A Year of Harvest: Affection and Righteousness - Furniture Swap Series Episode 7

Because King Wang Vegetable Shop, the place where we work, moved, Xiaobao and I also moved to Pinghe Village in Shoufeng. It's been almost a year now.

The old bungalow was empty, so we grow crops in exchange for furniture, and call on friends to bring their secondhand furniture into our home.

Someone asked: "Won't you owe a lot of favors?" I said: "We can give them sweet potatoes / corn / peanuts!"

What we owe, we repay with dreams.

Nowadays, Xiaobao is mostly out in the fields; I write field notes from time to time, to repay these friends who gifted us furniture.

[Seven]

Since I started writing about affection and righteousness, Xiaobao has stumbled along learning to farm and bake bread, and in the blink of an eye, 2012 is almost over.
This year passed very quickly, and the reason it passed so quickly is because of liking.
I know that finding it too young will be very hard. To be honest, we really have felt the hardship, but we do not think of it as bitter.

The last wave of crops for the affection-and-righteousness furniture exchange was rice.

It was rice cultivated by human labor to the very end, without farm machinery to help.
Cutting the rice in July, threshing in August, milling in September, giving gifts in October, writing in November.
When people receive the rice, they are always extraordinarily moved, because rice is Taiwan's staple food, because we eat rice every day. I really love the feeling of mailing rice to people. During that time I was often running around carrying rice,
brown rice or germ rice, two bags or three bags, all the addresses and phone numbers had to be copied down carefully. The mailbox was small, and it could be sent at room temperature too.

That was not entirely the rice Xiaobao grew; that was Xiaobao's starting point: a farming school started by King Wang Vegetable Shop, bringing a group of young people interested in farming down into the fields to grow rice. Hong Xiaobao just happened to stumble onto the right thing by accident -- he really loves farming. No matter how hard or troublesome it is, he still wants to keep farming. It was only through working hard and bulling ahead that this "ability" was slowly cultivated.
Only then did he discover that his passion was actually this great.

On September 26, we arranged with Xiaoying and Ouyang to go mill rice. The car drove to Photosynthesis Farm. Xiaobao dragged two bags of grain out of the car, preparing to sift them. I rushed to the rice mill and, seeing the mountain-like pile of rice bran behind it, let out a sound of amazement. I ran to the front of the rice mill again and watched Ou Xiaoyang scoop out ladle after ladle of rice grains to inspect them. "So this is rice!" I let out another exclamation. Ou Xiaoyang looked at me and could not help laughing.

Thank you everyone for being forced to watch the affection and righteousness this past year. This is the final chapter. My busybody letters are going to end! (Whew~)

A while ago, after finishing dinner, I went out for a walk. On the dark little road, I thought of my old home Meinong, which has the same smell as Pinghe Village. It turns out that the things I have been pursuing have been by my side all along, from childhood to adulthood. There was an inexplicable calm in my heart, like seeing the source of life.

A new year is coming. I hope we often remember,
Eat Happily: )

Pinghe Home, Chong & Xiaobao bow