A shift from pesticide-free farming to natural farming
As you can tell from its name, ”Teraoka Shizen Nouen” (Teraoka Natural Farm) is a farm that makes crops by natural farming. This means that no agrichemicals or chemical fertilizer are used. Up to this point, it may sound like an ordinary organic farm, but what’s amazing here is that they don’t plow the fields or remove the weeds. The farmland is left completely the way it is. Yes, they make crops in a very ”natural” way.
The owner of ”Teraoka Shizen Nouen” is Ichiro Teraoka who started farming after quitting an office job 7 years ago. Wanting to grow food that is safe and delicious, he made a challenge to grow crops in an organic way, without using chemical fertilizer or agrichemicals. He tried using red pepper soaked in ”shochu” (distilled spirit) as a homemade pesticide. He spent many hours pulling out weeds and eliminating bugs, and tried other methods of organic farming. However, one day, he saw some seeds that spilled out of a bag sprouting and bearing fruit in the corner of the field, and realized that he was putting too much effort, and it was best to ”let the nature do its job”. So Teraoka went back to study the basics of ”natural farming” and eventually formed his style of ”not doing anything” to raise crops.
There is no waste in the natural cycle of life
Teraoka believes that crops grown naturally have all the necessary nutrients they’re supposed to have. So he considers ”over-grown” vegetables and seedlings that are usually pulled out to thin out the field to be good vegetables. The ”over-grown” vegetables are those that have grown too much and started to flower. This phenomenon is commonly seen with radishes and Chinese cabbage which belong to the cruciferous vegetable family.
On the other hand, seedlings are just young vegetables taken out for the purpose of thinning out the field. So both kinds of vegetables offer somewhat of a different taste because the stage of growth is different, but they both can be enjoyed as vegetables if prepared in suitable ways.
”Teraoka Shizen Nouen” is a farm that makes you realize the fact that there is no such thing as waste in the natural cycle of life.
