Dongshi Xiyuan wheat harvest arrives, the long-missed wheat fragrance is back
I once dreamed of wheat fields.
The fuzzy awns of wheat in photos of foreign landscapes tickled my heart. I traveled all the way to Tuscany and pedaled hard up what looked like gentle slopes, and finally saw the dreamlike scenery I had pictured in my mind, truly intoxicated and dizzy with delight.
Two weeks ago, I once again rode a bicycle in search of wheat fields, and once again was dazzled by them. Only this time, it turned out to be in my hometown, Dongshi in Chiayi.
"Do you smell the wheat fragrance?" Tsai Yi-hung watched with a face full of contentment as the harvester entered the wheat field, cutting a path wherever it passed, as if it were a broad road to the revival of Taiwanese wheat. Three years ago he leased these 15.8 hectares of fallow land and began farming. What he most wanted to grow was wheat, perhaps because of childhood memories of wheat awns brushing lightly against him.
"When I was little, wheat fields were everywhere in the villages around here," he still remembers a mischievous trick: secretly slipping wheat ears into other children's pant legs. As they walked, the wheat ears would silently crawl upward like caterpillars, and by the time the children noticed, the ears had reached the top of their thighs, and they would yelp and have to take off their pants to get them out. We tried it on the spot, and goodness, it was no lie - the wheat ears have feet, they really do run!
For someone like me, a sixth grader who had never seen wheat with my own eyes, it is hard to imagine that Taiwan once had many wheat fields. During the Japanese occupation period, Taiwan's wheat fields reached as much as 5,000 jia, but starting in the 1970s, the United States exported large quantities of wheat, corn and soybeans to balance the Taiwan-US trade deficit, and wheat acreage plummeted, at one point to less than 100 hectares, mainly for distillery use. The Council of Agriculture even once publicly said that Taiwan's environment was unsuitable for growing wheat.
Shih Ming-huang, head of the Joyful Will Bakery, who no longer wanted to depend on imported flour, has been promoting local wheat for five years now, with farmers participating in the north, central, south and east. The contract farming area has expanded from 1 hectare at the start to 50 hectares, and the claim that Taiwan is unsuitable for growing wheat has been disproved on its own (you see, even our salty Dongshi can grow it). In fact, extensively dry-farmed wheat requires less labor than rice, and crop rotation helps improve the soil and defend against pests and diseases. Important agricultural principles such as being friendly to the environment, food self-sufficiency, and local production for local sales are all put into practice and sprout from the moment the seeds go into the soil.
Growing wheat for the first time, and organic wheat at that, Tsai Yi-hung had to face quite a few difficulties. "Look at these birds, I raised them all!" A commotion rose in the field, and the thieving birds flew up in fright, just like Van Gogh's famous painting "Wheatfield with Crows." Tsai Yi-hung said many people were waiting to watch the show, all saying how could wheat ever grow? The little birds would eat it all up!
Mother Tsai was also worried sick. "Who ever heard of not scaring the birds and not weeding (poisoning the grass)? Silly boy! I always pour cold water on him!" Tsai Yi-hung would retort: "Ma, how did you and Grandpa used to work?" "Back then there was no pesticide, the grass was all cut by hand." "Isn't that right!" "But it was really hard!" Mother Tsai still was not reassured, and even with inconvenient legs she often came to patrol the field.
Tsai Yi-hung, however, was very proud of his organic wheat field. Once a teacher brought a group of children to play in the wheat field, and the next day he specially called to ask; none of the children had an allergic reaction. "Although growing this doesn't make much money, I feel really good inside." A satisfied smile rose at the corners of his mouth.
This truly is "Joyful Will" wheat. Joyful will, joyful and willing - the highest realm of farming.
Although he has only just entered organic farming, Tsai Yi-hung's interpretation of "organic" is already very profound. He does not approve of buying expensive organic materials. "To do organic, you have to start from what is around us." He makes his own organic fertilizer, with raw materials from Dongshi's specialties: crushed oyster shell ash, discarded mushroom-growing space bags, and poultry and livestock manure from nearby chicken farms. This is both environmentally friendly and cost-saving, achieving several goals at once, recycling waste, returning fertility to the soil, and then nourishing plants anew, forming a positive cycle, and only thus can the ultimate ideal of organic farming be reached - being friendly to the earth.
"The results are really good. After eating this organic matter, the plants are strong, pests and diseases are few, and weeds can't outgrow them, so of course they need little care!" Tsai Yi-hung laughed heartily again. "Next year, I'll plant this whole field with wheat, and I'll even hold a concert here!"
In the glow of the setting sun, the sea breeze blew fiercely, stirring the golden wheat waves like a fuzzy blanket, adding a poetic soft focus to my hometown's rural scenery. To me, Tuscany is like an unreachable love, yet the several handfuls of wheat ears I hold in my hands right now are about to become tomorrow's bread. Love and bread - of course bread is more solid!
Every single grain is hard-won. Keep it up, Taiwanese wheat!