Brett Fry

Great photos and fantastic food. I wish I was there with all of you!

Hey guys,
I've been living in Japan for a bit now and have also been on a search for Fukuoka inspired farms - but have yet to find any. I did a bit of Wwoofing some years back and we searched out and visited those farms that practiced natural farming (none of the farms in the Japan WWOOF directory even mentioned Fukuoka-san). We did find some nice farms but the methods and principles weren't quite what we were looking for.

I've been growing Fukuoka's Happy Hill rice for four years ago and have tried unsuccessfully to duplicate his methods. After the first two years I felt that I had learned enough to possibly have a chance of success but each year some random problem would arise and wipe out the crop. I would agree that the few Japanese who know of Fukuoka-san believe that his methods are too difficult to replicate and prefer to follow Kawaguchi-san.

There is a farmer near Fukuoka city, Takao Furuno, who has developed a very effective, permaculture-like system of duck, fish, and rice farming. Although he uses machines his methods are duplicable without. His runs a very successful farming business and his ideas have spread into parts of Asia.

Also, this film looks like it will be worth watching http://finalstraw.sociecity.com/index.html

thanks for the advice everyone. 

i collected a couple bags of this stuff and it was surprising heavy.  it's sand-like in texture and appearance - most of the ash had been taken away by the wind.   a farming friend said all the good stuff had burned away during the explosion......though I'm doubtful.

i guess i'll just pile it up in the field for a year and experiment from there.

hey all,

so i live in southern japan and we've got a volcano that recently awakened and has been spewing lots of ash.  some areas have already received a foot of ash but my area has only gotten a light dusting.  farmers closer to the volcano have lost crops of leafy veggies due to the accumulations and locals are already predicting the upcoming rice season to be poor.
i had thought that volcanic ash would make a good fertilizer/soil amendment and was planning to use some in my field, but local wisdom here says otherwise.  are volcanic soils so different from volcanic ash?  what about the daikons they grow on a nearby volcano that reach 100lbs.?!

any wisdom much appreciated.

i'm growing tobacco this year for the first time and wish i'd found some of this info earlier.  i live in southern japan and lots of farmers grow tobacco as a cash crop.  there's some growing across the street from me and just uphill from my field.  they use a ton of chemicals and after heavy rains my field catches the runoff.  i've built canals to move it and it's noxious smell through swiftly.  I've read that smoking some varities prior to curing (and a lengthy aging) means you're getting about 40% nicotine and could experience a bit of pain.  that's probably why many seed packages label it as poisonous.  modern cigarettes have about 10% nicotine/gram (% increasing regularly to encourage addiction!).

i'm growing N. x sanderae, which i later found out is grown for flowers only.  I'm enjoying the fragrant flowers but looking forward to curing and smoking some for kicks.  maybe even roll it in bamboo leaves as mentioned above....

the leaves are huge so my original idea was to plant heavily and use them as mulch.  glad to hear it's also rich in nitrogen!

hey paul,

i just stumbled across this old post of yours while digging around the forums.  i was on a similar search for fukuoka's rice last year and happened upon a group at kyoto university that actively promotes and publishes the works of fukuoka.  a week later i had the 'happy hill'.

i'd like to send you some myself but my attempts last year ended in failure and i've only enough to make another go of it this year.  so send me a pm and i'll give you his email address.  you can also buy books by fukuoka that you probably won't find anywhere else.

good luck.  and if you happen to have a successful harvest using his dryland techniques i'd love to hear about it!