Mission Diversity and Life Diversity: A Field in the Heart

Text/ Hsu Szu-ting   Photos/ Da Wang Vegetable Shop Farming Method School

Friday is the weekly gathering time for everyone at the Farming Method School.

The students of the Farming Method School each have their own work or class schedules on ordinary days, so the times they can go to the fields, the Photosynthesis Farm, or the Pinghe Studio all differ. Friday is the day everyone can make it each week.

When we arrived at Pinghe Studio in the morning, Mr. Chen Wen-fu and his wife, who also grow organic vegetables in the Jhih-Syue Five Hundred Households Organic Zone, happened to come by to check on the progress of the vegetable shop's future base and offer suggestions on space planning from various angles. They remarked that the room in the middle made the whole space of the vegetable shop smaller, so not much produce could be stored there. Da Wang laughed and said in Taiwanese: "Aiyah, you don't need to bring in that much produce! You don't need to make the business too big, just keep it small." Da Wang proudly pointed to the room in the middle where the wooden floor had already been laid, saying: "The floor of this room has probably had tens of thousands of nails hammered into it!! Yi-wen would just step around here and there whenever she had time, and wherever there was a sound, she would add a few more nails there." That middle room is where backpackers who come for work exchange will stay in the future.

Yi-wen was the first person to come for work exchange and lodging, and is currently the caretaker of Pinghe Studio. She has already completed the coursework at the Graduate Institute of Folk Arts at National Dong Hwa University, with only a few credits left in the education program. When she has time at the Pinghe base and there is nothing to do on rainy days, she picks up the woodworking tools Da Wang left nearby and repairs things here and there, or makes wooden hooks needed for the studio. The wood comes from scrap lumber cut during garden pruning. Though called scrap lumber, each piece has its own pedigree, such as camphor cinnamon or beefwood.

In daily life, things that can be seen everywhere, with a little ingenuity and a bit of hands-on tidying, can be transformed into tactile multifunctional hooks, so that trees that took years to grow are not wasted at all, and the home environment gains a natural woody scent. Da Wang said that Mr. Shiomi was going to fly to Taipei today, and had specially taken a bus from Taitung to Pinghe Studio to personally give everyone a lawn mower; it just so happened that they could give him in return the wooden hooks that Yi-wen and A-Tian had spent all afternoon sanding yesterday, and he would surely love them. One lawn mower costing 11,000 yuan = handmade wooden hooks.

At that moment, the grandma next door slowly walked over and asked: "Yesterday a girl promised to help me fix the window in my room that has been broken for a long time. Winter is coming, and if the window can't close, rain and wind will pour into the room." Da Wang was a bit baffled and asked which window it was. After taking a quick look at the situation, he said with some difficulty: "Ah, I only know how to do some simple repairs. The frame and track of that window are both warped and need a professional carpenter. I just do this for fun! I can only make the window stay fixed, but it probably won't be able to move! I can give it a try tomorrow."

The grandma found Yi-wen, repeated yesterday's conversation, and said: "So, can it be fixed by tomorrow?" The vegetable shop's leading ladies, Xiao Bai and Xiao Xiao, bobbed their heads and ran next door to play with the little white dog the grandma keeps.

After the Start of Winter this year, it rained heavily for an unusual consecutive week. The soil in the fields became wet and sticky from the abundant rain. At this time, if a person steps into the field again, the added weight pressing on the soil will crush many of the microorganisms inside, and it would probably take a long time for them to recover their vitality. After heavy rain, even a person's body weight has this kind of impact, let alone any machinery going into the field to press down heavily or till the field, which would cause serious harm to the microorganisms and various insects in the top one centimeter of soil, especially earthworms, which play an important role in transforming soil nutrients.

However, although they know that no farming work can be done while it is raining, everyone still cares very much about the condition of the fields and will patrol the field area whenever they have time. "Has the corn just planted the day before yesterday sprouted? With all this rain, I wonder if the seeds will be washed away by the water or rot from soaking? Ah, the field of neighboring farmer Zhong-fen is flooded. Help her drain the water..." Even when it rains heavily, farmers who follow the laws of nature seem unable to do farm work, but in their hearts they still worry about the changes in the fields. People and the land are tightly bound together.