An Introvert’s 106 Days on the Farm
The first time I learned about ecological agriculture was around 2016. Through getting involved in nature education, I naturally came across people working in ecological farming and discovered that many were tending the land in the pursuit of healthy food, a sustainable environment, and a more sustainable way of life.
At the time, I was growing flowers and plants on my city balcony and had started experimenting with composting. With so little space, the composting process could never keep up with the volume of kitchen scraps, and I kept thinking: if only I had a plot of land.
It was not until April this year, when I arrived at Zhiliangtian Ecological Farm in Alxa, Inner Mongolia, as an intern on Foodthink’s third cohort of the Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme, that I truly came to feel it in my bones: farming is a high-stakes trade.
The land here is a gift from the Helan Mountains, cultivated for only a few decades. Since Zhiliangtian put down roots here, it has been nurturing the soil with sheep manure and green manure. If the soil is too sticky, they simply shovel in sand from alongside the fields and mix it through. Both the sand and the soil were carried here by wind and water. There is no clear boundary between them, but there is a marked difference — and it is precisely that difference that nurtures the patches of vitality across these desert farmlands.
Rainfall is scarce, but after years of building up the soil, melon, onion, and foxtail millet — crops that are water-efficient and have short growing cycles — all thrive. On the farm, the old saying “farming at the mercy of the weather” is played out to its fullest extent: sowing must be completed in just the right temperatures; unpredictable windy days leave the seedlings battered and stumbling; and the rainy season at harvest time is a ticking time bomb — a single shower can split the melons, ruining them for market or robbing them of sweetness. Amid increasingly volatile climate shifts, losses to magpies and other creatures sneaking a bite are the least of one’s worries.
I. The Young Who Press On After Those Who Fell
When farm mentor Ma Yanwei shared his entrepreneurial story, he said his original vision had been to protect Alxa’s groundwater, lakes, and wider ecosystem through ecologically friendly, water-saving growing methods and thoughtful crop choices, and then, through field-study visits, to help more people understand this land and support the spread of ecological agriculture.
Zhang Bin, at the farm, was an intern on Foodthink’s first cohort of the Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme. After his internship at Zhiliangtian ended, he returned to his family home in Gansu to start a sheep-breeding venture. At nineteen, still short on experience, he hit wall after wall; a year in, he realised how much he still had to learn and decided to come back to the farm. Zhang Bin calls himself a native of Qin; at such a tender age, he has already set his course: breeding high-quality cattle, sheep, and horses suited to highland rearing.
At a crop-focused farm like Zhiliangtian, he often misses his family’s cattle and sheep back in Gansu, and has long been planning to buy a horse, working out how to build a sustainable path on his family’s winter and summer pastures that weaves together medicinal-herb cultivation and livestock breeding. Cattle, sheep, and horses are an inseparable part of him. At just twenty, he has already grown into the mountains, rivers, grass, and trees — single-mindedly walking his own path.
Later, meeting more ecological farmers — each drawn to this work for one reason or another, tending the land and tending themselves — I thought of another farm mentor’s words, Sister Yan Ping of the Guangxi Xingfu Baicao Garden: “Farming isn’t hard. If you think of it as nurturing yourself, you won’t find it difficult.”
II. The Ecological Wisdom of the Farm
After the Start of Summer, the farm ordered a batch of snow chrysanthemum rootlings online; planted in late May, they burst into bloom by the end of June. At first, every kind of weed — morning glory especially — vied with the snow chrysanthemums for territory. The morning glory, in particular, would wind its tendrils up and tangle through the young plants’ slender, fragile stems and leaves, making quite a nuisance of itself. While the snow chrysanthemums were still short, we did our best to clear every last weed for them. Eventually, when the weeding proved endless, we decided to remove only the climbing morning glory and let the other weeds grow on. To our surprise, this not only reduced the morning glory’s encroachment — the other weeds turned out to be excellent supports, steadying the snow chrysanthemums so they were not easily toppled by the wind. In growing snow chrysanthemums, we had accidentally fought weeds with weeds. (P.S.: I have recently learned that what we call snow chrysanthemum may in fact be an invasive species still under observation — Coreopsis tinctoria — so please think carefully before planting~)
The sheep and geese that roam freely through the fields never touch the cultivated crops; they eat only the various weeds. As Captain Zhao, who manages planting at the farm, explains, the weeds are simply more nutritious for them than the crops.
In Sister Yan Ping’s Hundred-Herbs Garden, the weeds are kept — as long as trampling them down does not affect the citrus trees’ growth, that is fine. Zhiliangtian, growing herbaceous crops such as melon and foxtail millet, pulls some of the weeds by hand. How to control weeds effectively while still letting them perform their vital functions — retaining water, holding soil, and enhancing the diversity and resilience of the farmland ecosystem — is something that deserves far more exploration and practice.
III. Farm Life, Not What You Imagine
A hundred and six days as an introvert on the farm — for the most part, a hundred and six days spent living among people — was a perfect illustration of just how much a person can overestimate themselves: your energy, your tolerance for communal life …
This year Zhiliangtian took on as many as ten volunteers at once — the farm’s first attempt at managing so many people with such varied backgrounds, ages, and expectations. A great many unforeseen things happened: friction caused by clashing work styles and ways of communicating; the confusion of splintering into small factions … The dozen-odd volunteers were selected from over eighty applications this year, yet seven or eight of them were gradually asked to leave — some within days, others after months. There was no shortage of volunteers who had overestimated what farm life would be like, nor was there any shortage of the farm overestimating its own capacity to manage them.
This inevitably led me to wonder: what exactly is the allure of ecological agriculture, that so many people — farm mentors included — willingly step forward knowing how exhausting it will be, and walk straight toward the brick wall just to test how hard it really is?
IV. Perhaps Because Nature Remains[1]
And then there were the shooting stars at odd hours, the Milky Way stretching across the sky, and the evening glow — never the same twice, but always breathtaking. Even the occasional yellow dust storm had a beauty of its own.
A rainy day was a cause for celebration. That refreshing sense of the whole earth being washed clean can only truly be felt when you are there. Farm mates would immediately get to work kneading dough, mixing fillings, and folding dumplings — everyone could whip up northwestern wheat dishes with ease, and the Mongolian wild onion, lush and green all the way into August, was always a favourite on the table.
At times like these, the warm moments shared with farm mates came flooding back: on rainy days, chatting idly under the eaves with Uncle Qian, Zhang Bin, Muge, and Bailinger thrown in; watching Li Dan, the artist in residence, lead everyone in releasing balloons to trace the wind’s path; letting my body loosen by the bonfire, singing tunelessly along with the children; everyone’s beautiful voices beneath the stars; Zhang Bin riding his three-wheeler to take us to the little town for barbecue; gazing at the Milky Way together, watching the full moon rest upon the Helan Mountains; visiting Sister Bai’s place to see the lambs; Captain Zhao, who oversees production, rolling up his sleeves to cook soup for everyone …
Perhaps it is precisely because of this kind of nature and sense of place that more than eighty people wanted to come to this patch of land in Alxa and volunteer. Even with all the farm’s problems in operation and management, all the confusion, even in the face of uncertainty around land, climate, markets, and people, the farm still chooses to persevere with ecological growing — and everyone who comes here does their bit.
V. If It’s Just About Nourishing Yourself
The internship fulfilled my hope of staying in Alxa for a full three months: at the time I figured that if I could last in a place so bone-dry, so sandy, so bitterly cold one day and scorching the next, so inhospitable for someone from the south, then surely I could manage on most farms and bear the hardships of farm work. I later realised how naive that thinking was. Farms in different climates each have their own charms and discomforts — for instance, after three months in Alxa, I went back south and found the dampness overwhelming. Alxa’s sandy soil is actually forgiving ground for someone like me, who cannot shoulder a load or lift a bag.
In the two months since the internship ended, apart from resting, I have been travelling to farms around the country, steadily testing whether my desire to enter agriculture is more than a passing whim. For the first half of my life I have always been one step at a time, occasionally stretching my gaze to two. After the farm internship, building on that old wish to “have a plot of land,” I find myself thinking further ahead now — what I want to do and what I can achieve over the next five or ten years.
What it truly means to me, to own a farm or to be a farmer, I suspect I am only a little clearer on now than I was at the start of the year. There is still a great deal to work out through practice — walking into the brick wall — before I understand it. All I know is that I love being on a farm. But can farming sustain me?
And then there is the question that haunts me: what exactly is different between town and countryside? Why do I feel at home in the countryside yet dare not put down roots, and why do I need the city yet am always itching to escape?
Sister Xixi at Muyunpo said, even work that serves the environment or rural development does not require planting yourself in a village; you can do supportive work from within the city’s systems.
My answer, for now, is perhaps this: I want the countryside to be part of my life — perhaps most of it. I want to create a sustainable, half-farming, half-X life for myself.
Since I first encountered nature education in 2016, the turning of fate’s gears has brought so much my way. I have been lucky to witness so many pioneers in their fields — nature education, community support, biodiversity conservation, environmental protection, rural education, ecological agriculture — all of them holding fast to what the world considers naive. And what is wrong with naivety? It is all just nourishing yourself.
[1] The phrase “Perhaps Because Nature Remains” is drawn from Sister Meizi’s social-media series titled “But Nature Remains,” borrowed here to express the theme of this section.
To date, three cohorts have been completed, supporting over sixty partners in total across more than a dozen ecological farms nationwide, undertaking farm internships ranging from three months to a year.
Editor: Mei Ying