The Tail End of Spring: Love and Loyalty - Swapping Furniture, Part Four

Because the Great King Vegetable Stall, where we work, was about to move, Xiaobao and I also moved to Pinghe Village in Shoufeng.

The old bungalow was an empty house, so we grow crops to trade for furniture, calling on friends to bring their secondhand furniture to our home.

First the furniture, then once the dust settles, we plant sweet potatoes / corn / peanuts.

Someone asked: "Won't you owe a lot of people favors?"

"We can give them sweet potatoes! Some also said they want wild chili." I said, as if it were only natural.

What we owe, we repay with dreams.

Nowadays Xiaobao is mostly in the fields; I have started writing occasional field notes from the countryside, to repay these friends who gifted us furniture.

[Four]

1. 2011 - Purple Nutsedge

Back then we were still living at a friend's place in Ji'an; last winter was his first stage of learning to farm.

One evening, a suspected seed - an inconspicuous, black, wrinkled thing - lay on the Japanese-style table, and Xiaobao said: that is called purple nutsedge (Cyperus rotundus).

Purple nutsedge grows on the roots of weeds and can be used as a Chinese medicinal herb. He said that in the future, when we trade affection and loyalty for furniture, perhaps we could also give purple nutsedge to friends.

"Who would like the seeds of a weed?" I looked at that dried-up purple nutsedge on the table.

I picked it up - the seed of a weed, along with the innocence and strength of a beginning farmer, all held in my hand.

I think all of life is the same, always striking a balance between survival mode and beautiful ideals, then step by step, replanning amid scattered plans and being forced to change plans. In the end, we still return to our original intentions, just having walked longer, slower, and a bit farther.

We are still sometimes short of money for the life we idealize, but when you notice that you are one step closer to self-sufficiency, you feel all the more astonished - that is the most primal drive of being human, a satisfaction; traced back to its source, life turns out to be such a simple, such a focus-demanding thing.

After the corn was harvested, the weeds as tall as a person were cut down by Xiaobao. He borrowed a small tiller and a trenching machine from Brother Wu of Photosynthesis Farm and worked back and forth in the field, discussing with me the close connection between agricultural machinery and scale farming. Though he also talks about saving money to buy a tiller, fundamentally neither of us likes machines. Yet we cannot let go of our reliance on and need for machines, unless we return to the ancient of ancients, raising cattle to plow the fields like Grandpa.

Raise cattle? I have no idea how to raise cattle at all. But it is at this very point that I begin to try to appreciate working alongside animals, depending on one another to exist.

In short, that cornfield has started over again just like that. In the not-at-all-fertile soil, Xiaobao wants to plant peanuts, letting the magical roots of legumes fertilize the soil! We are also discussing whether to further shrink the planting area - plant a little, tend a little, and let a little be good. No longer letting growth conditions and pests and diseases disturb our moods.

Lately, with farming, baking bread, and the vegetable stall's work of killing fish and driving the vegetable truck, he is often in a chaotic working state. Especially as summer approaches and the weeds grow madly - just as one day I went to the backyard ready to weed, yet suddenly did not know where to start. Every day I silently recite three times: weeds are friends, weeds are friends, weeds are friends...

What is needed is an ordinary calm, a quietly accepting rhythm, finding a method - we are still groping for it, just as many friends are also seeking and creating their own life stories. One day, having taken root and striving to grow, even if the fruit borne is imperfect and unbeautiful, it can still carefully become a gift that people cherish deeply.

Summer has come. In this turn of spring and summer with abundant rain, I hope we can all not fear the troublesome and coexist with the flourishing of all things. Find a method, as diligent as bees and ants, and as simple-hearted too.

Pinghe Home - Chongzi & Xiaobao