on the farm

so i'm on the only organic farm in all of sichuan province. nice, huh? the chinese family i live with own the farm. father, maybe around 55, retired from the government and opened the farm four years ago. daughter, emily, lived in canada for 7 years, went to a university some place in toronto, met her chinese husband, chris, there. they moved back to help with the farm one year ago and got married and now run the market side of everything. maybe about 10 farmers and 10 packers on the farm each day, when it is not busy season. now is busy season, so a few more farmers. and one iowan. :)

the women who work on the packaging side, which is most of what i do, call me "mei mei". this means "little sister". i like that. they don't speak english, only emily and chris do, and they stay in their office all day. so today, in the packaging bit, we exhausted the extent of my mandarin while i explained my family, everyone's job, and how i'm not married and how that's really okay. then, i found out whether they were married and had siblings or children. other than that, i welcomed them to beijing and asked if they were going to the olympics, and that's about all i can say.

well, i can also say "vegetarian" and "toilet" and when i say them they sound very similar. so imagine me walking up to a street vendor and saying: "pardon me, this looks very tasty, but first, could you tell me, is it a toilet?"

i would also like to thank mr. stiles, for teaching me how to say "poo" in chinese. the word for "poo" in chinese has the word "bian" in it. but this is pronounced like "bien" in french, so in a fluster to say "okay, okay, that's okay" at a street food vendor stall, i instead said "poo, poo, poo". i think i was probably grasping for "c'est bien, c'est bien, c'est bien." at that point i just gave up and hopped on my bike and left. you should have seen that guy's face, though. partly horrified and partly tickled.

anyways, back to the farm. i already said how it has helped to increase the income in this area considerably. it's a good place, and the veggies are very good here. i have packaged many of them. and cleaned them and whatnot. every day is a little different. well, the two days i have been here anyways. for example, today i worked with string beans, peanuts, chilis, squash of all kinds, lettuce, bamboo, green onions, turnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and probably some other things that i can't think of and don't know the name of. also, i'm the sticker woman. i put stickers on things, probably because it doesn't require a lot of explanation.

my favorite is packaging the chilies. since they are organic, some of them don't grow straight (or so emily has explained). some of them grow in a spiral or get a little wonky in some other way. as long as they are not broken or partly eaten by bugs, we want to package them. we put them wonky ones at the bottom and lay some of them straighter ones on the top, then cover them in celophane like anything you have ever seen at a grocery store in usa or canada. now, emily says that people don't want these wonky chilies, so we need to kind of hide them at the bottom, otherwise people won't buy them. but the crooked ones and the ones that grow in spirals are my favorite vegetables on the farm! i think they are very cute, fun, unique, i don't know . . . i just like them. and they taste just fine. i only put one or two of the very spiraly ones in each batch. that way, if the customer hates the spiral ones, they don't feel to put out, and if they happen to be like me and like the spiral ones, well, we can't spoil one family with too many. but it's really too bad we can't package them separately: "boring straight chilies" 3 yuan, "renegade chilies" 5 yuan.

i really enjoy the packaging part of the farm. for one, it is fairly simple, considering my mandarin is kind of "poo". i think it's easier to watch and learn the packaging part than to watch and learn the farming techniques. but also, i like to think about the families in chengdu and hong kong who are going to unwrap what i am sending to them: a lovely package of delicious organic veggies. and they'll never know i was the one who did the work. i feel like putting a bow on each batch! instead, i leave them with a simple green sticker that says "organic farm". after this experience, i will probably think more often of where my food is coming from and the people who package what i eat, every step of the way. i'll tell you something else, i'm also going to wash my food like a mad person. i know i wash my hands after the toilet, but i can't speak for every vegetable packager on the planet. also, we dump the veggies on the floor a lot for sorting. the floor where the dog sleeps. the floor where people walk after using squatty toilets and not changing their shoes. people of hong kong! wash your veggies!