The Local Countryside

I can’t say I particularly enjoy walking down Orchard Road to City Hall. While it is a great walk for people watching and spotting marketing gimmicks (which usually involve PVC and/or short skirts), it gets pretty dreary once you keep going at it. So it is really nice to find somewhere less crowded and with less exhaust fumes.

Figs on a tree

A while ago the girlfriend and I took a ride on the Kranji Express to the Lim Chu Kang countryside, took a walk at Sungei Buloh, crossed paths with a 2-metre long monitor lizard and had some snacks at Poison Ivy. It simply left me pining for more of the area.

The Local Countryside – Hay Dairies Goat Farm

It was a weekday when my parents and I visited the area, so we were a little disappointed when we found out that Green Circle wasn’t ready for business. We then moved off to Hay Dairies Goat Farm for a look-see and some goat’s milk. We had missed the milking session, so we had to settle for the meet-the-goats session.

A hungry goat expecting to be fed.

Pregnant nanny goats

You can see some of their bellies move from the kicking kids inside. Fascinating.

The “stud” sniffing a nanny goats… Nuff said…

So a bit of reality check here: the goats don’t really frolic in the vast grass patches as you see in the Flash animation on the web site. (If you sense I’m a little peeved by this, it is only because you got to watch The Meatrix)

So after the meet-the-goats session, we bought a few bottles of fresh goat’s milk, chocolate and original flavours.
Advice: I prefer the original flavour to the chocolate one. So skip the chocolate, because it doesn’t really taste fantastic. But of course, it is a matter of personal preference. Try at your own risk.

The Dragonfruit Farm

We then adjourned to the dragonfruit farm just next door. For the uninitiated, dragonfruit, or pitaya grows from a family of cacti that looks just the picture above. They come in 3 varieties, red skin with white flesh, red skin with red flesh and yellow skin and white flesh. The farm only sells the first two varieties along with other products that are derived from the fruit, like fruit enzymes and canned dragonfruit juice (either red or white).

Flower of the Dragonfruit plant

My parents and I definitely didn’t just want to settle with buying the dragonfruits, so we toured the plantation.

Dragonfruit

Flower of the Dragonfruit plant

Flower of the Dragonfruit plant

Flower of the Dragonfruit plant

A cute little thing

Of course, it is my duty to inform readers that there are thorns, and should proceed with a level of caution. Especially when you see plants growing so close together…

Be careful of thorns

Besides the main function of growing dragonfruits, the farm also has some sidelines for variety, probably catered to pique the visitors’ interest.

Aquatic plants

Wine gourds

Just before leaving, we chanced upon a koi pond. So I stepped closer to the edge and the next thing I knew, the kois swarmed towards me and surfaced as if in a feeding frenzy.

Koi

It turns out that the kois were constantly fed by visitors and apparently they expected feed the moment someone steps near the edge of the pond! Damn smart lor!

Think I will plan another trip to the local countryside soon.

Green Circle yet again

The farm, though small, contains a dynamic, biologically diverse ecology.
A revision of the food chain/web we studied in primary school.
An amazing example of equilibrium.

Click here for the rest of the album.

Return to Green Circle

The last 2 days had me trekking, eating, running, running, slacking, running, sleeping. (Healthy, but very unconstructive.)
This morning, a run had me thinking of bread. Consequently landing me somewhere in Lim Chu Kang, in search of the organic farm I once visited.

First the bus service 175 that used to serve the route had been taken off! Now there are only services 172, 300 and 975. The first 2 are out of the question, so took the chance and boarded 975, since 175 and 975 have 2 out of 3 numbers identical. (Ok, so 172 and 175 also have 2 out of 3 numbers identical…)

The ride to the Green Circle had me staring out of the window, looking out for the landmarks of the alighting point. The place had a FIBUA village (ask your guy friends who have been through NS) opposite the road. It turns out that the alighting stop is just after Sungei Gedong Camp, and it’s much more prominent.

Then it’s a long walk along Neo Tiew Road. Walk, walk walk. Then a sign,

I have arrived! Now to hunt for bread. Don Cai is the person who makes these breads. This time round, he’s got a new product, Almond cookies. He offered a sample, I gladly obliged. Yum, and it reminded me of Chinese New Year. Also, the packaging strategy has been updated. Now he sells his walnut and raisin buns in packs of 6.
I got 2 multi-grain loaves and a pack of walnut buns and proceeded to a “get-to-know-my-D70″ session around the farm. Of course I took a lot of pictures.

Went back to the shed for a rest and a drink, shooting under the midday sun wasn’t easy. The owner of the farm, Sue brought a printout of a research report on this maringa to show us. It turns out that a stalk of leaves from this plant has the goodness of 4 oranges, 2 glasses of milk, 3 bananas and dunno how many soy beans combined!

What followed was rather funny. First, we chewed on the seeds of this tree, it was definitely potent stuff. Sue complained that the bitter taste still stayed in her mouth after 2 hours. Don introduced to me that its common name is “drumstick tree” because of the hard, long and slender fruit it bears. We went out to the tree and plucked a stalk of its leaves and proceeded to chew on them. Fresh to say the least.

Then Don and I came across this frenchman who was at the farm.
Don told me that he was there on some sort of farming internship.
Actually, more of trading farm labor for lodging, food and knowledge on agriculture.
Don also mentioned something called “Woofer”. Not sure if I got the term right, but it’s an internationally recognized scheme for people with the interest and passion for farming (sounds somewhat quirky) sign up to be farmers at farms all around the world.
Farm owners can impart knowledge to these volunteers and the volunteers in turn can even contribute to the improvement of the farm they are at.

This frenchman at Green Circle mentioned that his field of study is in animal sociology (something like that lah) and he specializes in the study of ants.
I brought up this small talk about why a pair of ants would return to a spot where a previous ant was killed, and if you killed that pair, a pair would come for each, until a time there would just no ants returning that spot…
Somehow I think he didn’t take that too well…

Enculé~ kidding…

Click here to view photos taken on this little excursion of mine.