David's Farm Blog

Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan .  Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye. Instead, different colors of rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields.
As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge.

A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants, the colors created by using different varieties, in Inakadate in Japan.  The largest and finest work is grown in the Aomori village of Inakadate , 600 miles north  of Toyko, where the tradition began in 1993. More than 150,000 visitors come to Inakadate, where just 8,700 people live, every summer to see the extraordinary murals.
Each year hundreds of volunteers and villagers plant four different varieties of rice in late May  across huge swathes of paddy fields.

The farmers plant little purple and yellow leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green leafed tsugaru roman variety to create the coloured patterns between planting and harvesting in September

Closer to the image, the careful placement of thousands of rice plants in the paddy fields can be seen.

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The chief woman ‘Greenie Tree-Hugging Activist’, who was responsible for getting horses banned from National parks and State forests, was climbing a tree to have a look out over the forest when a Tawny Frogmouth Owl attacked her for invading its nesting site.

In a panic to escape, she slid down the tree, getting a great number of splinters lodged in her crotch area. In considerable pain she hurried to the nearest doctor, told him she was an environmentalist and how she got all the splinters.

The doctor listened with great patience and then told her to go into the examining room and he would see if he could help her. She waited for 3 hours before the doctor reappeared. Angry, the woman demanded, ‘What took you so long?’

‘Well…’ replied the doctor, ‘…I had to get permits from the Environmental Protection Agency; the Forestry Service; the National Parks and Wildlife Service; the Wilderness Society and the Department of Conservation and Land Management before I could remove ‘old growth timber’ from a ‘recreational area’ . . . I’m sorry but they all turned me down.’

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This is a picture of the Doukhobor women assisting with the farming at Thunder Hill Colony Manitoba, Canada in 1897. Thanks Rob T for the post.  How can one man can keep all these women in line? Your comments please.