Introducing our Japanese veggies!

#1 Edamame! 枝豆　えだまめ　Who doesn't love edamame? In the picture I was holding a branch with fresh soy bean pods attached (soy beans before they reach their fully ripen stage and become totally round and plump)

peel the pods off the branch, blanch them, season with a tiny bit of salt and they are heavenly! Japanese people eat these as snacks to go with their summer beer! hmmmm..it's not summer without a cold beer and edamame!



#2 Burdock root 牛蒡　ゴボウ
needless to say, burdock root is a root. Many gardeners in Canada only think of burdock as a weed, few know that they edible. They taste....woody, but in a good way. Very distinctly flavored! I love it! Japanese people usually use burdock to make GOBO KIMPIRA, which is julienned burdock roots and carrots stir fried with soy sauce, sugar and sesame seeds. It's almost like my favorite food!

You can also make a salad with shredded, cooked burdock tossed in a creamy, sesame based dressing. If you don't feel like cutting them into small strips, you can cook them in chunks, in a soup, for example.





sometimes burdock split and gone twisted underground, in which case the diggers need to possess the muscles of a true farmer, the patience and precision of an archaeologist in order to dig out a perfect and intact burdock. It's really not a food you should take for granted. All that effort went into growing, digging, washing off the mud, cutting and cooking, it's the kind of food that requires the eater's overflowing gratitude


#3 Shiso　しそ　
Perilla, also nicknamed Japanese mint. A Japanese herb. a flavor so unique you will remember forever! use it to compliment dishes like you would with other herbs. There is also the red/purple variety. The red ones are commonly used to flavour Umeboshi, Japanese preserved plums and many other pickled dishes.



#4 Myoga みょうが　and Japanese Butterbur　フキ

My mom panted these in the green house, however, none of us know much about how to use these two vegetables. I only ocassionaly shred myoga (flavor wise, it resembles young ginger. The plant also resembles a ginger plant) to put on top of roasted and peeled eggplants.

A Japanese butterbur plant resembles rhubarb. The stems are the edible part, they are usually prepared in such a way that the texture and colour remind one of celery. They are rather rough and bitter. I was never a big fan of this vegetabl to be honest.



#5 Japanese cucumbers　キュウリ

Size don't matter! These cucumbers, though much smaller, are in almost everyway superior than the normal cucumbers and english cucumbers: crunchier, sweeter, less seeds...




#6 Hollow hearted vegetable (literal translation )　
空心菜 ,　エンサイ、クーシンサイ

This is more of a Chinese, rather than Japanese vegetable. The stem and the leaves are both delicious. The stem is hollow, hence the name. It's got a rather nutty flavour. Taiwanese like it quick stir fried with garlic.



7. Tsurumurasaki　皇宮菜　ツルムラサキ

I don't really consider this as a Japanese vegetable either, but more of a Chinese vegetable, . Although it was in a Japanese farm that I first harvested it. Like many other much celebrated Japanese food such as fermented soybeans, grated mountain yam, okura, this vegetable has a slimy texture. It may be used to thicken soups or stir fry dishes. The most simple way to prepare this vegetable is to blanch it, and then lightly dress it with soy sauce, oil, and perhaps bonito fish shavings on top

More beautiful art by Myshree and A-ma's debut!

More of Myshree's beautiful beautiful watercolour!



flowers she bought from the farmer's market!



The woods and the pond in our farm



mesmorizing sunset moment and a corner of one greenhouse



Gorgeous painting of sour cherries



A-ma painting with acrilic!



Awesome job! A-ma! You are NOT allowed to say that you have no artistic talents no more!!!!

Hierloom Tomatoes

Black Krim, garden peach, orange strawberry and Roma tomato (not exactly heirloom)


Golden sweet--super sweet cherry tomatoes, almost like candies



orange strawberry, also featured in one of Myshree's watercolor paintings.

Have you ever wondered why tomatoes are always red? Honestly, I had never wondered so until I saw my first heirloom tomatoes. Most types of tomatoes you see at supermarkets are not chosen because of their taste or nutritional value, but of their maximum yield, disease resistance, suitability for mechanized picking and shipping, as well as their ability to be picked before fully ripening. Mind you, supermarket tomatoes are almost always picked unripe. They become red as they are being sorted, packed and shipped before they appear before you eyes in supermarkets. That’s why supermarket tomatoes are too often tasteless, thick-skinned, and devoid of nutrition that tomatoes should rightfully process.

An Heirloom tomato, on the other hand, are so packed full of flavours and juice! It can be orange, yellow, green, purple, pink, brown, or even white in colour. The shape and size may be unfamiliar to your perception of a tomatoe; the surface may not be smooth but shows ribbing or fuzz; it may even be multi-coloured or striped! Heirloom tomatoes are almost always grown by smaller-scale farmers so it means that heirloom tomatoes not only taste more flavourful and juicer, but they are also fresher, more nutritious and mostly vine-ripen.

We are one of the very few heirloom tomato growers in our farmer’s market, and to be honest our heirloom tomatoes aren’t selling as well as we anticipated. When I went to Vancouver last time I stumbled upon a Wednesday farmer’s market in front of Main street station. I was flabbergasted by the varieties of heirloom tomatoes that were being sold there. One organic farm from the Okanogan claimed they grow more than 100 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes and they brought at least 30 kinds to the market. And oh boy you should see the long line-up of shoppers that were waiting to get the tomatoes! That’s the difference between City shoppers and country shoppers: City folks are more open to novelty stuff and are willing to pay a little more for it. Well, we just have to try harder to convince Comox folks that our green tomatoes have all the characteristics of a ripe tomato, although they are green!

Gourd-geous!

My mom planted some bottle gourds for fun last year. After drying, they turned hallow and light. A pile of dried gourds had been sitting in a corner of our living room for months inconspicuously until Myshree spotted them. She came up with the idea to paint these gourds, so she and my auntie and my grandma spent a Saturday morning making some wicked decorative art!



We came back from the farmer's market to this colourful scene!



grandma totally absorbed into painting gourds



Myshree painted thess AWESOME figurines of Lijen and Sherlene. I modified my dad's mouth a little bit and by a stroke of genius it completely captured his spirit



Myshree painted my amiable grandma. love this!



let the protective spray dry

Old man series

Myshree takes a lot of pictures, and Paul is often her model by default. It cracked me up seeing these photos. I have never seen a burdock-digging photo that screams ZEN as this photo does!



年長志工賣力挖牛蒡 old man digging burdock root



老人與狗 old man and the dog #1



老人與狗之二 old man and the dog #2



老人湖邊禪坐 old man contemplating the divine by the pond



老人收麥 old man harvesting rye

Artist in the house

Paul and Myshree (pronounced exactly like my name Michelle, but what on earth did this spelling come from?) came to our farm about a week ago. Paul is the principal of a certain community college in Taipei (He also has many other important jobs which I will omit here) and Myshree is an esteemed artist who does awesome watercolor and artistic embroidery. Myshree is a ball of bubbly energy, and Paul is a master of sarcastic humor. Myshree paints, cooks for us, cut my mom’s hair, and led my grandma out of her phobia for panting. I’ve heard that artists are the kind of people who never lose that child-like curiosity and fascination towards things. It’s inspirational to see how an artist is inspired by the beautiful things that are so easily taken for granted in our world. I was granted the permission to post some beautiful art work that Myshree created within her first week of being here, enjoy!






our heirloom tomato: orange strawberry



Dianthus, a beautiful edible flower I planted this spring

Summer love

So after Janto and Laura left (June 12th perhaps?), my mom and I were the only ones on the farm because my dad was in Taiwan visiting my po-po (grandma). We panicked a little bit because no prospective WWOOFers had contacted us yet, and then out of the blue three Germans emailed us from Naniamo and asked if they could come as soon as possible. Sabrina, Jackie and Robert chose our farm as their first ever WWOOFing farm.

And since then we've had no short of help.

After the trio left, Andrew from New Brunswick came.

Part of the reasons why we've had lots of help is owing to our partnership with LUSH Valley Food Action Society on the "Job Creation's Program". This program employs four trainees who are learn about farming at our farm, the Red Fish Ranch (a talapia farm), a cucumber farm, a dairy farm, Tsolum farm and Lannon Rd Garden (the last two are dedicated to growing vegetables for lower income families) Since the middle of June, 2 trainees have been coming to our farm to work.

Another part of the reasons why we've had ample help is due to our well developed skills to recruit our family and friends into working for us for free. Summer is an exuberant time because we always have visitors. So far we all had our respective friends come over to visit: dad's high school friends, mom's high school best friend forever auntie Jullia, auntie Julia's son Allen, her friend, her friend's friend, and her friend's friend's kids, my friends Meghan, Michele and Michael and my other friend Alice and her best friend Dustin.

In August the demography of this household has been over-represented by Taiwanese middle aged folks. We have three middle aged WWOOFers from Taiwan (they have many other much cooler attributes other than being middle-aged, but I'll leave those till future posts). My mom's sister and her mom (aka my grandma) also came for their annual visit/labour camp.

Growing up with my paternal grandma who loves to host people, cook up delicious feasts, our house always had larger than normal volume of pots, plates and utensils. Though none of my parents nor I are as fanatic about hosting dinner parties as my grandma, I guess hosting has become an intrinsic part of our lives. Furthermore, a family farm is a perfect place to bring people together, an ideal set-up for friends and family who want to come for a longer visit. There are always things to do, and these things are almost always refreshing to our guest. Although having too many people all at once can be tiring (especially for my mom) sometimes, it's been a blessing to have the company of loved ones, and to be able to share our lifestyle and wholesome food with them, not to mention that most of our guests are quite self-sufficient and are rather willing to have their labour exploited by us ;)



rice hat (Dustin)



another rice hat! (Andrew)



more rice hats! (Andrew, Michelle, Dustin, Alice)



mom and her friends hanging out and working, taking refuge under the shade from a super hot summer day

Endless picking

Out of all the farm works, picking can easily be the most gratifying and the most monotonous job. Since June, we have begun picking quite a variety of produce from their viney or bushy plants: sugar snap peas, shelling peas, raspberries, blueberries, different kinds of tomatoes, fava beans, cucumber...... By virtue of the large and intensive production per plants, peas and raspberries (blueberries too, but we only have a few bushes of blueberries) requires the most frequent and rigorous picking. When the production of these produce peaked, picking could seem endless. Sometimes it felt as if these peas or berries were ripening by the hour. After I spent 2 hours going through a row of plants, I would come back to where I was and found a bunch of what seemed to be newly ripen ones! One slightly dangerous aspect of picking peas or berries is that these little babies are so sweet and irresistible that I just can't stop popping them in my mouth as I pick them! (one for the bucket, one for me, one for the bucket, one for me.....) Half way into the the picking session I often found myself consumed by this mechanical, compulsive snacking habit although I was already very full. And never underestimate how incredibly full berries alone can make you feel!
Luckily, I managed to entertain myself to survive the endless picking. I was introduced by my friend Ginger to this podcast called "stuff you should know" by two intelligent, witty, slightly nerdy guys called Josh and Chuck in May, so I downloaded tons of the episodes at once and listened to them as I picked all the peas in June.
If you ever get stuck doing mindless, repetitive jobs and your work environment is i-pod friendly, I will not hesitate to suggest listening to these guys for entertainment and random, quirky trivialities such as: "Do toads cause warts?" "Bizarre ways to die", "How alien hand syndrome works?" "How Agent orange works?" etc.
There was an episode about "Is it better to eat local or organic" which is quite relevant to the issue of sustainably farming, so if you want to know more about the debate between eating local and eating organic organic explained in a witty fashion, check it: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/stuff-you-should-know-podcast.htm

oh! and one of my favorite episode is: "Bizarre ways to die"

Laura and Janto

Laura and Janto came to our farm at the beginning of May and bestowed us with their wonderful presence for six weeks. These pair are from Germany; despite their young age, they demonstrated impressive maturity, responsibility and mastery on baking Fonta cakes (apparently a staple at any German kid's birthday party). This awesome multi-purpose cake exhibited in the picture below being one of them.



This cake congratulated Hye Yeon's birthday, bade farewell to Hye Yeon, all the same while welcomed Mamiko and Michelle's return from her short trip to the East



Laura and Janto's stay overlapped with Hye Yeon (Front left) and Mamiko (back left), both of whom stayed for a rather brief but lovely two weeks. This meal featured Hye Yeong's tasty bulgogi and a group of focused eaters



Laura and Janto hanging laundry in a hot summer afternoon



Laura and Janto holding bottles of German-approved British Columbia beer



a slightly blurry shot of beautiful Laura holding a bouquet of beautiful and gigantic peonies



An also blurry shot of Janto holding a dead trapped mouse. I think he was chewing his breakfast cereal still, but here it looks as if he's chewing the same piece of deadly cheese which the mouse was going after



poor thing

Out in the fields

translanted squashes



zucchini on the left and three rows of sweet corns on the right



big bog-choi covered in remay and fava beans


from left to right: raspberry bushes, blueberries, rhubarbs, some spinach, lettuce, over-winter green onions/leeks, gobo (burdock roots)

flowers that fortell deliciousness

blueberry blossoms


flowers of shelling peas



flowers of fava beans



the flowers of fig (where? where are the flowers? actually the fig that commonly known as a fruit is actually a false fruit; it is a clump of seeds and internal flowers that grow together to form a single mass.)