How Our Sumisansui Journey Began

We are now the premier distributor for Sumisansui® products in North America. It all started with a farming adventure on the other side of the world.

I left Michigan in the fall of 2008 and headed to spring time in New Zealand. The plans were to spend six months traveling around both islands and working and studying at a farm on the North Island. I grew up gardening with my family and worked in commercial greenhouses in Kalamazoo MI from the age of 17. Kalamazoo has a long history of agriculture and was once known as Celery City, and later the Bedding Plant Capital of the World. I learned a lot in my time at the greenhouses and I was ready to move on from growing bedding plants to start my own market farm centered around heirlooms and biological practices. I was drawn to New Zealand primarily because of the varied climate - many different crops can be grown from south to north.

I took an intensive farming course at The Hōhepa Farm. In between course modules I traveled around New Zealand and did work trade on the farm. It was at this farm that I was introduced to the Sumisansui Irrigation tube - an innovative Japanese tool for diversified vegetable farms. The plots at the farm were in a few different areas based on soil type and convenience of harvest- salad and summer squash up by the houses, apricots and olives on the hillside and kumara down in the lowground. The Sumisansui made it easy to water them all as needed. I thought to myself that I would find and use Sumisansui when I returned home to begin my own market garden, and I assumed it would be readily available.

I started my market gardening career almost immediately upon returning to the USA in the Michigan spring of 2009. Year after year I expanded my knowledge and skills and grew food in many places and soil types. From 2011-2014 I partnered on a joint venture called Understory Farm and Orchard where we grew organic vegetables, tart cherries and cider apples. In late 2014 I moved on to launch Silverbeet Farm and Sureau moved back to Michigan where we began farming together, first leasing space at a friends organic farm and later back to family land in Kalamazoo. Because I moved where I was farming somewhat often and was leasing land it was not practical to install permanent irrigation infrastructure and I would often mention how much I wished we could just get some Sumisansui. Over the years I would search to see if it was available in the USA and could not find it.

In the spring of 2015 I met Phillip, he was working at a farm across the tracks and we spent that summer getting to know each other and have been together ever since. I told him about the Sumisansui irrigation tube and despite him not fully understanding what I was describing, he understood how important this tool was to me and how much I would like to use one on our farm. It became a bit of a running joke and often when we were wishing for rain or frustrated by the waste and mess of drip tape I would just shout SUMISANSUI!

Lucky for me, Phillip is the type of person who is willing to find out what impossible means so he happily took on the task of finding Sumisansui. After a couple years of internet sleuthing and reaching out, he received a call from a representative of the manufacturer in Japan. In the summer of 2022 we were sent a small number of Sumisansui products for trialing on our farm. Phillip worked on how best to adapt the Japanese fittings to American style irrigation components and we began using the Sumisansui Mark II on our farm. We are still using the first tubes and winders to arrive, they still work perfectly and we expect to get many more seasons of use.

In the Spring of 2023 we imported one pallet of Sumisansui Mark II irrigation tubes and fittings and one pallet of the M-Winder to begin selling them to other farmers. The first two years of sales we took a "soft launch” approach as we wanted to further increase our knowledge of the system and gain feedback from other farmers. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. One of our first farmers when asked how its working on his farm answered simply “good” when asked if he had any complaints he replied “not really”. So that’s a pretty ringing endorsement if you ask me.

It is amazing to watch this catch on and with the increasing interest in Sumisansui products we are now fully launching our business of importing these products from Japan to be sold to farmers in the USA and Canada. We have the confidence and experience to stand behind these products and the high quality components we are using to adapt Sumisansui to common irrigation components found in North America. We have some exciting partnerships and research projects going on and we are beyond excited to see where all this goes. It is especially satisfying seeing Sumisansui rolling out across so many incredible farms.