The Morning After the Typhoon

 Mt. Fuji looked like this.

I could see the damage to the corn from the roof. This is ground zero.

The corn looked like this before the typhoon.

Yesterday, the zucchini in another farmer's field was curved.

Today, it's twisted.

His corn is a little bent, but still standing.

Our vegetable stand is open today.

Cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, carrots and onions made it to the shelves. Bags of edamame, too. Some of their stalks were flattened and muddied.

A little more damage in the next post.

These photos were taken with a Panasonic Lumix 10x.

Changes after the Storm

The storm stopped trains in Tokyo and grounded planes. From a distance it looks like the fields out here in west Tokyo came through the storm okay.


Some of the netting was blown off,

but there was also some damage. It could have been worse.


This idea worked well.


The vegetable stand man and his wife have taken down the boards and are back to work. See this post to see the preparations for the storm.

Changes in the Field

Our vegetable stand man usually covers some young plants with plastic to protect them.


This morning he was putting nets over the plastic for more protection. A big storm is coming toward Japan.



It is a lot of work! (The patch of green in the right foreground is broccoli that has been harvested, so he's not protecting it.)


The farmer of the other field had help. They put nets down to prevent the plastic from flying away. This is the first time I have seen them do it.


Work continued as usual after all the net was laid out. By 10:00 AM the wind was already picking up a lot. Fortunately, the nets were holding everything down.


After lunch, the vegetable stand man and his wife closed up for the day. They hammered boards to the end of the stand to protect it from the strong winds that may come our way.

This Hakusai Gets a Chair of its Own

150 yen for a full head of Chinese cabbage! Direct from the field.

Click to enlarge the photo and you'll see another, bigger hakusai on the bottom shelf. Can you see the farmer in the shadows? He's minding the store while his wife is home cooking lunch. She left earlier with a cabbage in her bicycle basket. He's in the fields all day except at lunch time and late afternoon when his wife is making dinner. He is 86!

Busy Even Today

Even though it was labor Thanksgiving in Japan today, our vegetable stand man and his wife were busy. He cut the stems of yatsugashira. He biked them over to the stand where his wife stripped the outer skin off them. She put them on top of the stand to dry. Click here to see how they used to dry it.

This is yatsugashira in the field. It looks like sato imo (taro) but it has red stalks. Click here for a post about the root of the yatsugashira.

Kids Web Japan--Labor Thanksgiving

Cutting Cabbage

Our vegetable stand man walked along this row squeezing the heads of these cabbages. He chose one and cut it off at its base. Then he cut some of the outer leaves away from the head.

He put it in his basket along with another kind of cabbage to take to his vegetable stand to sell.

But first he stopped to check the broccoli.

Our vegetable stand man pulled some onions and tied them together to sell. That dark plastic thing is a shower stool. Some people use them to sit while they wash themselves before getting into the bathtub. He's using it for a field stool.

That's a bundle of dried onion stalks. He used them to tie the onions together.

Here are some onions with their roots still in the ground. They're waiting to be pulled. I bought some from his vegetable stand. They are nice and sweet.

He has a lot of them!

More Field Work

This is the field behind our house. This farmer put straw mats between his rows of corn. Click on the picture to see what is in his truck.

Here he is getting something from the van. His helper is taking a rest. They covered some rows of vegetables with nets. Those metal poles stuck in the ground will be bent and covered, too.

Field Work

Here's our vegetable stand man working in his onion field. The corn on this side of that path (in the foreground) belongs to another farmer. These pictures were taken from our roof garden. Click on them to enlarge them.

He farms that whole area on the left side of the metal railings. His wife sometimes helps him. I just found out that he is 84 years old!

Out to Dry

This is called zuiki imo, the stems (kuki) of a potato plant. The potato is a big potato that is eaten at New Year's. I'll be on the lookout to get a picture of it.

Baba told me that she doesn't particularly like it so she doesn't buy and serve it. It has a unique flavor. She said that it was something that was used in times when there wasn't much food. But people still eat and enjoy it in miso soup and in other vegetable broth dishes.
The stems are dried. The outer skin is stripped off. Then the stems are chopped and used in dishes.

Winter Vegetables

That's imo guki on the left and leeks on the right.

On the top shelf: cabbage, Chinese cabbage, bag of taro

middle shelf: turnips, spinach, broccoli

bottom shelf: leeks, daikon (Japanese radish)

Yesterday, children were walking home carrying daikon, Japanese radishes. Little Brother planted and pulled daikon in one of the nearby when he was in elementary school.

Click on the labels below for more posts about these vegetables.