Hand-harvesting rice: the rice of Lühub Ziran Tian (Green Life Natural Field) goes from the soil to the table
Sweating in the fields under the blazing sun, helping the family harvest the rice, is very likely an unforgettable memory, deeply imprinted on the childhood of many people now in their fifties and sixties.
My own memories include paddy fields too. That was the old home where I spent my entire childhood and lived for twelve years; just outside the back courtyard wall there was a whole stretch of rice paddy. So water snakes would often follow the ditches into our large courtyard, and my mother would always anxiously shoo us indoors. In the dark of night there were always loud insect songs and frog calls, weaving a serenade both bright and softly plaintive to lull us to sleep.
That paddy field was filled in when I was in the lower grades of elementary school, and residential buildings sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain. From then on, the water snakes visiting the courtyard seemed to grow sparser, and the nighttime chorus grew thinner and softer. And today, more than twenty years later, the area is even more crowded with high-rises, stores, and factories. Only one large drainage ditch, flowing toward the upper reaches of the Xindian River, that floods and overflows when typhoons come, has not changed much to this day.
But back then I only lived next to the paddy field; I never once went down into it or did any farm work.
That Saturday, through a series of coincidences and good fortune, I was able to join a group of people I had never met before, braving the fierce sun of <Dashu>, to work at the "Lühhuo" natural field in Xinwu. It was my first experience of harvesting rice by hand.
Though any professional farmer could tell at a glance that I was someone who rarely picks up a hoe or sickle, we really "played" at it earnestly and happily, and I look forward to bringing the children next time to experience rice planting….
On the morning of July 30, while the sun was still low, we, who live by the summer sunlight, had already left Hsinchu, following the coastal highway past Xinfeng and heading north into Xinwu Township, Taoyuan County.
Sitting in the passenger seat, I leafed through an atlas, searching for an unfamiliar place name, Kanglang Village. From reading the map, my intuition was that the biggest difference between Taoyuan County and neighboring Hsinchu County to the south is the dense scattering of irrigation ponds. The ponds that the early settlers dug on the Taoyuan plateau to retain water make this "land of a thousand lakes" the largest rice granary in northern Taiwan.
The Xinwu Township we were heading to is the largest agricultural township in all of Taiwan. The natural field in Kanglang Village, where we would experience hand harvesting, draws its irrigation water from a nearby 10-jia pond (the 12th branch line of the Taoyuan Canal).
I tried to sketch in my mind a simple picture of this farming settlement near the sea, dotted with many ponds.
Following brief written directions, when we spotted the statue of Mazu at the Tianhou Temple, we turned off the broad surface of Taoyuan Route 15 into a winding lane, looking left and right, but the "rice planting sign" we expected to see was nowhere to be found. Relying only on a very concise address and an even more concise house number, like a line of poetry, we began to "get lost" among the crisscrossing paths through the fields. The nearby paddies had long since been planted, or at least plowed, and the few busy people in the fields all seemed to be locals. Where exactly was the field being planted by hand?
Then we stopped and asked directions from a sturdy farmer driving a tiller. Following his guidance, we realized we had probably missed a three-sided courtyard house by failing to turn right earlier. Just as we turned back, we happened to meet by the roadside a tall, thin young woman who did not look like a local farm girl (later we learned she was the daughter of Weihua, chairperson of Lühhuo) out walking her dog. We asked her the way, and finally arrived behind the three-sided courtyard, where we met the "Lühhuo" friends taking part in this hand harvesting.
It happened to be a moment of rest during the work. The children, who had started working early in the morning, had been out in the blazing sun so long that they had taken shelter by the ditch beside the field where the trees cast shade, watching the small fish and scooping up river mussels half the size of a palm.
Dad joins the hand harvesting at the natural field
Ade took the small sickle from the hand of a resting "Lühhuo" friend and began bending over to cut rice, while little Gulu, who had taken an insect class over summer vacation, waved a homemade butterfly net and ran across the plowed farmland, chasing dragonflies and butterflies.
Little Gulu takes up a small sickle and joins the hand harvesting on his own
Golden Taigeng No. 9 rice ears in the sunlight
The professional farmer uncle says that stacking the rice ears in a cross pattern makes the later threshing work easier
There were surprises throughout the harvesting… tucked among several rice stalks was a nest where a wren warbler was raising its chicks… little Gulu kept reporting to me from time to time that he had found several small toads hiding at the base of the rice plants hopping out… many beautiful stink bugs and elegant little ladybugs were hiding in the stalks… and skilled hunter dragonflies circled and patrolled overhead. Sometimes he was distracted by the lure of small insects and set off on his own little explorations….
Because of hand harvesting, we kept having delightful encounters with beautiful little stink bugs
The lovely wren warbler had actually built a nest among the rice ears and was raising its chicks
From the casual talk during the work, I learned that nearby there was another 0.4-hectare paddy field farmed organically, which had just been harvested by a harvesting machine the day before yesterday. This 0.2-hectare plot, farmed by natural farming methods, had its rice ears deliberately left for everyone to experience the process and joy of hand harvesting.
Before meeting them, I had only learned from a link a friend posted online that this was a hand-harvesting experience offered by a labor cooperative. Recently I have fallen in love with working alongside my children, so I casually wrote an email to ask, and received a reply from Fangyu welcoming me to join. Beyond that, my understanding of "Lühhuo" came only from the rice-planting photos and brief information on their website.
Most members of "Lühhuo" are from Taipei. They are members of the Homemakers United Foundation and the Nature Trail Association who are interested in organic farming and natural farming, who recognize the importance of land health and food security, and who earnestly study and promote land-friendly farming.
Because the landowner provided land last year to support them in realizing their dream, and because they found two experienced local farming friends willing to serve as "field managers," after the previous conventional farming with chemicals and fertilizers came to an end, this year they became happy weekend farmers on the land in Xinwu for the first time.
From the chilly days of March, they experienced rice planting at They plan to use natural farming methods: no tilling, no weeding, no pesticides, no fertilizers, only sowing green manure before the year-end harvest, seeds of white clover and sesbania, hoping to continue hand cultivation, nourish healthy farmland, and also allow the seedlings of Taigeng No. 9 and Taichung Xian No. 10 rice to gradually acclimatize on this land, hoping to leave behind seeds that can adapt to the land environment and climate change. The other field, farmed organically, uses no pesticides or chemical fertilizers, only decomposed organic fertilizer, with rice planted by hand-operated transplanter and harvested by machine, producing organic rice as a source of income to support the cooperative's operations. And Lühhuo's long-term vision is not only farming experiences; they also study earnestly and integrate into rural life, hoping to take part in preserving the local ponds and rural culture. While working, I was able to listen to their thoughts and ideals about farming and the land. Our "Lühhuo" friends also enthusiastically told us that, based on their experience, if children are willing to come to the field and harvest rice with their parents, they will definitely enjoy rice planting even more. So they encouraged little Gulu and little Yuyu to be sure to come again when the second crop is planted, to experience the feeling of "walking backward" while planting rice. I also thought the brother and sister Gulu and Yuyu would enjoy it, because when planting rice the field is filled with water, and while planting they can also play in the water and mud. When the harvesting was halfway done, the professional farmer judged that all the rice ears could not be cut before noon, but worried that if there was convective rain in the afternoon, the already-cut rice ears soaked by rain would be harder to handle than the rice ears not yet harvested, so he first brought over the threshing machine and began threshing. This was an antique threshing machine, surrounded on all four sides by mosquito netting, powered by a diesel engine, roaring loudly. One group, not cutting rice, took turns lifting bundles of rice ears and feeding them into the threshing machine to knock off the grains, while another group learned to tie the threshed stalks into bundles and stand them upright in the field to dry. Earlier, while we were cutting rice, the farmer had reminded us to keep the cut rice ears as even in length as possible, and when laying them down, to overlap them bundle by bundle, which would improve the efficiency of later threshing. Sure enough, during threshing, who was professional and who was not became immediately clear. The seemingly simple act of cutting rice also has steps and details that cannot be overlooked. The children all loved helping gather the rice ears and carry them to the threshing machine, and regardless of how fiercely the sun beat down overhead near noon, they busily went back and forth handing up bunch after bunch, until the companions who had gone inside to rest called everyone in. Only after covering the diesel engine with rice stalks did we go back for lunch. Lunch was held in the garage of the two uncles of the Zhang family, the hosts. The fragrant white rice was freshly milled white rice harvested from the organic field just the day before yesterday. The vegetables were sweet potato leaves, green beans, water spinach, winter melon, and bitter melon grown by the Zhang family themselves. The chicken on the table was a free-range chicken raised by the Zhang family, and the soft squid came from the nearby Yong'an Fishing Harbor. This lunch, busily arranged from early morning by the women of the Zhang family, was enjoyed right at the place of production after hard work. Its incomparable value was its freshness, and its food miles were almost zero. I will probably find it hard to forget for a very, very long time the moment the white rice cooked from freshly milled rice first entered my mouth, that texture blending fragrance, tenderness, freshness, and sweetness, and that flavor so unfamiliar I had no words for it. After the meal, a warmhearted neighbor across from the three-sided courtyard invited everyone into a living room full of old-world charm to chat. It was only then that I began to get to know and understand all the "Lühhuo" members who had come to take part in this hand harvesting. At midday the sun was directly overhead. Even hiding under the eaves with an electric fan blowing, I still felt the sweat from the morning's work turn into a sticky film all over my body. Originally the hand-harvesting experience was only meant to end after lunch, but Ade, still wanting more, wanted to help finish processing the rice ears in the field. The group that stayed decided to rest until later, when the sunlight weakened, and then continue working, first drinking tea and chatting indoors, patiently waiting for the sun to slant. At 2:30 in the afternoon, Ade went back to the field alone and scooped up small fish from the ditch, planning to release them into the clay pots in the courtyard where fish and aquatic plants were kept, asking them to help eat the mosquito larvae. Little Gulu and Ade accidentally discovered that in the field soil there were several arrowhead plants growing together with the rice. It turned out that when the paddy field had no water, the highly resilient arrowhead could still survive by relying on its underground stems. The farmer uncle said that actually arrowhead only needs side shoots from asexual reproduction to be planted, so Ade and little Gulu dug up several arrowhead plants to take home, planning to increase the diversity of aquatic plants in the clay pots. While Ade practiced tying rice stalks and drying them in the field, I crouched low and walked along the land after the morning's harvesting and threshing, picking up the rice ears and grains that had scattered on the ground when the threshing machine overflowed with grain. Having experienced hand harvesting in the morning, I felt that every fallen grain and ear was waste, but a "Lühhuo" friend told me, just leave the fallen grain for the birds, for the field mice and small insects! Thinking about it, that made sense too. Isn't maintaining the vitality of the land and biodiversity the ultimate purpose of practicing natural farming here in the first place? I also gradually became able to accept that the grain I could never finish picking up could be shared with more life in nature. At 3 in the afternoon, the "Lühhuo" friends also returned to the field one after another, continuing threshing while dividing up the task of harvesting the rice ears that had not been cut in the morning. Little Gulu and little Yuyu also earnestly helped cut rice and gather the rice ears. As the sunlight slanted west, the temperature also imperceptibly slid from sweltering heat to cooler, and everyone's cooperation seemed to grow even more in sync. The speed of cutting rice while talking also became more and more energetic. At 4 in the afternoon, the farmer driving the tiller who had given us directions in the morning also enthusiastically joined the hand harvesting. Once he joined the team, cutting rice swiftly and nimbly, the standing rice ears almost vanished in whole patches within minutes. Everyone seemed encouraged and, gathering their strength, sped up. He said that almost all the adults in this settlement had to help the family harvest rice from a very young age, and after harvesting machines appeared, almost no one harvested by hand anymore. As the last handful of rice ears fell, I looked around the natural field and remembered how at midday, when leaving the edge of the field, I had looked at the rice ears remaining in half the field. At that time the field manager uncle guessed that at our harvesting speed we might not finish today, and suggested we just finish threshing the cut rice ears and they would find time to harvest in a couple of days. Unexpectedly, we actually finished the harvesting work. And all the adults and children began helping sort the rice ears and carry them to be threshed, and finally, before the sun dropped below the horizon, all the threshing was finished too. Weihua mentioned that after this harvest they would plow the soil next, and in about a month they would begin planting the second crop of seedlings. So Ade asked: for the second crop of natural farming, would they not plant seedlings? Instead, would they let the remaining rice stubble in the field grow naturally? The farmer uncle said: usually they would still sow seeds or plant seedlings, but he also mentioned their view of the second rice crop: in the first period of implementing natural farming, because the soil still had leftover fertilizer from last year, the harvest would be better. But if the second period continued without fertilizer, the soil nutrients might be insufficient, and they did not recommend planting seedlings. It would be best to first plant legumes such as peanuts and soybeans, letting rhizobia fix nitrogen from the air and increase nitrogen fertilizer in the soil, and then plant the first-period seedlings next spring. In addition, considering that golden apple snails grow faster in summer than in the first period, for the second period of natural farming they also did not recommend planting seedlings right after. After full discussion and exchange, they finally adopted a compromise consensus: for the second period, part of the farmland would be planted with seedlings, and part would be planted with black beans and peanuts. After all the grain was carried back and the farming tools were put away, the two field managers would help with the follow-up work of drying the grain. The next time we meet, this rice grown by natural farming and harvested by hand will already be freshly milled new rice. Before driving out of the three-sided courtyard's drying yard, the Zhang family's mother packed rice noodles and salty soup, fresh water spinach, and winter melon for us to take home. Little Gulu and little Yuyu seemed very reluctant to leave the three-sided courtyard where they had spent the whole day and which was full of warmth. So we agreed that next time, when the rice is planted, we would visit again. We drove away from Kanglang Village, heading into a dusk that deepened stroke by stroke and into a gentle evening breeze. The tiredness after labor only slowly unfolded and came over me when I sat down quietly, settling over everything as silently as the dark night. Little Gulu and little Yuyu fell asleep almost immediately. I chewed over the simple conversations about working the land over the course of a day, which carried within them each person's view of nature, philosophy of the land, and warmth, just like the first taste of new rice, which in the days to come would slowly soak in and leave a sweet aftertaste. Postscript: A month later, I read a book, and allow me to quote here a passage close to all the feelings of the Xinwu natural field: "Because of the connected land, climate, and the roots of crops, every person is the same as every rice plant, every tree, every animal, needing water, air, and nutrients in order to experience all the good and not-good things in life." 'Food is life! And rivers and lakes, ah, the watersheds of water." — Wu Yinning, Where Are the Rivers and Lakes? — Observations on Taiwan Agriculture Note 1: Farming notes from Xinwu Township by the Taiwan Lühhuo Design Labor Cooperative Note 3: Ade planted together the grain that fell into rain boots during the harvesting and threshing at the Xinwu natural field, along with the arrowhead, scattering them in flowerpots. In less than a week, the seemingly withered arrowhead had already put out fresh green leaves, and the grain, having touched the moist soil, had also quickly sprouted seedlings.
When the basket under the threshing machine is overflowing, you must pause the threshing first and pour the grain into the large rush-woven basket (the jiali), otherwise it would be a shame for the grain to keep spilling out
The brother and sister both cooperate very earnestly with the adults in threshing
Brother and sister Gu and Yu help gather armfuls of rice ears and carry them to the threshing machine; four-and-a-half-year-old Yuyu is often hidden by the bundle of rice ears she is hugging, so her little face cannot be seen
Ade carefully works out the trick of tying rice stalks to dry them
We often followed behind the path the threshing machine had taken, inspecting and picking up grain that had overflowed or fallen 
A bag of Taichung Xian No. 10 grain threshed before noon; xian rice is actually more drought-tolerant than geng rice and better able to adapt to climate change 
Helping the uncle hoist a heavy bag of grain onto his shoulder
Ade also hoists a bag and walks back to experience it
Before lunch, cover the threshing machine's engine properly with rice stalks
The natural field practices natural farming and does no weeding, so the rice always coexists and shares everything in the land with other plants and animals, until it ripens.
The dried rice stalks will be gathered to make scarecrows.
The group helping with threshing in the afternoon
At 5 in the afternoon, the harvesting advanced rapidly, and the paddy field had already been cut into a clear shape and pattern.
Yuyu also holds a small sickle to experience harvesting; although many adults worried she might accidentally cut her own calf, she still insisted on trying it herself.
A little after 5 in the afternoon, everyone hurried the threshing together
Hand harvesting complete_all the people gathered to help thresh
Brother and sister Gu and Yu are earnest, good helpers
Several uncles help Gulu hoist the last half bag of grain
Gulu experiences carrying the grain back
In early August, leafing through the new issue of the Homemakers United Foundation publication Green Claims, I read on one page that the cover of the tenth-anniversary special issue conveyed the imagery of "from farm to table." It turned out that what I had written a few days earlier after my first rice-harvesting experience in Xinwu echoed from afar and coincided exactly with the idea advocated by that cover.
Note 2: As this piece was nearing completion, I also received a reply from Fangyu. The grain harvested by hand last Saturday was test-milled the two days before and has already begun shipping. Although I could not take part in the subsequent drying and test-milling, I am full of longing and anticipation for tasting fresh rice with the shortest food miles and the shortest storage time.