From Career to Farming, Part Eight: Creating a Happy Economy at Happy Farm
Text by Chen Shu-ting, photos by Huang Shih-tse
At first, Happiness Farm was just a tiny family vegetable garden in the city. Their child's atopic dermatitis improved through a natural-food diet, and from then on Li Hsu-ying, a physician, and his wife Chen Hui-wen formally stepped into the field of natural farming.
With the gentle feelings of parents, the couple hoped to let all children eat safe food. Their pace was slow but firm, progressing from the pleasure of farming in their spare time to gradually raising the farm to a level of self-sufficiency and growing their own food. They also began to take the form of an educational farm, promoting to more people concepts such as the food problem, dietary safety and land ethics. These stories take place at Happiness Farm by the Datun River in Tamsui.
(Excerpted from the new book published by Guoli Culture in May "Fields and Wood, Self-Sufficient")
"Fields and Wood, Self-Sufficient"
This book interviews 10 couples who "abandoned 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 a matter of "after I retire"! Their farming methods are friendly to the land. Through their own hands and labor, they produce healthy food themselves, change what is on the dining table, and let food become a force for changing society. These 10 creative practices of farming life are not only a yearning 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 Wood, Self-Sufficient"
(http://www.books.com.tw/exep/activity/activity.php?id=0000051175&sid=0000051175&page=1)