To fish is no mean feat. To sit after the rain by an unstocked pond, with a worm dangling at the end of a bamboo rod, while there are fence holes waiting to be dug, seeds to be sown, beds to be weeded, calls for extraordinary powers within me.
Continue readingMeditations
Thoughts on a variety of topics.
Mad Farmer Goes to Market
For the past month, we have been selling our vegetables at the local wet market. On Thursdays, I veer from my early morning routine of staying dry indoors, while the sun dries out the dew. I step out onto the wet grass for the harvest. What a rude awakening, when the cold dew on these vegetables fall on my bare back; the vibrations from my sawing reverberate from the lower branches to the leaves above me. Yes, these vegetables grow overhead. They are the tree leaves of moringa (Moringa oleifera, kelor in Malay) and turi (Sesbania grandiflora, or agati).
By late morning, they would have been delivered to the middleman in the market. Our middleman is a middle aged Indian lady named Julie. She runs a small stall along one of the quiet alleys within an otherwise hectic wet market. A true wet market with a slippery wet floor of broken tiles.
Continue readingThe Man Who Makes Fertilizers
There once lived a man who made fertilizers. He did so, rain or shine, every single day.
He would pay much attention to the raw materials for his fertilizers. Some of them came from far away places all over the world, acquired with great difficulty and cost. And some he grew in his garden with painstaking care.
He would go through great lengths everyday to prepare these raw materials. Cleaning, chopping, grinding, pounding, juicing, fermenting, and even transforming them with fire.
Continue readingThe Accidental Gardener
The accidental gardener does not sow. She drops, she throws.
Seeds taken from the seed drawer, behind watchful eyes. She knows they can grow, yet the peculiar shapes and colours intrigue her more so.
The seeds scattered on the floor, drift where the wind blows. This time, the pumpkin falls off the kerb, and grows. Continue reading
A Small Organic Farm Contemplates COVID-19 and Food Security
This is written by my friends at FOLO Farm in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, as a response to an SCMP news article on food security during the COVID-19 lockdown.
𝘏𝘌𝘈𝘋𝘓𝘐𝘕𝘌: “𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘶𝘴: 𝘧𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘈𝘴𝘪𝘢’𝘴 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵-𝘊𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘥 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥”
Offering a response to this news as a small organic farm community in JB.
We don’t have to be afraid if, from this pandemic experience, we can all support each other to wake up and act decisively to regain our food sovereignty.
5 years ago, before we started FOLO farm, we would have been more worried, maybe even paralyzed, by such news. This worry would have then colored and informed our actions: Throwing in a few more bags of rice in the supermarket, visiting the instant noodle and canned food aisles again, temporarily suspending our knowledge of how bad processed food can be… Following the herd. Continue reading
On Permaculture
I first wrote this article for “The Sauce” magazine by Foodscape Pages.
I don’t remember when I first came upon permaculture. Perhaps there was never an exact moment, like the conception of a human. Perhaps the point when the sperm entered the egg was in 2011, when I took up a five square meter allotment plot at an organic farm in Hong Kong. I was working weekdays and come weekend, would jump on my white Vespa for the one-hour ride to my tiny garden in the mountains bordering China. I was clueless about farming then, but Nature was forgiving enough to spare me among the weeds some choy sum, French beans, and one strawberry. The point when the baby popped out was when I spent my 2013 Christmas and New Year holidays at the foothills of Genting Highlands, building a bamboo hut and digging canals to irrigate a paddy field as part of a permaculture course. Since then, it has been a bit of an obsession, practicing at the farms in the day and reading the same in the evenings.
Yet, five years since its birth, I still stumble whenever someone asks me, ‘What is permaculture?’ The answer varies, always. This difficulty is not unique to me; ask most permaculturalists and you might get responses ranging from well-memorized standard definitions to a blank-eyed ‘hmm’. The difficulty lies in the all-embracing scope of permaculture and what permaculture means personally to each practitioner. Try asking a loving elderly couple ‘What is love?’ and you’ll get an idea. On top of that, we try to customize the answer to the enquirer. A budding gardener and a corporate executive might go home with different answers after a conversation about permaculture with me. To be honest, I don’t think I would get better at answering even with another five years of practice. But I take consolation in the first verse of the classic Chinese text Tao Te Ching: ‘The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao’. Continue reading
Farewell, My One Year Old Garden
Farewell my garden. You are unlike any of the gardens I have shaped. In terms of money, barely any was spent on you. You were made of waste, scavenged together. You ignited from three bags of composted food waste – a friend’s contribution. Plants grew from seeds of eaten fruits. Plant cuttings taken fondly from families, friends and around the neighbourhood. The fertility came from our kitchen scraps, dried leaves the landscapers swept up, logs from pruned roadside trees, and pee. Even water, none of it came straight from the tap. Aside from rain, I spoiled you with flavoured water: mop water, shower water, rice water. Don’t feel upset, I did splurge on you once; I burst a pipe while digging in a garden for heliconia rhizomes, and had to pay for a plumber.
In terms of time, I was in no rush. There was no client, no remuneration, and no deadlines. As such, you were nurtured more than manufactured. I realized my zeal for gardening one day, when I came home to tend to you after a full day of paid gardening work, while my toddler waits impatiently by the gate in her blue swimming suit.
Before it all. Yellowing grass with bald patches.
So, thank you my garden, for being a small haven I could escape to, whenever living in this sprawling, car-centered city became unbearable and frustrating. You shielded me from the nakedness of modern ‘open living’, and I could live freely at home with windows wide open. Continue reading
Chinese Leafy Greens, Polytunnels, and Killer Floods
I have often been asked why I don’t grow much Chinese leafy greens. Those commonly seen in the market like chye sim/choy sum, kai lan, xiao bai chai, Chinese cabbage, etc. After all, growing up in a Chinese family, these are the vegetables frequently seen on my family’s dining table. Food is a big part of our identity, heritage and culture. What we eat during childhood is usually entrenched deeply in us. It is familiar ground we draw comfort from. So why do I choose not to grow these vegetables?
Truth be told, it’s something I have done before. I still remember planting and harvesting chye sim, Japanese kai lan, Chinese cabbage, and xiao bai chai from a rooftop garden at a school over 3 years ago. It’s always nice growing what you ate growing up as a child, proudly bringing the harvest home for your mum to cook them in the same way.
Chye sim/choy sum
Chinese cabbage
Xiao bai cai
Xiao bai cai
Japanese Kailan
Peeking into supermarkets around Singapore and Malaysia, one can be led to think that these Chinese greens grow perfectly well here. You see chye sim, bak choy, kai lan, radishes arranged in neat rows with labels stating they are grown locally. Walking around commercial vegetable farms, you see acres of them planted neatly on straight mounds. A sea of uniform green covered with thick juicy leaves. Try Googling “malaysia vegetable farm” or “singapore vegetable farm” and you’ll know what I mean. Images are powerful, and that was the type of farm I was striving for when I started farming.
Conventional image of a vegetable farm (Source: AVA)
But somehow, along the way of my farming journey, I stopped growing these vegetables. Here’s why… Continue reading
To Slash A Papaya Tree
Have you ever seen slashes on a papaya tree? Shallow knife wounds not intended to chop her down but merely to bleed her. The farmer said this tree in particular has not fruited, unlike her peers planted at the same time.
“She’s too complacent,” he said. “Got to make her work harder.”
But what if she’s not ready? She might want to grow deeper roots first in case of a future drought, or bigger leaves first to harvest more sunlight for tastier fruits, or dedicate energy to her health first before fruiting. She might want to reach for the stars first before having kids.
“No, she’s taking up prime real estate and has to pay for it.” Continue reading
A False Sense of Food Security in High-tech Farming
Earlier this month, AVA announced that 10 parcels of vegetable farming land in Kranji will be awarded to 8 companies. These are all high-tech farming companies that use “productive and innovative farming systems, such as greenhouses with automation and smart controls; multi-tier hydroponic systems using LED lights and data analytics to optimise growing conditions; and multi-storey farms that use automated soilless cultivation system and robotics”.
Source: AVA website
On AVA’s website, the first thing listed under “What We Do” is ensuring food supply resilience. To me, food resilience and security is about meeting our entire population’s minimal nutritional needs with safe food during all situations. There are 3 reasons why I think leasing our agricultural land to these high-tech farms do not contribute to that.
1) Poor Calories
Calorie is key for food resilience. One can survive somewhat miserably on a pure rice diet. Change it to a pure chye sim diet and it’s a different story. These high-tech farms are definitely not growing rice. How about farming high-calorie vegetables that are full of carbohydrates to fill your stomach, like tapioca or sweet potato? After all, these were the kinds of food our grandparents and parents survived on during the Japanese occupation when there wasn’t enough to eat. Well, these companies are only allowed to grow leafy vegetables. Not root vegetables or even fruiting vegetables like long bean and eggplant. Continue reading
INTO THE ULU 