ToT - Tag der Offenen Tür

Last Sunday was the Open Day of FiBL. I am not going to report on the activities of the day or give official figures like how many guests visited, for details you can check here http://www.fibl.org/de/medien/medienarchiv/medienarchiv13/medienmitteilung13/article/tag-der-offenen-tuer-am-fibl-1.html

Let me first started with Saturday the day before the open day, we had another big event for the FiBL colleagues and trainees - the MitarbeiterFest! But the day began with rains, and we were called to help setting up 20 pavilions for stalls in different locations. After working for the morning being soaked and tired, my stomach was compensated with lots of good cheese and bread. In the afternoon we did some shopping for the food stall and got back to the bee house doing some final preparation. The party started sharply at 5pm when the Cuban live music started slowly. Can't imagine the institute all of a sudden turned into a party place. A banquet hall with nicely set up tables and chairs with fine wine glasses on top. Colleagues got crowded around some finger food, FiBL wine and drinks. After some time of chit chat and getting together, we were ready for the food - organic and fresh full course first started with salad, the main course, dessert and unlimited supply of organic wine and beer. Of course, the best part is the dance floor of Cuban music, most of us moved along the music started dancing slowly, and I learned some new steps and moves too.

On the Open day I was running between the international group stall "the world of organic agriculture" and the bee house. At the bee house of course I would have loved to spend most of my time there. We had quite a lot activities such as honey tasting of 3 kinds of organic honey - mountain, flower and forest, the sound of bee - which is a local artist tries to harmonize bee sounds with human vocal. Salvador was giving explanations on organic and bio-dynamic bee keeping  to the visitors. He plans to do an international bee keeping course next year Spring, this course will run for 3-4 months during honey producing season. It would be cool to involve in his projects in FiBL.

Me- searching for my own camera

Salvador was explaining to the visitors - from Asia and Europe

kids looking at a small demonstrated bee frame

the sound of bees

For the international group, they showcased different projects in Africa - the African Organic Agriculture Manuel with some visual exhibition like how to make your own insect trap with recycled materials, a small cinema shows short films about market development projects in Africa and so on. I like the way they decorated the farm house - with African fabric and bundles of dried straws. Outdoor there were stalls for the cocoa projects in Malaysia, Bolivia and Ghana, cotton projects in India and so on. Pictures worth more than words, I will stop here and do more readings before midnight.

small African world in FiBL

Beate was giving out 100% chocolate powder as tasting

Irene our colleague from Kenya was explaining how African farmers practice diversified cropping

Nora and Monika the cocoa and cotton expert

Next month I will be in Germany for a month to attend workshops and conferences... Probably I will update the blog after a month or hopefully earlier!

~~Viva Con Aqau! - in Freiburg~~

 After 2 days in Bern to meet my thesis mentor and doing some data stuff, I'm glad that I had a "get-away" weekend to Germany -  Freiburg to see my friend Benni and his girl friend Sabrina. It's just 1.5 hours by train from Bern, and I reached already the green city of Freiburg, the student- uni town well-known for its alternative out-spoken activists campaigns and movements. It actually has a nice "Altstadt" the old city and small streams that flow through the streets. It's been almost a year since my last visit to this beautiful town. I made plans to come over Freiburg quite spontaneously, was thinking to just do a bit of sight-seeing and go to the Black Forest. It turned out I did something not that touristic at all and got the chance to learn about a really cool organisation - Viva Con Aqua.

They started in Hamburg, Germany. A "non-traditional NGO", founded by a German soccer player in 2008 and it's like a young people movement in Germany from cities to cities. What they do is to go to events, concerts, sport events like soccer games and parties, to collect "Pfand" (beer-bottles ransom) from the audience and raise money for water projects in Uganda and other developing countries, to help people access to clean-drinking water. My friend Benni was one of the core campaigners in Freiburg. They contact event organisers, clubs and bars, go to the events and collect "Pfand". Sometimes in good events they can raise up to 4000-8000 euros per night, which is pretty cool. People from different background can engage in their activities, they also give educational events and school talks about water conservation projects and global environmental issues. With their large social networking, it's easy to get people involved, like many artists, musicians, and cross-cultural activities. More to check on their website http://www.vivaconagua.co.uk/

Yesterday I was with Benni, Sabrina and a few Viva Con Aqua volunteers in a reggae concert in a suburb cultural club Smitz Katze. We started setting up around 2pm, it was totally hot and maybe the weather was too fine and people preferred to stick around in cafes in the city or do bike trips somewhere else. At the end of the day, we collected around 30 Pfand and raised 30 euros..We broke the record I think, of raising the lowest money?! But it was great to get to know about the NGO, talk to the volunteers and most of all, free entrance to the mid-night reggae concert. After some mid-night dancing moves to the relaxing reggae music and Jamica night, we were already pretty tired and rode the bike back home.
Find out more : http://www.schmitz-katze.com/

On Sunday we hiked to the Black Forest to the Schauinsland forest, where you can take a cable car to the mountain top and see an overview of the Freiburg area and a bit of the Alps. We took a cool Weizen beer in a mountain hut after walking for an hour and I was disparately looking for schwarzwälder kirschtorte (Black forest cake), but ridiculously I couldn't find any in the Black forest, but a nice cafe shop in a nearby valley village Günsterstal.

This weekend was really absolutely a "perfekt" get-away :)

 African Kiss Festival in Freiburg 22-24 November 2013
the 7th year!
http://www.spendenfreun.de/index.php?id=174&no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5bbackPid%5d=62&tx_ttnews%5btt_news%5d=52

So Far, so close…

Where am I situated right now? Friends may wonder where I have been the last 2 months. At the moment when I am writing this passage, I am still in Ningxia China, sitting along lakeside with lots of lotus leaves and a bright sun overhead. So far away from Switzerland, so close to my home – Hong Kong, only with 3 hours flight. In a week time I will be back to the land of mountains and cheese. And most of all, I will say good-bye to Mandarin Chinese and switch back to German mode again.

It is stupid that in China people can’t use Facebook or Google because of censorship and there’s always limitation of information you can get from the national news. It’s definitely true to say China is like a black box, there is always a mysterious side of things. Government officials, companies, communities, a person, people just like to keep things on their own. Unlike Western culture, Chinese don’t work directly and straight forward. We have a saying goes as “A man takes you wandering in a garden” means things don’t work out right away, but take lots of turns.

Let me first briefly say why I am in China. Here is North West China in Ningxia province. You can hardly find people from southern provinces, like Guangdong, or even from Hong Kong. I’m staying in a town called Qingtongxia, 40 km from Gangchengzi village, where I carried out my field work to interview apple growers. I visit their orchards for farm assessments. Until now, I have visited around 20 orchards to find out what had changed in their farm practices after converting to organic farming. Also, to see what are the social, economic and ecological benefits of growing organic apples, and what do they plan for the future. Another thing is to carry out RISE (Response Induced Sustainability Evaluation) for 10 orchards and at the end, to hold a farmer workshop to feedback the results to those farmers.

I am glad that things turned out quite well at the end, although there were some tough times and frustrated moments. Because of the early April hailstorm, apple blossoms were hit and apple trees can bear only little fruits, 60-80% less than the normal yield. Therefore, many farmers were not at home and out of town for side-jobs, as construction workers or work for some nearby vineyards. So it was hard for me to contact farmers for interview or to visit their orchards. Only their wives or grandsons- or daughters stay at home. For a few times I slept over at their homes because it’s already late when I finished the interview at late night. But most of them are very warm welcoming; getting known I am from afar and generally they are helpful all the time. It’s funny to see one farmer has a big mansion with a rose garden next to his apple orchard. I nearly got lost when I was looking for a toilet. Most farmers have a big pasma or LCD TV at home and quite well living standard. I wonder if they earn more than what we earn in Hong Kong, as most of them own beautiful houses.

The highlight of my stay was to hold a farmer workshop to present the topic what is farm sustainability and findings from my RISE assessments. Talking about time keeping, Chinese farmers ain’t like Swiss. We planned the workshop at 7 pm and there were only a few came. I was so worried back then, but people started showing up one by one, slowly, and finally the workshop started at 9:15am. I tried my best to finish it on time. It was the first time for me to present in Chinese. To be frank I speak English better than Chinese, but I am happy that they told me my mandarin Chinese had improved a lot in a month time. My parents also came for visit and support, I’m glad to let them know what my work is actually about and everything in a Chinese farm village was new for them – people from the big city.

The sun is heating really hard right how overhead me, I guess I have to go and hide inside a library. Last few days in Ningxia, I plan to visit a few closer apple growers and farewell with them, travel to south of Ningxia to the “no-man’s land” and gather myself again. My dad mocked me, saying I live like a Gypsy, a nomadic girl, moving from place to place. I also wonder where and when will I find a place to settle down, where I feel like home.  

Fricktal Bees :-)

Still a week to go before I leave Frick for my field work in China – Ningxia – a dry region in south of Inner Mongolia. Work-wise, I am quite prepared for the 30 interviews with the apple growers out there. These days I am sort of on my way to finalize the questionnaires for the farmer survey, some translation works have got done too. But what also takes time is to coordinate with the trading companies and my mentors and supervisor, they spread all over the world! Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, China… Internet and skype really make communication easier in this era of globalization. At the moment, what I worry the most is the language barrier. In Ningxia, Hui is the local dialect that most farmers speak. I can speak Chinese Mandarin, but not even fluent (Cantonese is my mother tongue...). I can imagine works would be more tough, when I don't speak the farmers' language at all. That also means it will take double time to finish an interview, which took me an hour in my trial interview. Can't even imagine a 5 hours RISE assessment (a sustainability assessment tool at farm level) will turn out to be 10 hours. I think both me and the interviewed farmer will gonna be K.O!!

Bee-keeping 

Speaking about bee-keeping, there are quite many colleagues somehow either are bee-keeper (Der Imker), or find it appealing and plan to learn on their own. My colleague Sal keeps 40 honey bee hives on the Swiss mountain nearby Luzern. He’s a very experienced “Imker” and produces organic honey back in his home. I was lucky enough to be his “office-mate” for a week time, and got to know about ‘how honey is made from’. Before I didn’t really know how honey is produced, which I feel a bit shame of. This amazing insect or you can describe them as an “animal”, means so much to us the human being in terms of food production. More than 1/3 of our food depend on the pollination through bees. Bees are highly hierarchically organized in terms of their roles (job functions of worker bees, drones, and the Queen) within a colony or a bee hive. By collecting nectar and pollen from flowers to flowers - within different species and varieties of crops, plants or trees- they help to transfer pollen and facilitate reproduction of plant, which is known as the process pollination.

hope the bees will soon adapt to their new home

“If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.”
― Albert Einstein

Worker bees are really hard-working little guys. They start life as a nurse bee nurturing brood (unborn bees, drones and queens). Other tasks include guarding the entrance of the colony, building honeycomb, ripening nectar to honey, packing pollen, cleaning the hive and carrying out the dead. The last and the most important task too, to fly out and look for nectar, pollen, water and propolis. During this time they would be eaten by birds or insects. And in industrialized conventional farms like almond, corn, wheat and soy plantations in California, bee colonies are disappearing without any traces because of several reasons. The most frightening is that chemical sprays are absorbed by the plant vascular system and contaminate the pollen and nectar that the bees collect and encounter. The chemicals disorient the bees and damage the homing ability of bees, that is why many bees lose their way back to their hives, and bee colonies slowly die out.   

Bee swarming

Back to Frick, this spring is apparently too cold and a bit windy for the Fricktal honey bees. We had only less than one week really sunny nice warm weather. When you feel that spring has finally come, she is gone the next day. It’s also not so easy for the bee keepers to control or predict bee swarming. During spring as the weather gets warmer, food become abundant and bee population grows fast in the colony. New queens are produced and finally only a single young new queen is raised by other bees. The old queen then is replaced, then she leads half of the colony includes the drones and worker bees to leave the hive and searches for a new home. Next time when you see bees cluster somewhere underneath a roof or within bushes of trees, don’t be panic, they are natural but could be quite aggressive sometimes. On sunny days, I followed Sal to the Bienen Stand (the bee house) nearby our office to control the bees. To check the number of queen cells and to see if there is a sign of swarming.

bee swarm

I really am grateful for having the chance to share the joy of keeping bees with Sal. But one big obstacle that I still have to overcome is…to avoid being stung!!

More about honey:

More than Honey - A "Swiss made" documentary about contemporary bee-keeping industry 
http://www.morethanhoney.ch/

Der Imker - the bee keeper, a touching story about a Turkish bee-keeper who tells how his life and family had been changed by Turkish-Kurdish war that caused a turmoil in the country.
http://www.derimker.ch/

Yamagishi Frühlingsfest

It's been long and not having time to sit down and dig my head into writing my blog. It's always easy to start up with something new, but try to keep it up is always an issue. In the last couple of weeks, I noticed spring had gradually come, but not so obvious. Now in May still, the weather is cold and sometimes when it rains and winds chilly, you 'd wonder does seasonality really exist. I remember in primary school, my geography teacher told us "In Hong Kong, we have four seasons, Spring is from January to April with moist warm air from the East China sea, we have foggy and the cloudiest sky of the year. Then Summer comes in May and lasts till August. When you see tree leaves turn yellowish and start to fall in September, you know it's Autumn and it's a season for family hiking.We have cool and dry winter from December till end of February." However, nowadays Winter doesn't necessarily mean overcoats and gloves.  When I was still small I remember the time during Chinese New Year which is usually around Jan/Feb, kids used to follow the parents from homes to homes to visit relatives and send out new year greetings. My mom would put me on the warmest clothes and dresses, since it's supposed to be the coldest days of the year. This cliché omage of lovers huddle together walking on winter streets with Christmas lights on might soon becomes outmoded and  far-gone. Winter is not that cold anymore in Hong Kong and don't be surprised one day you may see your guests wearing T-shirt and sandals come visit you in Chinese new year.

2 small volunteers :-) 

apple trees flowers, in late May and June they will slowly mature to apples!

Angus beef... fed on fresh silage 

delivery fresh regional farm products to Swiss !

My time in Switzerland has gone like an arrow. I'm happy and lucky enough to have met some angles around. When I'm abroad, it's always been my wish to try out more local things, and do stuff with the locals. It's the way to help yourself to adapt to a new culture. Last weekend, I was in a Yamagishi Früflingsfest (Spring festival) at my friend's family farm nearby Winterthur. Usually Früflingsfest is a time for farms to open up for visitors, to showcase their fresh farm products and to celebrate the coming of Spring. People from the nearby villages or the region come with family and kids, enjoy the day and have some freshly produced regional cheese, milk and vegetables. But it's a bit different with Yamagishi farm. "The Yamagishi movement is a network of egalitarian intentional communities which originated in Japan. People in these communities live without money and with minimal personal possessions, but their needs are provided for by the community. There are no bosses or set working hours. Their primary industries are farming and ranching." (WiKipedia). 

Yummy :-) it tastes homemade Japanese style!

Okolomiyaki - Japanese pancakes, so tasty! 

The laying box on the left keeps the hen warm with small eggs laid 

Farm Eggs - visitors come pick their own ones from the laying box

Their idea is to create a world "in which our children and grandchildren can live without worries, a world in which everyone and everything has the same chance to live a happy life, that is our goal, and we work for life". A lady who shared with me her life-changing experience with a Yamagishi farm in Japan back in 25 years ago. She said, it's all about "to do things from your mind to your heart, and from heart to actions". They live and work with their motto "Ich - ein Teil der Natur - werde ein Mensch, dessen Gedanken, Taten und Gefühle zum Gedeihen aller Lebewesen, der Sonne und der Erde beitragen" , which means I, being a part of nature, a person will contribute its thoughts, actions and feelings to the prosperity of all living beings, the Sun and the Earth. 

There are around 14 people live in the Yamagishihof in Switzerland, they keep livestock like Angus beef cattle, chickens for eggs and fattening pigs for sausages, and a small orchard for apple trees. Animals are respected and provided with comfortable living space, to have a happy life. The Yamagishihof buys farm products from neighboring farms like seasonal vegetables and deliver farm products to small quarters in cities like Basel and Zurich.

mini music concert and afternoon cake session

The festival
Last weekend the Yamagishihof were busy preparing for the festival. There I met more than 20 people and volunteers from Belgium, Korea and Kenya came to set up the ground and event. It was cool there was even an Indian tipi and camp fire inside where we were sitting around to keep warm and make hot tea. On Saturday we set up a mini golf course and collected wild flowers for decorating the dining tables. I was shifting around various tasks, sometimes being outside or stayed in the kitchen preparing dinner. The kitchen I must say, is always the busiest corner with the "cooking mamas" preparing good meals for us :-) In the evening after the long day of preparation, we sat down in a circle and sharing. We went a round to say what we had learnt or felt about the works or "zusammenarbeit" (work together in German). I feel everyone is so motivated to helping out and does everything from the heart. You've got to take initiatives, because nobody is giving orders, but people are ready to instruct you. 

On the Sunday, the event started at 10 a.m. and I guess during the day over a hundred people came. Most of them are Yamagishihof supporters or customers, some of them are old friends or farmers from the region. Since Yamagishi has a close link to the Japanese community and the culture, there were quite a lot of Japanese visitors. Funny thing is, I was mistaken to be a Japanese, I would never mind cos I can't tell European faces too.

I am happy to be invited to this farm event and to get to know more about Swiss farms. Yamagishihof has set a good example of promoting community supported agriculture (CSA) by establishing close relationships between farmers and customers. By educating customers the importance of buying seasonal and regional farm products. It is not necessarily be organic, but agricultural products could be produced in more ecologically friendly methods, which concern more about animal ethics, use less chemicals and live in harmony with the nature, so that species can be nourished by high biodiversity of the farms.

Crowds searched for farm eggs!

Our mini golf-course looks good  :-) Good job Lukas !

Merci viel Mal Aunt Renate, Auf Wiedersehen..

More about yamagishi in Switzerland:
http://yamagishi.ch/

apples and cherries Blossoms

It's a beautiful time to come visit Frick . Blossoms of trees keep surprising you everyday, clusters white apple little flowers sprouted from buds. Size of apples may depend on the flowering time, the 'king flower' is the first to open and gives rise to the largest fruits. Flowers are 'raw materials' for fruit production, heavy flowering is induced by how much sun light a tree gets. To get an optimize size of apple, in 2 weeks time we will do "flower thinning", to take off flower clusters in order to trigger physiologic shock to the tree, and to stimulate return bloom and tree growth and maintain tree structure.

It also gives more stable yields and prevents "alternate bearing of apples", which means the tree doesn't bear apples for next year. It's so nice to see and admire these pretty flowers, but in an orchard, this is the fact you have to remove them, to get higher yields. Pretty sad, huh? This week we also counted number of clusters and leave bud per tree. You can tell which ones are flower buds and leave buds. If a tree has too many clusters per branch, it will bear less apples or in smaller size or not in optimal quantity. Thinning is usually done by hand, since you need to measure or check manually which clusters to remove. And for different varieties, thinning method also depend. One dwarf apple tree can bear around 155 apples, and in European market smaller sized apples are more preferred.

white apple flowers start blooming since last week

the apple orchard look much more lively, isn't it?

Mowing machine to mow the weeds as mulching on the top soil.

We spent the whole week fixing the weeding mat on the floor
for against  competition of weeds to the trees

Willkommen auf dem Fricktaler Chriesiwaeg!

Just told by my colleague Corrine, that Frick is actually famous for its lovely cherries, and it's a well-know cherries production region in Switzerland. So today, me, Corrine and Tomas went cycling to this Chriesiwaeg (Cherry trail in Swiss German) to experience this spirit of cherries.
It's not far away from out house, just 20 minutes to get there. It's a bit hilly at the start, but it's "sehr schön" to bike along the meadows and passing by the cherries tree blossoms. I really look forward to the end of May, when the cherries are mature and ready to be eaten (i'm pragmatic I know :)

http://www.myswitzerland.com/de/fricktaler-chriesiwaeg.html

Me on the bike with cherries..this is something I will remember
about this place after years

Weingut FiBL

Friday is usually quite empty in FiBL. Most colleague work only 80% a week, and they can choose a day off, most people would pick Friday of course. Since this week, I started having lunch in the cafeteria almost everyday. Especially in this warm early summer weather, and in FiBL there is an open terrace for us sitting outside, enjoying organic lunch or coffee breaks under shades of chestnut  trees. As I told before, the work environment and culture in FiBL is very exceptional. You have lots of chances to exchange with colleagues, about your projects, research, or casual chats. There are many great people here, who are so experienced in organic agriculture and knowledgeable in specific topic. Everyday you talk to somebody else and always learn something new. Since there are many varieties of work here, soil sciences , animal husbandry, crop production and orchards, and test of parasites of plants. It's always interesting to encounter some research students by chance, and they probably would explain to you how they test the effect of charcoal on the growth of soy beans; how they growth fungi or spores in Bodenlabor to test susceptible varieties.

Something I like here is that everyone is willing to share, on an eye-level, not hierarchical at all, unlike the Chinese culture. You can call your boss or head by the first name, and talk to them as if other colleagues. When I first came here, I was not so used to this coffee breaks, and long lunch breaks and too much networking sometimes. As time goes by, I am used to this work culture here, and these in-between breaks are something I look forward to everyday.

Last Friday on the month there is a wine- tasting session
in the small vine yard, with 40 varieties of wine!