I picked this one up from the library on recommendation from Taylor. It’s a quirky read about no-tillage farming and philosophy. I started reading it at the One Dish One Spoon Retreat (Weeknotes 12).
The book is about farming in Japan. It is about farming rye, barely, and citrus. At another level, it is about philosophy and a way of life. There is a radical anti-technology and back to the land message woven in amongst the thoughts on sowing.
The introduction explains that the author intially worked deep inside the scientific agricultural complex. He spent his youth learning the scientific way of farming and analyzing crop blights at the microbial level. After a crisis of faith, he left all that behind and went to be a simple farmer on the land.
I keep coming back to this quote from the chapter Toward a Do-Nothing Farming. The question “How about we not do X?” is very powerful, and I seldom ask it.
For thirty years I lived only in my farming and had little contact with people outside my own community. During those years I was heading in a straight line toward a “do-nothing” agricultural method.
The usual way to go about developing a method is to ask “How about trying this?” or “How about trying that?” bringing in a variety of techniques one upon the other. This is modern agriculture and it only results in making the farmer busier.
My way was opposite. I was aiming at a pleasant, natural way of farming which results in making the work easier instead of harder. “How about not doing this? How about not doing that?"—that was my way of thinking. I ultimately reached the conclusion that there was no need to plow, no need to apply fertilizer, no need to make compost, no need to use insecticide. When you get right down to it, there are few agricultural practices that are really necessary.
Here is a quote from Humanity Does Not Know Nature.
Why is it impossible to know nature? That which is conceived to be nature is only the idea of nature arising in each person’s mind. The ones who see true nature are infants. They see without thinking, straight and clear. If even the names of plants are known, a mandarin orange tree of the citrus family, a pine of the pine family, nature is not seen in its true form.
I appreciate this bit about mistakes.
I have made a lot of mistakes while experimenting over the years and have experienced failures of all kinds. I probably know more about what can go wrong growing agricultural crops than anyone else in Japan.
This simple picture of holistic vegetable gardening really speaks to me. Now, I just need to work on the chickens and the pigs.
Next let us talk about growing vegetables. One can either use a backyard garden to supply kitchen vegetables for the household or else grow vegetables on open, unused land.
For the backyard garden it is enough to say that you should grow the right vegetables at the right time in soil prepared by organic compost and manure. The method of growing vegetables for the kitchen table in old Japan blended well with the natural pattern of life. Children play under fruit trees in the backyard. Pigs eat scraps from the kitchen and root around in the soil. Dogs bark and play and the farmer sows seeds in the rich earth. Worms and insects grow up with the vegetables, chickens peck at the worms and lay eggs for the children to eat.
Published: May 22, 2025 @ 13:34.
Last Modified: May 22, 2025 @ 14:03.
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