January brought the organic JAS on-site inspection, building a parking area, and shipping our lucky bags. After years of continually rethinking how we work, I finally felt I could work with real breathing room and calm. Our lucky bags were a huge hit with customers — a happy kind of overwhelmed. Since last year, working alongside Jeff, an American, in an environment where conversation is almost entirely in English, my own English has improved dramatically. I could feel we were finally ready for the overseas trade and tourist visits that are likely to keep growing. This year I set out goals like "building a café and direct-sales shop," "expanding into America," "wanting to grow as a manager," and "YouTube."

February was full of activity — a producers' gathering, holding an accounting study session, a meetup of young producers, activities of our Yusando tea-ceremony club, preparing our year-end accounts, welcoming guests, and shipping orders. At the young producers' gathering I connected with many peers, and I could really feel that circle steadily growing thicker. We kept holding management study sessions at the office too, where we discuss everything from technical accounting topics to each person's own worries. I also joined a rice-farming study session and had the chance to give a presentation there. More and more, senior producers have been coming to me for advice on management and cash flow, and I've felt a growing desire to support natural-farming producers who are struggling financially. A key staff member at our welfare facility fell ill, and there were moments I had to run the company single-handedly again for a while — but I felt confident that we could clear the coming peaks of the year-end accounts and the spring bancha harvest without much trouble.

One of the goals I set at the start of this year was "building a café and direct-sales shop." In February and April, I worked on it bit by bit, in the gaps between accounting and the busy farming season. It's never easy to move a project like this forward alongside farm work, but the systems we'd built up over the past few years gave me the time to make it happen.

And then in May, the shop opened. More than 50 people visited that month, and they got to experience our newly opened shop firsthand. Having a place right by our own fields where we can hand tea directly to people was a big step forward this year. Work on the shop kept going into autumn, through September and October — a place we kept improving all year long.

March was spent on spring pruning and harvesting spring bancha. March is Yusando's busiest time of year. I pushed through it despite being unwell for about half the month, but I made sure to properly rest on weekends. Having three staff members working together as a team was a huge source of reassurance, and even when I wasn't at my best, the work kept moving smoothly. A 21-year-old joined us this month as a trainee, and our plan is to raise him into a fully capable member of the team. Orders started coming in through our newly rebuilt English-language online store, and requests to visit from overseas, prompted by Instagram, have been increasing too.

April was a busy month of harvesting spring bancha, preparing our year-end accounts, sowing rice seed, sifting soil for seedlings, running a farm tour, and shipping orders. Thanks to my improved English, inquiries from overseas surged — in March we hosted a tour from Malaysia, and from the end of the month a French intern joined us. My relationship of trust with Jeff has also deepened further. The local young man who began his internship in March is on a one-year plan to build up his mindset, his skills in natural farming, his English, and his independence.

In April, we started a new initiative this year: the "Yusando Rice Paddy Division." Four families, including our own, work on the rice paddies together, with the goal of each family, kids included, being able to eat their own rice for a full year.

By June, the activity was in full swing. Since we've had more opportunities to be introduced to rice paddies over the past year, this year we managed to plant more than 6 tan. Four families, including my own and my sister's, took part — sowing seed and setting up seedbeds together as a group, while tilling, puddling, and transplanting were each handled by individual families. Most of the work happened on weekends, and I took care of checking water levels and adding water on weekdays. Even watering through the hot summer was something the Rice Paddy Division members took turns handling.

In October, the rice harvest wrapped up safely, with each household getting a happy yield of roughly 6 to 7 hyo per tan. In November, the harvest came to almost double last year's amount, and Rice Paddy Division members helped bag the rice into straw sacks too. Being able to split the work among everyone lightened my own load considerably.

May began with early-morning work reports, then moved into tea harvesting and preparing the rice paddies. This was a month with a steady stream of visitors from overseas hoping to learn about natural farming — people from Belgium and a Polish resident of London helped out with the tea growing. A late frost on May 10th cut this year's new-tea harvest to less than half the usual amount. It's damage I've experienced many times before, but I renewed my resolve to keep finding new ways to turn it into something positive. On the 19th, more than 50 people visited, and even in the rain we weeded the fields together and talked about the work we've been doing. June brought making black tea and harvesting bancha.

July was packed — weeding, weeding the tea fields, harvesting tea, activities of our tea-ceremony club, building a video studio, hosting visits, and a tea event. We finished this year's tea harvest safely once again. The yield dropped because of the frost, but we had plenty of stock from last year, so it didn't have much of an impact. Visitors also joined our Rice Paddy Division and tea-ceremony club activities, and I felt, little by little, that the ideal shape I'd imagined when I first started farming ten years ago was coming together. August brought new design work, cutting grass, weeding and cutting grass in the tea fields, cleaning the old farmhouse, a stall at the marché, and building a YouTube studio. On August 3rd, we had a booth as a natural-farming tea grower at an event in Ayabe City, and many conscious, engaged visitors bought our tea. On August 18th, we were invited to a Yamato tea event in Nara City, and I could really feel our recognition growing as a natural-farming tea grower from Nara. With members of the welfare facility Green Thumb weeding the tea fields and paddies, and Jeff handling the grass cutting, we made it through the hot summer with a real sense of ease.

In June, Vincent, a Frenchman, started working with us on a regular basis. With Jeff from America already part of the team, we became even more international, and I had more chances to practice French conversation — my own French improved dramatically. From July, I was even able to take French lessons during the drives to and from work. He used to be a pastry chef and has experience working at a tea shop in France, and he's become a real asset to the team.

At the Yamato tea event in August, he handled the tea tastings, and the quality of the tastings improved so much that we started getting many more inquiries. This year we welcomed many customers from Europe, especially France, and I felt I'd reached the point where I could hold a simple conversation in French. In October, four people from France visited Yusando through his introduction, and we had the chance to talk about our tea-making process and philosophy. Our Instagram followers have been growing too, mostly from France, and I'm aiming to make a France tour a reality before too long. In December, even while he was back home in France, he kept actively promoting us, and inquiries about our tea from all over Europe increased as a result.

September brought weeding, cutting grass on the paddy embankments, and making full-moon sencha. Our eldest son was hospitalized at the end of August and I spent time with him, but even so, I felt a real sense of calm knowing that bagging, shipping, weeding, and the rice-paddy work could increasingly be entrusted to others. A new business partner visited us from London and showed great interest in the tea we made under the full moon, as well as our three-year bancha.

October brought making bancha, making white tea, preparing our organic JAS application, and creating new designs. A user of our partner welfare facility, Green Thumb, took a new step forward — and knowing it came through the guidance of their support staff, not directly from me, made me even happier than if it had been my own achievement. November brought the organic JAS on-site inspection, hosting visitors, making shirobancha, and a stall at the marché. Visitors kept coming from overseas too — this month we had guests from Turkey and France. I could really feel that natural farming is drawing attention from around the world, and I've started thinking harder about how to bring even more people into natural farming going forward.

December brought making three-year bancha, buying new machinery, and hosting an Open Work Day. With next year's tea production set to increase, we renovated the factory and bought a new tea-processing machine. Our once rough-and-ready tea factory is slowly turning into something a bit more stylish. We've also decided to start accepting trainees at Yusando from next year, and I've begun building a curriculum where they can properly learn natural farming and basic English.

Looking back on the year, so much growth came to us from directions I never expected, in ways I never expected.