Archive Meme

I was doing my best to ignore the Archive Meme that Jenny tagged me for, but since I am sick as a dog and spending the entire day sitting on my ass next to the wood burning stove now seemed like as good a time as any. The directions for the meme are at the bottom of the post. I omitted the part about tagging 5 other people since I am anti-social by nature.

1. Family : The best way to celebrate any occasion, in my opinion anyway, is to get the family together and eat and drink to excess. This post talks about our Holiday Feast a couple of days after Christmas.
   
   
2. Friends : This would more appropriately be labeled neighbors, but even if they are not close friends good neighbors are great to have. I have been able to borrow a plow from a neighbor down the road for the last two years, and have been the happy recipient of two old trailers from my next door neighbor which I transformed into a utility farm trailer and a mobile chicken coop.
   
   
3. Me : One of my passions is cooking food over an open fire. We tend to grill year round even in the snow and rain. Here is the rotisserie Danielle got me for Father's Day last year. Its funny (given my anti-social admission above) that one of my favorite things is to BBQ up a pork shoulder for a bunch of people, like when we have our Memorial Day BBQ for friends and CSA members. To steal a line from Clerks "I hate people, but I love gatherings. Isn't it ironic."
   
   
4. Something I Love : This one is easy and hard at the same time. Easy since the thing I love most is my wife and family, hard since I don't tend to post sappy blogs. These posts about birthdays (Julia's, and Dainielle's)will have to do.
   
   
5. Bloggers Choice : As the name of my blog implies the adventures we get into trying to farm, which are largely the result of us having no prior experience, are the most memorable things that happen on the farm. Here are two posts about learning to castrate pigs and getting them to the butcher, which demonstrate this point
   

Archive Meme Instructions: Go back through your archives and post the links to your five favorite blog posts that you've written. ... but there is a catch: Link 1 must be about family. Link 2 must be about friends. Link 3 must be about yourself, who you are... what you're all about. Link 4 must be about something you love. Link 5 can be anything you choose. I think this is a great way to circulate some of the great older posts everyone had written, return to a few great places in our memories and also learn a little something about ourselves and each other that we may not know.

Turning Japanese --- I really think so

I was in Japan last week for a workshop related to my day job. It is amazing to see how the Japanese use space to its utmost. Parking lots had triple-decker elevator parking devices. One car was stored up in the air, one was at ground level and a third was held underground. The entire unit went up and down on hydraulics like the lift at a garage. (Sorry I failed to get a picture of this.)

The other noticeable area that they utilized space optimally is in agriculture. Almost any space between houses, warehouses, stores, basically anywhere there was some flat ground, held a garden. Since it is the middle of winter most of these gardens were pretty bare, but the hoop houses were plentiful and the cabages and onions that were still growing looked gorgeous, in perfectly straight rows with nary a weed in sight. The fields that were farrow had beautiful rich black soil just waiting for the weather to warm enough for spring planting.

I also saw vast expanses of rice paddies. They were all drained for the winter but you could see the canal system and pumps that allowed them to be flooded. I apologize for the glare in the pictures, the sun was shining off the windows of a train.
Tokyo is amazing. It is more Manhattan then Manhattan. Large portions of the city are as billboarded and lit up as times square.


But there are still signs of the past such as this Kabuki Theater,


Buddhist Temple

and most notably the Imperial Palace.