Repairing the Rice Paddy Ridges: A Farming Experience on a Tiny Nine-Li Field
Probably because of guaranteed-price purchasing and a level of mechanization as high as 90%, rice is the crop grown by the most farmers in Taiwan, and when I first came back to farm, I chose it as my entry-level crop as a farmer without giving it much thought.
In my mind I thought three phone calls would be enough to grow rice well: one call to bring the tractor to plow, one call to bring the rice transplanter to plant the seedlings, and finally one call to bring the combine harvester to bring in the grain. Little did I know that the legend that farmers grow rice with just a phone call was only everyone's joke, a complete illusion.
That year, shortly after the Lantern Festival, I took over from my uncle the nine-li plot (note: 0.9 fen) that my grandfather had left behind. My uncle and a few neighboring elder uncles stood on the paddy ridge supervising, while I was in the field repairing the ridge. I think they probably did not quite understand what this youngest, most highly educated child of the family was really trying to do, but seeing that I was willing to work in the fields was at least something new to them, and standing on the ridge supervising and giving directions probably meant a kind of passing down of skill.
A paddy ridge is the brick-built narrow path that separates one field from another. The gaps between the bricks need to be filled with soil; doing so prevents fertilizer water from flowing into someone else's field after fertilizer is spread. A 1-chi-wide ridge feels too narrow when you walk on it, and repairing it is truly backbreaking. I bent at the waist, grabbing field soil and stuffing it into the gaps between the stones. At that time I had spent too long in the laboratory and was a standard "laugh-and-stretch" type; after a few steps and patching a few holes I would stretch my back, and I took especially many breaks. My uncle saw it all, I suppose, and merely used his eyes to signal that I should bend down again and finish repairing the ridge. After several rounds like this, my first intimate contact with the nine-li field came to an end.
Can the ridge be left unrepaired? Of course it can, except that a leaky field with an unrepaired ridge requires more fertilizer, and it is also easy to misjudge the amount of fertilizer used. What is even more troublesome is that when the neighboring dry field is planted with sweet potatoes or corn, the field water flows through the gaps in the ridge to the old farmer next door, and you will be scolded until your head reeks...
Of course, the paddy ridge is not only a heavy memory of my uncle supervising and old farmers scolding until your head reeks; by the ridge there also unfolds the warm scene of exchanging vegetables. Generally, from the end of the second rice crop until the transplanting the following year, besides planting green manure to nourish the soil, diligent Taiwanese farmers also casually plant some vegetables. Interestingly, if you carefully observe this "casual" action, you will find that it is one of the main reasons for the low prices of winter greens each year; of course, it is also because pests and diseases decrease in winter and greens are abundant, so supply and demand in the market suddenly fall out of balance.
These vegetables are left by farmers for themselves to eat during the New Year, and most are grown without pesticides. At dawn and dusk, you can see someone pulling white radishes to exchange for cabbage, or me picking garland chrysanthemum to exchange for A-choy. In this back-and-forth, what the ridge connects is not only the positive value of bringing nutrition and food diversity, but also the sharing of the joy of harvest among farmers. I like the heavy responsibility of skill transmission that the adjacency between fields links between old farmers and young farmers, and I like even more the warmth of the small matter of vegetables linked by field adjacency. Come to think of it, it is because of this nine-li plot that I am connected to this land full of warmth and fragrance.
As for the ecology between adjacent fields, let us leave that for "Between Adjacent Fields - Part Two" to discuss.
Further Reading
Youth in Farming Feature Series (2) Ma Yu-an and Nine Centimeters