Between Rice Paddies and Facebook: A Farmer's Hands

Chen Wen-long, a farmer friend who grows wheat, messaged me on Facebook a few days ago: …..I am a wheat farmer in Yuanli, I grow Koshihikari rice, and I sell it directly with no pesticides. Getting this message felt strange, because Uncle Wen-long was born in 1949, which makes him 64 this year, and because he joined the Happiness Wheat farmer friends, he learned how to go online and log into the farming diary, and I never imagined that one day we would actually meet on Facebook. That feeling is really quite strange.

Today at dusk I had some free time, so I went to Yuanli to visit Uncle Wen-long. He and his wife were using their own homegrown white glutinous rice to wrap alkaline zongzi, and in addition to already being professional organic rice farmers, they are also very good at making mi tai mu and radish rice, and today I got to eat alkaline zongzi again. His wife said the rice cannot be packed too full, and you have to leave room for the rice to expand after steaming. Beside them, the rice cooker was steaming their own Koshihikari rice, and the uncle said: "Many farmer friends cannot bear to eat new rice and have to save it all for selling, but we are not like that; we grow it ourselves, so we love to eat it well."

If the uncle is busy with farm work and does not pick up the phone, you can leave him a message on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003625036452