Farmer Sachan – A primer on dirt, black cats and planting rice
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- Farmer Sachan – A primer on dirt, black cats and planting rice
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Sachan’s school is just way too savvy at times. They send entire grades off to the mountains for three days and two nights. Parents mark the dates with great anticipation. Teachers mark the date after. That’s when they get a day off to recover while the school designates that day a “Study at home” day. Oh so savvy!
The day after should of course be labeled as “scrub down day.” You know how this works. I even remember how it worked when I was seven. Mom and dad came and picked me up form my heavenly perferct week of camp. What made it so perfect? Let’s see…
- no parents!
- horses
- campfires
- bows and arrows
- NO BATHS!
Unfortunately the seven year old version of myself was not smart enough to keep this last bit of information away from the parents. That’s right, Carolyn (you know her as the calm, always smiling grand-spoiler to my daughter) had a classic level hissy fit. I was whisked off to the hotel where conveniently my mom had a wire brush, three packages of steel wool, an extra large container of Comet and a bar of homemade lye soap ready to rid my skin and hair of every last scrap of camp dirt.
Sachan is a girl. So there were no layers of hidden dirt. I still met her at the door with a scrub brush and water hose just to make sure. She made it inside before being instructed to strip and bath. I was taking any chances.
The highlight of “study at home day” was waiting for her bag to arrive. Did I mention the school is savvy? Want to know one of the greatest things about living in Japan? Double Black Cat. Double Black Cat is a delivery service. We use Double Black Cat for every trip to and from the airport. Our bags go the airport a two days before we do and come to our front door the day after. This same service will deliver your groceries. For these trips, the parents send the child’s bag two days before they arrive at their campus in the mountains. The girls are marched off the buses and sent to fetch their bag from the delivery room. Parents fill out a form, and the bags are left in the delivery room the day they leave, arriving at the their doorsteps the next morning. So easy, so convenient.
So the bag arrived. I only scared the green and yellow uniformed Double Black Cat delivery man a little. Apparently its not customary to greet them with a scrub brush and hose. The bag made it inside, contents emptied and the washing began. It was while emptying the bag that Sachan produced the rice plants. (I knew I smelled dirt!)
Now we had already heard the tale of how they planted rice. How the girls were surprised when they stepped into the rice paddy water and found (GASP!) mud under the water! (Ah, wouldn’t it be wonderful is rice grew in mini cement swimming pools.) And how Sachan, the crazy sinewy blond foreigner, planted 48 rice plants.
How exactly do you plant rice? Well here is Farmer Sachan’s step by step instructions:
Go to closest store and buy a mini rice patty.
Put dirt in mini rice patty.
Plant rice plants.
Flood mini rice patty
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Hi! Just wanted to let you know I visited your website today and read about Farmer Sachan and her rice plants. It was fun hearing about the Double Black Cat delivery service. Some of our motor cycle friends send their luggage ahead of them by UPS. Where there’s a will there’s a way. Love to all.