Drying of sukumo

This year, we will start indigo dyeing at the end of April, so we have been preparing for that.

Drying (in the sun) the sukumo that we made last year and cleaning the indigo hut.

Itoshiro is completely covered in snow in winter, so in autumn everything has to be stored inside the building. So in autumn we set up the space for winter, and in spring we set up the space for the coming season.

Every year, it's a lot of work to put up and remove snow fences, but it also feels good to be able to do a thorough cleaning at this time.

The sukumo that I started preparing in October of last year had some difficulties this time, and I couldn't keep the temperature for three months. I sprinkled too much or too little water during the process, and it was difficult to time the turning, so maybe the sukumo was immature.

I will use what I made last time next year.

The ones I'll be using this year are the ones I made the year before, and the rest I'll be buying from Tokushima.

It is very hard to make sukumo. However, considering the current situation in Tokushima with a decrease in the number of indigo and sukumo farmers, if we do not pass on the knowledge to our own people, we do not know when sukumo will become unavailable.

At the same time, if we could produce the sukumo used for dyeing locally, there would be no need to transport it from far away and it could be circulated locally.

We still have a long way to go before we can grow enough leaves to make the sukumo we use, but I believe we can do it someday, and I would like to continue to put it into practice little by little.