18 Sept 2016

The Importance of Stopping

Hello friends! 

It has been a while since my last post. My parents from the Philippines visited us in Hokkaido for about ten days. I have been going almost non-stop in establishing the homestead while working on other farms and meeting with different people I did not notice how the season is slowly changing. With the arrival of my parents, I stopped from doing all those things and noticed a lot of things have been going around me. 

We went to an organic farm near Hakodate City in a town called Kami no Kuni, translated as the Country from Above. This is the place where the Japanese first entered Hokkaido. The farmer grows organic Canola and "Egoma". Egoma is similar to Perilla and the seeds and leaves contain Omega-3. This is a very good alternative for those who are vegetarian and do not eat fish. They operate in a small-scale while processing the seeds and produce their own oil. It's a good example of value-adding your produce so that you don't have to compete with other farmers who sell their produce as raw material. Also, you can give emphasis on the safety of your product and offer a unique taste to it. This farmer specifically presses the canola at a low temperature to maintain the taste and preserve the beneficial oil. They then use the wastes from oil-pressing as fertilizer. Besides the canola wastes, they also use compost to enrich the soil.


5000 square meters of Egoma field soon to be harvested

They use a Combine to harvest the seeds but the leaves are also edible after proper cooking

We then went back to our land in Iwamizawa City. I was very excited to show them how much progress I have made in a span of two months! They wanted to do some gardening work so I told them to do some hand weeding!

They were supposed to be in vacation!

Teaching my brother how to use the grass cutter

I was really happy that they get to experience even just a fraction of what I have been doing. Touching the soil and grass while breathing the clean air from our land will surely awaken something within them and the positive feelings that emerged will surely enrich the space around us!

 They have never seen me ride a tractor before so I showed them how to use it!

We all agreed where we will build our house

With the arrival of my family, I learned to stop. Stop all the things and thinking and allow things to unfold before me. I was so focused and so into the turbulent flow of the events around me that I almost forgot to stop and allow the mud to settle. Allowing my thoughts and actions to be influenced by the mud made my each step unsure. Only decisions which arise from a clear mind result to the right path. With this stopping, my mind slowly settled and gave me the opportunity to clear my mind and finally make my foundation firmly rooted.

So please, I urge you to stop for a while. Notice the soil, the ground you are standing on. Feel the wind touching your skin and the water touching your mouth as you drink.

I met this cat in front of a Buddhist temple in Hakodate. It stopped, so I stopped.