Monday, April 21, 2008
2HJ daikon harvesting event: Straight from the fields to 2HJ recipients
Pull, cut head, turn over, cut tail, set down. Pull, cut head, turn over, cut tail, set down.
What sounds like a streamlined slaughtering ritual, in reality is the daikon (i.e., Japanese white radish) harvesting routine of the 20 or so volunteers that answered 2HJ’s call to Okabe on Sunday February 24. They collected over 2 metric tons of daikon (from about 10 tons available on the field), all of which had been delivered to 2HJ’s recipients by February 27, only three days after the volunteers harvested them!
The following Sunday, March 2, a team of children (and their caretakers), aged from elementary to high school, took their turn and pitched in to harvest over 1.5 additional tons of daikon from the field. Coming from several of the homes to which 2HJ provides food, the children enjoyed the rare opportunity of harvesting their own food and eating it fresh from the field. The staff from the various participating children’s homes brought back a bounty of daikon to supplement meals at their agencies.
For 2HJ, it was the first time in its history that the organization literally lived up to its name by harvesting a field of donated vegetables. Due to this year’s early frosts, the usual daikon harvest period was cut short, leaving entire fields of the vegetable to the plough. Fortunately, one field of high-quality, mouth-watering daikon remained for 2HJ to gather.
Looking back, 2HJ’s Executive Director Charles McJilton stated: “I always wanted to bring such an event to life.” But the idea only gained momentum when 2HJ’s staff member Haijima-san revived the connection he had made with Mr. Karasawa (the main driver of this event on the Okabe community’s side) while working for a farmer in Miyazaki, Kyushu, before joining 2HJ. When the two met again after Haijima-san’s return to Tokyo, conversations about the details of vegetable cultivation eventually lead to reflections on if and how there might be opportunities for farming communities to contribute in their own way to 2HJ’s activities.
Farmers invest a tremendous amount of time and effort in growing crops and vegetables, “much like parents raising and educating their kids,” as Mr. Karasawa explains. It gives them a rather nauseous feeling watching the results of their efforts go to waste, be it because there are not enough hands available for harvesting all of it, or due to some follies of the change in season. Consequently, joining forces with 2HJ seemed like an optimal way to kill two birds with one stone: Not only did some of the yet unharvested daikon get harvested, but also there were people happily looking forward to such a highly valued addition to their menu.
Tired, cold, excited, covered from head to toe in soil blown upon us by the marrow-chilling wind and looking forward to dropping by the nearby onsen (i.e., local hot spring) before returning to Tokyo, all volunteers agreed that working in the fields and harvesting daikon with our own hands had taken the stress of city-life, at least temporarily, away from us. And, if only for a few hours, we had made the somewhat surprising discovery that country life was not all about sweet strawberries and gorgeous green meadows. The life of a farmer can be tough—and the strong winds, blinding us at times, forcing us to swallow more than the odd grain of soil and sand, served as a good example of how tough that life can be.
As the first time ran so smoothly and was a positive, educational and last but not least fun experience for all participants, 2HJ hopes to continue this newly set up collaboration with the Okabe agricultural community, and maybe even set up links to other communities in the future.
And, as 2HJ is now looking into converting this originally one-off event into a regular, maybe twice-a-year activity, I am looking forward to another of those rare opportunities where I get to work with my hands. Maybe I will be allowed once more the occasional glimpse to the panorama of the snow-covered Northern Alps rising at the horizon. No doubt at the end of another such day I will again fall into my bed with a rare but soothing, satisfactory feeling of having accomplished a truly productive day.
Writer/Photographer: Pamela Ravasio
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