The People of Japan living in Countryside during Spring and Summer Season

When we say the countryside, it is a rural area or a vast part of farmland. It happened that my house in Japan has located in the countryside and lucky that they have one vast farmland just in the backyard. Most of the people living in the countryside own a vast area of farmland. Right after the winter, all people in Japan with a vast hectare of the farm are preparing for a planting season. I was just 5 months old here in Japan from the time we migrated here and I observed that people here are very disciplined in terms of many aspects. If you just stayed in the house and you have a vacant lot, you need to maximize the use of it and never take for granted.

It happened that my mother in law has huge farmland. Wayback to the time when they are still young, they used to plant grapes. My father in law is the one taking over all the grapes plantation. But right now that they are already 75 years old and above, the land that they used in farming before was left unattended for a long time ago. Nobody maintains the plant so they decided to stop the planting of grapes.

Fast forward to the present time now, one of their cousin in his 60`s is now borrowing the vacant farm just nearby their house. He planted it with Japanese beans or Edamame to sell for a living. The small part of the land remained vacant for us to plant what we wanted for our personal use. My mother in law decided to plant, tomatoes, watermelon, potato, sweet potato, onion, garlic, onion leek, eggplant, chili, cucumber, and melon.

I don’t have enough knowledge of planting but because of mother in law, I am slowly learning. First is we prepared the soil and covered it with a black vinyl plastic so the grass will not grow near the plant. Put the water hose underneath of it for proper water distribution.

Bought the plant seedling from the store at around 200 to 300yen after we prepared the soil. Once the soil is ready, we planted the seedling on it.

This is the Tractor known here in Japan we use to prepare the soil for planting.
Prepared the soil using this tractor. Designed to soften the soil and clean at the same time.
Planting the seedlings.
The soil here was covered in vinyl to avoid the grass growing near the plants.
Carefully arranging the plant to its designated  place.
Put the hole in the midsection with a space length equivalent with each plant on the vinyl plastic enough for the seedlings to fit in.
The kids water the plants after putting it on the soil.
Then water the seedlings after transferring it to the soil.

Being in the process of fighting Pandemic COVID-19, people usually stay in their house and limiting an unusual trip outside. I think planting is a good way to fight the stress that is caused in staying inside the house. This time of Pandemic is the best time to engage more on planting as the source of food that can give us any time. After two to three months of tender love and care, now the plants that we grow are now giving us a bountiful harvest every day.

Potatoes from our garden.
Potatoes showing healthy leaves just a week before we harvested it.
Potatoes harvesting from the garden.
Onion from our garden.
White onion.
The moment that we harvested the onion from our garden.
Harvested all of the onions in the garden.
The pumpkin from our garden.
The pumpkin that ready to harvest.
The garlic from our garden.
Garlic before we harvest all of it.
Tomatoes from our garden.
Tomatoes that giving us everyday supply from our garden.

Admiring People here in Japan as I learned different kinds of things for my daily lives here in Japan. Our children become responsible too in taking care of plants as we took care of the plants whenever we have time. The farm at our backyard became their playground literally every single day. Anticipating more planting and harvest moment with them every planting season.