Yi He Yuan Introduction
This is the "Happy Culinary Moments in the Countryside" series event organized by the Hsinchu County Local Specialty Industry Development Association, held at Yi Heyuan / Table in the Rice Field, inviting everyone to taste the local specialty ingredients of Hsinchu County. The rural feast at Yi Heyuan welcomes guests with local ingredients. Yi Heyuan is located in the Ruankiao Village of Zhudong Township, an important starting point in the history of water resource development in Hsinchu County, and is also an ideal cycling route. The entire Ruankiao area has about 12 hectares of farmland, with 85% planted with rice, 10% with vegetables, and 5% for individual use agricultural products. Most of the rice in the Ruankiao area is organically grown, and the organic rice production and marketing group has its own milling, drying, and packaging equipment, and has won the first place in national organic rice. When visitors come to Yi Heyuan, they might as well take this limited happiness home. Chen Li-long, the operator of Yi Heyuan, is the son-in-law of the Ruankiao area. His long-developed characteristics as a tech person allowed him to summarize the "optimization" of management from the vegetable planting process. Firstly, he adopts "planned planting." The customer’s ordering period is four months per phase, with a prepayment, meaning that planting only starts after confirming the order. Therefore, when providing vegetables to subscribers each week, the leftover vegetables in the farm do not exceed five bags, avoiding oversupply issues. Chen Li-long has diversified the operation of this farm. He has promoted urban residents to come and farm in the countryside and has offered courses in "Organic Vegetable Planting and Health" at a community university, which was selected as an excellent academic course in 2010, attracting students living in metropolitan areas to come here to plant vegetables, practice organic farming, and experience rural life. Later, he launched one-day or half-day "Food and Agriculture Education Experience Camps," which can group 20 or more people, attracting many agricultural associations, kindergartens, senior citizen universities, and family groups to participate. AIESEC International Volunteers Experience Three years ago, the AIESEC chapter of National Chiao Tung University sought a practical farm in Hsinchu County for international volunteers to stay for 6 to 8 weeks and gain hands-on experience in various processes of organic agriculture. The AIESEC students first came to the farm for a short stay experience and found it feasible, so in the summer of 2012, they began to recruit AIESEC overseas students to stay in Taiwan for a short time. From Monday to Friday, the foreign students worked at Yi Heyuan, and on weekends, they traveled around Taiwan with the students from National Chiao Tung University. Watching the volunteer students working in the fields, Chen Li-long commented that the busy seasons are during winter and summer vacations when many camp groups need to be arranged and hosted. After these vacations, only the two elders are left to farm. Actually, even on weekdays, this agricultural ambassador of Hsinchu County is not idle, as visiting groups discussing and exchanging ideas on organic agriculture, along with various activities promoted by the Hsinchu County Industrial Development Association for local agricultural exchange, keep him very busy. This tech-savvy farmer, who has established an exchange platform by the Shangping Creek in Zhudong, has become the best spokesperson for agricultural tourism in Hsinchu County.
