After the lockdown lifted, quilts, cured provisions and pickled vegetables lined every street in this small town in the Anhui region north of the Yangtze; the family followed Mother’s seasonal rhythm — frying meat balls, curing pork — drying out all fear and darkness, and met Grandfather’s passing too.
Since 2014, Ma Lan—head of the Forest Kindergarten at Friends of Nature Gaia Nature School—has led city children through the whole farming year, from loosening the soil to cooking, helping them rediscover food and themselves through stomping on fallen leaves, playing with stones and sowing seeds.
Once the grain corridor was disrupted, Ukrainian grain surged by rail, road and the Danube into southeastern Europe, sparking farmer protests in Poland, Bulgaria and beyond – yet Somalia and other nations most reliant on Ukrainian grain gained little. Around Odesa, farmers are forced to rebuild the entire sales chain.
A filmmaker who films in the southwest countryside yet always feels far from the land, she spent under a month at Tang Liang’s ecological farm in Niujiao Village, Jintang County, weeding and calling it a day with the eleven-person family. Back home, a whiff of ginger leaves – instantly familiar.
Foodthink is collecting feedback from event participants for the first time. The 5 most constructive responses will receive a set of Douban Nature Series tableware, to improve the quality and experience of our future events.
Jianwen takes us back to his mother’s hearth and his uncle’s herb garden, unveiling the food wisdom behind over a hundred varieties of wild greens and heritage pigs that take two years to mature – a Lisu family living in symbiosis with the mountain.
Hard farm labour need not stem from a lack of strength — keeping your back straight, using a broadfork instead of a hoe, and alternating tasks, drawn from German organic farm training and the US Farmworkers’ Ergonomics handbook, make the work easier and kinder to the body.
