A Detailed Explanation of the Core Ideas of Natural Farming: The Path of Growing That Returns to Nature

Today was the sixth day. A thin layer of sweat covered C from head to toe, and the heat escaping from every pore swirled like boiling white smoke, dissipating into the cold air of the just-brightening early morning. C leaned on the mud-covered hoe beside him, standing on his rice paddy halfway up the Coastal Mountain Range. The view here was excellent, overlooking the entire Huatung Valley plain. He gazed into the distance at the Central Mountain Range on the opposite side. The fog today was very thick, densely covering all of Chishang. Looking toward the Southern Cross-Island Highway, he could not see the distant Xiangyang Mountain; the great mountain shrouded in mist appeared as a blurry black shape, faintly visible, its ridgeline sketching out a magnificent splashed-ink landscape painting.

Yesterday, just like the previous five days, C had set out before dawn. He put on his hiking headband, pulled on his patterned long-sleeved gloves, and slipped into the tall rain boots specially custom-made for him here. Fully equipped and full of energy, he was preparing for the first time in his life to go down to the field to raise seedlings, ready to cultivate a rice paddy of his own. Just thinking about it made C so excited that he could not help but sit on a bench and bounce his foot. Once again, he nervously checked in his mind whether all the tools he needed to prepare were already packed: hemp gloves, a large hoe, a small round shovel for digging trenches, seven 12-foot water pipes, 14 steel pipes for the base, one fruit-fly net, a bundle of hemp rope, a tiller borrowed from farmer Hideaki Luye, a ladle, a bucket... oh, and the brown dog beside him, wagging its tail furiously.

"Now everything is ready," C thought to himself. Before the sky had brightened, having risen even earlier than the grandfather next door, he got up and set off. (It was also possible that the grandfather had gone out to the fields even earlier, so they had not run into each other.)

C walked from the alley behind his house up the mountain, passing the brick kiln and the farm pond that was as big as a lake. The brown dog followed closely behind, because it really wanted to catch the flock of white ducks by the pond. But the brown dog was too foolish, and every pouncing hunt only stirred the white ducks into a commotion. They flapped their wings with a clatter and swam down into the water, quacking as they shook their heads and tails, whispering to one another, as if mocking the brown dog's failure. The brown dog barked twice in frustration, then sulkily continued following C up into the mountains. Deeper in the mountain there was also a water source, which was the independent water source for his three-fen field as well.

The seeds C had obtained from farmer Hideaki Luye, Brother Xu, had already been soaking here for five days. By rights, the grains should have sprouted tips of 0.1 cm to 0.2 cm, ready for sowing. At least that was what Brother Xu said. Yet things had not gone as smoothly as expected. Out of 50 grains, only about one had a white tip emerging; the rest all seemed to be asleep. C frowned. The New Year was almost here, and the weather report said that the whole of Taiwan would next see low temperatures and lots of rain. He did not know whether there would be enough time, whether it would still be possible to sow the seeds in good weather.

C could not help becoming pessimistic. He suddenly remembered that Grandpa Kimura would talk to his apple trees, so he also scooped up a handful of the soaked grains, which gave off a faint fermented smell, and inspected them one by one. With his index finger he gently stroked them and said, "Thank you. Please try a little harder." He put the grains back into the water, and only then shouldered his hoe and returned to the field.

By the time he reached the field, it was about six in the morning. C had already been struggling here for five days. Half of the field bore the marks of coarse tilling. Following the methods he had learned from books on natural cultivation, C left clods of soil the size of cigarette packs scattered across the surface. The other half still retained its post-harvest appearance. From each rice stubble, two or three green rice stalks had already grown again, while the rice stalks cut during the previous harvest had turned yellow and dry, covering the entire field.

Although he knew the soil should be thoroughly dried in the sun, the soil of the Coastal Mountain Range was just so sticky and moisture-retaining. Coupled with the unusually rainy winter, his field had still only dried halfway. Brother Zhuang, who had come to help plow and turn the soil, drove the largest tiller in Chishang, and even his vehicle had almost sunk in and become stuck beyond rescue. In his heart, C could only smile bitterly at having chosen, on his very first attempt, a field whose "soil flesh" (Taiwanese) seemed bottomlessly deep to cultivate. He did not know whether that was foolishness, or simply the result of charging ahead on pure momentum.

But in fact C knew: he had come precisely for this field, deep enough to reach his thighs. Although ordinary farmers preferred fields only about 30 cm deep, enough for cultivation and convenient for machinery, and he had even heard that some people poured cement at the bottom of their fields, C simply felt that the nutrients such thick soil could nurture could never be matched by fertilizers made by humans. "Because I want to use pesticide-free and fertilizer-free cultivation!" C thought, curious what rice grown purely by nature would taste like...

For the past five days, C had been working here to prepare the seedling bed. During the first day or two, he used the tiller again and again, trying to break the oversized clods into finer pieces, while still keeping gaps between the soil. This was truly a skill that required time and accumulated experience. C laboriously pushed the tiller, yet often could not judge it accurately, going over it again and again. C knew there was a deep pit on the left side of the seedling bed. Although he always avoided that spot, in his heart he kept thinking: "If I could get the machine to do the work successfully, it would be so much easier..." C could not help thinking this way. In the end, unable to withstand the temptation in his heart, he decided to take the risk and drive into the danger zone.

By the time C realized what had happened, the wheels of the tiller were already sunk deep in the mud, spinning in place, transformed into two smooth tree-ring cakes. !@#$%…

C was both vexed and angry. He was furious at himself for having made such a decision. But no matter how angry he got, no one would come to help him in this vast three-fen plot. The machine stopped running, and all at once the surroundings became so quiet it was frightening. The field suddenly turned into wilderness, and C was trapped in the wilderness. "How did this happen?" "What should I do?" "Why does this soil have to be so sticky and so deep? I really should not have overestimated myself..." These anxieties, doubts, and blame swirled in C's heart, while nature maintained its usual silence.

Just as C was worrying, standing blankly on the field ridge with his mind completely empty, a huge black shadow of an eagle suddenly appeared on the ground. The shadow was so large that C almost thought the eagle would land on his shoulder the next second. C abruptly looked up and saw the huge eagle above spreading its enormous wings, revealing a black belly covered with spot-like white feathers. It glided gracefully all the way and finally landed on the treetop not far from C.

The eagle stared at him, as if it understood his predicament and embarrassment, then loftily flapped its wings and flew away, as if there was nothing in the world worth lingering over or being confused about.

C suddenly remembered something Brother Xu had once said to him when they talked about natural farming: "When you come into contact with nature, you are actually coming into contact with your own heart. When you encounter something that makes you afraid or creates difficulty, what you should really examine is your own heart, not the thing itself." C suddenly realized that his anger came from himself, not from the tiller stuck in the field. The tiller was merely a projection of his fear.

C finally calmed down, got both himself and the tiller out of danger, and stopped fighting against the power of nature. What the machine could not do, he would do with his own two hands, one hoe stroke at a time. Although the soil was very sticky, and scooping up one ladleful of soil took much more effort (after digging the soil up, it would stick to the hoe and not fall off, so he also had to expend effort shaking the soil off the hoe), at that time C's state of mind was very peaceful, very fulfilled, and he was so absorbed that he almost forgot time. By the time he noticed the sky darkening, the seedling bed had already been leveled, and the ditch beside it had already been dug.

Today was the sixth day. The sun rose slowly from the Coastal Mountain Range side. From his experience serving in the military in Zuoying, C knew that such heavy fog meant today's weather would be bright and sunny. He could not help smiling. He had always liked sunny days. Although after he began farming he had also come to deeply respect the arrival of rainy days, he still clung to that warm feeling under the sun.

The moist seedling bed shimmered under the sunlight, and the grains in the rice sack had miraculously all sprouted on the sixth day, as if a tiny totoro had come the night before with little green leaves and danced across them. C also now understood why Grandpa Kimura talked to his apple trees. Perhaps trees really could hear, but for him those words were what Grandpa Kimura said to himself. He kept himself, even in despair, preserving a heart of trust and friendliness toward nature. Through Grandpa Kimura's own language, he soothed the projection of despair within his heart, because what was in despair would never be the apple trees, would never be the grains, but our human hearts!