No, sorry. We farm in Nagano so a winter weekly vegetable box would contain a daikon radish, some negi onions and a big bucket of powder snow!
Click on the shop tab and follow the directions from there.
Payment is via post office or bank transfer after delivery and on satisfaction with the produce. The account details will be sent in your order confirmation mail.
If ANYTHING you purchase from Nagano, naturally doesn't arrive in good condition please don't hesitate to let me know and I will replace it or refund your money immediately. Everything I sell is the same stuff we eat day in, day out (well, I don't actually take a bite out of every tomato but I do pick for us at the same time as customers!) and I sell it in good faith that it is of a high quality.
That is one of the reasons Nagano, naturally doesn't take payment until AFTER delivery- you only pay for our produce if you're happy with it!
We polish rice in 30 kilo lots and I can't send 30 kilos at a time so I am literally eating the same rice you buy as what isn't sent goes into our rice cooker.
The wheat I mill to sell comes from the same bag I am using for our bread and cake and pancakes.
The beets, potatoes, greens, tomatoes, apples and rhubarb you purchase? I'm eating that same crop (often on the same day even as it's easier to harvest for us at the same time.)
So please, if it's not good, let me know so I can stop eating it too!
Is your produce organic?
Yes!
and No.
It's complicated!
To be certified organic in Japan and use the official term yuki saibai you need to undergo a rigorous and rather expensive application process. Here at Nagano, naturally we both have 'real' jobs and farm as a rather time consuming hobby so this is not something we have pursued.
Unless clearly labelled ***NOT ORGANIC*** though all the produce here was grown completely without chemicals- those allowed by organic farming methods and those not. We prepare our soil with chook manure from our own chooks, leaf mulch made from buried autumn leaves and liquid chicken manure.
We keep the weeds down with deep mulch method with woodchips we make ourselves, plastic mulch, tractor, grass cutter and good old elbow grease.The main pest control is me pulling caterpillars off the plants and throwing them to the chooks.
We remove bugs by hand or just donate buggy produce to the chooks who repay the favour with more manure and so the cycle continues.
We rotate crops and rest fields and try to work with the earth and not against it. We even water with river water rather than tap water.
However, while we live in a farming community we are surrounded by traditional farmers which means our neighbours do use chemicals to grow their crops. Some use machines to spray. We take measures to avoid inadvertent spraying (we grow a barrier of 2-3 m tall sunflowers at the edge of our vegetable field each year and have barrier strips of land between our rice and wheat fields and the neighbours' fields) and when questioned about the likelihood of my garden being sprayed my nearest neighbour assured me he wouldn't waste expensive chemicals on my crops.
So, are we organic?
Yes?
No?
It's complicated.
But the produce listed here is the same produce I feed my family with confidence that it's as healthy as it gets.
That much I CAN say!
If you have any questions about how we grow any of our produce just ask!
Nagano, naturally ships via Japan Post's yupack system. We are part of a farmer's co-operative that gets discount postage but in return has to send from a specified post office. My post office is not open weekends or holidays. I know some are, but mine isn't. therefore Nagano, naturally orders go out Monday to Friday. I have tracking numbers to trace your packages and if you have a preferred delivery time please just let me know in the comments on your order. I ship via regular delivery (not chilled or frozen) with no problems so far.
As much as possible I ship produce in recycled materials- boxes from the supermarket and newspaper from our recycling stack. I do this to avoid waste and to keep costs down. If you would prefer chilled shipping or new boxes just let me know- the customer is always right!