Sado - Cooking and field work with Megumi

Today we're visiting Megumi. She lives in a house that belongs to one of her friends and is located next to a dairy farm. She also has her own field where we'll be helping her this afternoon. Fortunately, Megumi speaks enough English to have a good conversation. For the morning, cooking is planned. We'll be making Chimaki with ingredients from her garden and her friends' gardens. Chimaki are rice balls wrapped in bamboo leaves and then steamed. The preparation is a bit like making risotto - when the rice is slightly cooked, it is transferred to the bamboo leaves. Everything is cooked in a camping oven that burns wood smoke-free and gets extremely hot. As a side dish, we'll make Fuki, a plant that looks like random weeds growing by the roadside. We have to harvest the Fuki stalks individually. Then they are rubbed in salt and cooked for a few minutes. Once they are cooked, all the stalks have to be peeled by hand individually. They are worse than peeling asparagus. Finally, they are stir-fried and tofu cubes are added to the pot. Unfortunately, in my opinion, they still taste like random weeds from the roadside. But the Chimaki are really delicious. After eating, we'll go to the field with Megumi. At first glance, you can't recognize the field as such because there is more weeds growing here than anything else. She explains to us that she doesn't see the plants as enemies, but as an infinite resource. With them, she can make small compost heaps on which she then plants her vegetables. So we help her cut down the plants so they don't get too tall and form piles about 2 meters long, which will later become a bed. It is important not to take too much from one spot and to only cut about half of the plant so that it can regrow. After a while, the work becomes very tiring, and it is impressive that Megumi does this alone two to three times a week. In any case, she is very grateful for the help, and at the end of the day, you feel like you have really accomplished something.