My first scene in aRong Nature Farm is seven women and one man sitting in front of the front door of their house, all peeling pineapples. They told me to put down my luggage in the room and return downstairs and head to the back yard where they have a more advance level. More advanced level of peeling pineapples?! They must be incredibly fast and unafraid of getting pricked. So I quickly walked to the back.
I see two sets of round containers sitting on a fire heater. They are steaming the pineapples. Why? to get rid of enzymes (or ferment) in the fruit, so after steaming, they can bake the pineapple slices for 48 hours to make dry pineapple. The steaming process allows the dry pineapples to last longer without getting mouldy.
Hence after steaming, we have to grab clamps and separate each slice of pineapples and lay them down on a very long baking pan, organize them into rows and columns of pineapple slices and put the pan into the wood stove. It’s a very long process.
XiaoGe is a really adorable girl in her early 20s whom I met during this trip. She’s a wanderer, trying to travel around Taiwan on a motorcycle. Staying here at this stop, she helps with the errands of the pineapple farm. One of her jobs is to look after the fire. Because the typhoon just passed, rain still remains, and many strips of wood and logs remain wet. XiaoGe has to look through that big pile of woods and chooses the suitable one for the heater and understand how to start a fire and most importantly keep the fire going at a steady rate. I stayed by her side, and she taught me how to make fire and create flame properly for the machine. Every 40 min or so, she has to go back and check the fire in the machine. It seems like a very tedious job, and a very difficult task.
Another thing about aRong’s farm is that who wishes to come to the place and help out a little with the errands of the farm can stay and have a free meal from the family. So every day, there’s different number of people staying for dinner. They call it mutual interaction. Again, I feel like a vagabond, but this time a working one.
After the pineapples have been heated for more than 24 hours, we slowly sorted the baked slices into three categories: the dry and good ones, the dirty ones and the still wet ones. The still wet ones are placed back into the heater, the dry and good ones are placed in a bag that is ready to be packaged and the dirty ones ..... I’ll leave it to your imagination. Actually, the dirty ones simply get cleaned again and may be put into the packaging bag or eaten by the workers as they continue their work.
According to aRong: “I don’t mind you eating my pineapples when you work, you can eat them until you’re scared of them that you don’t ever want to have any of it.” Really, after a while, you stop wanting to have it. The first bite however is so tasty that all the other dry fruits that you had before cannot be compared to this one in your mouth. Big YUM.
The pineapple trip was a very prickly and eventful, not only do all the farmers gather around helping one another with their crops and meals, they exchange information, products and livelihood. I, as a stranger, didn’t feel like a stranger, but a part of their mutual interaction process, a bum, but a very happy, helpful and supportive bum.
