It's cherry season on Zhang Zhimin's farm. Cherries are the first fruit to ripen every year and birds are the first to enjoy them. In fact, providing a treat for the birds was the purpose of planting the cherry trees on Zhang's farm.

Zhang's generosity has its rewards. The twittering birds could be heard in the background while Zhang talked to Beijing Review over the phone. It was dusk on May 16 and she just finished the farm work and was walking back to her cottage on the farm.

It is a large farm occupying 10 hectares on the southwestern outskirts of Beijing. Zhang established the farm in 2001 and has been working there ever since. "I live here the whole year and work on the farm from sunrise to sunset almost every day," she said. "I am the only permanent worker on the farm."

Art of nature

The farm is large, too large for one person to manage. But Zhang has never intended to operate it for profit—all she wants to do is to restore the farm to what it had been like before it was poisoned by chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Her skin has developed a dark tan from the years of farm work. Her hair has turned from black to silver and a slight stoop makes her skinny figure look even shorter. If unaware of her previous work, no one would see any difference between her and the other farmers in the village.

Born in downtown Beijing with fluency in English, Spanish and French, Zhang used to be in China's diplomatic corps and was posted to Africa. She also worked in a large state-owned company dealing with the import and export of agricultural products, through which she gained access to more information on farm products and how chemical fertilizers and pesticides affect the farm produce.

In the 1990s, Zhang was suffering from severe allergies of unknown cause. No hospitals could identify the allergen. "I had a runny nose all the time and my eyes were always watering," she said. "I suspected it might have been caused by harmful residues in food."

It was hard to find food that hadn't been grown or treated with chemicals. She asked her relatives in rural areas to help planting crops and vegetables without using chemical fertilizers and pesticides but the relatives said it was almost impossible to grow crops without chemicals.

"It is not a good sign that farmers don't know how to farm in a natural way," she said. "To eat organic produce, I'd better grow that by myself." In the early 2000s, when Zhang had just turned 40, she quit her job and rented 10 hectares of farmland.

She named the farm God's Grace Garden. In her mind, farms should have everything—cows, goats, chickens, birds, fruit trees and vegetables, and they should co-exist and live in harmony. No fertilizer or pesticide, not even machines are allowed to appear on the farm.

At the entrance to the farm, a large, white sign reads "Farming is the art of managing life through cooperation between human beings and nature."

For Zhang, it has been an uphill path to reach this harmonious ideal. Long-term usage of fertilizers and pesticides has had severe effects on the soil, including causing chemical oxidation and compaction. Local farmers normally till the land with machines to loosen the soil, but Zhang soon realized mechanized tilling also has drawbacks. "Machines loosen earth to a certain depth but the earth below that is still hard," she said. "What's worse is that they kill earthworms, the real heroes that can loosen the earth."

She hired two local women from the village to loosen the earth with shovels. She also refused to use groundwater and relied on rainwater for irrigation. After 10 years, she began to see the benefits of maintaining biodiversity on the farm. Birds began nestling in the trees, and cows and goats became natural weed eaters that produced natural fertilizer. The orchard now produces a variety of fruits in succession throughout the year, from cherry to mulberry, apricot, peach, grape, apple, plum and pear.

The market

The farm began to produce surplus fruit and vegetables in the early 2010s. A few people sniffed out the existence of the farm and became regular customers. By then, food safety had become a growing concern and there were others exploring natural farming practices on the outskirts of Beijing.

Zhang joined some of her customers to establish a farmers' market in central Beijing, offering a place for her and farmers like her to meet customers face to face.

Diversity is the core principle of the market. "The market is not just for vegetables," Zhang said. She is among the first group of farmers at the market where she tried selling many varieties of goods. She made tofu and bread until there were other farmers producing the same products.

Now the market is open every Tuesday and Saturday at two different locations in Beijing. The team has even set up two physical shops for those who can't sell produce at the market or online.

There are vendors selling vegetables, soy products, mushrooms, rice wine, malt sugar, fresh dumplings and noodles, cosmetics and even clothes, all made with natural ingredients and raw materials.

Li Zhi, who is a vendor of sprouts, joined the market in early 2021. Born in 1991 in Henan Province, he went to Shenzhen in Guangdong Province after college graduation to start his own business. It was a coincidence that he ran into a similar farmers' market in Shenzhen. After taking part in some activities organized by the market, he fell in love with organic farming.

He then handed his business over to his father and embarked on a career in farming. After working on a farm in Beijing for three years, he decided to run his own farm—a small plot of only 100 square meters, specifically for producing sprouts.

"The growth cycle for sprouts is very short, from several days to just under a month," Li told Beijing Review. "They're easier to take care of and it is a nice experience to see them grow from seeds to sprouts. When I started my business in Shenzhen, all I wanted was to make money. Now farming has provided me more happiness than I ever could have imagined before."

Li, who now frequents the market, holds workshops teaching customers how to grow sprouts at home. Hotpot restaurants are the main buyer of his products and the price is about three times that of sprouts sold in regular markets.

"More people are now willing to pay higher prices for our produce," Zhang said. She now mainly sells Chinese yams to the market, which have become one of its most sought-after products. "When we first ran the market, many customers didn't understand why our price was higher. Now many have agreed that the food is worth the price."

Zhang's income from the market now covers the day-to-day costs of running the farm, but is a long way from recovering the money she has invested in it over the past two decades.

"Farming is not a business for me," Zhang said. "Financial benefit is not my primary consideration. I want to show from my experience that China's traditional farming methods still work well in modern times and that we can use it to produce safe, healthy food."

Now she lives a simple life. She doesn't have a social media account and seldom uses her smartphone. The multilingual former diplomat now enjoys being an interpreter of nature.

(Print Edition Title: The Urban Farmers)

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson

Comments to yuanyuan@cicgamericas.com