As a general rule, I like to approach things with an open mind.  It is a guideline that has led me to many happy times.  In all my years there have only been a few things that I remember not being willing to at least try once and see how it goes.  One of those things was bungee jumping.  After having a detached retina and surgery to fix it I approached that with a very closed mind.  Eating food that is still alive is another thing I feel fine about saying no to from the start.  In Japan, there are some restaurants that make an art out of serving up raw fish and squid…while it’s still alive and gasping for air (or water?).  I’ve had the unfortunate chance to see their handiwork up close.  It hurts just to look at.  My newest addition is spraying pesticides. Up until now Satomi’s parents had forbidden me from helping with the spraying and I was fine with it.  But, since Satomi’s father’s stay in the hospital (a full report on that is coming soon) I have been called off the bench.  I’ve never liked the idea of pesticides.  I prefer some bug damage over toxins. I like the idea of pesticides even less now that I have been involved with their application. First we mix in a bright blue powder into 500 liters of water.  Next we mix in a red liquid.  Rumor has it that if you put the red and the blue together before mixing in the water the result is a chemical fire.  Super not cool!  The result is like a muddy puddle and we drench the trees with it. The dousing the trees get is colossal. I don’t actually do the spraying though. I have been given the job of ushering the hose around the orange groves in close proximity to Satomi’s mother, who gives the trees (and on occasion me) their actual dosing of noxious stuff.

Everyone around here is so nonchalant about safety of when using pesticides.  They don’t seem to mind breathing the fumes and mist or getting soaked by the pesticides.  I end up getting soaked but mostly it is because I wear so much protective gear and almost sweat to death.  I bought a plastic rain suit with a hood.  I wear rubber gloves, long brimmed hat, boots and a mask.  I want to upgrade the mask to one with a respirator. I’d like to enclose myself in human sized hamster ball for extra protection but then I wouldn’t be much help hauling the hose around. Despite how much gear I wear, honestly, I think that I had myself convinced that the pesticides we are using are weak and somewhat harmless.  I am singing a different tune now that I have seen the collateral damage.  It’s easy top miss if you aren’t looking but I have started looking and don’t like what I see.  It only took about a minute for a beautiful blue butterfly to succumb to to the power of just a few inadvertent drops.  It flew through edge of the pesticide mist far from where the spraying was taking place and immediately plunged to the ground.  I scooped it up with some unpolluted grass as soon as I saw it fall from the sky but he was dead by the time I got him to a clean place.  I saw  a lizard sprinting out of the field as fast as he could.  The only dead and dying things that I have seen from the spraying are the things that eat the “bad” bugs.  That explains why the spraying has to be repeated so many times.  The spraying gets rid of the problem but it also gets rid of the natural defenses. I really wonder how necessary the spraying is.   Satomi and I have some evidence that pretty nice oranges can grow without pesticides. One of the fields that has been abandoned in the last few years has become our pet project.  For two years now we have pulled the weeds that seem to cause problems and this year I gave some of the trees some manure since they haven’t had any fertilizer in a few years. I spread some clover seeds in the field this year to with the goal of fixing some nitrogen into the soil and preserving the hillsides that have been damaged by the wild boars.  For the most part though, we just let the field be as natural as possible and it produces oranges that look and taste pretty good  Some of the trees taste exceptionally good. Our friends prefer the oranges without the pesticides so we give them away free or sell them cheap for juice.  I think we could probably sell some directly to more health conscious people if we tried.  If the oranges still taste good this year we might give that a try.  The government co-op won’t buy unsprayed oranges so we can’t go the traditional route.  This is hearsay but a friend here in Japan told me that to sell your apples as organic in Japan you just use “less than seven kinds of pesticide and chemicals on the trees”.  He heard this bit of info from his friend who grows “organic” apples. I’m going to check into that.  After seeing the amount of deliberate misinformation in the world it wouldn’t surprise me.

-The Green Tea Dreamer