Yi He Yuan Introduction
This is the "Countryside Happiness and Good Food" series event organized by the Hsinchu County Local Characteristic Industry Development Association ─ Yihe Garden / Dining Table in the Rice Field, which invites everyone to taste the local specialty ingredients of Hsinchu County. The countryside banquet at Yihe Garden welcomes guests with local ingredients. Yihe Garden is located in Ruanquan Village, Zhudong Township, which is an important starting point in Hsinchu County’s water conservancy development history and is also an ideal cycling route. The entire Ruanquan area has about 12 hectares of farmland, of which 85% is planted with rice, 10% is vegetables, and 5% is individual household farm products. Most of the rice in the Ruanquan area is organically grown, and the organic rice production and marketing group has its own milling, drying, and packaging facilities. It once won first place in the national organic rice competition. When you visit Yihe Garden, you might as well take this limited happiness home with you. Chen Li-Long creates an organic and leisurely lifestyle at the farm. The operator of Yihe Garden, Chen Li-Long, is the son-in-law of the Ruanquan area. His long-developed characteristics as a tech person led him to derive an "optimized" management method from the vegetable planting process. First, he adopts "planned planting," where customer ordering periods last four months, and prepayments ensure that orders are confirmed before planting begins. Therefore, when vegetables are delivered to customers each week, the leftover vegetables in the farm do not exceed five bags, avoiding issues of oversupply. Chen Li-Long has diversified the management of this farm. He has promoted urban dwellers to come to the countryside for farming and has also offered a course on "Organic Vegetable Planting and Health" at a community university, which was selected as an excellent academic course for the year 2010, attracting students from metropolitan areas to come here to grow vegetables, practically apply organic farming methods, and experience rural life. He later launched one-day or half-day "Food Agriculture Education Experience Camps," which can attract groups of over 20 participants, drawing many agricultural associations, kindergartens, elderly universities, and parent-child families to participate. AIESEC international volunteers come to Taiwan for an experience. Three years ago, the AIESEC chapter at National Chiao Tung University sought a practical farm in Hsinchu County. This allows international volunteers to stay here for 6 to 8 weeks to work hands-on in organic agriculture. AIESEC students from Chiao Tung University first stayed briefly at the farm for an experiential visit. After determining its feasibility, they began recruiting overseas AIESEC students to stay in Taiwan during the summer of 2012. From Monday to Friday, foreign students engage in farming at Yihe Garden, while on weekends, they travel around Taiwan with Chiao Tung University students. Watching the volunteers working in the fields, Chen Li-Long mentioned that winter and summer vacations are busier, with many camp groups needing reception and arrangements. After the vacations, it's just the two of us old men farming. In fact, even on regular days, this ambassador of agriculture in Hsinchu County is not idle, as various groups come to discuss and exchange in organic agriculture, and activities initiated by the Hsinchu County Industrial Development Bureau promoting local agricultural exchanges keep him very busy. This tech farmer, who has established an exchange platform by the riverside in Zhudong, has become the best spokesperson for agricultural tourism in Hsinchu County.
