Quitting a Career to Farm, Part 5: Farm Well and Thank Heaven for Giving Us Food to Eat
Text by Chen Shu-ting, photos by Huang Shih-tse
When the blog name changed from "The Day I Lost My Rice Bowl" to "This Year, Heaven Has Given Me Rice to Eat," Liao Te-ming, this new farmer, left his familiar media job and came to Yilan, where he rented fields in Dongshan and Yuanshan, farming with natural methods that are friendly to the land. During the fallow season, like any ordinary farmer, he took on odd jobs to supplement the family income. Year after year, he settled into a stable rural life.
Liao Te-ming's fields are very quiet, with no lively farming experience activities. His rice is not sold on the market; he simply notifies friends by email that the time has come to order the new rice. Toward agriculture and toward life, Liao Te-ming's family lives on its own terms.
(Excerpted from the new book published by Guoli Culture in May, "Fields and Woods, Self-Sufficient")
"Fields and Woods, Self-Sufficient"
This book interviews 10 couples who "gave up their careers to farm," leaving the city and secure jobs so that the whole family could come to the countryside and live by their own hands and the land. Farming is no longer something to do "after I retire"! Their farming methods are friendly to the land, and through their own hands and labor they produce healthy food themselves, changing what appears on the dining table and letting food become a force for changing society. These 10 creative practices of farming life are not only a longing for closeness to the land and rural life, but also a gentle yet firm revolution, symbolizing a deep shift in Taiwanese social values. They are revolutionaries in the fields.
For more content, please refer to "Fields and Woods, Self-Sufficient"
(http://www.books.com.tw/exep/activity/activity.php?id=0000051175&sid=0000051175&page=1)