Qiu Ronghan and friends work together to realize the dream of an organic bamboo shoot garden
After the Dragon Boat Festival, Taiwan, China will be entering the real peak of summer heat, and besides zongzi, the most refreshing, heat-beating vegetable of this season is none other than green bamboo shoots. May to July is precisely the peak production season for green bamboo shoots in Taiwan, China, and this is the busy farming period for bamboo shoot farmers.
The sun had not yet shown its face, dyeing the sky with a layer of red glow. At 4 or 5 in the morning, organic bamboo shoot farmer Qiu Ronghan of Daxi, Taoyuan, hung a mosquito coil tray at his waist, shouldered his bamboo shoot chisel and bamboo basket, and prepared to go dig bamboo shoots. Five years ago, having graduated from the Graduate Institute of Architecture and Art at Tainan National University of the Arts, he resolutely returned to his hometown to help his aging father grow bamboo shoots, and he also changed the conventional farming methods that the older generation had long taken for granted, making his own kitchen waste compost and letting weeds and insects such as aphids coexist. In addition, he and his friends founded "Hezuo Farm Cooperative" to develop an app, simplifying the various middlemen that had long stood between producers and consumers and promoting a direct-sales approach for fresh fruits and vegetables.
(Photo provided by Taiwan Hezuo Farm Cooperative)
The Expert Speaks:
Compared with vegetables, which emphasize fertilizing and sowing, bamboo shoots involve five stages that are all extremely important: clearing the bamboo head (cutting away old, unproductive bamboo culms to allow new bamboo to grow), fertilizing, covering with soil, harvesting, and finally reserving seed (keeping the shoots suitable for developing next year's new bamboo and clearing away excess, unnecessary shoots). Every stage must be attended to, and bamboo shoots will not necessarily grow well just because you did especially well at any one stage. Therefore, growing bamboo shoots requires immense patience and care, observing the changes in the bamboo forest at every stage, and this is even more true of organic farming methods that abandon chemical fertilizers.
When the farmers' association purchases bamboo shoots, it grades them into 7 levels, and the first grade is called "golden ratio shoot." However, a beautiful bamboo shoot is not necessarily delicious; what truly matters is the texture and quality of the bamboo shoot, and consumers should not place too much emphasis on appearance.