It Takes a Team

Farming is a team endeavor. Sometimes the teams are big and corporate and sometimes the teams are bare bones. In Japan, there are a lot of latter. Like many farmer’s in Japan, Satomi’s parent’s were a two person farming team, so when her father passed away and there was no team and the land ceased to be a farm. Instead, it has become a collection of fields slowly going back to wildness.

Satomi and I have done our best, making yearly sojourns back to Japan to cut grass and bamboo. I make there for a week or two. Satomi goes for up to two months. But, nature never takes a day off and the wild energy of nature laughs at our efforts.
When I made the trip this past August, the grass and “weeds” were over six feet tall in places. Bamboo and vines had sprouted over acres where fairly recently oranges trees still flourished.

In seven days, I barely made a dent that will last beyond spring.

On a positive note, the purpose of that trip wasn’t to wage a losing battle against the best attempts of nature to recapture what it has once ceded to farmers.

My purpose was to work on building a new team that will preserve and reclaim the decades of hard work and dedication that Satomi’s parent’s put into creating the fields and business that supported them and their family.

Step one began nearly a year ago when a cousin accepted our request to cut the grass on two of the fields that Satomi and I have put the most effort into over the past few years. It was a big ask and we are grateful for the help her cousin and husband gave to us. But, we realized, it was probably too much to ask of a couple who hold down their own jobs in addition to maintaining a farm of their own. It was time to find some other help.

It turns out that even in the internet age that finding a person or people who help maintain woefully neglected and non revenue producing orange orchards is not the easiest task. Just as in much of the USA, many rural areas have seen the departure of young adults to cities where more lucrative careers beckon.

We had hoped to find a young farmer who wanted to make a few extra bucks two or three times a year. Our idea was to find someone who could grow with us and our dream to “return to the land” before we are too old to make a go of it.

Our dream person would also have a passion for more natural farming methods. Satomi and I have always been interested in organic but as time passes (and we have seen the resilience of abandoned orange trees nurtured by wild grass) we find ourselves drawn to even more fringe methods that few people employ and have track records of success but require time and patience that many farmers who need to feed families and pay debts “now” don’t utilize.

We didn’t find our dream person. And, we didn’t find a young farmer who could grow over the years as a member of our team.
What we did find was the Silver Club. Many Japanese towns have these groups of silver haired retired farmers who have given up the long days of farm work. Instead, they work in groups for stretches of three or four hours to get the job done.

We feel lucky to have been able to receive their services. They know farming. It’s not the kind of farming that we aspire to but we can recognize their expertise and their commitment.

Honestly, I would not feel cheated if they charged twice what they do. But they don’t charge double and we are grateful for that.

It’s amazing. We have started to build a bigger team. It is crazily different from the team we set out to build but is good and it’s more than a start.

A farm takes a team and once again we have one!