You have to eat this pie to believe it! The wild mulberries trees around the cafe are in season and our team has been picking them everyday. The apples are from Tomeko Miura's trees in Nagano. And the crust is our original Vegan whole wheat crust (really crispy and not too oily). This is actually a healthy pie!

Our wild mulberries are natural farming, permaculture and bio-dynamic farming at it best. The area around the Earth Embassy used to be used for growing mulberry leaves for local silk production and the trees have been growing here for hundreds of years. We use no chemical or machines and the trees simple grow wild on the edges of our fields, providing homes and food for insects and birds as well as giving us jam and a freezer full of berries for our shakes and cakes throughout the year. The jam goes great on Emiko's fresh Irish Soda Breads too!

共生植物,コンパニオン プラント
One of our basic permaculture and organic techniques is Companion Planting. Certain herbs and vegetables grow well together and reduce the need for fertilizer and pesticides by producing compounds that aid each other in growth, discourage insects, and can improve flavor. Instead of 'mono-culture' fields where only one crop is grown, we plant companions together in rows. For example marigolds prevent certain insects and nematodes (round worms) from attacking plants. Our eggplants are planted between rows of onions. And nasturtium surrounds our peppers, protecting them from aphids while giving us delicious flowers and leaves for our salads. In the foreground of this picture you can also see our hedge or oregano that surrounds the vegetable field, providing us with herbs for our pizza sauce and salad dressing, and also discouraging bugs from attacking our crops.

Cabbage is very hard to grow without chemical because of the "aomushi" cabbage moth. This small white moth loves laying eggs on cabbage leaves and the large green caterpillars that result can eat an entire field in days. We have been trying to convince our neighbors to go organic for years, but they say it is impossible. So we are trying to develop a technique to grow organic cabbages by planting them between rows of mint. The cabbage moth dislikes the menthol oil of mint, and hopefully our mint stalks will sufficiently hide the young cabbage plants from the marauding moths. If we are successful, we will bring by the locals and encourage them to follow a similar practice. The other advantage is that the mint serves as a cover crop, lessening the need for weeding and herbicides, and produces a valuable crop in the unused spaces between the cabbage rows.

We have started baking Emiko's amazing Irish Soda Bread every week and our new little bread shop "Chikyu No Panya" and plant nursery is open for business. Fresh breads available every weekend. Try the Oregano or Cinnamon Raisin and you will never go back to white bread. The shop also has all types of plants in pots for your home garden or balcony; raspberries, mint, basil, oregano, dill and more....

After years of no-till farming, this year we finally decided to try a bit of roto-tilling and find that for certain plantings, a bit of tilling goes a long way. Natsuco our field manager is here trying her hand at turning soil to break up the weeds and fertilize the soil for a new of Raspberries. Next volunteers Diane and Carol dig a trench to mix in our home-made horse manure fertilizer before planting.

The snow on Mt. Fuji is just about gone and our fields are in full green. Hope you will come by the cafe and try our fresh green salads from the garden!

Matt and Shawn are cutting poles for the sheep fences with Fuji looking on in the background and our traditional Giant Pink Koi flag flying for the luck of all the houses with boys.

After 8 years of little by little, this year our shop is finally full home-made goods from our team. Kanda-sans little organic rice farm has grown and he is now offering packs of 7 grain rice and black rice in the shop. Miho's Ramon tree nuts from her small naitve women's fair-trade cooperative in Guatemala, are now branded in Japan as MayaNuts, and her NGO Tierra Madre is selling the flour for baking all over Japan. The proceeds help buy and protect native forests. Come try MayaNuts cake with local wild honey at the cafe! The wild honey is harvested by Izuru's dad in Kawaguchiko, also in packs with honey combs in our shop. Shoko's home spun neon hats still available. And her latest, Thai Fisherman style pants, made from old kimonos. Some of the silk is actual gold obi material her grandfather wove years ago. Classic.

Jeannie wanted to get the gang together for something special on her birthday, so we were flattered when she asked Emiko to do a special vegetarian Mexican lunch spread, Solar Cafe style. The hot fajitas with a spicy mint salsa were the hit of the day. Mike obviously had a little too much hot sauce on his!!
After lunch all went strawberry picking and horseriding.

Contact Emi for events, weddings, birthdays, etc. 090-8004-5952