Raising Silkworms in Japan: Year Sixteen.

There is too much work to do around the house. There are too many things to prepare for the autumn. It would have been good to give silkworms a break this year. Focus on more important things. I've never raised less than 2500 silkworms at a time. A few lots of 25 000. That takes a good five weeks of concentrated effort to do perfectly. There would be a hole in the seasonal rhythm of life here if there were no silkworms and cocoons so I limited the amount to a few hundred this spring. Gathering a few leaves instead of a few branches is anticlimactic. (And in  a few weeks time, a few branches instead of a few truck loads of mulberry every morning.)
Silkworms, cocoons, reeling silk and dyeing and weaving the thread have been central to my life for the past 16 years. It is very sad to put this on simmer on the back burner for a year or so. The knit studio in Atsugi is slowly coming into focus. There are only so many hours in a day.  The indigo seedlings are almost ready for transplanting to the (immaculately clean, thank you Daphne, Cameron, Tim, Anneke, Ken and friends for your meticulous weeding and tilling.) indigo field.