A “Scoundrel Valley” Built with Bare Hands: How Can Building and Farming Achieve Autonomy of Life? | Food Talk Vol. 28
For this episode, Foodthink finally had the chance to visit Scoundrel Valley, to live and eat alongside Kouzi, and to experience firsthand the “shut the door and face the sky” life she has led for the past few years – cooking together in the open, four-way-breezed kitchen, picking fresh from the neighbouring plot whenever hunger struck, and savouring Kouzi’s homemade fermented foods beside the warm heated brick platform.
Scoundrel Valley has seen quite a few changes over those two years. Two new buildings have gone up on the farm, and Kouzi – a farmer who came to the craft late in life – has only grown better with the soil. Beneath these surface changes, she shared the philosophy that drives them: minimising the use of concrete and bricks, she put up the very first structure in all of Scoundrel Valley, reducing the impact of habitation on the land to the bare minimum. Through constant refinement, she has built three structures in total, achieving a comfortable life that is not only warm in winter and cool in summer but also suits both solitude and entertaining guests, and even allows for drying crops. As a devotee of the “lazy farming method”, Kouzi plants perennials wherever possible – even growing two rice harvests a year – and she openly says her ideal is “plant once, eat for a lifetime”. Add in the chickens and the fruit trees, and Kouzi is edging ever closer to her dream of self-sufficiency.
In Kouzi’s view, this way of living has fulfilled her ideal of freedom and autonomy for modern people. But faced with so grand a question, she chose to adopt a way of thinking and acting that endlessly shrinks itself. Since moving to the countryside, Kouzi has shaken off the sub-health state that once required a handful of pills every day and has grown strong and well. This may not solve society’s problems, but she hopes that by putting it into practice herself, she can show more people that each of us has the potential to achieve freedom and autonomy – meeting our own needs while reducing the harm done to the natural environment.
From city dweller to someone who lives wholly on the land, Kouzi’s story may prompt us to take a fresh look at modern ways of living. Press play and join us in exploring Kouzi’s unique life in Scoundrel Valley.
This Episode’s Guest
Kouzi
Farmer, endurance hiker, village brewer. Full-time foodie, part-time farmer, and writer by hobby.
This Episode’s Host
Wang Hao,
Editor at Foodthink. The happiest moment on a business trip is going swimming with Grandma Kouzi.
Timeline
00:32 What is it like to build a home in Scoundrel Valley and live a self-sufficient life?
01:18 What is the true relationship between people and the land? On the premise of meeting human needs, how can a house be built to minimise the harm done to the land?
07:42 How much land does one person need? One mu and three fen (roughly 870 square metres). How big a house does one need? Just 32 square metres. With nine steel columns and a light-gauge steel frame, Kouzi built the largest structure in all of Scoundrel Valley.
09:25 Sipping tea in Kouzi’s tea room with your feet dangling in the paddy: lift your head and there is a starry sky, bend down and there is the rice paddy, fill your ears with the chorus of frogs, and and you can also see fireflies.
11:02 In the city, we are enclosed on all four sides by concrete – the very boundaries of the world framed by cement – so do we really need a big living room, a balcony, a house grand enough to “match our standing”?
15:35 For a self-taught farmer arriving on a piece of land to break ground from scratch, is it possible to achieve near-total self-sufficiency? Apart from some fruit, sugar and salt, Kouzi hardly needs to buy anything anymore.
19:42 “Shut the door and face the sky – what profit could the land hold for me?” – a life experiment that seeks no profit, exploring just how far a modern person can truly achieve autonomy and freedom. Looking back on city life, perhaps the ones trapped in the system are not just the delivery riders.
24:38 The “lazy farming method”: the goal is “plant once, eat for a lifetime” – as long as you do not get too greedy at harvest, leave some plants in the soil, and they will keep growing. Kouzi’s aim is to achieve no-till farming on her little plot within two years.
26:07 The ideal of “autonomy of life”: faced with vast societal problems, people sometimes say, “What a lovely ideal, but I could never achieve it.” Kouzi chose a way of thinking and acting that endlessly shrinks itself – starting with building a house in the countryside and tilling a small plot, at the very least making modern life less damaging to the individual.
30:41 Is non-profit “lifestyle-based agriculture” actually expensive?
33:20 Building a house yourself, setting up a rocket stove, figuring out the techniques of farming – in the internet age it is easy enough to “acquire knowledge”, but we need to “converse with knowledge” through our own hands.
47:41 Could you go back to the city? You could, but there is no need. Once you have grown used to life under the bright moon among the hills, you feel you already have everything.
50:25 What does Scoundrel Valley eat each day? No need to ask life’s ultimate question anymore – whatever is ripe in the field, you eat. The land provides abundantly, and the cooking is simple yet delicious.
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Production Team for This Episode
Production: Xiaojing
Coordination: Wang Hao
Cover art: Wan Lin
Music: Banong
Editing: Wang Hao
Email: xiaojing@foodthink.cn