Sora Farm
Category: Newsletter
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Sora Farm Newsletter-Vol. 28
Last Tuesday, we harvested, cooked and ate Fuki. Fuki (aka: Giant butterbur) is a “delicacy” of spring in Japan. When I was a child, there was a patch of Fuki right beside my path to school. They were taller than me (well, I was a small child even for my age) and leaves were huge.…
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Sora Farm Newsletter-Vol. 27
Finally, it feels like spring. Our outside Christmas tree became a favorite spot for a little bird. As new farmers, we have small excitements all the time. Of the photos below, can you tell which one is tomato and which one is chard? Photo 1 is tomato and photo 2 is chard. I didn’t know…
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Sora Farm Newsletter-Vol. 26
It has been cold and rainy and even christmas cactus thinks it is time to bloom… However, it is not time for holidays for us. In our propagation house, lettuces are growing. Bok choi and kales started to germinate. We planted seeds of eggplant, broccoli, more lettuce, and some rice for experiment. We used to…
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Sora Farm Newsletter-Vol. 25
This week we have a good news and a bad news… Let us start with a bad news. In our greenhouse, we noticed that some of the komatsuna and mizuna were eaten. Didn’t look like slugs. It shouldn’t be crows as the greenhouse doors were closed. We set several mouse traps, and caught 7 in…
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Sora Farm Newsletter-Vol. 24
New season has begun! Even though eagles are often visiting us, we can’t keep our eyes on sora (the sky). So far, mustard, spinach, komatsuna and snap peas were seeded outside, first batch of lettuce seedlings were planted, and next batch of lettuce is in our propagation house. In this week we plan to seed…
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Sora Farm Newsletter-Vol. 23
Spring has arrived and we are back on the island! We enjoyed our trip but we are happy to be back. We came back last Friday and Kenji has been feeding and reviving his sourdough starter since. He did a trial bake yesterday and it was a success! We will be at AGI market this…
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Sora Farm Newsletter-Vol. 22
Last Friday, we visited two miso factories who keep the same production method since 400 years ago in Okazaki, Aichi. They are Maruya and Kakukyu. The miso they make is called Haccho miso, which is made with soybeans, salt and water only. To make haccho miso, soybeans are steamed and formed into fist-size balls, inoculated…
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Sora Farm Newsletter – Vol. 21
Today I visited Daimon Jozo, a family-owned soy sauce brewery with over 100 year history in Nara. Ingredients of soy sauce are: soybeans, wheat berries, salt and water. Soybeans are steamed, mixed with roasted and crushed wheat berries and inoculated with koji spores. It takes 72 hours for koji mold to grow, then it is…
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Sora Farm Newsletter – Vol. 20
One of the things I noticed during this trip was that komatsuna is getting more and more popular. When I was a child, it was called “mochina” in our area and we ate it only for new year in mochi soup. Now it is sold year-round everywhere. It was even served as one of the…
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Sora Farm Newsletter – Vol. 19
As per Japanese tradition, February 2nd is the day to ward off evil spirit and bring in fortune. At home, people throw roasted soybeans saying, “demons out, fortune in!” Many shrines throw packets of beans to visitors to wish them fortune. I visited a nearby shrine and received a couple of packets. One of them…
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