Roly-Poly and All That (Special Star Wars Interjection Edition)

Really wonderful idea. What an incredible smell you've discovered!

Today was an interesting experience on the farm.



A while back, K&K and I attended this Natural Farming workshop.  It's all the rage here on the Island at the moment, and can honestly say that most of it makes complete sense to me.  Although the techniques were developed in Korea, the differences in climate will only help the techniques here.  But I'll leave all of the technical stuff for another blog.

One of the items used in this technique is FAA (fish amino acids).  You make this stuff by taking fish waste (leftover bits from butchered fish - not waste created by fish) and you mix it with sugar and some microorganisms, and then you let it sit for 10 days or so.  The juice that drains out of the bottom of the container is then stored or used.  You dilute it 1:1000 and spray it on your crops, and it provides tons of nitrogen, as well as several other nutrients that help plants in the growing stage.

Sounds easy enough.

"Many bothans died to bring us this information."

Get bothans...er....fish, add sugar, stir and wait.  No problem.

"I've got a bad feeling about this."

We go to the local fish market, Suisan, and ask if we can have a few buckets of fish waste.  They kindly oblige.  We get them home and pop the buckets open.

"And I thought they smelled bad...on the outside."

Sure enough, it's not going to be as easy as we thought.

"Artoo says that the chances of survival are 725 to 1."

Inside these buckets are not the nice chunks and pieces of fish that we thought we'd get.  And now, logically, it makes sense.  While we were expecting plenty of fish guts (which, strangely, we didn't get much of), we were not expecting buckets full of fish heads.

"IT'S A TRAP!!!"

Giant....disembodied....fish heads.

So as the sole carnivore on this farm, I felt that I was the one who had to handle this.  Sure, we could just put everything in the big container as is, but it would take much much longer for things to break down enough to be usable.  I didn't want to do it, but it had to be done.

"But I was going to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!"

So I picked up my machete.....

"An elegant weapon for a more civilized age."

....and I chopped them up.

"Impressive.  Most impressive."

Now, I'm a firm believer that if you're going to make any kind of argument for eating meat, you've got to be able (although not necessarily willing) to kill something yourself and eat it.  I've caught, cleaned, and eaten many fish in my day, and I didn't think this would be much of an issue.  I mean, these fish are already dead.  But I have to admit it was strange.  First of all, these fish heads were huge.

"Size matters not."

And I mean really big.  Basketball big.

Second of all, there's something about the act of mutilating a once living for the sole reason of mutilating it.

"Take your Jedi weapon. Use it. I am unarmed. Strike me down with it."

 I don't want to say that it felt wrong, because that's not it.  But it did seem creepy.  And uncomfortable.

So, without going into much gory detail, I got the job done, cleaned up, and decided that maybe I wouldn't have fish for dinner.  At least for tonight.