邵大哥的梨想人生 by 國外朋友

Qing Yuan’s Farm (邵清淵) in Dajia, Taichung (台中市大甲區賢仁路90-2號 0932537868 ) 
 

After leaving the adorable XueZhen, we head to Taichung to meet Qing Yuan, a former engineer who started cultivating two orchards with his father. Qing Yuan is very warm, he even come to welcome us at the train station to guide us to his land, where he starts giving us a brief but very complete course about interactions between micro-organisms and the root system of the soil. 

 

The irrigation system of the orchard is made from suspended pipes on which are evenly distributed sprinklers, so that it can easily cut the grass at ground level. But the watering system is not so high, you have to bend your body to walk around the orchard. Not so convenient if you are tall and not flexible! 

 

 

As Qing Yuan often receives students, he made very detailed explanatory sheets on how the trees work. He emphasizes the importance of the mycorrhizal（菌根） network that allows the roots to absorb nutrients. For example, the passion fruit that gives dozens of beautiful fruits and spreads several meters around is growing so well because the mycorrhizal network that is around its root system is very effective. 

 

He shows us the apple trees he grows. How is it possible to harvest apples at such a low altitude, so close to the sea, in the subtropical climate of Taiwan? The way to prune the tree brings a first answer. Thanks to an S tool, Qing Yuan bends the branches of the tree so that they are in a horizontal position, or even slightly inclined downwards. Thus, the flow of lifeblood in the tree will be favorable to fruiting. The variety of the apple tree, as well as the rootstock (砧木) this one being especially made in Taiwan) also play a major role. 

 

 

Qing Yuan offers us a delicious infusion of chrysanthemums (菊花 Chrysanthemum morifolium) with some jujubes(棗) that he grows by himself. In Taiwan, chrysanthemums and apple trees are good companion plants, so he cultivates many chrysanthemums under his fruit trees, and they also serve as groundcovers. The companion plant chart from Taiwan can be asked via the Earth Passengers website (http://earthpassengers.org/ ). He dries the chrysanthemums thanks to a dehydrator that he made by himself. So easy for a resourceful former engineer! 

 

When there is enough sunlight, a solar thermal panel supplies a heat exchanger with hot water, allowing dry & hot air to circulate through a recovery refrigerator. Controlling the heat exchange makes it possible to control the temperature, which does not exceed 38°C in order to preserve all the nutritional qualities of the products. In case of low sunlight (especially during the evening), he uses a wind energy to dry the products, as wind can be quite important in this coastal area of Taiwan. 

 

When he does not use specific groundcover plants, he lets the weeds grow: they compete very little with the trees that are already well developed, protect the soil from erosion and sun, can distract insect pests, and sometimes are even edible (such as amaranth 野 莧 Amaranthus viridis). 

 

 

At the end of the afternoon, Qing Yuan brings us to his second orchard a few hundred meters away, to show us his method for fertilizing trees. Trees need to develop their roots and access nutrients between 50 cm and 1 meter deep. Thus, about 1 to 2 meters from the trunk of the tree, Qing Yuan uses a specific machine to drill a hole of 50 cm to 1 m in the ground, then inserts a bamboo which will be used to pour the liquid fertilizer composed of compost, bacteria and fungi, in order to improve the root system of the tree. The bamboo has previously been split into two parts and one of the two parts has been inverted (from top to bottom) so that the water can flow without being retained by the rigid part that separates two sections of a bamboo. 

 

Finally, Qing Yuan explains that in the future, he will be able to harvest something different according to the months of the year. For the moment, he has managed to stand out from the crowd by harvesting the earliest Nashis (水梨 Pyrus pyrifolia) of Taiwan in May. He harvests apples in June, Chrysanthemums in October, and soon kiwis in September, and so on...