Weeding was the first thing Dad taught me

Me: My dream is to raise a sheep.
Mom: You have so many dreams!
Me: But I really, truly want to raise a sheep.
Me: If we raised sheep, Dad would have it so much easier. And my dream is to raise a sheep!

Ever since I was little I have had lots of dreams. Opening a coffee shop or a cake shop was the same dream as any ordinary little girl's,
and as I kept growing older,
the fantasies I once had about the outside world had to give way, as I turned from a little girl into a grown woman, to facing my dreams more realistically.
What kind of ingredients lie behind those pretty cakes?
What kind of places do those ingredients grow in?
Question marks kept popping up around my dreams.
But even at the practical level, some fantasy scenes still inevitably appear
(like the little sheep raised in the movie "Bread of Happiness")
This time, though, the dream was spoken out loud in the hope of lightening Dad's burden of cutting grass.

Even though Mom and Dad had always deliberately avoided unhealthy food for us since we were little,
it was only in recent years, when the family converted the fields and mountain land left by my maternal and paternal grandfathers to pesticide-free, eco-friendly farming,
that I realized just how hard this path is, and that it is almost impossible to taste the fruits within a short time.

We are just starting out, so I want to record these small things that are rarely mentioned but are so important!
Let's start with weeding!

Shuili in Nantou is an area full of betel nut palms, and it is also Dad's hometown.
When Grandpa was alive he also made his living growing betel nut, and there was once a golden age for betel nut.

Two years ago Dad retired. The betel nut orchard had been contracted out to specialist wholesalers,
but Dad wanted to plant more different tree species among the betel nut palms,
so that it could gradually be converted away from growing betel nut.

The bananas are ugly, and they grow in among the betel nut palms, but because of Dad's insistence,
they have no pesticides and no herbicides. Wonderful!