The Helpful Gardener
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Editor's Introduction

At this point in our reading I am most happy to turn things over to the man who put pen to paper for this section of the book. We are most lucky to have Larry Korn with us, the translator for this particular version of the book, and his participation here is most welcome and beneficial to the discussion.

Without further introduction, I would like to turn this section over to Larry and your questions...

HG

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rainbowgardener
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So questions: Fukuoka-san died in 2008. Is his farm still maintained and maintained according to his principles?

The book was written back in 1978, 30 years ago, before the advent of computers, cell phones, etc. Back then the students on the farm lived in "semi-primitive conditions" (sounds more than semi to me - no running water!). Is that still true? Has the farm/school modernized at all?

In this intro it says the students are expected to be almost totally self-sufficient re their food (except for things like soy sauce & vegetable oil), but it only mentions 1.25 acres of rice fields (interplanted with winter grains) and 12.5 acres of mandarin oranges. Surely no one can live on rice, winter grains, and mandarin oranges? Do the students also have plots of their own to grow greens and other veggies?

muland
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Hello Rainbow. When I was at Fukuoka-san's farm he welcomed student workers to stay and help with the farming chores. He, in turn, taught the basic skills of farming, his unique way of farming and the philosophy behind it. Ok, it was primative...no running water, electricity and so forth but somehow it felt abundant. :) I wrote "semi-primative" because it was only a relatively short walk to the nearest town, train station, country cafe and so forth. Those of us who stayed for a few months or more did not feel deprived by the conditions at all. In fact it was a wonderful way to live and a great adventure for this city boy.

A rule of thumb in traditional Japan is that a family of four needs a quarter of an acre to grow all the food it needs for the entire year. At about 12 acres Fukuoka's farm is actually fairly large. It is a successful commercial farm with the Mandarine oranges being the main cash crop. He also sells the rice and barley. The harvest alone takes two or three months. We ate some of the grain, the fruits and berries from the orchard, grew vegetables in a wild and scattered way in the spaces between the orchard trees, caught fish in the local pond or at the sea nearby and gathered sea vegetables there, made tofu, and even ate a chicken now and then. The diet was quite complete. I'll tell you more about the way we raised veggies later if you like. :wink:

It's true that Fukuoka-sensei passed away two years ago at the age of 95. He had asked that no more students come to the farm by the mid-1980's. He was getting older and appreciating his soliture more and more when he was at home. He also travelled to many other countries in his later years hoping to help stop the desertification of the planet which he saw wherever he went. His oldest son, Masato, runs the farm now. He has maintained almost all of the techniques his father developed but adds fertilizer now and then as a conventional organic farmer would do. Masato does not see himself as a teacher and askes that interested people not come to the farm. He's too busy managing the day to day operations.

Fukouka-sensei wanted his students to live that way so they would become very close to the land and so be able to know what to do intuitively instead of relying on their limited intellectual capeability. I don't mean that the students were dumb...I mean that the human intellect is limited for anyone when compared to the complexity of nature.

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muland wrote:A rule of thumb in traditional Japan is that a family of four needs a quarter of an acre to grow all the food it needs for the entire year.
1 acre = 43,650 square feet (I truly wish the U.S. would go metric...hectares, square meters, etc.!)

therefore 1/4 acre = 10,912 square feet, more or less, for a family of four

Does this traditional guideline include growing rice as well as the soybeans needed for tofu and other soy products? Are fresh-caught fish or chickens also part of the understood traditional diet?

I've been reading John Jeavons' work for a long time. His current attempts are to make it possible for an individual to grow his/her calorie needs (potatoes or other "calorie crops"), veggies, fruit tree or two, and so on, in approx. 1/3 of an acre without any outside inputs. This vision also includes "compost crops" so that the soil is also replenished from the 1/3 acre. I know that it's a little off the strict track of this thread, but the similarity of the guidelines is striking: 1/4 acre, 1/3 acre, although with somewhat different emphases. (There are signs that Jeavons' ultimate hope is to make it possible to grow a nutritionally complete diet, both for human and soil, on 4,000 sq.ft.--the amount of arable land per person in many countries today.)

I'm trying to clarify the comparability of the two guidelines: points in common, points of difference. But I'm not clear on what the traditional Japanese guideline was expected to cover, and that's what I would like to have more information on.

(I'll have a library copy of TOSR by Thursday, but am continuing my scouting forays into local bookstores.)

Thank you.

Cynthia H.
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rainbowgardener
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Thank you so much for the update, muland. I appreciate that the way of life living very simply and close to the land would be a wonderful adventure and very freeing.

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Indeed; good to hear the farm is still in the family, as well. Land passing from parent to progeny, being increased by each along the way, has a very cyclical and proper feel to it...

:D

HG

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I find the concept of 1/4 an acre supporting a family of four to be very true. We did it, or close to. Slightly less than a half an acre of our farm consisted of two pear and three apple trees, a decently large garden, and a three pens for chickens, ducks, and (pet) geese. It could have been a smaller area if not for giving the chickens such a huge pen and a small pond for the ducks :oops: I confess we never ate the ducks I loved them.
Our garden easily fed the 6-7 of us all year not really including sasla, pickles, and other snack type foods we made and canned. We never bought veggies at the store. It's also amazing how much bigger your garden can be if you use cattle panel to fence it in and plant things next to said fence that grow up. Peas, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons were so easy to pick from that garden it was wonderful.
But getting back on track, the farm itself was close to 30 acres and the only part of it we used for food sat on the area right next to house. The rest of the farm was pasture for the horses and handful of steers we kept.
I think a key issue would be getting people off their butts to do it. I can't count how many times I've heard "why bother canning? I can buy it cheaper at the store than all that work" :roll: I wonder if they've ever tasted home canned green beans.....the stuff you buy is NOT the same.
Who wants to tell me how to make tofu :D Or is that in the book too?

muland
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You all have raised such interesting topics I hardly know where to begin. :) I'm not sure exactly what was covered in the 1/4 acre rule of thumb. Japanese village farmers were largely self-sufficient on their small holdings but one cannot imagine any single farmer isolated from the others in the village. One household might raise, say, 80% of their own food and 20% in surpluss of something they could produce particularly well. That 20% was traded with other farmers for the 20% they lacked. One farmer might only have an orchard so he would trade it for vegetables with the others. Only one farmer might make miso for the entire village and trade it for other things his family needed. No one was left out in the cold.

Also, the Japanese are great at making every square inch count using methods like stacking vegetables in time and space to assure a plentiful and continuous yield, and returning all of the organic matter back to the soil. The classic book on the topic of traditional Chinese gardening and farming, which is also practiced in Japan, was written in 1911! It is The Farmers of Forty Centuries by F.H. King (still in print by Rodale Press). This is essentially the method popularized as organic gardening by J.I. Rodale.

You hate the English units of measure!? :( Wendell Berry hates metric. He originally wanted to use the English units for TOSR. I told him it would be too weird to have Fukuoka-san using them so we compromised on using metric, as Fukuoka did, with English units in parentheses. Wendell's point is that the English units developed out of human cultural experience and are connected to something real. For example, a furlong (1/8 mile) is about how far a hourse could pull a plow before it had to rest. One furrow long. He sees metric as a scientific measure, so if farmers were forced to change it would be another way in which farmers had to change their traditions for the convenience of the scientists. :) Just throwing that out there...

I appreciate the way Jeavons considers where all the organic matter he uses comes from. Many people who simply have compost hauled in from somewhere else do not.

The Fukuoka family has probably been living in the same village for the past 1,200 years or so. The land is passed down through the eldest son. Fukuoka-san is the oldest male among his siblings so even though he became a plant pathologist and went off to the city as a young man he always knew he would end up back at the family farm. His son, Masato also knew that from the beginning of his life. Japanese society is like that. Everyone knows their place and what is expected of them. It grows out of geographic necessity. There are so many people living in a relatively small space they had to work out a way that they could all get along. The individuality we prize so highly in this country would create quite a challenge in those conditions.

I couldn't agree more, Dixana. If people learned how wonderful the taste and nutrition of home preserved food is they might reconsider their objections. I try to get people to at least shop at the farmers market a few times so they can get an idea of what the real flavor of food is. Also, the time spent doing chores like canning, pickling, smoking and so forth is a reward in its own right, especially if you do it with others. What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon. :D

As for tofu...it's easy to make, but I'll leave the recipe for another time. The very best book on tofu is called, guess what... The Book of Tofu, by William Shurtleff.

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Thank you Larry, for your time and knowledge.

And book recommendations. We really like those... :)

HG



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