Those Two Young Teachers Who Blind Quit to Go Home and Farm – How Are They Doing Now?
I. From a “Blind Quit” to the Farm
Life at the school was so predictable you could see the end of it at a glance. Both of us wanted to search for a different way of living. Though we had not worked out exactly where we would go after leaving our jobs, we were sure of one thing: we both longed for a space in which we could be creative, and we both loved nature and the countryside.
And so, in January 2024, we “blind quit”. It was around the time of the Spring Festival, and An Tian and I were celebrating at our respective family homes. While searching online for information about ecological communities, I came across Foodthink’s “Eco-Farm Internship Programme” recruitment notice, and sent the article to An Tian. I told him excitedly that this might just be what we needed to do next. Dreams live only in the mind – it is only by putting your feet on the ground and living in the countryside that you can truly decide which path to walk.
Three months later, we got our wish and arrived at Yinlin Ecological Farm in Conghua, Guangzhou. During our six-month internship, we followed the farm’s aunties and the growing team out into the fields to learn, helped plan farm events, improved the soft furnishings in the guesthouse, and occasionally pitched in with sorting and packing. We tried our hand at most of the jobs involved in running a farm, so we could better understand what goes into keeping one running and prepare ourselves for opening one of our own.
Of all those tasks, the most important and the most difficult was growing techniques. Ecological farming is unlike conventional farming: it uses no pesticides or chemical fertiliser, and the demands it places on the soil are high. Only healthy soil can produce healthy food. Yinlin Ecological Farm makes compost from the residue left after brewing traditional Chinese medicine, and uses it to improve the soil. We, in turn, learned how to grow cucumbers, tomatoes and other crops on that enriched soil.
II. Encircled by Pesticides
In May in Zhaixia Village, if you looked down from the hillside, there was one striking sight: a sea of withered, yellowed ground broken only by a few small, vivid green patches scattered here and there. This was because every spring the villagers planted tobacco, followed by rice and peanuts. During the tobacco growing season, they sprayed large amounts of herbicide to kill the weeds, and once the tobacco leaves had been harvested, the terraced fields on the hillside turned a dull, sickly yellow. The few patches of green surrounded by all that yellow were the weeds in our own fields, still growing strong.
This is the land on which An Tian grew up, yet if we had not come here to practise ecological farming, we would never have realised how deeply the habit of using chemicals had taken root in the village in just a few decades. When the seasons change, villagers spray herbicide; when the grass by the field ridges grows tall, they spray it again.
When we first planted our passion fruit, if a villager happened to be nearby, they would inevitably say: “You need to clear the weeds from the field – all this grass is not good.” An Tian would reply in Hakka: “No need to pull the weeds. When the grass grows tall, just cut it, and it turns into fertiliser.”
This exchange repeated itself many times. Each time, An Tian explained patiently, hoping that if the villagers understood the reasoning, they might change the way they farmed. Later, when someone commented again and a villager happened to be standing by, they would step in and say: “They just don’t remove the weeds.” Though we were still not understood, at least some villagers had begun to take notice of what we were doing.
As deeply ingrained as the habit of spraying herbicide is, perhaps even more so, is people’s aversion to grass. Here is one conversation between An Tian and a local villager:
An Tian: “Why are you spraying herbicide by the fish pond?”
Villager: “The grass is growing!”
An Tian: “Herbicide is poisonous. If it runs into the pond, won’t the fish die?”
Villager: “I know it’s poisonous, but if the grass grows, it has to go.”
A conversation like that sounds maddening and funny in equal measure, and what follows is a deep sense of helplessness. People are not unaware that herbicide is toxic, but compared with that, grass growing out of control seems simply intolerable.
The elders in An Tian’s family share the same mindset. When vegetables grown for the family table develop pests and need spraying, An Tian always says that pesticide is poisonous and bad for your health – after all, this is food for your own family, and a little less yield doesn’t matter. Eating healthily is what counts. In the end, the amount of pesticide used at home did drop, but the use of herbicide was still impossible to avoid.
The villagers today remember only pesticide and chemical fertiliser when they farm. They are true smallholders, and yet they seem so far removed from traditional farming. Accumulating experience takes generation after generation; forgetting it takes only a few decades.
In truth, the villagers also know that food grown without pesticide or chemical fertiliser tastes better. But under the pressure of making a living, what they need is yield, and what that means is economic return – and with pesticide and chemical fertiliser, the yield goes up.
If we look at our situation on the bright side, we are simply “keeping to our own patch”; on the gloomy side, we are ‘besieged on all sides’ and “ambushed from every direction”.
Under these circumstances, a reasonably independent stretch of land was essential for us. But that is precisely where the trouble lay: here, the land is all terraced fields. When the fields were originally divided to ensure fairness, every family received a little plot higher up the hill and a little plot lower down, all scattered. Although we do not use chemicals, escape is hard – as soon as the neighbour sprays, some of the drift finds its way over to us, however small the amount. I wonder: is this not a dilemma shared by many new ecological farmers?
We did once consider renting an entire block of land to solve this problem, but it was nearly impossible. The village has a long tradition of tobacco growing. As soon as the New Year passes, the villagers plant tobacco – even if it is not for their own plot, they grow it for a relative. For the villagers here, tobacco is a steady income with no worries about sales: as long as you grow it, you can sell it. And the tobacco company provides a full package of support – how to grow it, what fertiliser to add, what chemicals to use, all sorted for them. The villagers only need to do the growing. As a result, there are no idle plots, and it is difficult to find a single contiguous stretch of land to rent. Fortunately, our passion fruit field is situated in a relatively independent spot, with a ditch and a bamboo grove along the edges serving as a natural buffer zone, so the impact on us is smaller.
III. Natural Farming Is Never Set in Stone
The biggest problem was the soil. Natural Farming is founded on soil fertile enough to sustain itself, yet our passion fruit field was newly turned ground. Before we started, it had been a dozen or so small terraced fields; for easier management we used an excavator to redivide them into five terraced fields, so the soil had virtually no humus – in other words, almost no nutrition.
To solve this problem, one approach is to let time do the work: first plant leguminous plants and let them die back so they decompose and return to the soil as fertiliser, gradually building up the ground. Given enough time, organic matter in the soil will slowly increase, but this method takes at least three to five years. The other option is to add organic fertiliser so the soil has some nutrients available to the crops right away – though this requires both labour and the cost of the fertiliser itself. On a small plot, the expense is manageable; on a larger one, it becomes a considerable outlay.
Are there any other methods to bridge this transition? Considering our livelihood in the village, we could only opt for organic fertiliser so that the first year would yield a harvest. But once a basal fertiliser has been applied, should we keep applying more? We could not work that out either.
This dilemma also drew scepticism from the villagers, who were certain that nothing could grow without added fertiliser. “If you don’t believe me, just watch!” – that was how our exchanges often ended.
Faced with such doubt, we had no answer to give; we could only persevere in silence. Though we believed in Natural Farming, the uncertainty in our hearts was impossible to hide.
It was only then that we realised our understanding of Natural Farming extended no further than knowing it to be an agricultural approach that emphasised following the laws of nature and minimising human intervention, with a core philosophy of respecting ecological balance and harnessing natural processes to sustain a farming system. But confronted with one practical problem after another, how were we supposed to put that philosophy into action?
At that time, we happened to see that Jia Bo – the teacher who had first introduced us to Natural Farming at Yinlin Ecological Farm – was running a workshop on Natural Farming at Doudoule Farm in Chengdu. An Tian and I signed up right away. During that course of study, we gained a much deeper understanding of Natural Farming.
Natural Farming does not mean that human intervention is entirely unnecessary; rather, it calls for necessary intervention made with a full understanding of and respect for how crops grow. The skill of intervening is built up through day-to-day practice and observation.
For example, Natural Farming holds that grass itself is a source of nutrients and should be grown alongside crops, but in practice managing grass involves many subtleties: with fruit trees, most low-growing grasses are harmless – they do not block the trees’ sunlight and are unlikely to affect them. Climbing grasses, however, cannot be left, for once a vine wraps around a tree it can stunt the tree’s growth or even kill it. In a crop’s early stages, the surrounding grass should be pulled out so that the roots can develop properly. Once the crop is growing well, pulling grass is no longer needed – but if the grass outgrows the crop, it should be cut.
First, what suits the local geography and climate. This is the most important reference point: if the land is not naturally suited to a crop, it demands extensive additional intervention – polytunnels, for instance. We wanted to keep inputs low and ease the initial financial pressure so that ecological farming could become a sustainable enterprise. So vegetables that can only be grown under a polytunnel were never on our list.
Second, how well a product ships. Produce from ecological farming is hard to sell at the point of production because costs are high and prices end up higher than what locals will pay. For the local market, the cheapest option is always the most appealing. So our products have to be sold beyond the village, which means courier delivery. Narrowing the options on that basis left us with very few viable crops.
Third, whether produce from ecological farming tastes noticeably different from conventionally grown produce. This factor is really about sales: if ecological produce is indistinguishable from the conventional kind on the plate, the audience is limited. Few people actively seek out ecological products, but if the difference in texture and flavour is immediately apparent, there is a much greater likelihood of people buying.
Taking all three factors together, and by observing what the villagers actually grew, we chose passion fruit and peanuts – crops well suited to the local climate and easy to transport – as our farm’s signature products.
We are also experimenting with tomatoes. Although they are difficult to ship, they make the most noticeable difference in taste compared with conventionally grown tomatoes. Unfortunately, because we planted late in the first half of the year and the weather happened to be both extremely hot and humid, the entire tomato crop was lost.
It is foreseeable that as we grow more varieties, the time and energy required will increase, the demands on growing skill will rise, and we will need to find a balance between the number of crops and the attention we can give each. In that sense, the road of ecological farming seems to have no end – one challenge follows the next. Yet we are still proud that we have made it this far, step by step, and we will keep going. We recently registered our own family farm, opened a micro-store, and gradually set up a WeChat group to share the day-to-day of our growing and our work. Everything is moving forward in its own order. The road is long and the journey far; I shall search high and low.
All images in this article were provided by the author
Editor: Yu Yang