BEE Japan

On September 29th, we left Ueki and the yummy cooking of Lloyd and Kay, to climb mount Aso. For some reason, we were riding quite fast that morning and reached our meeting spot where the 265 and 325 much earlier than expected. Lindsey and I opted to take the most direct route to Merriemont, the organic farm we would live, learn and work on for the next two days, while Rocio and Salem went into “central” Aso to hang out a bit first. We knew rain was likely that day, but we were not prepared for what was to come.

The photo above is at Takamori station, just before the storm. A bunch of students came over and checked out what we were carrying, doing, etc. They were really fun people, and even gave us some snacks from their lunches! Five minutes after the photo though, large drops of water started falling on the bags Lindsey and I were unpacking in the street, the warning signs of a coming downpour. Shu, the owner of Merriemont warned us that he lived on the top of a mountain and that it would be a tough climb. So Lindsey and I we were in the process of unpacking all unnessary items for the next two days, to store in the coin lockers at the train station.
Salem and Rocio had decided a meeting spot ahead of us for 4:30, but later, we would find out the storm redirected them both. Lindsey and I sat debating at the station cafe over whether it was safe or not to climb the mountain to Shu’s place and at about 4:15, headed out shivering.
The rest is a bit muddled. With my cell phone out of range and useless, dark falling and incomplete directions to the farm, Lindsey and I were weighing our options. There were very few buildings around to work with. We checked out a place that looked like it would shield us from rain for the night, but no phone to let anyone know about our situation, although we did have enough food and water to make it through the night. We figured it was best to keep going, and hope to run into a house where people were home. As luck would have it, at about 6:30 we found a house, and although they were reluctant to come to the door (I think our appearance scared them a bit, as neither of us look Japanese and in the countryside…we can scare people just by being foreigners) thankfully, someone did. Phew! (For a moment there, we weren’t sure if she would)
Before we knew it, a stranger (the woman’s son) was loading our bikes into his truck, I hopped in the back and held on for dear life, raindrops were smacking into my face at full spead in the pitch dark, and we were at Merriemont farm.
Salem and Rocio had managed to meet up with eachother after enduring some dangerous terrain and called Shu for a ride from Takamori station as the storm had gotten too intense to ride in.

Shu had a great curry dinner waiting for us AND a really fun shower. Check out the photos on our flickr page. You stand in a bucket and turn on the faucet above, which is connected to a big drum outside of rain water heated with firewood. We all immediately thought of Little House on the Prarie with nothing but the curtains between us showering and the dinningroom table. Shu crafted and built the cabin with very cool bunkbeds, solar heating and lots of other great details.

I’m afraid we didn’t get to help Shu too much those two days as it continued to storm throughout our time there. We did plant a few things though…spring onions, hakkusai and something kind of like spinach, and did so in a pretty cool way. It wasn’t your average farming. Rather than clear the weeds and till the earth, we cut the tall weeds into smaller pieces and let them lay in the planting bed so as to preserve the diversity of bugs (big bugs like bigger plants generally…and they eat the little ones to keep a good balance) and to serve as nutrients. We barely dug up the earth so as to keep the natural layering of nutrients and life(bugs) as well. I’m probably not doing Shu’s explanation very much justice, but the main point I got from it was, that nature has a pretty good system going on its own, so if we can interfere as little as possible with it, we’re likely to reap the most benefits from it. Nature is naturally productive and well balanced in other words.
As for the ride out of Aso… I’ll say three things; it was sunny, all down hill, and I’ve never seen Lindsey with a smile so big.