Organic chestnut pumpkin, grown by A-Xiang on the pure land of Gongguan, Miaoli

I am happy that the organic chestnut pumpkins I grew have finally started to be harvested one after another over the past week or two. Besides preparing to ship them to the organic distributor Leezen, which I work with, I also want to keep some of the larger ones to try selling online or through physical stores, so here of course I have to write at length about the sweetness and bitterness of the process, along with photos and posts.

Last year I was still working in the Netherlands, this year I am in a pumpkin field

It is hard to imagine that at the start of last year (2014) I was still working at FEI, a multinational company in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, that manufactures electron microscopes, discussing technical issues by phone and email with maintenance engineers at forty-six branch offices around the world, and now I am already in Miaoli, Taiwan, China, harvesting organic chestnut pumpkins, carrying a backpack and scissors into an overgrown pumpkin patch, picking fruit after fruit.

There were many reasons for returning to work in Taiwan, China from the Netherlands. One was that at the end of 2013, while in the Netherlands, I saw Taiwan news filled with reports on food safety problems, and at work I also felt that I talked too much and felt somewhat empty, wanting more opportunities to work with my hands. And because I heard my high school classmate A-Huang, who lives in Miaoli, talk about his part-time work experience at an organic farm, plus the highly independent nature of a farmer's work, it made me think of growing healthy crops with my own hands on this pure land in Miaoli.

Also, many people will say, has consumer confidence in organic certification labels not already collapsed? Why choose to grow organic crops? My thinking is that by growing organic crops myself, I can gain a deeper understanding of the crisis of collapsing confidence in organic certification, and bring a deeper level of confidence to consumers or relatives and friends, exerting some positive influence, which is also the charm of this work.

Why not save more money, open a farm, and hire people to do it? Since I left the military and entered the workplace in 2005, I have changed jobs four times. Although the industrial products made by the companies were different, and both part-time and full-time positions were involved, the main work was mainly maintenance or R&D engineer. Perhaps my learning and work history has been too theoretical and abstract, and I have found that I increasingly need hands-on ability, because being able to actually solve a problem or produce something means mastering the quality and source of the product, and only then can we talk about industrial upgrading and marketing, which is impossible to achieve by hiring others.

Why choose chestnut pumpkin?

As for how I stepped into this line of work? Actually, I asked my way into it. At first, my high school classmate A-Huang introduced me to apply for work at the farm in Xihu, Miaoli where he was working part-time. Later, during the interview, I found that the boss had an older farming friend, Mr. Lin, who was in his sixties and even more short-handed, so the next day I visited Mr. Lin's farm with him and got to know nearby farmers, and because of this I also met Su Jianxin of Yuqing Organic Farm in Gongguan, Miaoli.

I found that he was closer to me in age. He personally grows and produces organic leafy vegetables in a greenhouse, is very clear about growing details, and is generous in explaining them, so I wanted to apply for an intern position at his farm. Because this intern position was created in cooperation with the beginner organic agriculture class offered by the Agricultural Research and Extension Station of the Council of Agriculture, I first went to the Hualien Agricultural Research and Extension Station for a two-week beginner organic agriculture class, and then returned to Miaoli to work and learn together with Mr. Su Jianxin.

So why choose to grow chestnut pumpkin? Because what I mainly learned at Yuqing Organic Farm was growing short-term leafy vegetables (water spinach, bok choy, lettuce, amaranth, and so on), cabbage, cucumber, and chestnut pumpkin. Since, aside from pumpkin, all the other crops require purchasing a cold storage facility, in order to lower costs when operating the farm independently while also overcoming a relatively high technical threshold, I currently grow only chestnut pumpkin, which stores and transports well and has a denser texture and a better price, and at the beginning I planted one or two fen of land to learn and evaluate suitable growing techniques, and later I will gradually expand production.

Because the technique is unstable in the early stage of growing, I chose not to put all my eggs in one basket. I spend only about one fifth of my working hours growing one and a half fen of pumpkin, and with the rest of my time I take cases from the translation company I worked with before to maintain basic expenses. Only by extending the front line this way can I slowly learn to grow and sell pumpkin, and I will not go hungry because of one failure.

Thank you all for your help, and everyone is welcome to buy

My mother tongue is Miaoli Hakka, because when I was little my parents both spoke this kind of Hakka at home, except that I grew up in Hsinchu City and did not often speak it, so I ended up only able to understand it but not speak it. After coming to Miaoli last year, I found that few people are like this.

In Eindhoven I often met engineers from various places who came to the factory for training. I remember a Belgian engineer who himself spoke Dutch but lived in the French-speaking region of Belgium. His children could only speak Dutch at home, while at school and in outside society everyone spoke French. I think it was probably a similar situation.

When I first came to work in Miaoli, hearing everyone speaking my mother tongue made me feel very close to home. Although I am not very familiar with my relatives in Miaoli, the new people I met all treated me well, so here I must thank Mr. Wang of Leezen, A-Xin the owner of Yuqing Farm and his former intern A-Zhong, my farming friend Mr. Lin who works with me, the grandmas working at Yuqing Farm, my farming friend A-Cai of Wujiaqi Farm, Tu P, Mr. and Mrs. Xie, Mr. Luo, the landlord, and also the friends at St. Anne's Catholic Church in South Miaoli. Without you I could not have grown these pumpkins.

If any of you are interested in ordering, you are welcome to click this link to fill out the order form. In addition, buyers can arrange a free one-hour group visit to the farm in Gongguan, Miaoli, and I will personally explain the process of organic chestnut cultivation with no pesticides and no chemical fertilizers. The farm is on the top of a small hill at an altitude of 300 m, and there are other scenic spots on the mountain that I suggest you visit as well.

It takes only twenty minutes to get from the foot of the mountain to the top, and only fifteen minutes from the Gongguan interchange of National Highway No. 1 to the foot of the mountain. For the farm route map and information on other scenic spots, please download from here. Also, summer is here and there are more mosquitoes, so I remind you here that if you come to the farm, please remember to bring mosquito repellent or long-sleeved clothing and long pants.

Below is my growing process, to share with everyone

Figure 1: At fourteen weeks after sprouting, I decided to first harvest the more mature fruits. I used a backpack for the pumpkins because that way I could harvest while stepping across the weeds, and finally return to the edge of the field to place the pumpkins on a wheelbarrow.