Three Full Months of Rain Taught Me What It Means to “Depend on the Sky”
Foodthink Says
In an era of climate change, the growing frequency of extreme weather is an undeniable fact. As farmers, we can only ‘exhaust every effort within our own hands’ within whatever margins the sky still permits, and preserve our hope. The recent lull in rain is just the right time to tidy the land and gather one’s resolve. Foodthink would like to take this opportunity to send our warm greetings to all our fellow farmers.
As a complete greenhorn, all I wanted to know was this: if conventional farming yields 500 kg, what might one expect without chemical fertilisers or pesticides? Was there a guaranteed minimum?
Back then, I assumed my respondents were simply using “depend on the sky” to brush me off.
The ignorant are fearless – “depend on the sky” failed to deter me, and I rented the land in the end. My two years in Taiwan enjoyed favourable winds and timely rains; the harvests were good, even outperforming seasoned growers who likewise shunned chemicals. It was only when I reached Eren Valley that heaven gave me my lesson, and I at last began to understand what “depending on the sky” truly means.
I. Onions: A “Successful” Failure
On 31 May, I harvested the onions; the entire yield is pictured. I have once again “successfully” failed. Using the word “successful” is no act of self-deception: I have successfully proved that onions can be grown in Eren Valley.
Total self-sufficiency – ideally growing everything you want to eat yourself. But some varieties you can tell from theory alone will never survive here – apples, for instance (apples need a cold dormancy period to flower and fruit, and this area simply does not accumulate enough winter chill). Others require hands-on experience to finally make peace with giving up on – tree beans and walnuts, for example. Onions fell into the category of “still to be verified”: they are sold in local shops, but no one here grows them. Then I learned that Pingtung, at the southern tip of Taiwan, is famous for its onions – and it is considerably hotter than Fujian – which made me think, “This one I can definitely do.”
Last November, I bought two hundred seedlings online and planted them in sandy soil suited to onions. The survival rate was good, and I felt confident about self-sufficiency. When I went home for the Spring Festival and returned, the onion shoots were thriving in the spring. I would often pinch off a few tender, plump leaves to eat as scallions – indistinguishable from the real thing in both look and flavour.
Then came Eren Valley’s darkest hour. This year’s rain has been relentless. From March onward, a long rainy season set in, and right up to now the days without a single drop can be counted on one’s fingers – even the days with sunshine are few and far between.
Onions are vulnerable to waterlogging. Although that plot drains well, the sky kept pouring down so relentlessly that the soil was saturated to the level of a paddy field. I watched the onions rot as they grew, dissolving into invisibility amid the unending rain. Of course, a few did persevere – my “resilient onions,” as I call them – but they have fallen far short of recouping the thirty-odd yuan spent on seedlings.
II. Winter Wheat: Not a Single Grain
The idea of growing wheat came from Taiwan, too. Taiwan is even hotter than here, yet quite a few people grow winter wheat. In May 2022 I spotted a lone wheat plant by the roadside. I walked over and pinched the heads – to my surprise, there were firm grains inside. Local friends theorised that it might be grain dropped by a passing animal-feed truck, or bait from rat poison that had sprouted after getting wet. Either way, it proved that wheat could head and set grain here.
The first trial planting was in late 2022 – 2 December, on the eve of a cold snap. Here you cannot plant wheat by the traditional solar terms; you just have to watch the sky. Once the daytime high drops below 15 °C, you can sow – otherwise the seedlings bolt out of control the moment they sprout.
What I planted that year was not even proper seed wheat – just grains meant for sprouting to make malt sugar. Strictly speaking, it was only a trial, but the yield wasn’t bad: I gathered over ten kilograms. Emboldened, I had someone source proper seed wheat early in 2023, prepared the field, checked the soil moisture, and planted the wheat the proper way.
The cold snap in 2023 came even later than in 2022 – I sowed on 11 December. This time, with serious preparation, the seeds germinated beautifully. During the Spring Festival I was back home in Shandong; when a neighbour sent photos of the field, I was quietly thrilled. After the holiday I arrived home late, and the first thing I did was walk the field with a torch to check the seedlings. Green shoots everywhere – not seedlings at all, but my dream of self-sufficient flour, laid out across the field.
Under my eager, anxious gaze, the wheat across the whole field greened, tillering, then heading. When I photographed the first wheat head, I couldn’t resist posting it on social media to show off – already dreaming a harvest dream of a golden sea of ripened wheat, as though I could see steamed buns, bread, pizza… an army of carbohydrates marching in formation.
But then came this spring’s endless, unceasing rain. By all accounts, the field’s drainage was decent enough, yet the wheat plot was flooded into a paddy regardless. Not only were the roots submerged, but during anthesis the daily rain made pollination impossible. My wheat heads came out thin, small, yellow, and shrivelled. Half a mu of wheat – not a single plump grain set. In the end, I had to mow them all down with the brush cutter and turn them back into the soil.
And so, Eren Valley’s 2023–2024 overwintering crops met a complete, utter defeat.
The sky is force majeure. What I encountered goes by the term now in common use: “extreme weather.” This is not only agriculture’s number-one problem; it is humanity’s number-one problem.
III. Imagining Heilongjiang from Taiwan – Summer Insects Know No Ice
My friend had consulted her cousin, a rice grower, prepared a proper slide deck, and presented to the Taiwan farmers on how rice is cultivated in the northeast – from raising seedlings in artificially heated greenhouses in spring, to harvesting in October.
In Taiwan, reaping rice is above all a matter of reckoning with typhoons. Harvest day must come before the typhoon arrives, avoid torrential rain, and account for the weather during the drying period after reaping. Wuchang is dry enough not to worry about drying the grain; what her cousin worried about was snow – the harvest had to be in before it fell.
“What if it snows?” The Taiwanese rice farmers, unable to help worrying for their northeast counterparts thousands of kilometres away, asked, “Wait until the snow melts before harvesting?” In Yilan, if you cannot beat the rain to the harvest, you would rather wait a few more days – even if fully ripe grain drops into the field – and wait for the rain to pass and the skies to clear.
My friend shook her head. “The snow where we are – once it falls, it doesn’t melt.” The words hung in the air; the whole room fell silent. A beat passed, then everyone burst out laughing – the Taiwanese simply do not understand the cold of the northeast. In Taiwan, if snowflakes drift from the sky, anyone’s first instinct is to grab a phone and take a photo – otherwise the moment they touch the ground they melt away. They cannot conceive of snow that does not melt on contact, snow that lies until spring warms and flowers bloom, half a year later, before it finally thaws.
There is a distance beyond mere miles from Yilan to Wuchang – a distance so vast it makes us believe that humans can conquer anything.
The sky has always been the supreme authority hanging above a farmer’s head; it has been so for millions of years. It is only that modern people, reshaped by two centuries of industrial civilisation and modern education, tend to project their own assumptions onto the sky – and even imagine they can change it.
When I once asked the Yilan farmers what kind of yield to expect, it was the same – the mindset of a modern industrial model.
IV. Watching the Sky, Watching People
I am not saying humans are entirely helpless. Improving soil quality and restoring microbial life are all works in progress here in Eren Valley, as, of course, is the introduction of non-native crops. From Yunnan have come broad-leaf chives, broad-leaf coriander, sour quince, and Buddleja officinalis; from Henan, Schizonepeta; Hani red garlic; and from Lugu Lake, prinsepia fruit – all now taking root here. Then there are the toon shoots and figs in my Taishan courtyard, and the Ruiyan fragrant rice that travelled with me all the way from Taiwan.
If someone asks me about the yield now, I too will answer: “Depends on the sky.” Not playing the mystic – simply speaking the truth. And if they ask, “Are you still going to grow wheat? Still going to grow onions?” – Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?
If you have a dream upon this land, then follow it. Plant, and at least there is a chance; do not plant, and there is certainly nothing.
Man proposes, heaven disposes. Planting is doing all that is humanly possible; as for the harvest – give it your all, and leave the rest to the sky. Each to their own fate.
All illustrations in this article are by the author unless otherwise noted.
Edited by: Wang Hao Layout: Xiaoshu