Yi He Garden Introduction
This is the "Countryside Happy Dining Moment" series event organized by the Hsinchu County Local Specialty Industry Development Association—Yihe Garden / Dining Table in the Rice Fields. Featuring local specialty ingredients from Hsinchu County, everyone is invited to come and taste them. The countryside feast at Yihe Garden welcomes guests with local ingredients. Yihe Garden is located in the Soft Bridge Village of Zhudong Township, which is an important starting point in the history of water resource development in Hsinchu County and also an ideal cycling route. The entire Soft Bridge area has approximately 12 hectares of farmland, of which 85% is planted with rice, 10% with vegetables, and 5% consists of individual homegrown produce. Much of the rice in the Soft Bridge area is organically grown; the organic rice production group has its own milling, drying, and packaging equipment, and it has won first place in the national organic rice competition. When visitors come to Yihe Garden, they might as well take this limited happiness back home. Chen Lihong creates a carefree organic life in the farm. The operator of Yihe Garden, Chen Lihong, is the son-in-law of the Soft Bridge area. With a long-standing background in technology, he has developed an optimized operating method derived from his vegetable farming process. First, he employs "planned cultivation," where customer orders span four months with advance payments. This ensures that after confirming the orders, he only starts planting, so the leftover vegetables when delivering produce to subscribers weekly do not exceed five packages, effectively avoiding overproduction issues. Chen Lihong has diversified the operations of this farm. He has promoted urban residents to engage in farming and has offered a course called "Organic Vegetable Cultivation and Health" at a community college, which was selected as an excellent academic course in 2010, attracting students from urban areas to come and experience organic farming and rural life. He later launched one-day or half-day "Food and Agriculture Education Experience Camps," which can be organized with groups of over 20 people, drawing participation from many agricultural associations, kindergartens, elder universities, and family units. AIESEC International Volunteers come to Taiwan for an experience. Three years ago, the AIESEC committee at National Chiao Tung University sought a practical farm in Hsinchu County for international volunteers to stay for 6 to 8 weeks to engage in the various processes of organic farming. AIESEC students first experienced a short stay at the farm themselves and found it feasible, so starting from the summer of 2012, they recruited AIESEC international students to stay in Taiwan. From Monday to Friday, the foreign students worked on the farm at Yihe Garden, while on weekends, they traveled around Taiwan with students from Chiao Tung University. Observing the volunteer students working in the fields, Chen Lihong noted how busy they get during the summer and winter vacations with many teams to host and arrange. After the vacations, only he and one other old farmer remain working the fields. In fact, even on regular days, this agriculture ambassador of Hsinchu County finds himself busy with visiting groups discussing organic agriculture and participating in various local agricultural exchange activities promoted by the Hsinchu County Agriculture Development Office, leaving him with hardly any downtime. This tech-savvy farmer has established a communication platform along the Xiping Creek in Zhudong and has become the best spokesperson for agricultural tourism in Hsinchu County.
