About US
We are Lizzy and Koji, two pacific northwesterners who still love living out here even when the darkness of February begins to erode the sanity of many PNW residents. Neither of us grew up on farms but as we journeyed through our early adult lives we found ourselves inching closer and closer to wanting to understand our food system. In order to achieve many of our goals, we decided that we wanted to learn how to be farmers for a few reasons.
Food is central to our lives and is a beautiful way to bring people together. Our relationship certainly started with food and Koji often jokes that Lizzy only sticks around because he still cooks for her six years later. We love sharing food with other people, and we love eating.
Farming is healing. Jokes have been made about urban millennials going back to the land to find meaning in the soil and while we do fit that trope in some ways, we have also found there is lots of truth in this! Having your hands in soil, being outside, eating healthy foods is good for the body, soul, and mind and we are sure that is proved by science!
Food production and access can be directly related to issues of educational inequality, institutional racism, and economic injustice. In fact, our industrialized food system relies on the exploitation of laborers, historically and contemporarily on racial grounds.
Our food system is a key factor in environmental degradation but also mitigating the effects of climate change. We believe that by collectively farming in a way that prioritizes soil health, we can both reduce carbon emissions and also make our food system more resilient in the face of the changing environment.
And as Ron Finley of the Ron Finley project so aptly puts it: “It is not radical to know how to grow our own food. In fact it is more radical that we do not all know how to do so.”
We began our farming journey in 2017. It has taken us to many parts of the country and the world and has provided us with countless mentors. We are excited to continue learning about plants and our earth and how best we can fit into changing our food system on all of these levels in the years to come!
What is Makanai?
Makanai (pronounced Mah-Kah-Nai) means Staff Meal or Family Meal in Japanese and is most commonly used in the restaurant setting. We both worked in restaurants for many years and have always loved Makanai. It is a special and cool opportunity for cooks to cook whatever they want. Staff meals may not always be pretty, they are often made with whatever ingredients are left over, but the best ones are made with care and love for the people you spend so much time with.
Makanai embodies so much of what we try to do on our farm. We want to feed the community that we love and we want each and every person to feel that in the food we grow. We want our farm to grow the Japanese vegetables that Koji’s mom used to put into the bentos she used to make everyday until he was 18. We want our farm to be a place that prioritizes the health of the soil and the people who are working on it. We want our farm to be a place where folks can gather, share a meal that won’t always be pretty, but will always be sure to use lots of vegetables and care.
Our Farming Practices
No Till, More Chill
Our farm is committed to learning and trying out practices that don’t just grow high quality food but also to be constantly replenishing the nutrients in whatever land we are growing in. It is no secret that there has been a massive reduction in topsoil across our country since as far back as plantation slavery. Soil is a complex and beautiful network of microorganisms, fungus, and so much other life working in harmony to harness the sun and help ecosystems thrive. One of the reasons our food system right now is reliant on so many outside inputs is because we have spent hundreds of years sucking out nutrients without replenishing them, and destroying these subsoil ecosystems through tilling and spraying chemical pesticides/herbicides without giving the land time to rebuild them.
Though tilling has become an integral part of how many of us, including ourselves, view farming, and we have nothing but respect for the many small scale, organic farmers who continue to incorporate tilling in thoughtful and responsible ways and are practicing restorative agriculture, we have come to believe through our studies that farming without tilling, and mimicking nature where we can, has the potential to produce more nutritious foods, and help build back soil matter faster. This balance produces a number of benefits like pest control, disease resistance through biological diversity, drought and flood resistance through permanent raised beds etc. that theoretically will allow us, and the land, to chill more. Though we are still working out the details of what no-till agriculture can look like on a larger scale, and the early stages have required a lot of additional work to form permanent raised beds, the initial results we have seen convinced us to push forward!
“What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
At our farm we use no chemicals of any kind. Instead we rely on the biodiversity in our soil and compost, companion planting in the same beds, and lots and lots of flowers. Everything we are trying comes from knowledge that our ancestors from Japan and Europe, and also indigenous people across the world have known for thousands of years and is part of a larger global movement of small scale farmers trying to repopularize these practices (see Campesino a Campesino or agroecology). We have found books old and new to be incredibly helpful. If you are interested to learn more about the No-till movement and regenerative agriculture as a whole, please reach out anytime!
