Farm overview

Our general routine here is as follows:
06:00 - Wake up
06:30 - Breakfast
07:00 - Work
11:00 - Prepare lunch
11:30 - Lunch
12:00 - Work
16:00 - Go home
18:00 - Dinner
21:00-22:00 - Bed

Working here is a lot of fun, it's a great work environment with really nice people. I love all the physical activity! Such a nice change of pace from sitting at home in front of my computer all day. I've already spent a good bit of time in the kitchen, they like when I make dishes and provide new ideas for meal. And whoawhoawhoa they have a Vitamix blender!! So you know I am all up in their kitchen! Shout out to Our Potluck Family :-D I've already made not 1, but 2 batches of wonderfully smooth hummus! Best hummus I've ever made! While chick peas are hard to find here, I used large white beans instead and nobody could tell the difference! This blender, man, I can't even tell you how in love with it I am. Vitamix blenders are $300-600 in the States and I've been lusting after one for years and saving up for it. But there are comparable high speed blenders here for only $70!! So I am DEFINITELY buying one here! Packing it in my backpack will be interesting :-P

The microgreens here include white and red radish, mustard greens, sunflower, kale, red chard, chives, red cabbage, and arugula. Herbs include mint, basil (Genovese, Thai, and purple), thyme, cilantro, parsley, and lemongrass. And we also have baby spinach, sorrel, and clover. The farm's personal garden has lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, scallions, kale, corn, eggplant, and wheat!

My projects so far have been to transplant basil into the aquaponics "pond", consolidate hundreds of styrafoam boxes of plants into one greenhouse (they have 4 greenhouses total and 3 had sporadic boxes around and were really unorganized), plant a private herb garden for the farm's personal use, test gauze for sprouting, and various other odd jobs like filling/planting trays, transplanting, shoveling chicken crap for fertilizer, watering, moving trays around, etc. Lots to do!

They use a mixture of coconut husk, water, and perlite as a grow media instead of soil to start seeds in trays. The trays get covered with vermiculite, are watered, and then put in a grow house that is heated to induce sprouting. After the seedlings sprout, the trays are moved out onto large tables where they grow only about 3-4 inches tall and then they are harvested for sale! So depending on the seeds, it only takes 7-21 days from seed to harvest! Super fast. I can't wait to try it on my own, on a much smaller scale of course :)

The trays look like Chia pets and I like to "pet" them when I walk by them hah. They also have a bunch of rows of plants in the soil that they want to use for commercial sale as well. Soil and water contamination is inevitable in China, but they mix in their media and other natural fertilizers to improve the quality of the soil. Shrug, I haven't gotten sick yet and I'm hoping I don't have any long term effects from only 3 months!

Various plants have been put into the aquaponics system for testing but they are wanting it to be all basil. They sell the microgreens individually and also in a mix that has all the microgreens as well as mint and cilantro and it tastes DELICIOUS!! Such a yummy salad cuz it's a bit peppery and spicy and fresh, very flavorful! We eat very well here!!

I thought I might start getting homesick after being gone a month, but so far I've been OK. I haven't felt too far from family since I was with my cousin in Shanghai. Perhaps after being out here in rural China for 6 weeks I'll start missing home, but I've only been here just shy of 2 weeks and they already joke about me staying for good! Heh I'm glad they like me here, I certainly am learning a WHOLE bunch! I've been given a few projects and I love how much responsibility I'm given even though I'm just a volunteer. I feel like I already have a "farm family" :-)

Beat (the Swiss manager) spent some time with me showing me all the greenhouses and broke down what every area is on the farm. We are the only ones around during the weekends and it's a good time for training. He's really nice, a very good teacher, and let's me feel really involved. He encourages me to ask questions and to even question their methods so that I can really learn things and so that they can also be flexible with their methods if something isn't working. Even though I know zero about farming, coming from a start-up background I feel like I really understand some of their challenges. The farm hasn't even been in existence for a year and they already have a small but steady customer base. It's impressive the system they already have in place in such a short time! Kinda gives me motivation to hit the ground running with PneumoniaCheck when I get back!

Everything here is very interesting and I'm certainly learning a lot, but it's definitely not traditional Chinese farming hah. We even eat a fair amount of Western food! Spaghetti, sandwiches, French fries. But they are trying to shift to a healthier things so I'm making lots of smoothies with their badass blender. And trying to learn some authentic Chinese dishes too!

OK sorry, this was a very long, unorganized post! Lots of cutting and pasting so my bad. I'll try and make the next post more fluid! Thanks for checking up on me :-)

Hugs from the farm!