I am in Miaoli, on the highway, heading over to yourfarm. The area name, zhuan gou shui, to translate literally, is opening the coal mine. It is a mysterious area to many people in Miao Li. The driver put in the area name in his GPS, and followed the map until we reached a lot underneath a highway. We had no choice but to call the farmer and asked for more directions. The farmer very kindly expressed that he'll come and pick us up where we are. When he arrived, he asked us to follow him, and then we drove for … another 30seconds.
The farm house and the farm is directly underneath that highway. We were 500 metres away from it when we thought we were totally lost.
When we got off the car, Guabao ran and greeted us. Guabao is a black dog and behind him came Youchen, the farmer. When I first saw him, he seems ounger than I expected.
The farm is not exactly the biggest farm that I've seen, but it has its charm. Walking over to the area, Youchen described to us his prospects and his belief in what it means to be organic. Youchen is in his late twenties. He doesn't talk much but very eager discussing his farm and his prospect with you. There are various types of products on his farm: starberries, asperagus, etc.
For him, it is a balance: the balance in the way his crops receive nutrients from different sources at different times, the balance of the relationship between the farmer, the land, and the environment, and the balance between what you eat and what you produce -- nothing too excessive, but enough.
He explained that to be totally organic may be too idealistic. When the farmer proposes to be organic, he/she needs to understand the use of fertilizer, the control of insects and bugs and the land, the mud itself. To be totally bug-free in Taiwan's weather and temperature conditions can be extremely difficult due to the moisture and humidity. Moreover, he listed out two types of organic fertilizers: plant-based and animal-based. He showed me one of the plant-based fertilizer he used for his asparagus. It looks like shredded wood, he said it has totally coating on it [not sure what 'totally coating' means]. He explained that when using animal-based organic fertilizer, one needs to understand what kind of food the animal used to consume. If the type of food that the animal consumed is not organic, like us human, then when it disintegrated, the fertilizer itself contains those chemicals that the animals consumed, then the new crop itself is no longer purely organic. He had plenty more to say about the use of mud.
For Youchen, he tries to understand every bit of the process in using any product on his crops. Having a background in chemistry, he looks at the product that farmers use in order to repel insects and weeds, he studies the ingredients, understanding which ingredients create that effect and he tries to derive similar effects from something in nature.
For example, when fruit flies attract to lights, he'll use lights to avoid the fruit flies to approach his crops, or use thick fruit millettia (a type of plant) to paralyze fish to catch fish or to use the smell of strong plants to distract certain bugs.
At some point, he expressed that, nowadays, people gradually pay more attention to the stuff they consume in their mouths, the idea of organic products thus have became a commercialized process in which farmers prioritize being mass produced, instead of focusing on natural purity.
