The Farming Grandma--Toucheng Farm's Chuo Chen Ming

Chuo Chen Ming had her epiphany 30 years ago on the eve of her 40th birthday. "If I don't begin working on my dreams while my mind and body are at their peak," she thought, "when am I going to do it?" Soon after, she was crossing hill and dale with a real estate agent hunting for the perfect place. When she found it in the mountains near Kengfang in Toucheng Township, Ilan County, she spent all of the more than NT$5 million she had earned from her garment factory and teaching to buy it. Thus began what was to become the legendary story of the farming Grandma.

"Look, children!" exclaims Chuo Chen Ming. "That's our national bird, the Formosan blue magpie. They're very family-oriented birds. After the chicks grow up, they help their parents raise their younger siblings." She then leans forward to make sure she doesn't miss any of the questions coming from the large group of children before her. Her eyes and ears remain surprisingly sharp in spite of her 68 years-there's not a movement in the forest that escapes her notice.

Visitors to the Toucheng Farm in Ilan all remember the grandmotherly old woman who pops up all over the farm. Always bursting with energy, she is happy to share her opinions with visitors, including her insistence that the farm grow its food organically and prepare it in a traditional fashion. Her personality is so warm and frank that visitors almost always end up addressing her as "Mama Chuo" regardless of their own age.

Chuo Chen was born in Chingshui Township, Taichung County, in 1940. After graduating from Taipei Women's Normal College (now the Taipei Municipal University of Education), she began working as a teacher primarily of sixth graders. She also established a well regarded tutoring business. It was a busy life, but Chuo Chen has always pushed herself hard and her sideline enabled her to save up some seed capital.

Teacher, businesswoman, farmer

When Taiwan extended compulsory education beyond elementary school in 1968, entry into middle school became less competitive and enrollment in Chuo Chen's tutoring business shrank sharply. Light industry, however, was booming. Chuo Chen decided to buy a sewing machine and began assembling garments after school. After a time, she bought another machine, then another, and eventually was running her own garment factory.

"If you're going to do something, you'd best give it your all," advises Chuo Chen. Following her own advice, she gave up her teaching sinecure the next year and, with the purchase of a four-storey building, dove headlong into the business world. At its peak, her company employed 50 or 60 people, and generated several million NT dollars a year in profits. Former president Lee Teng-hui even dropped in to give her the thumbs up for her success as a businesswoman.

But the pace at the garment factory was frenetic. When rushing to meet shipping deadlines, she even got her three children into the act, putting them to work folding clothes and cutting loose threads. The youngest, Chuo Chih-cheng, who had then not yet reached school age, would sometimes become so exhausted that he'd fall asleep on the factory's wooden floor. Dinner was usually restaurant food or fried rice prepared by Chuo Chen's eldest son, Chuo Chih-hung. Once they'd eaten, Chih-hung would take his younger siblings to their tutors.

"I didn't want things to be that way," says Chuo Chen, "but your word is crucial in business. If our garment dyer had equipment problems, or sent the wrong color fabric and we had to send it back, it threw our shipping schedule out of whack. The only way to get things out on time was to work through the night." Chuo Chen recalls overseeing operations all night long on many occasions, once making her husband Chuo Teng so angry that he cut off the factory's power.

Chuo Chen had a good head for business. When nylon fabrics were still new to the market, she used remnants from T-shirt sleeves to produce new, form-fitting underpants that were a huge hit with consumers.

Chasing a dream

Amidst the frenetic pace of her growing garment business, Chuo Chen often found herself recalling lazy pastoral scenes from her childhood. Then, after ten years in business, on the eve of her 40th birthday she had an epiphany. If she wanted to realize her rural fantasies, now was the time. "Many people think that they need to save a lot of money before they begin working on their dreams. But who has the energy to chase their dreams when they're old and tired?" she asks.

So she stomped on the brakes, then sent her life careening off in a new direction. Just as she had in her business career, Chuo Chen put the pedal to the floor in the pursuit of her new dream, plunking down more than NT$5 million to buy approximately 80 hectares of land in the mountains near Kengfang in Toucheng Township. In those days, that kind of money could buy an upscale apartment on Taipei's Tunhua South Road. Chuo Chen's friends were flabbergasted by her decision, but couldn't shake her resolve.

On her birthday, three senior citizens took Chuo Chen to look at a piece of land. As the car wound its way through the mountains, the seniors kept telling her that the parcel was in Taipei County's Juifang Township, but Chuo, who didn't remember Juifang being so far, was dubious. When they finally arrived in Toucheng, Chuo Chen having been half-coaxed, half-tricked into getting there, she saw mountains green to their summits, head-high miscanthus grass, and land that stretched away virtually roadless in every direction. Deeply moved, she bought the land and began the arduous work of clearing it.

Toucheng Farm's success is not Chuo Chen Ming's (front row, second from left) alone. Her family's devotion to making it work has been a tremendous help. In the front row are her eldest son, Chuo Chih-hung (far right), and his wife, Wu Chi-chen (second from right). In the back row are her second son, Chuo Chih-cheng (far right), her husband, Chuo Teng (second from right) and Chuo Chih-cheng's wife Chiang Fu-mei (center).

Woman of steel

Chuo Chen's old classmates from Taipei Women's Normal College were upset when they saw the one-time beauty wearing plastic boots and a bamboo hat as she toiled away with laborers. "Chen Ming, is life really that bad?" they asked. But her dearest friend later sent her a note: "If you delight in what you do, you won't tire doing it. In joy, you'll forget your troubles." Chuo Chen has always gone her own way, and her old friend's note echoed her philosophy.

"She's like a hyperactive child," jokes her husband Chuo Teng, a former head of the Taipei Feitsui Reservoir Administration. During the early stages of clearing the farmland, Chuo's work for the reservoir administration often kept him from home. As a result, Chuo Chen Ming cleared the land largely by herself relying on her own indomitable will and incredible energy.

"When we added the hotel," recalls Chiang Fu-mei, wife of the Chuos' second son, "the foreman told me that we had an amazingly hardworking employee on the farm who was helping them mix concrete and lay brick. Of course, the worker he was talking about was actually my mother-in-law!" Chuo Chen Ming firmly believes that it is her responsibility as the owner of the farm to be able to do every job on it. Over the years, she's learned how to pour concrete, as well as carpentry, plumbing, electrical work and any number of other tasks. She's also even had her eldest son's wife, a university graduate, come with her to Tahsi to buy live fish, then made her squat down with her to kill and clean the more than 500 catties they bought.

Chuo Chen has never been the kind of boss who orders her employees around from the comfort of an air-conditioned office. Chuo Chen's family has long since become accustomed to living with a perfectionist superwoman. "My mother does the work of five people. No one can keep up with her," says her eldest son, Chuo Chih-hung. "No," interjects his father, "your mother does the work of ten people."

Native species

During the farm's first decade of existence, Chuo Chen emulated the famed poet Tao Yuan-ming by disturbing her forest as little as possible. She conserved native species and used only the gentler slopes to raise Taiwan cherry, Chinese juniper, camellia and sweetgum. Her business was selling seedlings. Unfortunately, it wasn't very profitable. In the farm's second decade of existence, she enrolled in the Council of Agriculture's guidance program for developing "resort farms." In so doing, she became the only woman among Taiwan's first generation of resort farmers.

Over the last two decades, her seedlings have grown into shade-giving trees. The farm's grounds now include six kilometers of paths that take visitors to numerous scenic spots, including the Springs of Immortality, the Jade Grove, Echo Falls, and a hilltop pavilion offering views of Turtle Island.

Three streams-Ping Hsi, Taotzulin Hsi, and Ta Hsi-pass through Toucheng's ecologically rich slopelands. Local native species include turn-in-the-wind (Mallotus paniculatus), red nanmu (Machilus thunbergii), ivy tree (Schefflera octophylla), and tree fern (Cyathea lepifera), all of which Chuo has preserved. She's also brought in valuable makino bamboo (Phyllostachys makinoi), Taiwan cherries, camellias, rhododendrons, black pines (Pinus thunbergii), hinokis (Chamaecyparis obtuse), and Chinese junipers for her seedling business, and fruit trees such as wax apples, honey Murcotts, peaches, kumquats and pomelos. Visitors can sample fruit straight from the trees while soaking in the ocean of green she has created.

Guests hiking in the hills often return to the farm with their hands filled with fresh-picked loofahs, their caps brimming with wax apples, and their pockets stuffed with passion fruits and kumquats. Young visitors are often the most amusing. More than one child has come back from a walk with a leg soaked in the remnants of a fresh egg carelessly shoved into a pocket.

Over the last few years, Grandma Chuo has also turned her attention to food processing. A skilled cook, she has learned how to preserve kumquats, and has traveled as far afield as National Ping Tung University of Science and Technology to pick up new techniques. She now passes on her knowledge to overnight guests in do-it-yourself classes. During the April-June bamboo-shoot season, the farm dries bamboo shoots, cooks rice in bamboo stalks, and makes bamboo whirligigs, floating lanterns, and water pistols. Visitors, adult and child alike, can join in the fun by making bamboo lions, roosters, sailboats, and airplanes. The surprises to be found everywhere on the farm draw many families back for regular visits.

Chuo has come a long way since her days as a teacher and garment-factory owner. Her ambition now is to introduce her guests to the vitality of rural life through her organic produce and her buffaloes and geese, which are raised out of doors.

Learning from Nature

"I used to make clothes, which are a lifeless thing," says Chuo Chen. "Now I have hills and trees and a small stream, and all of it is alive!" There are crabs and little fish in the stream, fireflies dancing over the damp grass, and native plants flanking the trails through the hills. Visitors sometimes even catch a glimpse of an eagle soaring high above, or a snake slithering across the path before them.

"Why do the eagles come? Because there are snakes. Why do the snakes come? Because there are frogs," says Chuo Chen, explaining the local ecology. She believes that as long as she keeps the natural environment unpolluted, wild animals will use the farm to breed and raise their young.

Chuo Chen even applies environmental principles to the daily cleaning of the coops and pens of the farm's chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, cattle, and sheep. The animal waste is first washed into a sedimentation tank, where water hyacinths leach out heavy metals. Once the waste has settled, it is drawn off for use as fertilizer in the orchards and fields.

Over the years, the Toucheng Farm has adjusted its approach to land management to keep pace with advances in environmental understanding. In 2006, as part of its effort to conserve native species, the farm began removing Busy Lizzie (Impatiens walleriana), a non-native species, from its lands. It even recruited visitors to the farm and students from the Lan Yang Institute of Technology's Department of Health and Leisure Management to help with its monthly campaigns to root out the flowers.

Busy Lizzie is often found in parks and along footpaths. Chuo Chen says that people are entranced by its bright flowers, and often forget that it is an invasive foreign species. It is a hardy plant that shoots its seeds away from itself so that offspring don't compete with their parents. This allows it to spread rapidly and helps it displace native species. Toucheng Farm implemented its monthly "rooting out" campaign in response to the Council of Agriculture's program to preserve Taiwan's native species, and uses the campaign as an opportunity to disseminate accurate information about conservation.

The "Farming Grandma" wants children who visit to play on bamboo xylophones, try to get a traditional face bowl to spray water by rubbing it with their hands, or make giant bubbles, in hopes that they'll find joy in such hands-on activities. In the photo opposite, children from Singapore are fooling around in a stream.

Like visiting Grandma

The Chuo family's management of the farm, which has now grown to more than 100 hectares, draws on principles related to production, ecology, and life. In so doing, the family gives visitors a chance to experience forest ecology for themselves. Even after a decade-plus in which resorts, farming and otherwise, have sprung up all over Taiwan and competition has intensified, the Toucheng Farm has remained popular for its pristine natural environment.

Toucheng Farm has grown tremendously since it first opened its five-room hostel. It now houses up to 500 guests at a time and receives about 60,000 visitors a year, 80% of whom stay onsite. Ecological package tours that include hands-on classes also generate tens of millions of NT dollars of revenues for the farm.

Luo Yi-wang, a visitor from Taipei who works in the electronics industry, says his first visit was at the recommendation of a friend from Ilan. He recalls being greeted by a seemingly never-ending array of hot and cold foods on the snacks table. The setup reminded him of his grandmother's house-he never had to ask for food, and there was always more available.

"That's how we country people treat visitors," says Luo, who grew up in Chiayi. He says the huge spread of snacks, which exemplifies rural hospitality, soon made him a loyal customer.

The opening of the Hsuehshan Tunnel has made it possible for residents of northern Taiwan to make day trips to the farm. Chuo Chen has responded by investing tens of millions of NT dollars over the last two years in an effort to persuade guests to spend the night. Her additions include a winery that produces and sells kumquat, plum and grape wine and a winding waterway that imitates a kind used for drinking games in classical times. In those days, literati would sit beside a waterway on which a cup of wine would be set afloat. Whoever the cup stopped in front of was expected to quaff the wine and recite a verse. With this addition, Chuo Chen is giving modern visitors a chance to experience the game for themselves.

Moved by life

At its heart, Toucheng Farm's management philosophy seeks to reproduce Chuo Chen's childhood memories. Though it focuses on the past with its emphasis on simplicity and a return to nature, the farm is nonetheless bursting with vitality. It takes children back to "Grandma's house," where they romp, relax, and gain a sense of Nature's possibilities.

Chuo Chen well remembers the poverty of the years following World War II, but also recalls the vibrancy of the natural world-the frogs that kept pace as she walked between the paddies on her way home from school and the clouds of grasshoppers that used to fly up out of the thick grass. She remembers catching loaches in the paddies just after the rice harvest. She remembers her playmates rolling up their trouser legs to scoop up fish in irrigation canals and being scared out of their wits by water snakes. She remembers skies filled with dragonflies after heavy rains....

"In those days, we learned something new every day," she says. "But the most important thing was that everything we touched was alive."

Having been a teacher herself for more than a decade, Chuo Chen is keenly aware that life in those days provided exactly the kind of "development of the whole person" that modern education so vigorously advocates. But, in spite of our present-day wealth, she believes our children's toys are all "dead." Kids senses are endlessly stimulated, but little moves them. Chuo Chen wants the children who come to her farm to interact with living things, to play in the natural world and eat the food it provides. For Chuo Chen, "Only discoveries that are 'alive' and moving make lasting impressions."