Furthermore, Chitose is home to several abandoned family farms, left behind by aging couples whose children moved to the cities. Between 2015 and 2025, a quiet movement of "herb inheritance" took root. Young daughter-in-law herbalists began leasing these empty fields, not to grow cash crops, but to establish yakusō no niwa —medicinal herb gardens. They formed a cooperative called Chitose no Yome no Kai (Chitose Daughters-in-Law Circle), which now supplies dried herbs to apothecaries in Sapporo and even exports yomogi powder to Korean skincare companies.
One such woman is Mai Suzuki (name changed for privacy), a former graphic designer from Osaka who married into a dairy and potato farm in Chitose in 2018. "My mother-in-law thought I was crazy when I refused to spray the edges of the fields," she tells me over a cup of yomogi tea she harvested herself. "She said, 'Those are pests.' I said, 'No, those are antibiotics, antifungals, and digestive tonics.'" jux773 daughterinlaw of farmer herbs chitose better
The “better” is not moral superiority. It is resilience. When heavy snow cuts off Chitose’s rural roads for days, the herbalist yome does not panic over a forgotten pharmacy run. She walks into her frost-covered garden, brushes off the snow, and harvests what she needs. She is better prepared. She is better connected to the land. And she is often better rested—because her family’s minor ailments no longer spiral into emergencies. Chitose is not Kyoto or Nara. It lacks ancient temples or tourist-clogged streets. But it possesses something rarer: a transitional climate where wild herbs grow with unusual potency. The city sits on a plateau with dramatic temperature swings between day and night, which increases the secondary metabolite production in plants—the very compounds that provide medicinal benefits. Furthermore, Chitose is home to several abandoned family
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