Winterlude

It's been a quiet week at ARI. The winter vegetables sit half-frozen in their beds, and the staff and volunteers scurry around campus with their shoulders hunched against the cold. ARI seems to conserving energy for the work that will begin again in April, when the next class of participants arrive.

But farm work continues! Wheat and garlic are quietly growing in the fields, and we continue to harvest carrots and broccoli. Mostly, we're preparing the fields for the next growing season (digging irrigation ditches in the rice paddies, cleaning fields of plant debris, applying compost, making organic fertilizer) and processing the crops from last season (sorting red beans and black beans, drying sweet potatoes and radishes). We've also been helping out the livestock section. Last week, I helped weigh the pigs, pack silage (fermented corn feed for the animals during the winter months), and transfer chicks from the hatching house to the chicken pen. So I'm getting more familiar with the animals - this suburban girl can now catch a chicken like a pro.

Thanks to the slower pace, I've also had more time to just enjoy being in Japan. I've been to a sado (a traditional tea ceremony); I've learned how to make mochi (sticky rice cake) and miso (fermented soy bean paste); and I've been enjoying the wonder that is onsen (natural hot springs). Japan is starting to feel normal. I can now pick up individual soy beans with chopsticks, and I apparently bow to the sales clerk an average of four times when checking out at the grocery store.

Our sado hosts

Our delicious post-tea brunch - sticky rice with red beans, sweet soy beans, and pickled vegetables

And yesterday, we got to play hooky for a community cross-country ski day in neighboring Fukushima prefecture. Most of the group (which included staff from the Philippines and Myanmar) had never been skiing, so we cheerfully bungled our way down the course, poles flailing and ski tips pointing in all the wrong directions. (I turned out to be the best skiier of the bunch, so you know it was a bit of a fiasco!) It was a fun change from farm work, and the landscape was beautiful - mountains of white birch trees and gray ash, valleys of white snow and gray snow sky. A soothing sight for this wanna-be New Hampshirite far from the snowy north country.

Getting ready for skiing in front of the main building...

I hope everyone in the Washington, D.C. area is enjoying "snowmageddon!" Get some sledding in for me.