When a high school maths teacher decides to farm

I. On the Farm, I Said Goodbye to My Allergies

In truth, I have almost no memory of having allergies before the age of 30. It is only in recent years that frequent allergic reactions became a thing; for instance, if I walked through the grass in sandals, there was a high probability that my feet would be red and swollen by evening. Sometimes, after a few nights of poor sleep, the palms of my hands would become red, swollen, and so itchy that I could hardly sleep.

I realised that something must be wrong with my lifestyle for me to have become so hypersensitive.

So, I decided to play doctor for myself, starting with improving my sub-optimal health. I remembered that back when I was a maths teacher a few years ago, I suffered from frequent migraines; however, whenever I went hiking in the mountains for a few days, the headaches would vanish, even with the heavy physical exertion. This meant that I was healthy when immersed in a good environment and an active state.

Then there were the allergies. Because my living environment was too sterile and I rarely came into contact with soil, I would inevitably break out in itches all over whenever I spent time in my mum’s vegetable patch. How could I improve this? The only way was to re-engage—to let my body adapt once more to a rich environment, including its microbiota, and to make myself a part of that environment.

Thus, during my break after leaving my job, my health gradually improved. My migraines almost entirely disappeared, and while allergies still cropped up occasionally, they vanished completely once I arrived at Xiqing.

In Beijing, around the turn of March and April, the temperature was pleasant, allowing me to spend long hours in the fields working with the earth. As a complete novice to farming, I always managed to soak my shoes while watering and frequently stepped deep into the mud. To better feel the soil and work more effectively, I often worked without gloves. Every day, I returned from the fields with my clothes and shoes caked in mud; I used to joke with my husband that I was turning into a little mud person.

The muddy water in the fields has a certain pH level, and the soil is rich in microorganisms. When I took off my shoes and socks at night, the tops of my feet were often incredibly itchy and bright red.

After a month of such days with wet shoes, the signs of allergy suddenly disappeared. When the internship ended and I returned to my hometown in Hubei, I spent time every day working in my mother’s small vegetable garden. Aside from the occasional mosquito bite, I no longer had large areas of red, itchy skin; even when working in the garden in flip-flops, my feet never swelled. In short, it seems my allergies are gone.

What happened in the transition from being hypersensitive to allergy-free?

I ate fewer snacks and healthier food;

I exercised more, replacing structured workouts with farm labour;

My daily routine became more regular; and by immersing myself wholeheartedly in nature, my mindset improved.

The intensive cultivation and diverse planting across the five-mu farm felt incredibly fragmented; I didn’t know how to organise the work. At first, I could only tell the cucumbers from the tomatoes. I knew nothing about the specifics of their growth or cultivation, and my daily patrols of the fields didn’t yield any further insights into the crops.

By the second month of my internship, I was still selectively ignoring many of the plots, such as the muskmelons. Another intern, Ma Hao, was managing them; I wasn’t interested and paid no attention to how he did it. I took the same approach with the first batch of watermelons.

I focused only on what I wanted to. Initially, I thought this was due to my limited capacity, as I had only just started in agriculture. Later, I realised this revealed that I was still confined by my identity as an intern; I lacked a holistic view of the farm and wasn’t taking every crop to heart. It’s clear that although I worked hard during those first two months, my mindset was far too leisurely.

That changed in June, when the farm owner, Wang Xin, went to Germany for a two-and-a-half-week exchange. This left just Ma Hao and me to handle the daily operations. Although no new crops were planted in June, the farm was at full capacity; hardly a single plot was idle. Just patrolling the fields took a significant amount of time. Different crops are at different stages of their growth cycles and have different watering needs, yet I was still a novice with less than two and a half months of experience.

During the weeks Xin was away, all sorts of problems cropped up in the farm’s management, but compared to when I first arrived, I truly did my best. During this period, I kept every single crop—and even the flowers and plants in every nook and cranny—firmly in mind.

As I write this at my computer at home, the entire layout of the farm remains deeply imprinted in my mind: at least thirty types of crops, with several plots sown at different times. Managing a farm requires an immense capacity for holistic oversight; you can imagine how daunting the challenge is for a beginner.

During this time, I also came to realise how difficult it is for small-scale farmers practicing diversified planting. The time investment required in the fields is enormous, yet it is impossible to quantify.

In the heat of the day, very little work can be done in the fields at noon. However, this is also when the plants are at their hottest. You need to understand the changes occurring between the crops and the soil at this specific time; the more you observe, the deeper your understanding of the crops, the soil, and the environment becomes.

It was through this process of repeated observation and verification that I developed an intuition for making immediate judgements. Take, for example, the transplanting of cucumbers.

In mid-June, temperatures in Beijing soared towards 40 degrees, and Ma Hao and I transplanted a batch of cucumber seedlings. Because the temperature was too high, and some seedlings had been flooded several times during the nursing stage—leaving them with weak roots—their water absorption was poor and transpiration was insufficient. As a result, twenty seedlings simply succumbed to the heat.

On the evening we discovered this, we did our first round of replanting, loosening the soil and increasing the watering frequency to help the young plants survive the heat. However, some still died, so we replanted a second time. Yet, the number of dead plants remained relatively high, which left me quite disheartened. But it was then that a shift occurred.

I was in the cucumber field, observing and pondering, when a sudden breeze blew past—it was so refreshing! The moment I felt that, I immediately thought of the weather Xin chose when planting sweet potatoes. I felt I should replant immediately. I checked tomorrow’s forecast; it wasn’t hot either. Wasn’t this the perfect time to replant? The survival rate would surely be high!

So, I immediately went to the greenhouse, selected some healthy cucumber seedlings, and planted them. As it turned out, the survival rate for this batch was indeed very high. I took this as a sign of my own progress and felt happy for a long time.

First become a labourer of the land, then a farmer.

III. Finding a More Whole Heart on the Farm

While doing this work, my attention was entirely focused on the crops. I would observe how the strawberries grew, noting which flowers hadn’t been properly pollinated; I would wonder what a thinned fruit would have become if left alone, and how it would have affected the others; I could see both the past and the future of this plot of land.

When weeding, I would imagine the state of the soil, the various stages of crop growth, and the types and sizes of weeds, noting the differences between them. When can I stop weeding? How should I set the blade? Should I pull out the roots? How should I handle those close to the crops, and those further away? What would happen if I left them?

The insights gained from pondering these questions are directly tied to the land. Perhaps if I spend enough time in the fields, the answers will come.

Since my internship ended, I often find myself thinking back to my first day at Xiqing. In late March, the open ground in Beijing had barely produced anything yet, but the essence of spring was already there. On the final leg of my bus journey, the roads were lined with great poplar trees, their drooping branches just beginning to show tiny buds.

I remember the weather being lovely that day—the sun wasn’t too harsh, nor was it dimmed by gloomy clouds; the strawberry leaves were lush and green. Standing to the east, I watched Brother Xin in the strawberry patch; it seemed as though all the strawberries were joyfully encircling him, echoing his smile.

I felt a surge of emotion, as if I were beholding a masterpiece, unsure for a moment whether it was the wind or the sheer presence he commanded within this piece of land.

In that moment, I found myself imagining that if I ever had a piece of land of my own, I would treat it with absolute sincerity and care; when I stood upon it, we would be inseparable.