Abandoning a Career for Farming Series, Part Four: Farming Is a Belief, a Union of Agriculture and Life
Text by Chen Shu-ting, photos by Huang Shih-tse
What kind of life does it take to change twelve jobs and move more than ten times in twenty years, finally settling in Dingyanyuan, Taitung, in a small village surrounded by sugar apple (Annona squamosa) fields?
Dark-skinned and gaunt, Roger walks even through a pineapple field whose leaves are as sharp as blades like a warrior, without a moment's hesitation.
He left home at fifteen, and only at nearly forty did he walk back into the sugar apple field his father had left behind. Over the following seven years, he moved step by step from conventional farming to Shumei Natural Farming, living out a life of "turning faith into farming, turning farming into faith, turning faith into daily life."
(Excerpted from the new book published by Guoli Culture in May, "Fields and Trees, Self-Sufficiency")
"Fields and Trees, Self-Sufficiency"
This book interviews 10 couples who "gave up their careers to farm," leaving the city and stable 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 dinner table and making food 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 Taiwan, China's social values. They are revolutionaries in the fields.
For more content, please refer to "Fields and Trees, Self-Sufficiency"
(http://www.books.com.tw/exep/activity/activity.php?id=0000051175&sid=0000051175&page=1)