Farmer Sisters Braving the Wind and Waves on the West Sichuan Plain

Late in 2021, while still working at an internet company in Shanghai, I came across Foodthink’s “Ecological Agriculture Internship Programme” recruitment notice, and it was as if something had stirred me.

Once my application was accepted, I chose Yujian Farm in Meishan, Sichuan, as my internship destination. As it happened, just before my trip to Sichuan, Shanghai entered lockdown. But there was something I simply had to see through, waiting for me, and two months didn’t feel so unbearable.

At the end of last September, just as I was making my way from Chengdu to Meishan, the area was locked down again because of the pandemic. Fortunately, Auntie Chen Ying from Yujian Farm helped me get in touch with Hu Xuemei Ecological Farm in Pidu District, and so I had my first farm experience.

I. I. Work-for-Board at Xuemei Farm

Sister Xuemei’s family currently tends six mu of land, managed by the couple alone – a genuine family farm in every sense.

The natural surroundings around the farm are superb. A little over a hundred metres behind the house, a broad river rushes briskly past. It is called the Baitiao River, one of the drinking water sources for Chengdu’s urban area. Water-conservation forests and wetlands line both banks, while an ecological greenway winds its way downstream – a wonderful spot for a summer stroll and a breath of cool air.

Unfortunately, the temperature dropped the very moment I arrived, and I had no warm clothes in my backpack, so I had no choice but to borrow a big floral padded jacket from Sister Xuemei. Once I slipped on that “battle gear”, so long as I didn’t open my mouth, hardly anyone could tell I was from out of town.

Sister Xuemei worried that I, a northerner, might not be used to the local food, so she handed me the job of cooking all three meals for the family. Every day, only after I’d finished my duty as the household chef would I head out to the fields to help with the work.

The most fun were Wednesday and Sunday – the vegetable-box assembly days. Sister Xuemei and I would set off early in the morning with baskets to pick the vegetables, then spend the afternoon packing and sending out parcels. Each vegetable box contained four or five varieties.

Most orders come from consumers in Chengdu, so the delivery distance is very short – parcels sent in the afternoon can arrive by the next morning. For packing, they use cardboard boxes and paper bags, with virtually no plastic and never any over-packaging. Some leafy greens aren’t even placed in paper bags; they’re stuffed snugly among the other vegetables until the box is packed tight, which is all it takes to prevent shaking and bruising. I truly admire these packing techniques.

Sister Xuemei, who is just past forty, is an incredibly capable rural woman. What makes her admirable goes far beyond her organic cultivation skills and her management of the farm. Beyond the day-to-day labour of production, she also actively takes part in community events on environmental protection and the sharing of composting techniques.

This time I happened to catch Xuemei Farm mid-composting: oilseed cake and rice bran, mixed with water at a 10:3 ratio, turned every single morning. The temperature in Chengdu was about 17°C at the time, and by the third day after starting the compost, the internal temperature had already climbed to 50°C. On the fourth morning, when I went to turn the heap, mycelium had spread across its outer surface – truly remarkable. Before long, the nutrients transformed by these microorganisms will be ready to go back to the fields.

II. Autumn and Winter at Yujian Farm

Once travel became possible in mid-October, I said goodbye to Sister Xuemei and arrived at Yujian Farm in Meishan. After two months of truly living here, I gained a far deeper understanding of what life on a farm really means.

My first days at the farm fell right in the middle of the local autumn sowing season. My first task was to clear a grassy patch alongside Wang Shi, the farm’s long-term farmhand (in this area, men who do manual work are addressed as “Master” before their surname).

The plot was thick with nut sedge and alligator weed, both of which have roots that are devilishly hard to clear completely. Nut sedge tubers are shaped like jujube pits, with fine rootlets sprouting across their surface, often trapped inside individual clods of soil. Unless you break each clod apart, it is nearly impossible to pick out every last root. Alligator weed (commonly nicknamed “revolution grass”) has roots that are easy enough to spot, but tilling the soil tends to chop them into tiny fragments. Left behind in the earth, these scattered shreds of root are like seeds sown across the ground – they simply sprout anew and grow.

It took Wang Shi and me two or three days’ hard work to clear this grassy plot, which covered barely half a mu. Auntie Chen Ying tried sowing green manure such as clover there. The green manure did sprout, but the nut sedge and alligator weed grew back just as fiercely – it was clear we still had not pulled up every last root.

The second round of “breaking new ground” was on the open strips running along the mulberry and cherry tree rows. Alligator weed had all but taken over this plot – every metre or two we turned over, the roots we pulled out would heap up into a small mound. Wang Shi carried them out trip after trip on a carrying pole with baskets slung at either end, setting them aside for composting. Once we had finished preparing the ground, we sowed broad beans, garden peas, barley and rye across it, and stretched netting over the plot to keep the birds from eating the seeds.

The third round of digging out roots took us to the vineyard. Late autumn into early winter is the time for top-dressing fruit trees. First we cut back the weeds on the ridges and in the furrows, then cleared out the alligator weed roots once more. After that, we dug half-metre-deep trenches on both sides of each grapevine with a hoe, filled them with compost, covered them with soil, and irrigated with water from the duck pond. This way we boosted the soil’s fertility while also giving us a chance to refresh the ducks’ pond.

Before the winter chill set in, we gave the entire strawberry plot a final hoeing to clear the weeds, and while we were at it, trimmed off the old leaves from each plant. Once the beds had been watered thoroughly and the ground was firm enough to walk on, Auntie Chen Ying and I laid two-colour mulch film over each strawberry ridge, tore small holes along the rows, and poked the strawberry seedlings through.

I have always been concerned about the heavy use of plastic film in agriculture. While laying mulch film over the strawberry beds and putting up polytunnels, I asked her whether any other material could serve as a substitute – I had heard that straw could also keep the strawberries warm.

Auntie Chen Ying said she had tried straw too, but insects would crawl out of it and eat the strawberry fruit. The film, however, has many advantages: it keeps pests at bay, retains warmth and moisture in the soil, and its smooth surface allows water to drain easily, so wherever the strawberries rest against the film, they never rot from excessive dampness. She had also considered reusing last year’s film, but the holes torn in it did not line up with the positions of this year’s strawberry seedlings, so it simply could not be used.

I thought to myself that if my own farm cannot avoid using plastic film in the future, I must find a way to increase the number of times it can be reused.

III. The Path to Self-Sufficiency at the Table

What first drew me to Yujian Farm, beyond its nickname – the “Hundred-Herb Garden” – was Auntie Chen Ying’s exacting standards for food sourcing and her grand ambition to achieve complete self-sufficiency.

Apart from flour and sweet potatoes occasionally purchased from fellow farmers (from Liangliang Farm in Jintang County) and apples (from fellow farmer Li Lijun in Shandong), nearly everything on the farm’s table is self-grown grain and vegetables. Even everyday seasonings and snacks are made in-house. Having experienced it all firsthand, I admire her even more than before.

Five or six large earthenware jars in the farm’s front yard stand open to the sun, brewing all manner of pastes – fermented black beans, sweet bean paste, wheat paste, and more. They demand constant watching and stirring so they neither dry out nor turn too wet. Stirring is by no means effortless. Once, when I helped stir three jars of paste, it took me the better part of a morning. Before the paste goes into a clean jar, you must sterilise it with high-proof baijiu to ward off contaminating microorganisms. Ladling the paste from jar into narrow-necked crock demands even greater patience still. I have to hold my breath, keep my arm perfectly steady, and take a few long, slow breaths to stop myself from getting impatient – I feel as though every scrap of my temper has been ground away.

At Yujian Farm, any fruit or vegetable that cannot be eaten fresh is dried in the sun. Leafy greens need no explaining, but yardlong beans and cauliflower, too, can be boiled first and then sun-dried for keeping. When these dried vegetables meet water once more and find their way back to the table, they reveal yet another texture and flavour.

Fruit, however, cannot rely on the sun alone. The farm has acquired a small dehydrator. Leftover strawberries from spring, peaches that run over in summer, and the very last of the kiwi fruit in autumn are all sliced and slow-dried into everyday snacks. This year, when we made dried kiwi fruit, I was appointed head of the peeling operation. On rainy days when there was no work in the fields, nothing suited me better than sitting under the courtyard’s rain canopy and peeling away.

The person mainly in charge of cooking at the farm is Uncle Zhou. He always asks me: “Little Li, do you feel like we don’t eat enough meat?”

I don’t think it’s all that little. The poultry we eat is virtually all raised on the farm, and Uncle Zhou also occasionally buys locally farmed freshwater fish and pork ribs for cooking. At this frequency, it is precisely the “eat less meat, eat good meat” approach to eating.

Not to mention, Uncle Zhou makes tofu pudding whenever he has a spare moment, then turns to me and says: “Doesn’t it taste different from tofu pudding you buy outside? These are heirloom soybeans we grew ourselves!”

I often find myself wondering what kind of drive could lead someone to hold the quality of their food to such exacting standards. Of course, health and wellbeing play their part: Auntie Chen Ying and Uncle Zhou are about the same age as my parents, both at fifty – the age when, as the old saying goes, one comes to know heaven’s will. With a steady household income, they are in precisely the right position to have the time and the energy to pursue a higher quality of life.

Yet I think what really makes it possible to sustain such a pure organic life is the farm’s commitment to carrying forward traditional wisdom and its steady, resolute rhythm of living.

IV. Coda

In 2022, when the outside world was swept by one unthinkable event after another, I sank into political depression over the suffering of people far away. I could not be sure how to find my footing in this era, yet the two farm internships gave me the courage to imagine new possibilities.

My internship is over now, and I have returned to my hometown in Hebei – an utterly ordinary village on the North China Plain. Every farming household in the village practises conventional farming; my parents, too, run a five-mu fruit orchard there.

At first, I did not expect my family to understand my decision to build an organic farm. Yet my time at the two family farms in Sichuan taught me that support within a family need not rest solely on shared convictions – parents often back their children simply out of love. If what I stand for can withstand the tests to come, perhaps our differences in outlook will melt away in their own good time.

I have already begun searching for land for the farm – probably not too far from home.

About the Ecological Farm Intern Programme

Foodthink launched its agricultural internship programme in November 2021. Eighteen interns headed to eleven farms across eight provinces and municipalities, undertaking internships lasting from two months to one year.

We hope ecological farms will lay out their valuable experience in farm management, production techniques, sales and marketing for the reference of young people who wish to return to the countryside and take up ecological agriculture. At the same time, interns from diverse backgrounds can contribute their own strengths, inject vitality into the farms, and reduce the cost of learning and trial and error when they go back to the countryside to start their own ventures.

In 2023, registration is now open for Foodthink’s second round. Click here or scan the QR code on the poster below for registration details.

On 9 February, we will also hold a special open sharing session, inviting the first cohort of interns and their mentors to look back on the internship experience. We will open a Tencent Meeting and livestream on Foodthink’s Video Account. If you have any questions about the internship programme, you are most welcome to ask. Please follow Foodthink’s upcoming posts for further details.

Unless otherwise noted, all images in this article were taken by the author.

Editor: Ze’en