Long Valley Rice Harvesting Workcamp (1) — Background

Long Valley is the largest agricultural freshwater wetland (the total area is 150 hectares) with over 500 years of agricultural history.  Many years ago, it was in the spotlight because the Hong Kong government was planning to build a train line across this piece of wetland.  Finally, environmental groups in Hong Kong won the lawsuit and Long Valley has then been preserved for conservative purposes.

 The greenery in Long Valley.

Hong Kong is famous for its concrete forest and being a financial centre, no one can ever imagine that there is such a big piece of agricultural land.  In fact, every inch of land is so precious in Hong Kong, and it is much cheaper to import vegetables and rice, who knows that there is still rice planting in Hong Kong?  It is all because of our environmental organization, Conservancy Association (CA), which reintroduces rice planting in Long Valley, so different species of frogs and birds can have their habitats here.  At the same time, local people can also contribute by volunteering and gain knowledge about Hong Kong agricultural history, ecology and they can also educate the young generation that rice is not coming from supermarkets.

 The golden rice field waiting to be harvested.

In June every year, it is the rice harvesting period.  Rice harvesting can only be done on sunny day, because the wet rice can easily become moldy if it gets wet.  Local volunteers can only come on Saturday, Sunday and holidays, if it rains on these days, the rice harvesting activity has to be cancelled.  As a result, CA cooperates with Hong Kong volunteering organization Voltra, recruits local and overseas volunteers to stay in Long Valley for two weeks, so as to speed up rice harvesting work.

Local farmer, the lovely childlike 82 years old Mr Lam!

This is the second year that CA and Voltra hold such a rice harvesting workcamp.  As I just came back Hong Kong and have plenty of free time, also I love nature and would like to learn about rice cultivation, so I became the camp leader of this workcamp.

During the period of 18^th to 31^st July, 2012, together with Estelle (whose nickname is Get—pronounced as Jet) from France, Dima (Forest) from Russia, Hyorin (Tree) from Korea, Audia (Rice) from Indonesia, Candy (Watermelon) and Ben (Mountain or Uncle Ben) from Hong Kong, we experienced a very tough work (totally not exaggerated) in rice harvesting, the adventurous typhoon no. 10, battles with the cunning rat, mosquitoes and red ants.  However, we are like wild beasts that we enjoyed the process so much that we sang and danced every day and we did eat like wild pigs, swallowing tons of food in every meal.

The crazy wild beasts.

I realized that I love this kind of farmer’s life very much, rising up with the sun and finishing the day along with the sunset.

Life, can be really really simple, but sweet.

(To be continued…)