year I think it is different. I had a nice box of quality pectin, lots of sugar, and a real lemon to squeeze for juice.
This is a really small recipe- I want to make sure it works before I make liter upon liter of it. Since it is only 500 ml or so, I just used an old jam jar since the kids can eat that much jelly in an afternoon if not supervised. If you make lots and lots of it, follow proper canning proceedure and sterilize.

Here is how I did it:

1. Collect about two cups of kudzu flower petals. You can just strip them off the flower stalk into a colander or bag as you collect them. 
2. Wash the blossoms in cold water. I like to fill the bowl with water to the top to make the bugs float to the surface. Then I can skim them out. Bugs mean healthy kudzu, so don't freak out. I would probably freak out if there were no bugs... "OMG! Why aren't there any bugs? What is wrong with these blossoms?"
3. Drain the blossoms and return them to a bowl. Now pour 500ml of boiling water over them, and put the bowl in the fridge for 8 hours. 
4. Strain the blossom water into a kettle and throw away the spent blossoms. The water will look brown or gray. That is fine, it is not the final color.
5. Add 1/2 Tbsp of lemon juice, and the pectin. Stir and heat on high to a full rolling boil. 
6. Add 2 1/2 cups of sugar and stir and return to the rolling boil. Boil one minute more.
7. Remove from heat and skim off the pink foam.
8. Pour into sterile jars (or just clean ones if you are going to be refrigerator jelly people like we are) and cap. 
9. Cool on wire rack.
10. Enjoy.

Kudzu blossoms after steeping- Looks terrible now, right?

The liquid is not so bad of a color. Now to add some lemon juice and pectin...

Pink!

Ummm.... jelly! (I hope, let's see if it sets....)

My Greywater System

My homesteading guru and mentor Anna suggested that I write a post about my greywater system.

First, two terms:
Greywater: wastewater generated from domestic activities like bathing, doing dishes, laundry, and so on.
Blackwater:  wastewater contaminated with human waste- sewage

Seven years ago, when we built our house, we made the decision not to put in a septic tank. The main reasons were because of possible well contamination and because our lot is quite small. We instead decided to use a composting toilet (which means no blackwater) and a greywater system.

I bought Art Ludwig's book Build an Oasis with Greywater and made dozens of plans, each more complicated and involved than the last. I decided to build an artificial wetland from the house, meandering along a path to a sink near our mailbox. On paper it was beautiful. The gentle curves, the water plants poking up from the pebbles that would make up the system. It would have baffles to keep the water from just running straight, and the plants would clean the greywater gently, using up the excess nutrients as it slowly moved down to the pool.

That never happened. Time constraints kept me from finishing quickly, and we ended up with a small pool of fetid water that smelled like rotten eggs. And it was my fault. I should have followed Art's guidelines, and I should have realized just how much work it entailed to build such a paradise. Moving cubic meters of rocky soil, ordering cubic meters of different grades of rock, not to mention the maintenance cleaning out lint sludge, small food particles that escaped the sink drain screens...

Now I am happy to say that for the second attempt, I followed the guidelines in the book, and have discovered the guiding principle of all truly stable engineering projects. K.I.S.S.
Keep
It
Simple
Stupid!

Our greywater now drains to a large unlined basin filled with rice hulls and wetland plants that just naturally  found their way there. A number of water tolerant trees and shrubs form a ring around the outer edge. Again, I didn't plant them, I just kept the ones that thrived.
The large pipe from the house takes all the water to this, and it is wonderful. And simple.
No more smell, no more clogging, when the rice hulls eventually decompose, I just add more.
K.I.S.S.

Clean, Green, Beans!

The littlest one and I spent a lovely 20 min or so picking 720g of green beans from the garden Thursday. Then we brought them into town and had them checked out, as I am methodically doing with all my produce.  

Clean Beans! No Cs 134/137 detected!

I was so excited to have beans that I ate rather too many... about 500g! Raw! Note to self, next time eat slightly fewer raw beans, or at least gently steam them. Actually the digestive distress was not that bad. And on the bright side, my insides feel very clean. The dandelion coffee helped with that too I think.

Cabbageworms decreasing

Well, since the great cabbageworm harvest of the other day, I have been picking every other day or so. No fixed schedule, just whenever I feel like it.

• 6/30   73
• 7/2     17
• 7/4     25
• 7/6       2

Of course, I still see those white butterflies all over the place, so I know the war will continue.