Fall, here for a moment!

Right now we are harvesting Daikon,huge japanese radish, really different than our radish though, and Hakusai, chinese cabbage, and carrots too. So here's some pictures....


Putting up the Daikon storage building for the winter- a truck full of daikon

the Daikon Processing Center:) Cutting leaves, washing, drying daikon and leaves for japanese pickles, and bagging for orders

the daikon field, with oat cover crop behind

oats

the drying daikon leaves, really pretty aren't they!

an autumn view

and yet another

Kenji harvesting hakusai-chinese cabbage

absolutely beautiful!

Daikon has a really great design from the top, and the sides..

pushing it's way up

harvesting daikon and hakusai with Kenji, Toshi and Kai, Kai loves harvesting, and he is a really hard worker, it's fun to work with your kids, I mean really working, you get to know them and who they are in a really intimate way



Kai learned how to tell when a hakusai is ready to harvest from watching Kenji- the head feels firm, he learns well from working together, and trusts his instincts, like his daddy!

Down in the potato storage, packing potatoes for delivery, when I want the kids to hang out there with me, I call it "the cave" and tell them to bring their flashlights and swords and fight some dragons for me!

Who let the chickens out.....okay some of you will get it.....they had alot of fun, and the kids did too, Sage caught a few and held them, thinking that they escaped, he was trying very hard to get them back inside, but really they were just out for a walk

The trees along the edge of the woods are at their peak this week....I love fall, I can't really even explain all the reasons why, but it's my very favorite season, and I always feel as if it's over before I can enjoy it...

and now, who let the ducks out??? Orie-san and Kenji finally persuaded them that it would be okay to leave their stinky pen and venture outside, they weren't too sure and kept trying to go back home...until they saw the pond and then did they ever go crazy!! They washed and washed and made lots of racket, and they are just gorgeous now, clean and shiny, and no more stinky:) they are enjoying their new home, and they don't seem inclined to go back to their old one, so at least for now, until it gets too cold, they are in the pond to stay.





Mom, "amai!", these are so sweet, fresh pulled carrots are a favorite around here, they are deliciously sweet and the color is out of this world

Lunch on Mondays includes lots of wonderful volunteers! Left to right-Gondon, our volunteer accountant, and unfortunately you can't see her, but Akiko-san(known as Ah-tan to all of us, her nickname, she is great with our kiddoes and does just about anything, Ma, who has a delivery route on Tuesdays, and Noriko-san who has recently began coming, a member at our church, and then Nai-Nai of course!

Toshi, Orie-san, Kenji and Makino-san,(another volunteer, a former student of Nai-Nai's, who has been a wonderful help this year when we've been so busy! Thanks everyone...

Another load of Daikon

Maki-no-san, Ma Obasan and Nai-nai, cutting the tops off carrots and cleaning them

Ahhh, these little carrots could make me become a poet, I had to stop and take their picture tonight while I was making supper they were so striking in the bowl waiting to be cooked.

Books-a window to the soul

"You are a woman, are you not? An ezer kenegdo to your core. Your lingering disbelief(may it be fading away) that anything important hangs on your life is only evidence of the long assault on your heart by the one who knows who you could be and fears you.
There is much life saving that needs to be done yet, and someone needs to do it. Not in a pressure-filled, You'd better get to it kind of a way. Rather, an invitation. Your feminine heart is an invitation by your Creator. To what? To play an irreplaceable role in his Story. Isn't that what your Lover wrote there? Some dream, some desire, something so core to who you are it almost hurts to think of it. The very longing is such a part of your being it's scary to even give it a voice. You may not know the dream itself yet. But you know the longing to play an irreplaceable part. That is a good beginning.
Ezer is woven into the fabric of your feminine heart. You must live this out. What lives, what destinies are hanging on your "Yes" to God?"
from "Captivating" by John and Staci Eldredge- pg 205
(ezer, it is explained in the book, is the word in Hebrew used to describe Eve when she is created. Translated helper, companion, etc, it is only used elsewhere in the OT to describe God, when you need Him to come through for you desperately, usually in life or death circumstances, a lifesaver, in other words. Kenegdo means alongside or opposite to, a counterpart. Beautiful, don't you think?)

"Child," said the Voice, "I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own."
from"The Horse and His Boy" (The Chronicles of Narnia, book 3) by C.S. Lewis
(the quote that will come back to me often, to remind me that it is not for me to think I know,or to write, another's story)

"It has been said that there are two important ways to promote the growth of plants. One is through photosynthesis taking place in the leaves, which, as you know, utilizes energy from the sun. The other is through the absorption of inorganic materials such as nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potassium, by way of their roots. But this does not give us a complete picture. Over the last twenty years, the field of soil microbiology has developed greatly. It has been discovered that amino acids, nucleic acids, vitamins, and hormones play significant roles in the growth of plants, and that these substances are secreted by the microrganisms in the soil. When plants can get these materials they become robust and grow well. In addition, the color and flavor improve, they keep longer, and they contain more vitamins. That is why, among other things, one has to give food and space to microorganisms in order to make good soil, and therefore good plants. With the additions of microorganisms and their various secretions, the soil will become soft and porous, like a cushion. Soil like this holds much moisture, and so is able to supply water to crops even in dry weather. It also retains warmth, even during a cold summer. Furthermore, oxygen can penetrate deeper into bacteria-laden soil, which helps to make crops strong and disease resistant. "
from "A Farm with a Future-Living with the Blessings of Soil and Sun" by Yoshinori Kaneko(and no, no relation:)
I found this book in the Menno Village library, and I, being a lover of how things work together and the whole picture, loved this description, it made me think of the role of healthy microorganisms in our own bodies digestive system, without them we are not strong or healthy either....the book goes on to describe how the addition of chemical fertilizers, although indeed causing growth and what looks like healthy green leaves, are unbalanced and can even cause imbalances in our own bodies when we ingest them, as well as very interesting, join with proteins from meat and fish to become carcinogenic....the addition of chemical fertilizers makes the soil too acidic for the healthy microorganisms to survive and this acidic enviroment is a breeding ground for molds, the major cause of plant diseases, bringing on the need for more chemicals and further imbalances.(by the way, the healthy microorganisms in our bodies are also destroyed when we take antibiotics and other chemicals into our bodies, so take probiotics if you have to take them:) just a free tip!

"Communism, like nudism and anarchism, dimly sees something heavenly, but by insisting on enacting it now, by human force, it turns the heavenly into the hellish, as when adult powers are given to infants."
from "What Will Heaven Be Like?" Christianity Today article, click on the post title to link to the article.

"You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law;you have fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit, by faith, are WAITING for the hope of righteousness."
from Galatians 5:4- emphasis added by me

"For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor."
from Galatians 2:18-speaking of the law again

well, all of Galatians.... how many laws have I tried to write for myself and others?? how many times have I tried to assure myself of my okayness, not even my goodness, by trying to find "The Way" to do just about everything?? Ahhh, the freedom ...and struggle in yielding myself daily, hourly, minutely(yeah, yeah, that's not a word!), to the Spirit, and resting in God's work and wisdom, and being able to say, it wasn't me, Thank God, it wasn't me!

In that moment, that second,
when panic seizes my chest, when
it sucks my breath away, in that moment,
my God, I cry out to You,

It is all Yours, take it from me...
make from this battle a monument to
Your name, in my weakness,
be glorified.

Like beauty from ashes,
like silver refined in the fire,
from the yawning depths of my fears,
from the blinding heaviness of my selfishness,
from my very real tears, mingled with Yours...

(is it possible? my faith is small and hesitant-I
am not worthy to have my tears mingled with Yours, but yes, You say, what liar are you listening to? Was my blood for nothing? You are my child, I made you, I knew you before you were formed in your mother's womb, you are my heir to righteousness)

...come springing forth rivers of
Life, overflowing,
reaching out beyond my
infinite smallness to only You know where

and then in these everlasting moments---failure,
the word that seems the end, and You say,
"only the end to you, and the beginning of Me."

To some you must be harsh, is it true? but to me, You are my Savior, gently scooping me up, scraping me off the floor of my depravity, and lifting me into your freedom, Your life, Your hope.

for with these tears my search for perfection is sanctified, no longer a shameful thing to hate and hide and rage against- No, No, a passionate call from You to Your heart, where the only Beautiful Perfection is found, forever, and ever Amen.


"Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives." Hebrews 2:14-15

Halloween festival, well just a plain old good time!

Sage's last minute costume which Sage and I came up with between the two of us

The "hayride" truck, ready to go

Carving pumpkins, I don't have my cute little girl's straw hat on in this picture, but I was dressed up as a country girl, and everyone thought I looked like Anne of Green Gables!

cute dressed up visitors

Kai is a "common rider"(this is really the name, said with Japanese pronunciation, I'd love to know how the name came about!) one of the popular comic heroes, he loves wearing costume outfits like this and swears it makes him go faster than any of us:)

loading up the truck for a ride to the pumpkin patch, although we had picked alot of pumpkins, we left some so people could pick out their own if they liked, the truck hayride was a popular attraction and we gave several rides.

This is the one! Everyone enjoyed the trip to the pumpkin patch, especially the kids of course

Orie, Koko, and Rita

Doing the power pose:)

Kenji was a fisherman, an easy last minute do, Ha!

Carving, all by myself

Toshi with pumpkin...

Cute huh!

After carving pumpkins and eating chicken broth/veggie soup made by Nai-Nai and Kabochan we had a contest, to see who could throw a bag of momi-gara, rice hulls, the farthest, both a kids contest and an adult contest, lots of laughs!

way to go skeleton!

The winners of the adult contest with their veggie prizes

after the contest we invited everyone to the spaghetti squash/kabocha/pumpkin field to help us harvest the rest of our crop. Makino-san(a Monday volunteer!) very helpfully earlier in the day cut them off the vine, so everyone spread out over the field and carried them to the truck. Considering we had between 50 and 60 visitors(at least half were kids), we had plenty of help.The kids were fighting over them, looking all over, it was like an easter egg hunt! Everyone had a great time they said, and it was so fast for us! The kids only lamented they couldn't ride back in the truck since it was packed full of squash..

Here they are in the dusk, bringing 'em in

the harvest!

by this time it was dark and time to hand out homemade cookie favors(thanks to Nai-Nai and Kabochan of course!) to the kiddoes and light the jack-o-lanterns, this is just a fun collage, but they looked really cool in the dark, the kind of thing that turns you back into a delighted kid!

some more jack-o-lanterns...a fun day, and the rain started just as everyone was packing into cars and headed home, hallelujah! they'd been calling for rain all day, whew!

ahhh, the keyboard!

once again it's been a long time since I've posted. Once it's been awhile then it seems to get even longer, that whole procrastinating thing I guess. I'm so sleepy I'll be doing a lot of back spacing, well I am.. so just a few words to get back in the swing. The pics are the easiest, but the writing is the most therapeutic...and I've found reality just doesn't get real for me until it's on paper, or more accurately for now, on screen. It's been very busy here this last month, lots of new things for everyone to learn, and unfortunately lots of sick days for our family. Kenji and Kai are fighting with change of season induced infections/asthma(Kai's officially diagnosed with his 3 day hospital stay) and all of us have colds, along with the rest of the farm...Sicky times like this are tough on all of us, and my perfectionistic downfalls hit hardest when my family isn't well. You know, the fear that comes when you can't control something?? It's at times like these that I find it hardest to relent to God's hand, feeling somehow that I can't trust Him to take care of those I love most. I know what I'm doing when I'm doing it, but it certainly doesn't make it easier to let go. Grouchy mommy and controlling wife tendencies tend to emerge when I'm feeling lack of control. And it does bear saying that my need for control is not something I'm particularly proud of, it's just something I know I struggle with and I don't doubt pretty much always will. When I recognize it then sometimes I can let go and I'm no longer a compulsive worrier like I used to be, but other times it's alot harder to let go and be patient for God's timing and purpose. Well, anyway, I'm learning new things thru this experience as always- about myself and subsequently humanity,(like I'm still quite thoroughly capable of throwing a temper tantrum when I don't get what I want, along with the best my children can serve up, maybe a little more subtly however) God's faithfulness, as well as purely practical things as well.....
We are harvesting Kabocha little by little(Japanese winter squash, I think marketed as Hokkaido squash maybe in the States), and we still have one more field of rice that has to be handcut also as it is way muddy, weather cooperating, we'll be doing that the beginning of next week. They have been drying the rice in the huge drier and taking the hulls off, bagging and storing it. Next will come spaghetti squash,soybeans, Chinese Cabbage, and Daikon eventually. We're packing potatoes nearly daily to ship, orders are coming in by fax and piling up on the desk....Nai-Nai we await your return:) And the other day we harvested alot of pumpkins in preparation for our Halloween festival in a week. The kids just love those big orange things, and who can blame them!
Sage just sang in a music contest with his school. He was front and center(he's always put there I think because he's the shortest in the school). He sang wonderfully but could hardly keep his arms still and legs still, my child for sure! Kenji thought he should be doing the directing that one of the fifth graders did. He just kind of stood out against the other very still children, the best was when the girl next to him elbowed him in the ribs to be still, he got the message anyhow, it's always nice to get a good laugh! Sage knows all the words to the songs and says he had alot of fun that day as most of the day they were at the contest singing or listening to others sing so it didn't feel like work. He was puzzled when one of the little girls talked about not wanting to go because she was embarrassed, he wanted to know why? But he did admit that if he was by himself he wouldn't want to do it, but with others he had no problem. They have been practicing lots of music lately, for that contest and for something else, maybe the school festival or a concert, not sure. The music we haven't heard yet he plays the triangle and the xylophone, (well that's not really what it is, but I don't know the name for real:), something like that. I was impressed at their singing, with a sixth grader playing piano(and not just a simple song, but accompanying), and a fifth grader keeping time, with simple directing. His Japanese has blossomed in the last few months, and he uses both languages at home. Kai and Lucas are picking up from this too, it is fun to see. One of the songs Sage is singing at school is It's a Small World after All and we were talking about how our living here and becoming comfortable in this culture makes it easy to understand what they are talking about in the song.
Kai is getting used to the fact that his daily playmate Ken-Ken is gone for awhile and he and Lucas are getting along famously, for the most part. The last several days our house has been scattered with K'nex, rediscovered during chilly days he couldn't go outside with his cough. He is excellent at putting the models together that the pictures show, he's always been really good at puzzles. And of course the complimentary self-designed guns, swords and arrows that always result! My love of gadzillions of small painful pieces is quite driven by the thrill of creativity I observe! The other day we were driving at night and he saw a star and suddenly said I'm going to draw a star tomorrow...the next day he tried and was frustrated, and tonight his attempt turned into a monster:). He is very into space, and we've read the awesome books he got for his birthday alot, we hear alot about space shuttles and rockets in our house and he frequently sees space shuttles(in the form of airplanes I try to convince him!) in the sky. His most recent interest is volcanoes- boys are very fascinated with power and mystery, anybody noticed this?? While he was in the hospital we had some deep conversations about Jesus and God, it's that awareness age Michelle:) He typically acts like he doesn't want to pray,or me to pray, he's kind of a shy kid in some ways though. He is working himself out of his overdependence on me after his episode in the hospital...today I was thrilled to hear him say that he wanted daddy to push him in the shopping cart instead of me because he liked daddy just a little bit more than me!
Lucas is quite the talker, he can get across pretty much anything you need to know, and plenty more....his favorite word right now is the Japanese word Dame, which means no...he says it very strongly to anyone within his hearing when they are doing pretty much anything that he doesn't feel like them doing at the moment, whether it matters in his life or not! Hmmm, wonder if he's heard it a few times himself.....? He loves to play with any kind of vehicles, loves to line them up in a row and "park" them as he says and make roads anywhere, in anything. He also loves to play with stuffed animals, making them talk and pretending they walk and eat and things. He got a cute stuffed turtle for his birthday from Jiji and Baba, just in time as he lost his favorite stuffed duck sometime around then. Some of his other favorite words...Dessert, please!, ( accent on "sert", very clearly, and many times repeated, preferably while running around the table after not eating more than a few bites of real food!) He is just beginning to be afraid of things, likes the light off when he's laying down so there aren't shadows and doesn't want to go in the dark alone. When we were walking outside at sunset the other night, "I see Jesus!" he said pointing into the sunset...when I said, really, you see Jesus, he says Yeah!, in this just so cute way he has of saying it like amazed or something, and then today when we walked outside for the first time he looked up and pointed at the blue sky with interesting wave-like clouds, and said, "mommy, ocean is coming!" with one of his loud dramatic whispers and facial expressions he is famous for...He is horrified if one of us carries him in the house with his shoes on and sometimes ends up in tears before we can get them off of him and get him laughing...He gives us all many laughs and at two, many an exasperating control struggle just to balance everything out!
well, as usual it's been more than a few words and more backspacing than actual words typed! but it's good to be typing again, hope you are all doing well, and thanks to all here who've been a big help and bore extra burdens while we've been working on healing and thanks to everyone who has been praying for our health....and sanity:).

Minna no inekari-rice harvesting by hand with Menno people

the day we tried to have the rice harvest and just as the explanation was beginning it started pouring...so we served the hot soup and postponed until the next day!

so the next day, nicely sunny and warm

the cutting has begun, you just grab a bundle and whack it off! the kids especially like this, getting to handle a sharp, wicked looking tool not being a daily occurrence!

Sage was a rice cutting machine, his goal was to cut one row end to end and he did this plus much more, he kept with it for most of the time that we were cutting all day long

more kids enjoying themselves!

Kenji's cool pics, here and the next..did you know rice was so pretty??



Orie-san and Rita-kun

Kai demonstrating, he also cut for much longer than we expected, sticking with it, using real tools is such a motivator!

showing Lucas how to do it

when you plant the rice you plant little plugs of rice, you can look back at some of my first pics to see, so it grows in clumps, easy handfuls to grab and cut

the fields have been drained for some time now so are only somewhat muddy instead of sucking you up muddy in most places at least

piles of cut rice

taking a break, sitting on a pile of rice

Sage and Koko, almost to the end of our rows, Koko told Sage she wasn't going to go to the rice field or cut, but since we all went she said, well,I'll just go and look, but then she decided to try it and ended up cutting lots of rice along with Sage

my picture doesn't do them justice, but there were so many kinds of pretty fall wildflowers in the ditch next to the rice field, beautiful!

mmmm, what better artist than God