Lila, our long time friend from Maui, was at the farm for a little birthday garden party. Lila used to live with her kids on a beach near Jake's tree house and the family organic fruit farm in Haiku. She now lives with her two children and two grandchildren near Yoyogi park and runs a kindergarden for the keikis. We had Champagne and fresh blueberries to celebrate her visit!

Local friends often come by on Sunday to help out with our fields. Hitoshi lives nearby in a 200 year old house he has made into a cute little gallery and lounge space, and often comes by the Embassy to help out with events and eco-homes work. He works at the local fruit farms picking cherries in summer and has also become the slow-life handy-man for the little village at Shojiko, and helps the grandmas with any house and yard chores for 800yen an hour (cheap! they love him) plus snacks. Hitoshi is the master of living the good slow life. He left the 9-5 world of Yokohama and now runs his occasional business from 10-3 only. He and Jeannie spent the day helping taking care of some of our baby trees. Are they working or chatting? Hitoshi's shirt looks a little too clean here...

Volunteer Sarah helps Jake with planting some radish starts. We tried a little companion planting experiment, putting the sprouts along the sides of the already planted potato rows.

The Eden Homes - Saiko Eco Lodges project is finally underway. After three years of planning, designing and preparing land, we broke ground in August and the first home is already framed and had the roof put on yesterday. The home will be a weekend retreat for Tak Norris, his family and his staff at Platinum Ltd.

The home is a passive solar design with an earth sheltered foundation to allow sunlight to heat the home naturally during the day and retain the heat at night. We are using non-toxic, four star rated materials and the interior will be Finnish Pine (Mrs. Norris is from Finland and loves the smell which reminds her of the mountain cabins from her youth) The home is also All-electric, from heating to hot water, which reduces CO2 emissions and will be self powered with our solar panel array on the roof.

The Shojiko Traditional House sold this spring after only 3 months on the market. A very nice family, Mr. and Mrs. Sato are moving to Shojiko from Tokyo with their 10 year old son and 20 year old cat. The son will be attending the local Jr. High School from next April, and the cat will be sleeping in the sunroom most of the time. Mrs. Sato was looking for a countryside home to live more of a LOHAS lifestyle, and fell in love with the Shojiko House the minute she walked in the door. The had 15 guests staying the other weekend, and said there was still room for more in the upstairs loft! The local village is excited to have the Satos joining our little community. They are already making plans to join the miso making this year.