Frog’s Glen lies smack in the middle of thirty or so small family farms. As I’ve told you, everyone is growing rice this year in their paddies. Nearer their homes, probably for personal cooking, they also keep hatake of onions, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumber, corn, and other vegetable staples.
The olllllld land here produces as long as you take care of it. Problem is, our patch was likely farmed to the hilt for centuries and then decades ago discarded to lay fallow. The dirt we bought three years ago had become clay, rock, sand, and not much else.
We’ve been doing a good job turning that around the past few years. Each spring and autumn I work compost in and we hand battle weeds as they attempt to roar back each April to October. Worms and bugs and birds and snakes are returning. Neighbors often stop to chat, complimenting us on the resuscitation of what was nothing more than a communal parking space for farmers’ trucks only a few years ago.
I do get chuffed.
In addition to the shrubs, trees, and flowers we’ve been planting, we’ve started farming a bit too. Considering the neighborhood, it would be kind of a waste not to! Toru has popped in green peppers, corn, eggplant, tomatoes, herbs, watermelon, tangerines, and grapes.
One thing we neglected to do however was protect our produce.
The neighbors know better. Pest control is in the Japanese DNA. They throw nets over anything edible or string electrical impulse wires around their plots to keep the bigger “visitors” away.
This week we came out to find every ear of corn eaten, as well as the eggplants pecked apart. All had to be tossed.
Mrs. Noguchi, an always smiling 60-something, stopped by this morning as I was out on the perimeter weeding. She paused at our fence and said, “Your corn got eaten, didn’t it?” She said she saw the results of “the hit” even out from the road. “All your corn ears were stripped open and lying on the ground, right? I knew you got nailed.”
I asked her if she thought it was inoshishi, wild boar. “No way. Your corn was peeled, wasn’t it? Those were monkeys.”
A year or two back I saw a small pack of monkeys in the back garden of some person’s house about a 20-minute walk away. I was with the whippet Tera, and when the monkeys caught us observing them, they went batshit. I was truly scared at the noises they made––more like crazed guard dogs barking than anything cute and chimp like.
I remember one shaking his fist right at me. “WOOF WOOF,” he yelled-barked. He was staring straight into my eyes, not the dog’s.
This was no Curious George. This was Carnivorous Goro. I tugged at Tera and said, “Let’s move. Now boy, now.”
Mrs. Noguchi said we have to net anything edible. “You don’t have a choice. Once those grapes sweeten, they’re gone. Tangerines, poof. Watermelon, sayonara.” She actually speaks this way. It’s cute.
She put her fists on her hips and surveyed the length of our place—she was in full consultant mode. “The monkeys now know your house so they’re likely to send out recon patrols to watch the garden’s progress. They can likely smell everything you’re doing…the breeze out here carries information.”
I knew this would happen. Though I sympathize—people say the wildlife in Japan is starving—screw these thieves.
No one messes with my sweet corn.
Most of the farmers in the area find Toru and I amusing, I believe. They have no idea what we are doing out here in their valley and likely strike up conversations to probe for a few answers. As one said to me three years ago, “You may see beauty here, but we only see rocks and dirt.”
One guy near us, who seems to do nothing but grow onions and whack at an encroaching bamboo thicket swallowing his property, doesn’t find us amusing. I think in fact he can’t stand us, though we’ve never exchanged even a greeting. I’ve several times called out a good morning or good evening to him and he simply looks away. He probably dislikes foreigners or maybe doesn’t dig anyone who grows un-netted vegetables.
I hope your bamboo keeps encroaching, onion guy. Like the possessed forest in that Kurosawa film. Like Mifune Toshiro may you take your leave of this planet in an unspeakable onslaught of arrows head to toe.
One can hope.
But there are two other farmers in the hood who I like running into. One is Mr. Kodaka who shares tips if you ask and who always has a tightly pursed (but genuine) smile. Kodaka-san is tall for a Japanese, I’d say maybe 185 centimeters. He’s one of those super fit 70-year-old guys with 2% body fat, and he walks slowly but purposefully with ramrod straight posture. He ties a long white towel on his head to absorb perspiration and to block the sun. (Funny, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him not wearing the towel…is he bald, greying, or have a huge shock of wild black hair?) He clips a tin mosquito coil container to his belt, sparks the coil, and each early evening micro-patrols his rice fields, hand weeding and trimming with bonsai clippers.
This man is ice cool.
Mr. Serisawa is super cheery and another hand-farmer who never uses machinery. This year he is working four rice paddies, all planted and tended by him alone. I remarked that it must be incredibly difficult working all that area but he smiled and laughed. “It’s small. I have so little,” he lied. Mr. S lives just up the road from us and has a smart Nissan GT-R parked in his open garage. I’ve never seen the car move. Talk radio eerily plays in his garage 24/7 seemingly for…the car? He’s never in there.
One other guy I like to see around is the son next door. He lives with his mom who is quiet but friendly enough. I associate her most with Micro Perfection Farming. I’ve never seen such a tidily kept, almost policed, hatake.
The son looks tan and surfy and indeed one day I did see him waxing a board out front of their house. He is a dabbler, I believe. He waxes a surfboard but doesn’t really ever load it onto a pickup and go down to the waves. He saunters down the road with a rod and tackle to a modest reservoir to catch “very small” bass as he calls them. But it’s my guess he hasn’t ever jumped both feet into any interest or hobby. He does work hard, helping mom out with the more brute farming tasks—digging out ditches, shoveling, wheelbarrowing and such. Toru dismissively calls him baka musuko or stupid son. The guy probably isn’t an Einstein but I think Toru isn’t giving him a chance. Literally any 30-something living with his mom would be labeled baka musuko, and that’s that. The man is quite nice to us and always has a smile and a helpful comment on our gardening or farming.
We’ll get some netting if we ever want to eat fresh produce from the Glen again. We should have realized years ago why the home center in this area has an entire aisle devoted to “animal countermeasures.”
It’s no use resisting: when in the Glen, do as Glenians do.
Oh the dreaded wildlife! I was originally amused at those low electric fences that protected the rice fields. I mean, you can just step over them! In Australia we have to use almost 2 metre high fences to keep out kangaroos! But of course, no kangaroos here and inoshishi can't jump 😅
oh boy, I was so excited when I read about your garden becoming fertile.
I was silent-screaming with disappointment about the stolen crop.
I love the way you describe characters and animals and land, Jack...all those interesting details!