which is really a nice thing since the koi food I purchase is about $8.00 per pound. Last month I was texting a koi dealer, Taro Kodama to thank him for letting us use a reference chart on the Kodama Koi Farm website. A few days later he texted me that he had found a type of koi that I was interested in purchasing. She’s a 20″ Beni Kumonryu from Ozumi Ikarashi. I thought ‘Merry Christmas to me’ and voilá, she’s mine.

Taro asked if I wanted to enter her in the 3rd Annual Virtual Koi Show and I agreed. In virtual koi shows the koi are judged based upon a photograph and video. It’s kind of nice because there is no transportation requirement, low entrance fees and depending on the show sponsor, some really nice prizes. My little beni kumonryu was selected Best in Variety – Kawarimono. The exciting part was she won some koi food! I’m really excited.

Is JPD koi food better than the rest? I’m not too sure but their diet revolves mostly around JPD and an occasional bag of Saki-Hikari, Kenzen, Hi-Silk. Koi food comes in large or medium pellets – some float and some sink. I used to want large pellets that sunk but during COVID, shipments of koi food from Japan were snarled with the rest of the backlog. As a result, I just fed them whatever JPD product was available and they seem to do just fine.

One of my tasks related to koi food is making sure the pantry is organized. I always try have about 100 pounds of food available. My reorder cue is when I have 5 empty tubs. Maybe this year I will try to be a little more conscientious of measuring how much I am feeding but our travel schedule makes feeding a little inconsistent. I ordered 30 kg of koi food from Russ Peters of PS Koi and spent the rainy morning today packaging it into smaller vacuum sealed packets. The plastic bins ensure that the mice stay away from the food. It’s always satisfying to see my little koi food supply neatly stocked in the corner of the garage office.

The chickens have finally started laying eggs. I think there are four chicken laying eggs. The shell colors are brown, light green, pink-brown, and olive green. The olive green egg layer has only laid once – I have searched the ground around the house wondering if she has laid an egg somewhere outside of the coop.

I am keeping track of our eggs and thought about getting a date stamp for the eggs. Once you start getting ten or more eggs a day, you will want to keep track of which ones were laid first. I looked online and saw an egg stamping kit on Amazon for $27 which seemed expensive. Perhaps it’s the “egg-safe” ink. Being a cheapskate, I spent $10 dollars for a few thousand colorful dots. Every morning, I note the number of eggs we collect in a notebook and affix a color dot on the entry and on the eggs.

The chickens are very amusing and we enjoy doing things for them. This weekend I took some of the sticks we have been clearing and built a roosting rack for them in their run. Things I learn how to do on TikTok 😂. I have been watching a lot of funny chicken videos on TikTok and decided that I would post some stories on TikTok about our country life this year. Today I posted my first story. It was a little learning curve to figure out how to use their creator but once I understood, very easy. I will say that the chickens are a livelier bunch to video over the koi.

Aside from the usual woodland clearing projects, we cleaned the interior of our new koi pond. We rented a better pressure washer than ours and used a product made by pond builder’s chemical company. The product is called Crete Cutter and designed to clean concrete on trucks. We sprayed the product on our Octaform panels, ate lunch and went back outside to spray it off. Pond builder did a really nice job on the walls and floor. While it took him just over two hours, it’s a deceptively hard task on the body.

Another step closer towards finishing the pond. That’s our weekend on the farm. It’s morning in Japan now and time for me to watch my Facebook and Instagram feed. I’m looking forward to seeing posts from my friends visiting Japan this week and next week. It’s the All Japan Koi Show next weekend so many of the koi kichi are visiting breeders, eating all sorts of great food, and seeing cool things in Japan. I’m secretly hoping that someone will step into a TKG restaurant …