Lai Qingsong / exchange the time of the first phase of rice cultivation for a new vision of life! Invite everyone to the slow Island School to help each other live together and grow old together.

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If half-farmers can make a living and half-X can flourish the village, can we set up a school with half-agriculture and half-X? huh?

A van bound for the beautiful plain of the back mountain

Twenty years ago, driving a third-hand van, loaded with all his belongings, carrying his beloved wife and Xiaoban's daughter, he staggered onto the Beiyi Highway and set out over the layered mountains. It also opened a life with the help of rice fields and countryside.

Looking back on my life at that time, I did encounter an intractable bottleneck. I returned from the internship of the Health Association of the Japanese Life Club, but got bogged down in a quagmire at the scene of the green consumption movement. After leaving my job, I turned to an online translator for a living, but fell into the plight of cheap labor day after day! But he was also unwilling to sell his time to enter the boring workplace. Coupled with the fact that the young child grew up day by day, the cramped apartment could no longer tolerate her surging vitality, so she finally decided to give it a shot. If what you want is a free life, then you might as well leave Taipei and try to move to rural Ilan.

Unexpectedly, this seemingly impulsive decision has carried out an unexpected and wonderful chapter for his own life. If it were not for this beautiful Lanyang plain to recuperate my sleepy body and mind, the life of being trapped in the city might be another situation.

In 2001, Qingsong tried to grow rice for the first time on his father-in-law's field in deep ditch, which was also the origin of Gudong Club. The fallow period of life in reverse homecoming

At that time, I chose to come to Ilan in the hope that it was an important opportunity for my children to attend Waldorf School. of course, Ilan is the hometown of my wife Meihong, and it is also an important consideration. Standing at the 30-year-old barrier, my classmates and peers have fought courageously to take the lead in the workplace of industry, government, and school. Only I feel physically and mentally exhausted, and my life can not see the future like the earth. It is the land under your feet that gives you salvation!

At that time, I didn't realize that at the moment when the world entered the network era at the speed of light, everyone was concerned about the infinite future of the network economy, and no one cared about the impact that the network might bring to the agricultural and fishing village. with the current of the times quietly seeping into the Lanyang Plain, I have also witnessed the changes of the countryside in the network era, as well as the alternative life options provided by the countryside.

The forerunner of half agriculture and half X-Gudong Club

After picking up the hoe and actually operating the farming, I quickly found that sales is the key to whether farming can make a living! Fortunately, with reference to past Japanese experience and the help of friends, Gudong Club successfully invited a group of consumers who are willing to take action to support farmers and produce safe and friendly rice.

There are several key factors in this. The first is the detailed division of labor system in Taiwan's rice industry, so that novice farmers can also get a smooth start. Second, the network infrastructure spread all over the world, which enables farmers to have close ties with consumers. Finally, with the immediate completion of the housing distribution system, farmers and fishermen on the hilltop and Haimei have the most important means of transportation! This also opened the prelude to community-supported agriculture in Taiwan.

Under the call of being recruited to make fields and eat their own rice, a group of Gudong who yearn for rural life gather by the fields year after year. The clustering of two hundred armour-semi-agricultural and semi-X actors

In the twinkling of an eye, the Gudong Club gained a foothold in the countryside of Ilan for more than a decade. under the influence of the turn of fallow subsidy policy, a large number of fallow farmland began to be released, which attracted an influx of urban people yearning for rural life, including retired teachers and instructors. There are also engineers who change jobs in middle age, designers and office workers who have just left school, and even female college students who have not graduated from college!

In just a few years, these volunteer farmers have taken root in the vicinity of the deep gully in Yuanshan Township, and the two hundred armies initiated by Yang Wenquan is an important organization to help this group of immigrants to smoothly integrate with the on-site rice cropping system. Although it is called an organization, in fact, Liangbaijia is more like an open system with blurred boundaries. As long as the participants are willing to abide by the basic rules of the game, they will be able to obtain agricultural land through Lianbaijia and become a member of the new peasant community.