Little Forest: Summer/Autumn (リトル・フォレスト 夏・秋)

"Little Forest" is divided into 4 parts - Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring. After the end credits of "Summer", "Autumn" follows. After that, the trailer of "Winter - Spring" will be shown. Please enjoy the continuity of the movies.

Komori (Little Forest) is a small settlement in a village somewhere in the Tohoku region.

There aren't any stores here,

but if you have a little shopping to do, there's a small farmer's co-op supermarket

and some other stores in the the village center, where the town hall is.

The way there is mostly downhill, so that takes about 30 minutes,

but I'm not too sure how long the trip back takes.

During winter, you have to go on foot because of the snow,

so that'll take you something like a good hour and a half.

But it seems that most people

do their shopping at places like the big suburban supermarket in a neighboring city.

When I decide to go there, it nearly ends up taking the whole day.

When you look down from this ledge after a long spell of rain finally clears up,

Komori looks like it's been drenched in water vapor.

The water that been soaking in the soil evaporates with fervor.

Komori is located at the bottom of a mountain basin.

The vapor from the mountain pours in too.

And the humidity levels swell.

It creates an atmosphere that clings to you like a wet shirt.

With humidity levels close to 100%, the resistance in the air makes it feel like

if you put on fins, you could swim through it.

Weeding?

If I don't move the air around this place, it might get ill.

That's right. Just don't fall into the dew.

The life force of the weeds in the fields becomes stronger.

From a mugwort root I dug up yesterday,

a new sprout had already shuddered and come to life.

The green invaders.

The fields and roads are becoming completely covered in weeds.

I mow 'em down and I yank 'em out, but...

No matter how many days you leave them up to air, the laundry never dries.

Ah.

Mold forms on the wooden ladle you use for jam.

That's it. Time to use the stove.

Stoves with smokestacks force the moisture out with their flames,

so it dries out the rooms indoors.

It get pretty hot, but it must be done in the battle against mold.

But the heat is nothing more than aminor annoyance, so...

I take advantage of the situation to make bread.

High heat and humidity are well suited for fermentation.

The stove is bigger than my regular oven,

so I can bake loaves of bread that are bigger than usual.

There aren't any families that grow wheat in Komori.

The rainy season and the growing season overlap, so the wheat can't dry out.

If the wheat can't dry out, then it can't grow.

But we used to grow it.

Back in the days when we increased our rice production, we'd even convert the fields to paddies.

I see.

So I use the flour that I bought for the bread.

Flour and...

Because we can buy them at wholesale for cheap around here,

all the bread and cakes are made with "earth flour".

Yeast...

No matter how much you knead the earth flour, unlike using "bread flour",

it is very difficult to get it to end up as a thin film.

So rather than kneading it to no avail,

it seems much better to let it ferment for a while after you mix all the ingredients together.

Let the dough rise slowly while getting rid of the gas about twice.

This makes it much easier.

Then you smooth it out and when the yeast has fermented enough, you light up a bunch of charcoal in the stove.

Bread backes at about 200 degrees Celsius.

That's about the temperature in the stove just before it gets out.

That's why you don't bake stove bread in the winter.

Because it would be too cold.

The baking done in these stoves isn't consistent.

But the parts where the heat is focused end up turning out a lot tastier than normal.

And it dries out the room too.

Tadah~

I should go and pick some mulberries and have some bread as snack.

I'm not going to let a little rainy weater get the best of me.

This has become a savannah of weeds~

The blades rotate when you forcefully push it forward.

It's a device that harrows the soil and loosens the weeds.

They're floating, floating.

The white roots messily float about.

But the grass around the rice plants are still left,

so those must be taken care by hand.

So I swish my fingers among the weeds to catch them.

Ugh, my shoulders and back starts to ache.

Ow!

On top of the damp and sweltering heat,

these annoying jerks around won't leave me alone.

I hate horseflies.

Agh. I wish I could just wash this whole feeling off me.

Guess I'll prepare some rice sours.

First, make some amazake.

Mixing koji into some rice gruel...

In this season, it's fine to leave it at room temperature.

You can make it in a single night.

Mmm. Sweet.

Now you increase the bacteria that encourage fermentation.

It's the same like with yogurt or unprocessed sake.

I put in yeast for general bread baking purposes.

Have to mix it well. Since it's warm, it will take around half the day for it to be ready to drink.

The gas from the fermentation forms bubbles, but it's so refreshing when you drink it.

Then you put it in the fridge and let it cool down.

After cutting the grass, which makes you feel like you've been in a sauna...

One more.

It's sweet and goes down easily, so there should be hardly any left for long,

but occasionally, you'll make too much.

Oh.

Looks like I've boiled too many.

Hello~

Hey, it's me.

What? Anyway, I made way too much rice sour.

Yeah, again.

Wanna come over for a drink?

Yeah, walk on over. Otherwise, Kikko will find out.

Okay~

Yeah, see you.

He's two years my junior from the branch school named Yuuta.

Coming~

Good evening~

Come in.

Looks like it's going to rain.

Yeah.

What do you think?

Wow, it smells great.

- It's a nice batch that you've made too much of. - I know right.

- I'll do it. Sit down and wait. - Okay.

- Cheers! - Cheers!

What do you think?

It's good.

Good.

Humid nights with no moon nor stars like these...

You've been working all day?

Yeah.

...are entwined with dampness. It is a true darkness.

Huh?

There should be more water.

There's a leak.

I stand on the ridges and listen carefully.

Besides checking the sound of the source of irrigation,

Ah! There's a mole hole.

in order to find the holes that moles and other rodents make,

one must make sure to do a good job cutting the grass.

There's a silverberry tree growing beside my house.

Every year, the branches start to buckle from the weight of the fruit when it's in season.

But I'd never thought to make jam out of the berries until now.

I've been ignoring these silverberries all all this time.

When they're still young, they're bitter and sour.

They're hard to eat because of the large seeds.

Let's go find other berries.

The fully ripe berries have lost all their bitterness and are just sweet and gooey.

There were all kinds of other tasty things around it.

So a lot of berries would go untouched, fall off their branch, and rot in the ground.

Oh no~ Mom, clean this up.

So much for my brand new shoes.

I even used to think of them as annoying.

I went to the city and lived with a man for a while.

There sure is a lot of fruit on there. What kind is it?

It's a silverberry tree.

Silverberry?

Can you eat them?

You can eat them but they're bitter.

- Bitter? - Nope, it's sweet.

Being a bumpking from the mountains, physical strength was all I prided myself on.

So it was frustrating to not be able to reach something that he could.

You're just too short.

Here.

I'm going to picky my own.

- C'mon, just eat it. - Pass.

Things turned sour with him.

So I went back to Komori.

And now,

it's silverberry season again.

So many berries falling to the ground only to rot away.

It's all piled up and will just go to waste.

That's just so sad.

Let's try making them into jam.

It takes time to take the seeds out.

Suddenly...

I realized that I was making the jam while thinking as if I were going to let him eat it, like I used to.

Idiot...

I weigh the separated fruit

and add 60% of its weight in sugar to start.

I didn't want to make it too sweet.

Still too sour.

Maybe I should go with 100%...

I wonder if it'll lose the silverberry quality once I take all the gunk out.

Hmm... Maybe I better add that sugar after all...

It boiled down before I got to decide on anything.

You know it's boiled down if it forms a loose ball when dropped in water.

It may seem loose, but jam hardens up quite a bit once it cools.

The fully cooked jam should be an opaque, muddied, dark pink color.

"If you overstir out of fear of letting it burn, your jam discolors."

I think Mom said something like that.

Cooking's a mirror that reflects your mind.

Stay focused.

Wouldn't want to hurt yourself either.

I guess...

this is the color of my heart right now...

...huh?

From one strainer's worth of silverberries, I got three small jars of jam.

I opened a jar the next morning right off the bat.

Here goes nothing.

It became a rich very sour tasting jam with a little bitterness.

Sour!

There's a frog living in your stomach.

That's the "frog in the stomach".