All flattened!

Hooray! Just when I had more than enough of cutting branches. My hands aching...but finally, the plot is all flat, i.e. all bamboo have been de-branched. Now I just have to sort them out. Recently I have been accompanied by literally tens of thousands of flies who gathered whenever I kicked over a bamboo shoot and feasted on it.

All flat

All flat, taken from opposite side

Just started to clean up the tiny branches

As mentioned before, I have to sort the bamboo into 3 groups. I already started with the tiniest branches which I am going to put alongside the north side, and make a kind of a border there.

like so

I will also cut as many bamboo I can from the north side so there will be none left to fall over my land when wind blows. I went up there by the way and had a look. There is quite a lot of bamboo but it is nowhere near as dense as my plot was. I think if I fell them and continue felling the new ones a couple of times a year, it should be manageable. I just have to make sure who the lazy owner is just in case. But from the looks of it, the land has been left on its own for years and years, except for those who come and pick shoots to eat.

north side. You can see hint of the border I am making with tiny branches

So..plan-wise, I would say I am on track with the schedule.

1 done, 14 to go

At home, things are popping out a little here and there. Good and bad things. Let's get rid of the bad things first. I spent a couple of mornings picking all plum pockets I could see from the tree. Next year I plan to spray the tree with neem oil early on to prevent the infection. But this year I guess removing the bad things that pop out is the only thing I can do.

there is a lot of it

Now to the good things. Strawberries are blooming like crazy and I hope I can eat some sweet home made berries this year.

The bed in the backyard

The zucchini seeds have germinated and tiny leafs are out near the chicken run.

And the chickens keep staring at them with hunger

And near the front gate, peas I planted are ready to harvest so I will use them for cooking. Most people just plant a bush or flowers near their front gate but I figured why not plant something I can eat.

I just let it climb wild. Didn't water or anything.

Invaders from beneath

I spent some time planting tomatoes, cucumbers, two kinds of zucchini, melons and sunflowers etc in the garden. Also sat down and removed all the weeds from the two strawberry beds so the berries can grow better. Forgot to take pictures.
In the forest, every day new bamboo shoots emerge and if I ignore or miss one, it quickly grows to a young and thick bamboo that can no longer be kicked over. These things are persistent and surprising. They come out from the tiniest openings that the sun can penetrate, and push over any obstacle in their way, big or small.
Lucky for me, the neighboring old people visit almost every time I am there and ask me if they can pick them to eat, and I tell them I would be delighted if they killed them all for me.
Until I dig out all the roots, it's going to be a constant maintenance of at least a couple of days a week during growth season, which is April to end of July... Oh well. The more motivation for me to dig the roots sooner.
Here a couple of pictures of the tiny bastards that pop out everywhere.

This one was hiding under the un-flattened part

Everywhere new bamboo shoots, the tiny ones hide under the leafs and then one day grow to 50 cm

Hard to miss when it is too late

The flattening continues

So far so good. I am on schedule, based on THE PLAN.
A couple of days more and I have flattened the whole plot. After that, I will be sorting the bamboo into 3 groups.

Picture taken from Mr. K's side. Just a little bit un-flattened left to the right

One group which I will place near the shredder is the thinnest bamboos up to maybe 10-12 cm thick, which can all be turned into chip and mixed with the soil later on.

Picture taken from Mr. O's side

Another group which is a complete nuisance is the tiny tine side branches which I have been cutting off. They are too tiny and stiff to be shredded, and keep getting stuck in the machine if I put them in. If I leave them on the ground, I keep stumbling and getting stuck in them when I walk, and they will probably take real long to decompose thanks to their tininess. I shall spread them in the strip of land to the north which is owned by 200 people or so, and where the bamboo poachers keep entering.
The last group is the thickest bamboos, which are too big for the shredder. I can stack them along the north side, or even better put them in the north strip on top of the side branches to rot in due time...
That whole north strip with its bamboos is just bothersome, and can fall over in my plot whenever, so I shall cut those down and lay them there. Hopefully it will deter people from walking there, and also the new bamboo from growing, plus it will be a kind of natural marker of where my land begins.

Plum pocket epidemic

In the garden I last week prepared the soil by mixing in some manure and compost. This weekend I planted seeds cause it seems the frost is finally ending.
I planted 2 types of corn, and also potato in the sloped backyard area. I also spread some fertilizer in the strawberry beds. The chickens got lots and lots of chingensai, broccoli and other greens that I pulled out.

Chingensai flowers, you can see bees too

I did leave a patch of chingensai though because the flowers smelled absolutely sweet, just like honey. Other flowers I noted are the cherry tree, which is blooming for the first time. Last year I couldn't identify it because there were no flowers.

Cherry tree next to the chicken run

Pretty and white flowers. I hope the birds don't eat all the fruits...

Zoomed in

The peach sapling is full of flowers too... although the branches kind of look tiny and malplaced. Nothing is growing from the upper parts.

I just have to wait and see

And next in order is the plum tree... all those pretty flowers are replaced by leafs and unfortunately the whole tree seems to be covered with those nasty sick fungi that causes the fruit to transform into empty shells, the plum pocket disease or whatever it was called. I tried picking them off but there are just too many. Maybe 95% of the fruit will be wasted because of it...

Just a few I picked. Yuck!

The way forward

While waiting for the shredder cutting parts to arrive, I had a long think about future and planned a bit. I guess it is because every time I am in the forest some new old man or woman comes by and starts talking and asking what I will make of the plot. So every time I explain, I make a better version, and I started liking the newer versions in my head more and more, so I thought I should put it to writing.

Standing by

First step I guess will be to make sure the flattening gets finished ASAP. The shredding depends on it and the plot doesn't look so nice when one side of it is still not flat.

Farthest you can see the un-flattened part

The unflattened part from a different angle

It may not look like much but it's actually a lot. I worked 4 hours without break on cutting branches and it had barely changed when I was going home. I think maybe it will take at least 2-3 more weeks till the flattening is done.
I came up with a 15-step plan to reach my goal (or at least the start of my goal), so for future reference, I present to you, THE PLAN.

First I will finish the flattening. Then the thin bamboos have to go into the shredder. That will leave the plot with only the thickest bamboos, and fairly clean. Then I want to put in a small shed with lockable door where the shredder is now, because right now there is just a piece of tarp covering my important tools. Plus I don't want to haul the tools back and forth every day. But before I put a shed there, I have to get rid of that big big tree that is leaning over my and Mr. O's land threatening to fall over with the next mini landslide or typhoon.
I also have to dig out the horrible bamboo roots but before I can do that I have to cut down the sugi trees that are in the way. In the way will also be the thick bamboos which are left over. I have to either burn those or let them rot but they have to be somewhere else, like in the north side, and not in the way.
I also have to get rid of those annoying bamboos in the north that can fall over and kill any saplings or beehives or other things. And also get rid of the equally annoying bamboo shoot hunters. To achieve that I will cut the bamboos, and lay them all along the north side, in the neighboring land. That land is shared owned by like 200 people half of which I assume are not even alive. With enough bamboos laid there, the new shoots will stop emerging, plus it will be dangerous to walk there looking for shoots. The shoot hunters will have to walk on the flat area beyond the slope, which is full of bamboos.
After digging out roots I have to mix in nutrients and stuff to fix the soil PH and what not, if needed.
And after that I will need to put fence around the plot to protect from people and animals. In my plan there was a bit of waiting period with not much to do so I put in "fix road" and "cut weed" and "fix parking" which is good to have.   

The plan with seasoning

Assassination

There's been too many forest stuff going on so I thought I should update with a couple more pictures from the garden now.
By the way now that spring is upon us, I took a tour to the local park and picked a few frog babies home and threw in the lake. Let's see if they run away this year too.

The plum tree has gone from flower mode to leaf mode

The cherry sapling and the peach are also growing fine. The cherry never bloomed though but now it is full of baby leafs. I am afraid I may have planted those too shallow and on top of hard clay so soon they will stop growing and become midget trees or not fruit or something of that nature.

The cherry

The peach with a few pink flowers

One morning when I went to pick up eggs, I saw that 3 out of 4 eggs in the nest were broken and it was a big mess. I guessed that one of the hens must be moody or her hormones are making her act weird and soon she will be over it. I hoped the hens don't develop a taste for their own eggs and start eating them before I get to them. I threw out the broken eggs and cleaned up in the nest.

broken eggs and things

That day passed and I forgot about the eggs. That night around 9.30 I heard one of the hens SCREAM like she was dying. Then I heard flap flap and more and MUCH LOUDER screams and it wouldn't stop. I rushed out with a torch and was right at the chicken run maybe 1 minute after the first scream had come. By then it was all silent.
I found a lot of white feathers all around the run, and assumed the worst, that some cat or tanuki or some other wild animal had somehow found their way inside the run and coop, and had picked up a chicken and killed it and run off with it. At the same time I connected the dots with the eggs I found that morning.
I looked around a little and saw the white hen's body on the ground and just then heard a rustle in the nearby tree in the run. I pointed the torch to that direction but couldn't make out any eyes or any animals. The rustle stopped so I guess whatever animal it was had escaped now. I looked closer at the white hen and saw that her eyes were open, and she was slowly breathing but not moving. I started slowly clapping her to see where she was hurt, and saw that her neck was wounded badly. Blood was flowing out evenly from both sides of her neck, so I supposed she would die in a few more minutes. By then she got a bit of energy somehow and tried getting to her feet and walk away but didn't make it far. I hugged her, trying to put pressure on her wounds as much as it went and took her inside.
Strangely the 3 cats did not go completely crazy when they saw the hen. Just sniffed at her slowly and acted a bit worried in general. I washed the hen's neck and wound with alcohol and patched her up with a bit of bandage. It was hard to estimate how hard I could wrap the bandage without strangling her but at the same time put enough pressure to stop the bleeding. Somehow I did it though.
Then I gave her a bit of water and made sure she drank. And I figured that was as much as I could do, so let's leave her to her fate and hope for the best.
I put her together with her friends (who were sound asleep as if nothing had happened) in the coop, and for the first time in a loong time closed and locked the coop door.
The next day I checked the run and although I couldn't find any obvious holes or paths leading in, I put a bit of extra net just to make sure. The white hen had survived the night, thank Bob. I came to think about that it could actually have been a snake... that would explain the interest in the eggs, and also the wounds on both sides of the hen's neck and not having ran away with the hen. It would also explain how it got in through the holes in the net.
It has now been a few days and the white hen has been spending her whole days inside the coop, sitting inside one of the nests. I put up extra water and food in the coop especially for her, and also fed her worms so she would heal faster. This morning although it was raining cats and dogs she slowly walked out and had a bit of stroll and drank some water that had accumulated on some leafs. I hope I can remove the bandage this weekend.

White hen with bandage

I did notice yesterday that she was bleeding anew from her crown. But not sure why... Today it was fine again.

White hen with bandage, version 2

Please don't die, Big Momma.
I am now locking their door every night, just to be safe.

Chipping fun

A new day, a fixed shredder and lots of bamboo. It was another sunny day.

My workstation. Ready to go!

Not much to say about it...it has to be experienced. It was extremely loud but satisfying at the same time. I had my ears, eyes, mouth and nose protected and kept feeding thin bamboos and cleaning the output whenever it started getting clogged.

Chips ahoy!

Gradually the area close to the chipper started to become clearer as I removed the thinner bamboo and shredded them. Now I could only see the thicker ones left. Still not decided what to do about those. Either burn them, or let them decay, or cut them down into smaller pieces and feed those into the shredder.

A little bit cleaner

I tried feeding different things into the shredder just to see what kind of sound they made. Softer things like big bamboo shoots I found, or leafs etc etc.

Me in action

The chips and crap around the shredder started piling up, and formed a tiny hill

Chip hill

And a little time later, the hill had become a mountain

Chip mountain

Eventually I ran out of fuel, just in time to feel that the shredder was not cutting the wood as quickly as before. I guess the teeth were getting dull. Good timing.
I went home and ordered a new set of teeth for my baby shredder. And while waiting, I will do more "flattening" and home gardening I suppose.

Fixing the shredder

Armed with a couple of 100 yen shop mini saws, I went to the plot to cut my way through the metal that was blocking the cutters. By the way when I arrived I did notice that Mr. K had dropped off about 20 bamboos in my plot, none of which were green. These are old, toughened brown stuff that are extra hard. They had not decayed but instead gotten more solid with the sun if that makes sense. So no way was I going to put them through the shredder. Here is a pic.

Thanks for the canes.

So I sent him a mail and thanked him for his contribution and asked him to take care of his own bamboos henceforth cause I have already too many myself. He said he will burn them when winter comes and apologized. Anyway... 
It was a sunny day and I spent maybe half an hour sawing till I was halfway through.

It's a very narrow cut so zoom in

I had to change saws at that time because I had already more or less killed the first one to get through so far.

Poor saw. R.I.P.

Another half hour and I was completely spent, but almost there...

Just a couple more millimeters

And at last the final cut was made.

You bad bad piece of metal

After that, I reassembled the shredder and put in oil and fuel, and decided to take a break with the shredding till the next day. Instead I took a walk around the plot to see if there were any other changes. I did find a handful more bamboo shoots which I promptly kicked over thinking "Oh no, you don't!"
And I also noted that the bamboos in the north side had started to bloom and the flowers (and seeds? I don't know) kept falling down in my plot. Definitely have to cut those bamboos down too if I want to keep more bamboos from growing in my land.

I think they bloom only once every few years...

...must be my lucky year

Other than that I saw that the bamboo trunks I had left behind were rotting nicely and in very psychedelic colors

Groovy....

The shredder must be cut

The previous day had left my body aching all over. Pushing and pulling the truck, and loading large bamboo into the shredder etc I had used muscles which I didn't know I had to their limit...
My arms, legs, back, front, everywhere is pain, and I can barely move. Anyway, I went to the forest to check what the shredder's problem was.

Seen from the out-mouth on front

After cleaning out the insides, a first glance shows that some of the separator teeth has become bent. Wow, the force is strong with bamboo. As well as one of the separators has simply vanished. 13 horse powers mixed with hard bamboo can do that to metal, no matter how tough.
However, that was not the problem. The started rope would not move so something must be keeping the rotor with all the blades from turning. It was just stuck.
I looked around and could not see what the problem was, so I started stripping the shredder's parts to get better view.
First I removed the feeding parts on top and on the side. That opened up a hole on the side and an even bigger hole on top.

From above

Finally I could spot it. The feeder hole on the side has a bit of metal welded to it, to strengthen the hole. That extra piece of metal had somehow been ripped apart and bent over, stuck just between the wall where it is welded and the moving parts, and was now stopping the cutter from rotating.

A closer look from the side hole

The metal has curled just to fit into the distance between the wall and the blades. It is really thick metal so hammering or manually trying to bend it back with sheers won't do.
The only way I can fix it is to cut it out.
I removed the back wall to get to the blocking piece better from inside.

From inside

I used a sheer to straighten the bent separators. And then used a tiny saw to slowly cut the curled part. In the picture you can see the tiny tiny cut where I started. Result of 15 minutes of sawing. The saw I was using was pretty dull though so I decided to buy a better one, and try again another day.
At least it feels good to have figured out what the problem was.
Oh, and Mr. K came by and asked me if he could put his unwanted bamboo in my plot so I can shred it. He said its too much work to burn them.
Nice as I am I said sure.
I mean it doesn't make a difference if have to shred my 1000 bamboos or 1000+30 of his.

The revenge of the bamboo

I have covered the plot all I could with the cut bamboo, but still light gets through and the new bamboo shoots have started emerging.

They're here....

I kicked over a couple that I could see right away. Still they are not so tall, just a few centimeters above ground so it is simple enough. Maybe next weekend they would be tall enough for me to spot directly and kill.

popping up here and there...

I think I spotted around 10 so far.

A couple more in this picture

The ones I did not kick over, I dug out for eating.

Here is one.

I gave half of them to our neighbor and the rest I prepared myself...

The harvest of the day

Although I love the taste I myself don't eat them as I am allergic/too sensitive to their poison. I boiled the shoots with rice rinse for 1,5 hours and voila there we had a nice huge serving.

So yummy looking

Chika had some, and she had some more the day after. However the day after she did complain that hurt belly hurt and her mouth did tingle when eating the bamboo, so we agreed that I would just stop serving her bamboo. I offered to call an ambulance but she said she was not that bad. So from now on I will just kick over the bamboos. I guess I will stop giving them to our neighbor too, just in case they are as bad as me at preparing them. Don't wanna poison them accidentally.
I went over and had a quick look at the field I am borrowing, the one I planted some potatoes in.
A few of the potatoes have started to come out.

Pretty distinct color

one more potato